7/ .3.8. -4 THE OBJECTIONS TO THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE PENTATEUCH, IN PART I. OF DR. COLENSO'S " PENTATEUCH AND BOOK OF JOSHUA," CONSIDERED, AND SHEWN TO BE UNFOUNDED. BY EDWARD GRESWELL, B.D. FELLOW OF COBPUS CHEISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD. LONDON: RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE. PARKER, OXFORD. DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO., CAMBRIDGE. MDCCCLX1II. OXFORD: PRINTED BY T. COMBE, E. PICKARD HALL, AND H. LATHAM, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER " IF my conclusions," observes the Author of ' the Penta- teuch and Book of Joshua critically examined/ "were only speculations, if they were only matters of higher or lower probability, I feel that I should have no right to express them at all in this way, and thus, it may be, disturb painfully the belief of many. But the main result of my examination of the Pentateuch, viz. that the narrative, whatever may be its value and meaning, cannot be regarded as historically true, is not, unless I greatly deceive myself, a doubtful matter of speculation at all; it is a simple question of facts " Pre- face, p. xx. In this view of the nature of the controversy between Dr. Colenso, in this first Part of his Work, and the defenders of the historical character of the Pentateuch, the Author of the following pages is entirely disposed to concur. It is a ques- tion of FACTS throughout and a question of that kind, which, in every instance, has one and the same issue in view, viz. Whether the facts and circumstances of the case, as repre- sented in ' the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically examined/ or as they are bound to be represented according to the simple historical construction and sense of the original accounts, and as they will be found to be represented and explained in the following pages, are more truly the facts of Scripture. And such being the general plan and argument of the following Work, with respect to the details, nothing is neces- sary except to explain to the reader that, whenever in the discussion of these questions, there was occasion to refer to some Chronology of the Old Testament, the Author has con- sidered himself at liberty to borrow the requisite data from a a 3 2067908 iv ADVERTISEMENT. Work of his own on that subject ; which, though still unpub- lished, has long been lying by him, in a state little short of completion, and waiting only the additional light and con- firmation which the ' History of the Primitive Calendar' is calculated to reflect upon it. Specimens of this Work were given in his Fasti Catholici a , from which an idea might be formed of the circumstantiality with which it went through the whole of the Old Testament history, from first to last. The Author has good grounds for the confidence which he places in it, and he has not scrupled to refer to it whenever it was necessary. He begs leave also to observe that besides the Objections formally insisted on in this first Part of Dr. Colenso's Work, and consequently noticed, and to the best of the Author's ability answered, in the present Work, doubts are insinuated, if not avowed, of the truth of the Scripture account of the Creation, and a very decided opinion is expressed on the Scripture account of the Deluge, and on that of the first, if not of the second also, of the Miracles affecting the sun. If none of these objections in particular is noticed in the following pages, it is not because they escaped the observation of the Author, nor because he was disposed to underrate the gravity and importance of the questions so raised, but simply because each of them had been anticipated in another Work of his, ' The Three Witnesses, and the Threefold Cordb' the publication of which preceded only by a short time that of this first Part of Dr.Colenso's Examination. Had Dr.Colenso seen that Work, before the publication of his own, he might perhaps have learnt from it that it was possible to answer the question of his Zulu (Preface, pp. vii. and viii.) without being under the necessity of ' speaking lies in the Name of the LORD/ and still more probably might have seen reason to hesitate before he ventured to pronounce the simple and ob- vious construction and explanation of either of those miracles, (Preface, p. x. and note,) something, ' which every natural philosopher would know to be wholly untenable/ 8 Fasti Cath. ii. 169 sqq. : Ibid. 231 sqq. ' Pp. 1-^5, 55-79, 98-139. Works by the same Author. FASTI TEMPORIS CATHOLICI AND ORIGINES KALEN- DARI^E. (History of the Primitive Calendar, Part I : Origines Kalendarise ./Egyptiacae, Sinicse, Indicse, or History of the Primitive Calendar among the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Hindus.) In four volumes, 8vo. Oxford, at the University Press, 1852. GENERAL TABLES of the FASTI CATHOLICI, or FASTI TEM- PORIS PERPETUI, from A.M. i B. C. 4004, to A.M. 6004 A. D. 2000. i volume, 410. Oxford, at the University Press, 1852.* SUPPLEMENTARY TABLES, AND INTRODUCTION TO THE TABLES, of the Fasti Catholici, both the General and the Supplementary. i volume, 8vo. Oxford, at the University Press, 1852. ORIGINES KALENDARI^; ITALICS. (History of the Primitive Calendar, Part II.) Nundinal Calendars of Ancient Italy, Nundinal Calen- dar of Romulus, Calendar of Numa Pompilius, Calendar of the Decem- virs, Irregular Roman Calendar, and Julian Correction. Tables of the Roman Calendar from U. C. 4 of Varro B. C. 750, to U. C. 1108 A. D. 355. In four volumes, 8vo. Oxford, at the University Press, 1854. ORIGINES KALENDARI/E HELLENICS; or the History of the Primitive Calendar among the Greeks, before and after the Legislation of Solon; (Part III.) In six volumes, 8vo. Oxford, at the University Press, 1862. DISSERTATIONS UPON THE PRINCIPLES AND AR- RANGEMENT OF AN HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS. Second Edition. In four volumes, 8vo. Oxford, at the University Press, 1837. PROLEGOMENA AD HARMONIAM EVANGELICAM, sive de primariis nonnullis, ad Chronologiam Evangelicam spectantibus, Disser- tationes quatuor. Accedunt Kalendarii Anni Sacri, ab anno A. Ch. N. 1511 usque ad A. D. 94, in annis expansis Tabulae LXXXV : Neomenia- rum Anni Sacri Tabulae Synopticae vi : Characterum Mensium Anni Sacri Tabula Generalis i. Oxonii, e Typographeo Academico, MDCCCXL. * N.B. These Tables, though published along with the First Part, are equally necessary to every succeeding Part. One Copy however is competent to serve for the whole work. HARMONIA EVANGELICA, sive Quatuor Evangelia atque Actus Apostolorum Greece, pro temporis et rerum eerie in Partes Sex distrimiti. Editio tertia. i vol. 8vo. Oxonii, e Typographeo Academico, MDCCCXL. Editio quarta. Oxonii, e Typographeo Academico, MDCCCXLV. Editio quinta. Oxonii, e Typographeo Academico, MDCCCLV. AN EXPOSITION OF THE PARABLES, AND OF OTHER PARTS OF THE GOSPELS. Five volumes in six. 8vo. Oxford, Printed by S. Collingwood, Printer to the University, for J. G. and F. Rivington, &c. 1834. By the mine Author. JOANNIS MILTONI FABUL.E, SAMSON AGONISTES ET COMUS, Greece. Interpretatus est Edvardus Greswell, S.T.B. Coll. C.C. apud Oxon. Socius. Oxonii, excudebat S. Collingwood, Academiae Typo- graphus; veneunt apud J. H. Parker, &c. MDCCCXXXII. PRELIMINARY ADDRESS OF THE ORIGINES KALEN- DARI^E ITALICS, lately published at the Oxford University Press, with some further Observations. Oxford, John Henry Parker, &c. 1854 THE THREE WITNESSES, AND THE THREEFOLD CORD; being the Testimony of the Natural Measures of Time, of the Primitive Civil Calendar, and of Antediluvian and Postdiluvian Tradition, on the Principal Questions of Fact in Sacred or Profane Antiquity. London, Rivingtons, Waterloo Place; Parker, Oxford, &c. 1862. CONTENTS. Page QUESTION I. The Family of Judah. (Colenso, ch.ii. pp. 17-20.) 3 II. The Size of the Court of the Tabernacle, compared with the Number of the Congregation. (Colenso, ch. iv. pp. 31-34.) 1 1 III. Moses and Joshua addressing all Israel. (Colenso, ch. v. pp. 35-37.) 23 IV. The Extent of the Camp, compared with the Priests' Duties. (Colenso, ch. vi. pp. 38-40.) 27 V. The Number of the people at the first muster, compared with the Poll-tax raised six months previously. (Colenso, ch. vii. pp. 41-44.) 33 VI. The Sojourning of the Israelites in Egypt. (Colenso, ch. xv. pp. 91-95.) 40 VII. The Exodus in the fourth Generation. (Colenso, ch. xvi. pp. 96-101.) 45 VIII. The numbers of the Israelites at the time of the Exodus. (Colenso, ch. xvii. pp. 102-106.) 50 IX. The number of the Firstborn, compared with the number of Male Adults. (Colenso, ch. xiv. pp. 84-90.) 61 X. Increase of the Tribes in Egypt, and the mode in which it was probably effected. (Colenso, ch. xvii. pp. 102-106.) 69 XI. Increase of the Tribes which had one founder only, Dan, Manasseh, and Ephraim ; and that of the Tribe of Levi. (Colenso, ch. xviii. pp. 107-112.) 80 viii CONTENTS. Page QUESTION XII. The Institution of the Passover. (Colenso, ch. x. pp. 54-60.) 83 XIII. On the true interval of Time taken up by the Circum- stances preliminary to the Exodus. (Colenso, ch. x. pp. 54-60.) 91 XIV. On the March from Egypt, and the Order in which it . was made. (Colenso, ch. xi. pp. 61-64.) 99 XV. The Israelites dwelling in Tents. (Colenso, ch. viii. pp. 45-47.) 105 XVI. The Israelites armed. (Colenso, ch. ix. pp. 48-53-) IO 9 XVII. The Extent of the Camp, and the daily Necessities of the People. (Colenso, ch. vi. pp. 38-40.) 125 XVIII. The Sheep and Cattle of the Israelites in the Desert. (Colenso, ch. xii. pp. 65-81.) 133 XIX. The Numbers of the Israelites, compared with the Ex- tent of the Land of Canaan. (Colenso, ch. xiii. pp. 82, 83.) 151 XX. The Priests, and their Duties at the Celebration of the Passover. (Colenso, ch. xxi. pp. 131-138.) 155 XXI. The Number of Priests at the Exodus, compared with their Duties, and the Provision made for them. (Colenso, ch. xx. pp. 122-130.) 165 XXII. The War on Midian. (Colenso, ch. xxii. pp. 139-146.) 174 HISTOKICAL CHARACTER THE PENTATEUCH. HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE PENTATEUCH. QUESTION I. The Family of Judah. (Colenso, ch. ii. pp. 17-20.) (1.) THE question which has to be considered in reference to the above subject is this : Whether Hezron and Hamul, sons of Pharez, and grandsons of Judah, could have been born before the Descent into Egypt. Dr. Colenso (19) infers from Gen. xlvi. 12, (and in my opinion rightly,) that Hezron and Hamul were included among those who went down into Egypt; but (20) he cannot reconcile the fact of their being already born before the Descent, with the history of the mar- riages and births, in the family of Judah in particular, given in Gen. xxxviii. And the dilemma, to which he would reduce the defenders of the historical truth of the Pentateuch in this instance, is this, That if they maintain the literal truth of Gen. xxxviii, they must give up two of the Seventy, line- ally descended from Jacob, who either came with Jacob into Egypt, or were already there at the time of his coming. If they maintain the integrity of the Seventy, including Hezron and Hamul, they must give up the historical truth of Gen. xxxviii. It shall be my endeavour, with God's help, to shew that there is no inconsistency between these two things ; that we are at liberty to believe in the simple historical truth of Gen. xxxviii, down to the birth of Pharez and Zarah, and at liberty also to believe that Hezron and Hamul, sons of Pharez, and grandsons of Judah, born after the close of Gen. xxxviii, were nevertheless two of the Sixty-six (lineally descended from Jacob, Gen. xlvi. 26) who went down with him to B 2 4 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, i. Egypt, and two of the Seventy, who either came into Egypt with him, or were found there at his coming. (2.) To go to the bottom of this question indeed would require me to enter on the consideration of the births of the children of Jacob in general j and that, as I freely con- fess, would be an intricate and difficult subject : especially if we took into account the conditions of the Problem itself which would thus have to be solved, That all these chil- dren, with the exception of one, must have been born in Padan-aram, and all within an interval of time not exceed- ing seven years at the utmost. It must appear, at first sight, a difficult and almost an impossible undertaking, by any arrangements of our own, founded on such data as are discoverable at this distance of time, to bring the births of eleven sons and one daughter, in one and the same family, consistently with the laws of nature, and consistently with every known fact in their subsequent history, within the com- pass of the same six or seven years. And yet it can be done, and in my Chronology of the Old Testament, of which I have already given some account, I thank God, it has been done, from the birth of Reuben 8 , in the eighty-fifth year of the life of Jacob, and in the first year of the second seven years' service with Laban, B. C. 1822, and (as it may very probably be as- sumed) in the month of February in that year, down to the births of Joseph b and Dinah c respectively, (both which appear to have been determined to the same year,) B.C. 1816, the former very probably in the month of May, the latter in the month of October, in that year. (3.) To produce this Table here, accompanied with the neces- sary explanations, would require too many details, and take up too much time ; but if the reader will allow me at present to assume its existence, and the fact of its having been sub- stantiated by the proper proofs throughout, then Judah, the fifth son of Jacob, having been born, according to this Table, B.C. 1820, (and very probably towards the end of July or the be- ginning of August that year,) would be forty-two years old complete at the end of July or the beginning of August, B. C. 1778. And the true chronology of the history of Jacob and of his family, from the birth of his last child in Padan- a Gen. xxix-32. b Ib. xxx. 22-24. Id. 21. QUEST, i.] Family of Jndak. 5 aram, B.C. 1816, to his return to the land of Canaan, B.C. 1810, and from the time of this return to that of the Descent into Egypt, conspiring- to determine the date of this Descent at last to B.C. 1778, and very probably to the autumnal quarter of that year, it follows that Judah, born July or August, B. C. 1820, must have been forty-two years old, and two or three months more, (that is, in his forty -third year,) at the time of the Descent. And the question, which we have to consider under these circumstances, is, Whether one, who was at the utmost only forty -two years old complete, or in his forty- third year still far from complete, could have been the father of three sons, already grown up in some sense or other, before the birth of a fourth, as related Gen. xxxviii. i-n, and the father of a fourth, as related Gen. xxxviii. 12-30 ; himself too grown up and the father of two sons, (as it must be inferred from Gen. xlvi. 1 2,) before the Descent into Egypt. And this is the question which I shall now proceed to consider. (4.) The first thing necessary for this purpose is to explain the connection between Gen. xxxvii. and xxxviii. with respect to which Dr. Colenso appears to have laboured under a double mistake. Ch. xxxvii. is devoted to the history of Joseph, from a certain time of his life to that of his being sold into Egypt, xxxvii. 25-28, 36, the last thing related in that chap- ter; and this time in the life of Joseph being represented, xxxvii. 2, as that when he was seventeen years of age, Dr. Colenso (20. i.) appears to have inferred from this note of time that Joseph was sold into Egypt when he was seventeen years of age ; and consequently that the whole of this chapter in his history belongs to the seventeenth year of his age. Joseph, as I have already explained, was born probably in the month of May, B. C. 1816 ; and consequently must have been sixteen complete, and in his seventeenth year, after the month of May, B. C. 1800. His history in Egypt is demonstrative that he must have been brought there in B.C. 1792. The true extent of the time then, embraced by his history in this 37th chapter of Genesis, must have been eight years ; from some time later than May, B. C. 1800 (Gen. xxxvii. 2) to the time when he was actually brought into Egypt (xxxvii. 28, 36), and that, some time evidently in the summer, (xxxvii. 24, 28,) B.C. 1792. 6 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, i. (5.) The last event of this 37th chapter having thus been this sale of Joseph into Egypt, (as Dr. Colenso supposes, when he was only seventeen years of age,) and the next chapter, which gives the account of the marriages and births in the family of Judah, beginning with his own, being ushered in by the words, " And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down," &c., Dr. Colenso has construed this note of time as if it implied that the beginning of this 38th chapter was consecutive on the end of the 37th ; and conse- quently that the first thing related in this 38th chapter, the marriage of Judah to the daughter of Shuah, was synchronous with, or directly consecutive upon, the last event in the pre- ceding chapter, the sale of Joseph into Egypt : from which it must have followed, as he himself argues (20), that if Joseph was sold into Egypt at seventeen years of age, this marriage of Judah' s, (who was only four years older than Joseph,) syn- chronous with it, or directly consecutive upon it, must have taken place when Judah was twenty or twenty-one. But this is to mistake the idiom of Scripture, in the case of this phrase, " At that time," or " In those days," or the like, and not only in the Old Testament, but in the New also d , ac- cording to which it is much more frequently prospective than retrospective, in its reference to the context of events, and more properly intended to draw attention to what is about to be related, than to what has just happened. The truth is that the first event related in this 38th chapter, the marriage of Judah in the first instance to the daughter of Shuah, is related where it is, merely because of its connection with what follows, merely as the first of a series of causes and effects, of antecedents and consequents, which ultimately led to the birth of Pharez and Zarah as the sons of Judah himself by Thamar ; and the true link of connection, between the chro- nology of the 37th chapter and that of the 38th, is the date of the last event recorded in the former, the sale of Joseph into Egypt, B.C. 1792, and the date of the last event recorded in the latter, the birth of Pharez and Zarah, the sons of Judah and Thamar, which turns out to have been B. C. 1792 also. (6.) The question therefore, which we have still to consider, is this : The date of the birth of Judah being known, the <* Cf. Matt. iii. i, xii. i, xiv. r ; Mark, viii. i ; Luke, xx. i. QUEST, i.] Family of Judah. 7 summer quarter, B.C. 1820 the date of the Descent into Egypt being known, the autumnal quarter, B.C. 1778 and the age of Judah himself at that time being known can the marriages and births in the family of Judah, recorded in Gen. xxxviii. beginning with his own marriage, and ending with the births of Pharez and Zarah, yet taking in also the mar- riage of Pharez, and the births of Hezron and Hamul, as both implied in Gen. xlvi. 12 be reasonably supposed to have come to pass in the first forty-two or forty-three years of the lifetime of Judah himself? by reasonably being understood, (whether a priori to be expected or not,) without offence against any known law of nature. And this question, it is evident, would be reducible to the more general one, What is the earliest time of life at which men, without any offence against the laws of nature, may be supposed capable of marrying and having children ? And the ultimate answer to that, it is evi- dent, must be returned by the proper reply to the question, What is the standard of the age of puberty ? What is the earliest time of life at which men attain to the age of puberty ? (7.) Now with respect to this standard, as recognized and assumed among the Jews in particular, it may be inferred from the Mishna and from Maimonides 6 , that in females the age of puberty was reckoned at twelve years and a day, and in males at thirteen years and a day ; an assumption which no one will suspect of having erred on the side of defect, but which may very well be conjectured to have done so on the side of excess. I have shewn in my Origines Kalendarise Hellenics f , that among the Greeks, at a very remote period of their history, the age of puberty in females was a year at least earlier than this standard of the Mishna ; and that some of the most celebrated female names in Hellenic antiquity must have been wives at ten or eleven, and mothers at eleven or twelve. In males too among the Jews an earlier standard than that of the Mishna seems to have been practically re- cognized. Josephus reckons the number of males, who returned after the captivity, from twelve years old and upwardss. We e Cf. my Dissertations on the Principles and Arrangement of an Harmony of the Gospels, vol. ii. 136. (cf. i. 378 n : 396, 397 : 369 n.) Hi. 415. f iv. 507, 508 n: 509 n: 511; v. 67. 550 : vi. 477. Ant. Jud. xi. iii. 10. cf. i Esdras, v. 41. 8 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, i. are told h it was usual with the Jews, as soon as their male children arrived at the age of puberty, to take them up to Jerusalem to be made Disciples of the Law, and subject to the obligation of attendance at the National Solemnities, in common with the rest of the male adults ; and our Saviour himself was taken up to Jerusalem, evidently for this pur- pose, and equally so for the first time, when he was twelve years of age, Luke ii. 42. (8.) This shorter standard of the age of puberty in males, twelve or thirteen, is confirmed by the matter of fact, in more than one instance; as i. in the history of the Patri- archs themselves, by the case of Benjamin. Benjamin, ac- cording to my Chronology, was born (probably in the month of April) B.C. 1800; and consequently could have been only twenty-two years and six months old, at the utmost, at the time of the Descent, the autumnal quarter, B.C. 1778 : and yet he was even then the father of ten sons, all of them in- cluded, and necessarily included, in the Seventy, Gen. xlvi. 21. And though it is possible that some of these might have been twins, we are bound to defend the credibility of the Scripture account in this instance, if necessary, even on the hypothesis that all the ten were single births; and that could not be done except by supposing that Benjamin began to have children at twelve or thirteen years of age. * ii. From Josephus' account of the length of the life and of that of the reign of Solomon 1 , it may be inferred that he must have supposed him to have come to the throne at thirteen or fourteen years of age; and that being assumed, if, according to Scripture, he reigned only forty years, and Rehoboam, mVson, who succeeded him, was forty- one years old when he came to the throne, he must have been born when Solomon was twelve or thirteen. And though the true age of Solomon, when he began to reign, was more probably seventeen, yet that Josephus had some authority for his own assumption on that point, may be inferred from the fact that Eupolemus also, as quoted by Alexander Polyhistor k , makes him only twelve at his accession, and only thirteen when he h Dissertations, ut supra, i. 397. cf. Joseph. Ant. Jud. v. x. 4. of Samuel, i Ant. Jud. viii. vii. 8. * Prseparatio Evangelica, (Oxonii 1843.) ix. 30.425-8: 34-428. 4 . QUEST, i.] Family of ' Judah. 9 began to build the temple. The oi'iginal authors of these traditions, whosoever they were, could have thought it no difficulty that Solomon must have been both a king and a father at twelve or thirteen years of age. And that such was actually the belief of the Church in Jerome's time, may be seen from his own testimony 1 . iii. But whatever may be thought of this case, there is another, and a still more remarkable one, in the subsequent history of the kings of Judah, of which there can be no doubt. It may be certainly inferred from 2 Kings xvi. 2, xviii. 2, and 2 Chron. xxviii. i, xxix. i, that Ahaz could not have been more than eleven or twelve years old at the birth of Hezekiah. And if Dr. Colenso, or any one else, should be disposed to think this fact scarcely compatible with the course of nature, I would recommend him to read that passage of the Epistolae Critical of Jerome, just referred to ' ; where he will find an account of a case in point, which happened in Jerome's time. (9.) When we consider the much earlier developement in hot climates, such as that of Judaa or of Egypt, both of the physical capabilities and of the physical inclinations, which must cooperate in order to such an effect as this, of marriages and births at the earliest possible times, consistent with the laws of nature, it will not, at least it ought not, to appear surprising 1 that actual instances of both should be discoverable even in the domestic history of the Patriarchs, without any regard to the special ends and purposes which the Divine Providence might have had in view in permitting them, or to the uses to which, in the ceconomy of subsequent events, they may have been actually subservient. The case is still of not unfrequent occurrence in the Harems of the east, that boys, as we should call them, are fathers at twelve or thirteen, and young men are grandfathers at twenty-five or twenty-six. (10.) On this principle, there would be no inconsistency with any known law of nature under the circumstances of the case, either anciently or at present, in the assumption that the marriage of Judah to the daughter of Shuah, the first thing related Gen. xxxviii. i, 2, might have taken place in his thirteenth year ; and the births of Er, Onan, and Shelah, the 1 Opp. ii. 619. col. a. 620. col. b. (Edit. Bened.) Epp. Criticse. Ad Vitalem. 10 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, i. successive fruits of that marriage, in the next three or four years ; and that Er might have been married to Thamar be- fore Judah was twenty-six complete, and Shelah grown up, Gen. xxxviii. 11-14, (which means arrived at the age of puberty, and so far at a marriageable age,) when Judah was still iii his twenty-seventh year ; and Pharez and Zarah, his children by Thamar, might have been born when he was not more than twenty-eight complete; and Hezron, the eldest son of Pharez, when Judah was not more than forty-one complete, and Hamul his youngest; when Judah was not more than forty-two complete. (11 .) On this principle at least has my own Chronology of the Old Testament proceeded in its arrangements of these dif- ferent marriages and births ; and such is the consequence of these arrangements, that the date of the birth of Pharez, when Judah was twenty-eight complete, turns out to be B.C. 1792 the connecting link, as I observed (5), of the chronology of ch. xxxvii, in the history of Joseph, with that of ch. xxxviii. in this history of the family of Judah. And with respect to Hezron and Hamul, of whom Dr. Colenso consi- ders it impossible that they could have been born after all that is related in this chapter, yet before the Descent into Egypt, it turns out that one of them must have been a year old, and upwards, and the other a month or two at least old, at the time of the Descent itself. (12.) I shall therefore take my leave of this subject with one or two general observations, i. There were no doubt reasons, (and reasons probably connected with the scheme of human Redemption,) whether they have been made known to us in Scripture or not, which rendered it necessary that while the line of the future Messiah should be traced on the father's side through the family of Abraham perpetually, by the mother's side, and as that of the promised Seed, it should be carried on through Thamar, and Rahab, and Ruth, daughters indeed of Eve, the common mother of all mankind, but in no sense daughters of Abraham, ii. There might be similar reasons connected with the foreordained oeconomy of the in- crease of the Tribes in Egypt if the Twelve Tribes in general, as the event proved, were destined to be derived from fifty-five individual founders in particular, all of them QUEST, ii.] Court, and Number of the People. 11 born before the Descent, and none of them after, (which was strictly the case) to render it necessary that the five founders of the Tribe of Judah, three of them his sons, and two of them his grandsons, should all have been born before the Descent. These reasons, on the supposition that every step in this whole course of proceeding's was part of a Providen- tial ceconomy, to which each was alike subservient in its pro- per order of time, might possibly account both for the early marriage of Judah, in the first instance, and for the early marriage of Pharez, in the next, as equally necessary to the birth of these five future founders of the Tribe of Judah in Egypt, (three of them his sons, Shelah, Pharez, and Zarah, and two of them his grandsons, Hezron and Hamul,) all in Canaan, before the Descent into Egypt. QUESTION II. The size of the Court of the Tabernacle, compared with the Number of the Congregation. (Colenso, ch. iv. pp. 31-34.) (13.) The Tabernacle being now complete in all its parts, and having been set up accordingly" 1 , the consecration of Aaron and his sons to the service of the Tabernacle being next enjoined 11 , and all the congregation, agreeably to the same command , in order to witness the ceremony of this consecration, having been gathered together to the door of the Tabernacle, it is assumed by Dr. Colenso (35) that, " As the text says distinctly, < at the door of the Tabernacle/ they must have come within the court j" and that being taken for granted, he proceeds to argue from it, that, according to the Scriptural representation of the circumstances of these pro- ceedings, it supposes itself, and it requires its readers to sup- pose, that 603,550? men at least, if not more, were admitted on this occasion into an enclosed space of ground, which was not capable of containing without inconvenience (38) the 1 2oth part of their number. (1.4.) The first exception, which may be taken to the reason- m Bxod. xl. 1-17. Lev. viii. and ix. Lev. viii. 3, 4. P Numb. ii. 32. 12 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, n. ing which issues out in such an absurdity as this at last, is that, for ought which appears to the contrary, it is fcmnded on a purely gratuitous assumption. Scripture is silent about the admission of the congregation within the precincts of the court; and to assume so material a fact as that without authority is simply gratuitous. We read, Lev. viii. 3, of the command, " Gather thou all the congregation together unto the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation :" and we read, ver. 4, of the execution of the command, "And Moses did as the LOED commanded him, and the assembly was gathered together unto the door of the Tabernacle of the congrega- tion/' In both these" instances the preposition in the original is al ; and in both in the English version it is rendered by unto, and not, as Dr. Colenso (35) would seem to have read, by at : though whether unto the door, or at the door, as the version of the Hebrew al phethee, it would be alike opposed to the supposition of admission inside the door. (15.) The next exception which may be taken to the same assumption, and the same reasoning from it, is this, That to suppose the spectators, assembled on this occasion, admitted any further than the door, actually admitted within the door, and consequently into the court, and in such numbers as would have filled the court an hundred times over, would have defeated the very end and purpose of their being 'sum- moned together at all ; viz. to witness with their own eyes the consecration of Aaron and his sons to the sacerdotal office, and the first discharge of their functions in that capacity. This ceremony was to be performed within the court of the Tabernacle ; part of it in the Tabernacle itself in the forepart of the Tabernacle, or Holy Place, at least, where the altar of in- cense, the table of the shew-bread, and the golden candlestick were all situated but by far the greater part of it in the court of the Tabernacle, (the enclosed space, in front of the Tabernacle,) where the laver of brass, in which the priests were required to wash their feet, before entering, on any oc- casion, into the Holy Place, and the brazen altar, on which only all the sacrifices, whether on this occasion, or on any subsequent occasion, which required the instrumentality of fire, could be offered, were situated, both in the open airq. For these i Exod. xxx. 1 8-2 1 : xl. 6, 7, 10, 1 1, 29, 30. QUEST, ii.] Court, and Number of the People. 13 purposes, and all the other particulars of this first day's cere- monial, Lev. viii. 6-30, a clear court, a space containing none but Moses, and Aaron, and Aaron's sons, was absolutely neces- sary. A court filled, and more than filled, with spectators, would have rendered it absolutely impossible that any part of the ceremony could have been performed such for instance as the disposal of the bullock for the sin offering (ver. 1417) with all the solemnity and all the regard to order and form, prescribed for the occasion, and necessary to be observed throughout it. (16.) Again, it is to be observed that this ceremony of the consecration of Aaron and his sons lasted eight days'"; though no more of its particulars are expressly related than those of the first day and those of the last. Whether the congrega- tion was called together to the door of the Tabernacle on each of the intermediate days does not appear ; but that they were summoned to attend on the eighth day, as they had been on the first, and under the very same circumstances, does appear. We read at least, Lev. ix. 1-4, of Moses' call- ing Aaron, and his sons, and the elders of Israel together, on this eighth day, and charging Aaron to bring such and such offerings on his part, and the elders, or the children, of Israel, to bring such and such on their part, " Because the LORD would appear to them on that day " i. e. (ver. 23, 24) not only in the pillar of the cloud as usual, but by fire, upon the altar of burnt offering, from heaven. And, ix. 5, we read of the observance of this command : " And they brought that which Moses commanded before the Tabernacle of the congregation : and all the congregation drew near, and stood before the LORD." We may presume then that they were all assembled on this last day under the same circumstances as on the first day ; either all within the court of the Tabernacle, or all with- out it. Now it appears to me, from ix. 15-22, (the account of the ceremonial of the offerings specially required from the people, for the first time, on this occasion, and now ministerially offered by Aaron and his sons for the first time also,) that of these two suppositions the latter only could have been the truth. For we observe, ix. 22, that, at the end of all, it is ' Lev. viii. 33 ix. i. 14 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, n. said, " And Aaron lifted up his hand toward the people, and blessed them, and came down from offering of the sin offering, and the burnt offering, and peace offerings." This " coming down" is explained by the fact that, as the ap- proach to the altar of burnt offering, though not by means of steps, was up a stage or inclined plane 8 , the Priest offi- ciating at this altar must have stood on a platform at the foot of the altar, more or less elevated above the surface of the ground or floor of the court. And Aaron, as it is here observed, while still standing upon this stage, having made an end of the offering of these sacrifices in behalf of the people, preparatory to the blessing of the people, which had yet to be done as the last part of his duty, on this occasion, being said to have first of all lifted up his hand toward them, what must be inferred from that fact except that he and the people were standing at the time, relatively to each other, in such a position, that he could not have had them close to himself and round about him, (as he must have had, if they had been admitted into the court,) but at some distance from him, and in front of him ? The height of the brazen altar itself was three cubits, or five and a half feet, (Colenso 36); probably three feet and an half above the level of the stage on which the ministering Priest, when employed about it, had to stand, and consequently not less than two feet higher than the level of the ground. From this position, so much higher than the people, if they had been standing around him at the time, he must have been said to have lifted his hand not toward (al] but over (dal] the people. But supposing the people collected at the time at the entrance of the court of the Tabernacle, and Aaron standing as before on the platform of the altar, in front of them, (such having been de facto the position of the altar of burnt offering relatively to the entrance of the court*,) nothing would appear more natural than this description of his lifting his hand toward the people, preparatory to his blessing them ; and by that gesture drawing their attention to the act which he was about to perform. (17.) On this question however of the admission or non- admission of those who are always to be understood by the s Exod. xx. 26. t Ib. xxvii. 1-8. QUEST, ii.] Court, and Number of the People. 15 assembly or congregation of the children of Israel, on any occasion of this kind, within the precincts of the court of the Tabernacle, there is one general principle applicable to every question of this kind alike to which if Dr. Colenso had paid due attention, he would probably never have thought of instituting any such comparison as that which is proposed in his Fourth Chapter, between the size of the court and the number of the congregation. He has abun- dantly made it appear by means of his figures, that the admission of the congregation into the court, under the cir- cumstances of the case, was physically impossible ; and I shall now proceed to shew what does not seem to have occurred to him that it was morally impossible, a much more effectual bar to their admission in a given instance than the limited dimensions of the court itself; and one which must have kept them out, though the court itself had been capable of containing 120 times their number, in- stead of an laoth part of it. (18.) Now, when I say it was morally impossible that any part of the congregation of the children of Israel as such, and much less the whole of them, could have been admitted within the court on this or on any occasion, after the Taber- nacle had once been set up ; what I mean is that, when certain distinctions had once been introduced and established by the Deity himself, in respect of places, as sacred or pro- fane, as appropriated or not appropriated to himself and in respect of persons, as set apart or not set apart for his own service and in respect of duties and offices, in relation to the places where, and the persons by whom, they were to be performed in his own behalf to have admitted the congre- gation in general into any part of a sacred enclosure like the court of the Tabernacle, which was accessible only to the Priests and the Levites, would have been to confound all those distinctions of God's own appointment ; and therefore morally impossible. Such distinctions might be, and as the history of the Exodus proves actually were, sometimes pre- sumptuously disregarded and violated, on the part of the people; but it was morally impossible they ever could have been so, with the permission or sanction of the Deity him- self. 16 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, n. (19.) Now, with respect to the fact of such distinctions, both of places and persons and services, as these, the Material Temple of later date, as every one knows, had its first or outermost court, accessible to Proselytes from the Gentiles ; and its next to this, accessible to female Israelites ; and its third, accessible to male Israelites and beyond this, its fourth, accessible to the ministerial orders, the Priests and Levites : and in the centre of this it had the Nads or Sanc- tuary, divided into the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies or Most Holy, the former accessible to the Priests, at all times, in the order of their daily ministrations, the lattef accessible only to one of their number, the High Priest for the time being and to him only on one day in the course of the year v . And every one is aware of the jealous vigilance with which these distinctions were watched over and enforced in later times ; and how impossible it must have been, under such circumstances, for a Jew to have conceived even the idea of such an anomaly as that of the admission of Gentile Proselytes into the court of the female or male Israelites, or that of the admission of the male or female Israelites into the court of the Priests and the Levites, or that of the Levites into the Holy Place, accessible only to the Priests, or that of the Priests in general, into the Holy of Holies, accessible only to the High Priest, or that of the High Priest himself into this Place, except on one day in the year. (20.) These distinctions were not first introduced when the Material Temple was first built. On the contrary, they came into being with the Tabernacle in the Wilderness and though carried out to their greatest extent under the first and the second Temple, yet from the time that the Deity, after the Exodus, was pleased to institute a standing evi- dence of his presence among his people, in the shape of the Tabernacle, set up under his own directions, as if for his personal habitation, and therefore called Messican, (which in the Hebrew means Dwelling Place,} all these distinctions, of places and persons and services, followed as matter of course. It is assigned as one reason for the selection of a single Tribe, to minister in holy places and in holy things, that the.con- v Cf. Josephus, Contra Apion. ii 8. p. 1 244, and Ant. Jud. viii. iii. 9 : De Bello, v. v. 2. 4. 6. 7. QUEST, ii.] Court, and Number of the People. 17 gregation from that time forward might be preserved from the risk of inadvertent and unintentional, as much as wilful and presumptuous, intrusion into forbidden places or for- bidden services; and thereby from the punishment which must be inflicted on every such offence, whether intentionally or unintentionally committed x . And there is good reason to believe that this supposed superior sanctity of one Tribe above the rest of the Tribes, or of one family in that Tribe above the rest of the families in it, was something which the rest of the Tribes in general, or the rest of the Levites in particular, for a long time were very slow to acknowledge. The object proposed by the worst and most aggravated of the rebellions, which are upon record, instigated by Korah, head of the family of Izhar, among the Levites, and abetted by Dathan, Abiram, and On, heads of the Tribe of Reuben, the Primogenital Tribe, and by the 250 of the more influential among the other Tribes, distinct from that of Levi, seems to have been the assertion of the opposite principle to that of these distinctions, more than any thing else, to affirm and maintain the equal sanctity and equal acceptableness of all the congregation ; and therefore the equal right of all as much as of the Tribe of Levi, or of one family in that Tribe, to the same freedom of access to Holy Places the same freedom of approach to the Presence of the Deity the same right to a share in the ministrations intended in honour of him as, under the existing state of things was exclusively claimed, and exclusively exercised, by themx. Nor could we desire a better proof of this than Numb. xvii. 12, 13 the terms in which, after the people had been taught, by repeated chastisements, that these were distinctions, immutably fixed, not by Moses and Aaron, but by God himself, and, as such, not to be disturbed with impunity, they expressed their re- luctant acquiescence in them at last. " And the children of Israel spake unto Moses, saying, Behold we die, we perish, we all perish. Whosoever cometh any thing near unto the Tabernacle of the LORD shall die. Shall we be consumed with dying?" Before, they thought they could penetrate with * Cf. Numb. i. 51 : iii. 10. 38 : viii. 9, 10-19 : xv '"- " y See Numb. xvi. 1-3 : 5. 7, 8-1 1 : 35. cf. 15. 1 7-19. ai : xxvi. 9, 10 : xxvii. 3 : xvi. 37-40 : xviii. 4, 5. 7. 22. C 18 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, n. impunity into the very presence of God himself. Now, as the lesson which they had learnt from their recent experience, they think it unsafe to approach within any distance of the visible residence of God. (21 .) No one requires to be told that, as the Tabernacle was strictly enjoined to be made after the pattern shewn to Moses in the Mount z , so the Temple of after times, on the same principle, was bound to be conformed, as closely as the change of circumstances would permit, to the pattern of the Tabernacle. And so it was in every thing which concerned the essence of a Moveable Temple, like the Tabernacle in the Wilderness. The Messican of this Moveable Temple answered to the Nads of the Material Temple of after times. * The name of Naos denoted dwelling place in the Greek, and that of Messican did the same in the Hebrew. The name of the Sanctuary was common to both. The dimensions and the component parts of both were the same. Each was divided into the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies or Most Holy. In both, these were separated from each other by the Second Veil a . The &yi,ov KOVIUKOV, as it is called by the author to the Hebrews 13 , i. e. the holy furniture) was the same in each : in the Holy Place, the altar of incense on one side, and the table of shew-bread on the other, and the golden candlestick : in the Most Holy, simply the ark, and the contents of the ark, the Testimony, or Two Tables of Stone ; the mercy seat, and the cherubim of glory : and by the side of the ark, the authentic copy of the Law, laid up by Moses, the golden pot of manna, and Aaron's rod which budded 6 . Without this Naos of later times, and without the Messican of the Wilderness, was the same open space, enclosed on all sides, and set apart alike under each for the daily ministra- tion ; containing under each the brazen laver, and the brazen altar, necessary alike under each to the daily service of the ministering orders, the Priests and Levites. (22.) And thus far the parallel between the Temple of later times and the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, with respect to z Exod. xxv. 9. 40: xxvi. 30: xxvii. 8 : Numb. viii. 4 : i Chron. xxviii. 11-19 : Hebrews, viii. 5 : Acts, vii. 44. Cf. Hebr. ix. 3. b i x . i . c Exod. xvi. 32. 34 : xxv. 16 : xl. 20 : Numb. xvii. 10 : Deut. x. 2. 5 : xxxi. 26 : He- brews, ix. 4. QUEST, ii.] Court, and Number of the People. 19 the distinction of privileged places and privileged persons under each, would seem to be complete ; and the Nads of the former to answer to the Messican of the latter, and the court of the Priests and Levites round about the former to answer to the court of the same two orders, under the latter. But besides this court, the Temple, it may be said, had two more, if not three ; the court of the male Israelites, the court of the female, and the court of the Gentiles : and the question may be asked, What was there under the Tabernacle to correspond to these ? The third of these, the court of the Gentiles, may be left out of sight at present. As to the other two, even under the Temple it was common to both to be situated externally to the court of the Priests and Levites, though next to it; and though custom appears to have established a distinction between them, whereby one was confined to the men, and the other to the women, it may be questioned whether this distinction was not due simply to the rules of society in the east, whereby the female sex, on all occasions of a public kind, were kept from too close and promiscuous a contact with the male. But for this rule of private and public life, there was no reason in the nature of things why both the male and the female worshippers, who composed the entire congregation of the people, in contradistinction to the Levites, even under the Temple, much more under the Taber- nacle, might not have had a common court. (23.) And this being admitted, the answer to the question What there was under the Tabernacle in the Wilderness to cor- respond to the men's and the women's court under the Temple, is the following fact, (the proof of which I reserve for the pre- sent,) that the Tabernacle both at first, and ever after, as often as it was taken down and set up again, having been pitched at a certain distance from the General Encampment of the Tribes, (which admits of being determined,) there was always a vacant space between the court of the Tabernacle and the Camp ; large enough to admit without inconvenience the whole of the congregation, and much more any part of it less than the whole : and in this vacant space, between the court of the Tabernacle and the General Encampment, pur- posely left for such uses as these, we have every thing which 20 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, n. could be expected under the Tabernacle, to correspond to the men's and the women's court under the Temple. (24.) And this brings us to the question, What is to be understood by the phrase at the door of the Tabernacle, or of the assembling of the people at the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation, of such frequent occurrence in the history of transactions, after the Tabernacle had once been set up ? A door, in the ordinary acceptance of the term, is a material obstruction, adapted both to shut and to open bodily and neither the Messican nor the court had any such door as that. The entrance to the former was not through a door, but through five pillars, a certain distance asunder, partially hid by a veil, which hung half way down them in front d ; the entrance to the court was through a gate, which could be opened or shut pro re nata ; opened, when there was occasion to go into the court, and shut when there was not. (25.) And this leads me to observe that the word which in all these instances is rendered in the English by Door, in the original is Phethee; and the proper meaning ofPhethee, accord- ing to Gesenius, is, first, that of an opening, (as for instance of a gate,) and secondly, that of an entrance, as the consequence of such an opening, and through the space thereby laid bare. It is only in its third signification, if at all, that it denotes what would be commonly understood by dvpa in Greek, janua or ostium in Latin, and door in English. Its proper applica- tion is to the laying open of a space, before closed and shut up by such an obstacle as a gate ; and it is found in one or two instances specially constructed with the Hebrew for gate, ssar, in the phrase, " Opening of the gate of the city/' Josh. xx. 4, Judges ix. 35, i Sam. x. 8, and Prov. i. 2 1 . Such, in my opinion, is its meaning in all these instances of its use, of which we are speaking at present, in the phrase of " Gathered or assem- bled unto the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation ;" and it would have been well, had it been rendered accordingly in the English version in all of them, " Gathered unto the open- ing, not unto the door, of the Tabernacle of the congregation." (26.) Now, if the gate of the court of the Tabernacle was of d Exod. xxvi. 36, 37., xxxvii. 37, 38 ; Hebr. ix. 3 ; Joseph. Ant, iii. vi. 4, p. 270, 272. QUEST, ii.] Court, and Number of the People. 21 such dimensions as it appears to have been, (twenty cubits 6 , between nine and ten yards,) and if it was situated, as it also appears to have been*, in front of the Tabernacle to throw open this gate was to lay open a full view of the Tabernacle, at no great distance from it in front; and to summon the people to this opening, would be the same thing as to sum- mon them before the Tabernacle or before the LORD, only dif- ferently expressed. And again, if the altar of burnt offering, and the brazen laver, (both so constantly used in the daily ministrations,) were situated, as they appear to have beens, in a right line between the gate of the court and the Tabernacle, (the altar, at no great distance from the gate, the laver at no great distance from the Tabernacle,) it is manifest that even from the outside of the court, through this gate and this opening, there would always be a clear and distinct view of every thing going on in the court, especially about the altar and the laver. (27.) In the last place, we may illustrate and confirm the above explanation of this phrase, Door of the Tabernacle, by cer- tain instances of its actual use, in which it could not possibly have meant any thing but the opening of the gate of the court ; nor the assembling of the people at or unto that door any thing but their assembling at or unto this opening. As, i. Exod. xxxviii. 8, where Bezaleel is said to have made the brazen laver of the looking-glasses of those who assembled, (marg. assembling by troops,) at the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation. Who these were, though not specified in the original, might always have been divined, i. from what is specified, the nature of their offerings, part of the mundus muliebris, looking-glasses ; and ii. from the gender of the participle rendered by assembling which is feminine. But it is placed out of doubt by i Sam. ii. 22, where the very same phrase occurs again, of the women who assembled at the door of the Tabernacle in Shiloh. The women then, it seems, under the Tabernacle in the wilderness, could assemble themselves, (and in troops or crowds,) at the door of the Tabernacle; but could they do so within the court? for, if not, this assembling themselves at the door, in e Exod. xxvii. 16., xxxviii. 18, cf. Joseph. Ant. iii. vi. 2. f Exod. xxvii. i., xxxviii. i., xl. 29, cf. Joseph. Ant. Jud. iii. vi. 8., viii. 6. * Exod. xl. 6, cf. ig; Jos. Ant. iii. vi. 2, cf. viii. iv. i. 22 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, n. these instances, could never have meant any thing more than their assembling themselves at the opening of the gate of the court, always outside of it, however close to it, never within it. ii. Numbers xii. 4. Moses and Aaron and Miriam are sum- moned to come forth (of the camp as such) to the Taber- nacle of the congregation. Moses and Aaron, in obedience to this summons, might have presented themselves inside of the court ; but is that conceivable of Miriam, a woman, though of the tribe of Levi also ? And xii. 10, while Miriam was standing where she was summoned to take her stand, consequently either outside or inside the court, she was struck with leprosy ; yet nothing is said of putting her out of the court, where no leprous person could have been permitted to stand for a moment nor after she was restored to herself, of shutting her out from the court for such and such a length of time, but only from the camp, Numb. xii. 14, 15, Deuteron. xxiv. 9. iii. Numb, xxvii. 2. the daughters of Zelophehad bring their case before Moses and Eleazar, and the Princes, and all the congregation, to the door of the Tabernacle. And we may reason in this instance as before, that though Moses and Eleazar might have been inside the court, could the Princes of the people or the daughters of Zelophehad have been so ? If not, to the door of the Tabernacle, in this in- stance also, means only to the opening of the gate of the court opposite indeed to the Tabernacle within the court, but not inside the court. And the same may be said of Josh. xix. 51, of the division of the lands, before Joshua, Eleazar, and the heads of the tribes, at the door of the Taber- nacle of the congregation in Shiloh. iv. But the clearest case, for the illustration of the dis- tinction in question, is that of the consecration of the Le- vites, Numbers viii. 9, 10. This ceremony, it is said, ver. 14, 15, must be undergone before they could enter on their ministerial duties; and, for that purpose, both they and the congregation were summoned first of all before the Tabernacle, viii. 9, 20 one particular of the ceremony at the consecration being this, that the Levites, (8580 in num- ber 11 ,) should pass one by one before the congregation, and h Numb. iv. 48, cf. 36, 40, 44. QUEST, in.] Moses and Joshua. 23 the congregation should lay their hands upon them, viii. 10. And that all this was intended to pass, and actually must have passed, outside the court, must be inferrible from viii. 1 5, which specified beforehand that after all this should have been done, the Levites should go in, to do the service of the Tabernacle ; and from viii. 22, which relates historically, that " after that went the Levites in, to do their service in the Tabernacle/' If they went in only after this consecra- tion, they must have been outside all the time it was going on; and if they were outside all that time, much more the rest of the people. The assembling of both, therefore, pre- liminary to the ceremony, Numb. viii. 9, before the Tabernacle, could have meant nothing but their assembling in front of the entrance of the court. QUESTION III. Moses and Joshua addressing all Israel. (Colenso, ch. v. pp. 35-37.) (28.) The particulars recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy appear to have taken up the space of one solar month of thirty days exactly, from the first of the eleventh month, (the first of Sebat,) in the fortieth year of the Exodus, Jan. n, B. C. 1520, to the first of the twelfth, (the first of Adar,) Feb. 10, the day after the death of Moses '. They consist almost entirely of the addresses, (speeches, as they would be called in profane history,) of Moses himself, made to the people in contemplation of his approaching death, and of his final separation from them, at different times of the in- terval in question, the dates of which may be very probably determined. (29.) With respect to all these addresses, and by way of preliminary to the consideration of any such objection as that which is stated in this Fifth Chapter of Dr. Colenso ; the point to which the attention of the reader should first be directed is that of the unity of the circumstances under which, though distinct in themselves, they appear to have ' See ray Fasti Catholici, ii. 206-212, and my Three Witnesses, 85,86. 24 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, in. been delivered ; first, the summoning- together of the people, (the whole of the people, all the congregation,) as if to hear these addresses in common, and then, the addresses them- selves, so delivered on each of these occasions, as if expected to be heard, and as if actually heard, by all in common. Dr. Colenso (40-42) appears to have discovered an absurdity in this representation, sufficient in his opinion to throw doubt on its truth ; as if Moses could purposely have collected an audience for these farewell addresses of his, a very great pro- portion of which could not have heard him, even if they could have understood him, and could not have understood him, even if they could have heard him. (30.) But the question, in each of these instances, is not, Who could hear Moses, or Who could understand Moses, on these occasions ? but what Moses himself would be bound to do, and what he might be -expected to do, preliminary to each? Whether Moses, about to renew the Covenant of Horeb, after a suspension of thirty-eight years, and with the children of those with whom it had been made originally, (too young at that time to have taken a deliberate and re- sponsible part in it for themselves, but now grown up, and constituting the whole of the congregation,) about to re- publish the Law by repeating and re-enacting most of its injunctions, or to make it more intelligible by explaining and qualifying some of its requisitions, or more complete and perfect by adding and supplying what was still wanting to its integrity aware too of his own approaching depar- ture, and desirous to make an end of his personal ministry among the people committed to his charge, with a series of the most solemn, as well as the most earnest and affectionate, exhortations to obedience, and perseverance in obedience, en- forced by every argument of encouragement or intimidation, of hope or fear, which could have weight with rational and responsible creatures Whether Moses, I say, about to do all this, would begin with calling together only that limited part of the whole congregation, which was competent to hear, or competent to understand, what he was going to say to them, or every individual member of the whole congregation, man or woman, old or young, high or low, down to the very in- fants and sucklings themselves, who had only an equal per- QUEST, in.] Moses and Joshua. 25 sonal interest, (as every individual member of the people and Church of God, without respect to age or to sex, must have had,) in what he was about to do or say. (31.) In like manner, reading in the book of Joshua, viii. 30-35, of a similar occasion, where Joshua too is represented to have recited the Book of the Law, (apparently as it was left by Moses k , and consequently in its totality,) in the first year of the Eisodus, " Before all the congregation of Israel, with the women, and the little ones, and the strangers that were conversant among them," Dr. Colenso (41) in that re- presentation too discovers the same appearance of absurdity, calculated a priori to discredit its truth ; as if Joshua could reasonably be supposed to have summoned an audience toge- ther on purpose to hear him read something which so many of them could not have understood, even if they had heard, and still more could not have heard, even though they could have understood. (32.) But the question in this instance also is not What part of the audience so called together was competent to hear or to understand what was read, but what kind of an audience Joshua was bound to call together, and might be expected to call together, preliminary to such a ceremony as this, the moving cause of which was evidently the injunction recorded Deuteron. xxvii. 1-8, 12-26, (cf. xi. 29, 30,) and the time pre- scribed for which might seem to have been the very day of the passage of the Jordan, (Deut. xxvii. i, 2,) and certainly must have been intended to be some day, as soon after as possible. Is it surprising that Joshua, having received such a solemn charge as this from Moses himself, with the arrival of the day of the delivery of the Law itself forty years before, the fifth of Sivan in this first year of the Eisodus, as it had been the fifth of Sivan in the first year of the Exodus May 20, B.C. 1520, as it had been May 30, B.C. 1560 only fifty- five days after the passage of the Jordan, March 26, the same year, (for this appears to have been the true time to which this ceremony is determined by the course of events before and after 1 ,) preparing on this day, the most proper of any which could have been selected for such a purpose, both to obey the injunction of Deut. xxvii. 1-8, 12-26, to the letter, * Deuteron. xxxi. 24-26. l Cf. my Three Witnesses, 84, 85, 101. 26 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, m. and yet to rehearse the Law, which had been transmitted to his keeping by Moses, in its totality also should have begun, as Moses himself had done under similar circum- stances only four months before, with calling together not those merely, who were competent to hear and to understand him, but every individual member of the people, whether man or woman, old or young, a native Israelite or a stranger, who had any the least personal interest in the requisitions and in- junctions, the rewards or the punishments, the exhortations or the warnings, the promises or the threatenings, of the Law itself? (33.) But though I believe that this is the true explana- tion of the circumstances under which the whole of the Book of Deuteronomy was delivered, and also of the circumstances under which Josh. viii. 34, 35, was done as recorded ; I must still enter a protest against the unfairness of the mode of the reasoning which begins with assuming the thing which con- stitutes the absurdity, and then argues from it to the pre- judice of the historical account, as from an acknowledged fact. Scripture, on the first of these occasions, Deut. i. I, says only, " These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel ; " and on the second, Josh. viii. 35, _only " That there was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel." The truth of the scriptural account is consequently answerable for nothing but the fact of these addresses, on one of these occasions, and the fact of this reading, on the other, under such and such cir- cumstances in each. As to the hearing or the understanding of what was said or read, it leaves that to the common sense of its readers; in the judgment of which it must be just as absurd to suppose that nobody among those present could have heard or understood what was spoken or read, as that all could. It is self-evident that both Moses and Joshua would be heard by those at least who stood next to them ; and it is no straining of probability to suppose that these in particular would be those who were not only the most competent to understand, but the most concerned to hear, and to remember what they heard, the Priests and Levites, the elders of the people, the heads of the tribes, the captains of thousands, the captains of hundreds, the captains of fifties, QUEST, iv.] Carnp, and Duties of the Priests. 27 and the captains of tens" 1 . It is still more evident to com- mon sense, that few as might have been competent to hear either Moses or Joshua on those occasions, there could have been none who were not competent to see him ; and few who, if they saw him, were not competent to know what he was doing, and what it was which had brought them together, to hear or to see him. (34.) Dr. Colenso's rule of judging of the credibility of the Scripture accounts in these two instances, amounts substan- tially to this ; That in the record of things spoken, (of which ancient history is just as full as of things done,) nothing which is related to have been said to, or in the presence of, a given audience, is to be believed as actually so said, if the audience was too great to have heard it. The human voice, it may safely be assumed, is physically incapable of being heard and understood within a compass of sound and space greater than would be filled by an audience of 10, or 12,000. How many harangues of the generals of antiquity to their soldiers, and how many speeches of the orators or demagogues of Greek or Roman history, would this test and criterion of truth or falsehood strike out of the page of history, and set down to the score of fable ! QUESTION IV. The Extent of the Camp, compared with the Priests Duties. (Colenso, ch. vi. pp. 38-40.) (35.) There was a particular description of sacrifices under the Law, (those which were styled sin offerings,) the disposal of which was peculiar the blood indeed being offered, as usual in all other cases also, on the altar of incense or altar of burnt offerings but the bodies of the victims, with every thing appertaining to them in their natural state, being burnt without the camp n . The true reason of this distinction, though at the time a secret and mysterious one, is probably to be m Exod. xviii. 25 : Deuteron. i. 15. n Cf. Exod. xxix. 14: Lev. iv. n, n-ai : vi. 25 : viii. 17: xvi. 37: cf. Numb. xix. 3-5. 28 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, iv divined from Heb. xiii. 11-13 ; from which it may be inferred that this class of offerings under the Law had a special rela- tion to the one great sin offering, the sacrifice of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, which also like these was offered 2oo rf/s 7rape/ji,j3o\77s, or " without the camp." (36.) On this point too Dr. Colenso, upon his own assump- tions, has raised a question, and consequentially deduced an absurdity, chargeable on Scripture, and obtained, as he terms it (45), by "looking plain facts in the face." And these assumptions are, i. That it was the duty of the Priest, who disposed of the blood of these sin offerings, to dispose of the bodies of the victims also ; and therefore to carry them himself from the quarter where they were to be slain, the Tabernacle, to the quarter where they were to be burnt, Without the camp. ii. That the site of the Tabernacle was always within the camp, and the magnitude of the camp, at the least esti- mate of it, was three miles square, if not, (as he himself is more inclined to believe,) even twelve miles square (44, 45). Laying these assumptions together, he has no difficulty in drawing the inference that, as often as a sacrifice of this kind was offered under the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, it was the duty of the Priest (Aaron or one of his sons) to carry the body of the victim, and every thing belonging to it, in its natural state, on his own back, a distance certainly of three quarters of a mile (44), and possibly even of six miles (45), to find a place, where it could be burnt, without the camp. (37.) Both these assumptions are mistaken in point of fact ; though the mistake in the first instance is of no consequence to the present question. It is a mistake to suppose that such simply servile duties of the ministry of the Priests under the Law, as that of the disposal of the bodies of these victims in this particular way, were incumbent on the Priests themselves. It ignores the fact that the Levites were made over to them in perpetuity, to relieve them from such services, as well as for other reasons ; and if any one will turn to the texts which seem to enjoin these services on the Priests themselves, he will see that the verb, which is rendered by " shall carry forth," is just as capable of being rendered " shall cause to be carried forth." There were Levites enow (see 27. iv. supra) at this very time, under the Tabernacle, while there were yet QUEST, iv.] Camp, and Duties of the Priests. 29 only three Priests, to have rendered the performance of this duty, even on Dr. Colenso's hypothesis of the site of the Tabernacle, and of the dimensions of the camp, so far as numbers were concerned, a feasible one. (38.) But with respect to this hypothesis itself the size of the camp, for the present, may be treated as indifferent also. It makes very little difference to the resulting absurdity, whether the size of the camp was three miles square, or twelve miles square, if the Tabernacle was really situated in the midst of it. The assumption which vitiates the reasoning- in this Sixth Chapter of Dr. Colenso's all through, and false itself, leads, as was natural, to conclusions equally false, is that of the site of the Tabernacle. And to this question I shall confine myself for the rest of my observations on this chapter, reserving that of the size of the camp for a future opportunity. (39.) Now the only part of the Pentateuch, from the begin- ning of Exodus to the end of Deuteronomy, in which there is any distinct and formal reference to the site of the Tabernacle, is Exod. xxxiii. 7-11; and that is so clear, and so much to the purpose, that one cannot but be surprised it should have been totally overlooked, as it appears to have been, by Dr. Colenso. Let us begin with producing this passage, as its importance on the present question deserves. (40.) Exod. xxxiii. 7 : " And Moses took the tabernacle, and pitched it without the camp, afar off from the camp, and called it the Tabernacle of the congregation. And it came to pass that every one which sought the LORD, went out unto the tabernacle of the congregation, which was without the camp, ver. 8, And it came to pass, when Moses went out unto the tabernacle, that all the people rose up, and stood every man at his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he was gone into the tabernacle, ver. 9, And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the LORD talked with Moses. ver. 10, And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door; and all the people rose up and wor- shipped, every % man in his tent door. ver. n, And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp : but his 30 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, iv. servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle/' (41.) The first remark which may be made on this account is, That it cannot possibly be considered historical, that is, an ac- count of something- done at this time, between Exod. xxxiii. 6, and 12, on the day apparently of the descent from the Mount, after the first forty days passed there ; the date of which, as I have shewn P, was July 16 in the first year of the Exodus, B.C. 1560 : at which time, though all the directions had already been given for the construction of the Tabernacle 46. QUEST, viii.] Numbers at the Exod-iui 59 14,) and to fight his own battles, in Canaan, not one indivi- dual soldier would be found disqualified by age or infirmity from taking his proper part in this common duty and service of all. iii. The positive testimony of Ps. cv. 37, that, when the Israelites left Egypt at the Exodus, there was not one feeble person among their tribes not one (for such is the meaning of the Hebrew term, rendered by feeble,} liable a priori to totter, to stagger, to be tired out and wearied, whether with the exertion required from travelling, or the efforts required from soldiers, through old age, bodily infirmity, or the like ; and the indirect testimony of Joshua, v. 4. 6 that all who came out of Egypt, circumcised, above the age of twenty, and all who died in the wilderness, circumcised, above the age of twenty, (which under the circumstances of the case must have been the male and adult part of the entire nation at the Exodus,) were men of war; i. e. were able to go out to war. iv. Examples of the fact itself, for which we are contend- ing, either that the actual military age of this sera was much longer than it is at present, or that it was rendered so, KO.T olKovoniav, to these soldiers of the LORD of Hosts. As i. the case of Caleb, forty years old, according to his own account, (Joshua xiv. 7. 10,) in the second year of the Exodus, and eighty-five in the seventh year of the Eisodus, when the division of the lands was going on, yet as strong and as fit for war at the latter time as at the former, ii. The case of Joshua, who was fifty-six years of age, according to my chronology, at the Exodus, and consequently ninety-six at the Eisodus, yet evi- dently as fit for the five or six years of incessant warfare in the land of Canaan, which then awaited him, as on the day he left Egypt, iii. The case even of Moses himself, 120 years old complete at his death 1 , yet still in possession of all his physi- cal powers ; his eye not yet dimmed, his natural force not yet abated. And though it may be said, this was a special dis- pensation in his case, suspending the progress of natui'al decay until the special service, for which all his natural bodily and mental powers would be required, was completed, a reason I Fasti Cath. ii. 210, 211 : Deuteron. xxxiv. 7. 60 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, vin. like that, which required such a special dispensation in his case, on the same principle, would have required it in that of the humblest of his followers; each of whom had his own individual part to perform in this common work of all, and each had the same need of all his physical powers and capa- bilities for that purpose. (83.) These considerations, and the express testimony of those other texts, which make no difference between the number of males above the age of twenty, and the number of males able to go out to war, are competent in my opinion to jus- tify the inference that the limitation, at Numb. i. 2,3, of adults, and able to go forth to war, implies no inconsistency with the other statement of males above the age of twenty, without any further qualification; but merely makes us aware of a fact, which we might have surmised, but could not have known for certain, without it, that among all these males, adults or above the age of twenty, there was not one as yet unable to go out to war. (84.) Lastly, it appears from the second census, Numb. xxvi. 1-4; 51 ; Deut. ii. 14, 15, that as the number of adults, still able for war, on this first occasion was 603,550, so the number, on the second occasion, similarly described, was 601,730 : and among these last, there was not one who had passed in review at the former numbering, except Caleb arid Joshua, xxvi. 63-65. These numbers, on the second occa- sion, do so far vouch for those on the first ; for it appears from Joshua v. 4, 6; Numb. xiv. 29; xxvi. 63-65; Deut. ii. 14, 15, that each of these effects of the thirty-eight years' inter- val between the two, both the removal of all above the age of twenty and fit for war, who had passed the former census, and the raising up in their stead of all, who were of, or above, the age of twenty, and fit for war, and passed this second num- bering, was alike KCT' oiKovo^iav and the increase in the one case was purposely accommodated to the decrease in the other. And this inference of the proportional decrease and increase of the rest of the males in these instances, in general, is much confirmed by that of the tribe of Levi in the same interval of time, in particular : the numbers of that tribe, males, on the former occasion having been 22,000 (Numb. iii. 3-39), and on this second occasion, (Numb. xxvi. 57-62,) being 23,000. QUEST, ix.] Firstborn, and Male Adults. 61 (85.) It may be assumed therefore, as the general conclu- sion from all these premises, that the number of males, from twenty years old and upwards, in all the tribes, except that of Levi, taken together, which came out of Egypt at the Exodus, must have been 603,550. And the number of females, of the same age, who came out at the same time also, being assumed as equal to that of the males, the sum total of both together, and so far of the entire nation, at the Exodus, excepting the tribe of Levi, must have been 1,207,100. And this too being conceded, to know the gross amount of both sexes, and of every age, which came out on the same occasion, nothing is necessary but the numbers, of both sexes, and of every age, under twenty, (which Scripture expresses by from one month old and upwards,) which came out also. And this brings us to the question of the number of the firstborn, and of the proportion of the number of the firstborn to the rest of the population, at the Exodus a question, which in the prosecu- tion of our own argument naturally comes in here, but in Dr. Colenso's book is the subject of his Fourteenth Chapter as something distinct in itself. QUESTION IX. The Number of the Firstborn, compared with the number of Male Adults. (Colenso, ch. xiv. pp. 84-90.) (86.) Now the number of the firstborn, taken as com- manded, Numb. iii. 40-43, in the second year of the Exodus, was found to be 22,273 > an( ^ this number, as I have observed (84), is checked and confirmed by that of the Levites, taken on the same occasion, (Numb. iii. 39, 14-39,) and taken in- stead of the firstborn, 22,000. The number of the firstborn males, then, from one month old and upwards, in the second year of the Exodus, having thus been 22,273, anc ^ ^ ne num ber of males, from twenty years old and upwards, at the same time, having been 603,550, it has been inferred from these two facts that the proportion of those firstborn in particular to these males in general must 62 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, ix. have been that of one firstborn to every forty-four or forty- five males. And Dr. Colenso is one of those who has drawn this inference, and has gone even further still, and inferred as a logical consequence of such premises (93), that every firstborn, under such circumstances, must have made one of a family of eighty-eight individuals, male and female, collectively. And this is one of the many startling conclusions from data supposed to be furnished by Scripture, the very extravagance of which is the best argument, with every unprejudiced mind, that there must be some great mis- take in the assumption on which they are founded. (87.) Now the origin of this mistake, it appears to me, is to be traced first of all to the misapprehension of the injunction, relating to the numbering of these firstborn, Numb. iii. 40 : " And the LORD said unto Moses, Number all the firstborn of the males of the children of Israel, from a month old and upward, and take the number of their names ." The age thus specified was limited at one extreme, but not at the other from a month old, as the earliest age, but upwards simply, for the latest and upwards, so expressed, might be so construed at first sight, as to include every age in the ascending scale, from a month, to any assignable age more than that. And as so expressed, it would seem to have been intended to include not only the firstborn among all who were under twenty years of age at the time, but also among all who were above it. And that being assumed as a possible, and even prima facie a natural, construction of its meaning, it would be difficult to say, that even the inference just alluded to, extravagant and absurd as it must appear, might not be logically deducible from it. (88.) Independent however of the absurdity of such an inference in itself, that it must be founded on some great mis- take of the injunction in question, would be proved by the following consideration alone : That, on this principle, there could not have been one of those firstborn who, as the eldest of a family of forty-four or forty-five sons, must not have been forty-four or forty-five years of age at least, and therefore must not have been obnoxious to, and no doubt must not have paid, the redemption-money, levied on all above twenty years of age, two or three months before this time. What other redemption then could these in particular have stood in QUEST, ix.] Firstborn, and Male Adults. 63 need of to make it necessary to take the Levites instead of them, as well as of the rest ? It must be evident consequently, that to construe the injunction Numb. iii. 40 as taking in any above the age of twenty, yet supposed to stand to the rest of the adult population in the relation of firstborn, as leading directly to such an inconsistency as this, of the redemption of the same individual soul twice over, first by the redemption- money, and again, by taking the soul of the Levite in his-stead, must be the consequence of some misconstruction of its meaning. How then is it to be understood, so as neither to mistake its true meaning, and yet to avoid such an inconsistency as that ? (89.) To go to the bottom of this question, we must begin with referring to the account which Scripture itself has given of the devotion of the firstborn to God, which rendered it ne- cessary that their souls should be redeemed, either by taking the Levites in their stead, or in some other way. i. Exod. xiii. i : " And the LOED spake unto Moses, saying, ver. 2, Sanctify unto me all the firstborn, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of beast : it is mine... ver. u, And it shall be, when the LORD shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites, as he sware unto thee and to thy fathers, and shall give it thee, ver. 12, That thou shalt set apart unto the LOED all that openeth the matrix, and every firstling that cometh of a beast which thou hast ; the males shall be the LORD'S, ver. 13, And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb ; and if thou wilt not re- deem it, then thou shalt break his neck : and all the firstborn of man among thy children shalt thou redeem, ver. 14, And it shall be when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is this? that thou shalt say unto him, By strength of hand the LOED brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage : ver. 15, And it came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the LORD slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man, and the firstborn of beast : therefore I sacrifice to the LORD all that openeth the matrix, being males ; but all the firstborn of my children I redeem/' ii. Exod. xxii. 29 : " The firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me." iii. Exod. xxxiv. 19 : " All that openeth the matrix is mine ; 64 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QVEST. ix. and every firstling among- thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, t/ntt is male. ver. 20, But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb:... All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt re- deem." iv. Numb. iii. 1 1 : " And the LORD spake unto Moses, say- ing, ver. 1 2, And I, behold, I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel, instead of all the firstborn that openeth the matrix among the children of Israel : therefore the Le- vites shall be mine ; ver. 13, Because all the firstborn are mine ; for on the day that I smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I hallowed unto me all the firstborn in Israel, both man and beast : mine shall they be : I am the LORD/' Cf. 4i, 45- v. Numb. viii. 14 : " Thus shalt thou separate the Levites from among the children of Israel : and the Levites shall be mine. . .ver. 16, For they are wholly given unto me from among the children of Israel ; instead of such as open every womb, even instead of the firstborn of all the children of Israel, have I taken them unto me. ver. 17, For all the firstborn of the chil- dren of Israel are mine, both man and beast : on the day that I smote every firstborn in the land of Egypt I sanctified them for myself. ver. 18, And I have taken the Levites for all the firstborn of the children of Israel." (90.) These texts plainly declare that the firstborn of the Israelites became consecrated to the LORD, at the time, and in consequence, of the judgment inflicted on the Egyptians in the plague of the firstborn ; and that had not provision been made even then in the purpose of God for the redemption of the firstborn of his own people, the lives even of those, at the time, and ever after, must have been treated as forfeit to the plague in question, as much as those of the firstborn of the Egyptians. It is manifest therefore, that, with reference to any such distinction among these firstborn themselves, as that of children or of men, of non-adults or of adults, there could have been no difference, at the time of this plague, between the firstborn of the Egyptians and the first- born of the Israelites. Both must have belonged to the same class, as children, or both to the same, as men ; both must have been reducible to the same category of adiilts, or of non- adults, alike. Let us then proceed to consider what further QUEST, ix.] Firstborn, and Male Adults. 65 light may have been thrown by Scripture on this question, of the particular subjects of the last of the plagues among the Egyptians, whether children as such, or men. i. Exod. iv. 22 : " And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is my son, even my firstborn: ver. 23, And I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me : and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn." ii. Exod. xi. 4 : " And Moses said, Thus saith the LORD, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt : ver. 5, And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill ; and all the firstborn of beasts." iii. Exod. xii. 12 : " For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast ; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment : I am the LORD. ver. 29, And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the first- born in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne, unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon ; and all the firstborn of cattle, ver. 30, And Pha- raoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead." iv. Ps. Ixxviii. 50 : " He made a way to his anger ; he spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence; ver. 51, And smote all the firstborn in Egypt ; the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham." Ps. cv. 36 : " He smote also all the firstborn in their land, the chief of all their strength." (91.) These are plain descriptions, not of heads of house- holds and fathers of families themselves, as the proper subjects of this visitation, among the Egyptians, but of a certain class of the component parts of every such household or every such family among them, at the time ; the children as such, in contradistinction to the parents; and among the children, the firstborn as such in contradistinction to the rest. And such having been the proper subjects of this visitation among the Egyptians, such must have been the proper subjects of r 66 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, ix. it among the Israelites also, if no oaconomy of redemption had been provided for them, no more than for the same class among the Egyptians. It is evident therefore, beyond the necessity of any further argument to prove so clear a point, that by the firstborn of the people of Israel, as obnoxious a priori to the same judgment as the firstborn of the Egyptians, no description of persons could have been intended at the time, and none can be considered intended in subsequent allusions to them, but the firstborn, males, in every family ; the eldest male children among the children of the people of Israel, pro- perly so called. And the question is now reducible simply to this issue, What must be understood by the children of Israel, and consequently by the firstborn of those children, properly so called ? (92.) This phrase of the children of Israel in the original is always expressed in the form of Beni-Israel ; and Beni-Israel, we may freely admit, both may be, and often is, used in the utmost comprehension of such a phrase, for all the lineal de- scendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; for the whole nation of the Israelites, so descended, and at once. But this more extended application of the phrase to the entire series of de- scendants from one stock, however far downwards, it is evi- dent, is itself a secondary one, founded on the proper sense and proper application of such a phrase, whereby, in this instance, it must at one time have been restricted to the Twelve Patriarchs of the Tribes, as for a time the only lite- rally existing Beni-Israel, or Children of Israel. And the firstborn of the children of Israel being understood of the firstborn among the children in this restricted sense, the next question is, Whether the Beni-Israel in this most proper sense, in the idiom of Scripture, has not its recognised limits, whereby virtute termini itself, as so used in a parti- cular instance, it must take in only those of a certain age ? (93.) Now both the idiom of Scripture, in the use of this phrase, and the meaning of the phrase itself as so used, it appears to me, may most distinctly be collected from the ac- count of the rebellion of Kadesh-Barnea, and its consequences. Numb. xiv. 1-3 : The congregation, having heard the report of the spies just returned, are represented as saying, " Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt ! or would God QUEST, ix.] Firstborn, and Male Adults. 67 we had died in this wilderness ! and wherefore hath the LOKD brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey?" And it is in reference to this expressed apprehension about the fate of their children in particular, that the Deity, soon after, is re- presented to say, ver. 29, " Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness ; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against me... ver. 31, But your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, them will I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised, ver. 32, But as for you, your carcases, they shall fall in this wilderness, ver. 33, And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years,... until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness." Compare also Deut. i. 39, which is even more direct to this point : " Moreover your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, and your children, which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess it." Now we know that all, who were thus excluded from the promised land, at that time were above the age of twenty ; (cf. Numb. xxii. 1 1 ;) and all, who were still to be admitted to it, at this time, were under the age of twenty and these latter being also so clearly described as children, as merely little ones, at this same time, in contradistinction to those who were men this testimony, in my opinion, is demonstrative that the phrase of Beni-Israel, in its proper idiomatic and restricted sense, as so used in Scripture, is always intended, and always to be understood as intended, of that part of the nation in general, which was standing, at a given time, to the rest of the nation, in the relation of children indeed, but of children still under the age of twenty. (94.) With this understanding then of the proper meaning of the phrase, let us again refer to the terms of the command, Numb. iii. 40 : "And the LORD said unto Moses, Number all the firstborn of the males of the children of Israel, from a month old and upward, and take the number of their names." It must now appear that though the order was seemingly limited only at one extreme, and left indefinite as to the other, it was in reality limited as to both by its F 2 68 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, ix. own terms as to the one, by the idiom of Scripture, the usus loquendi, and the reason of things, as to the other. The sub- jects of this numbering were to be the firstborn of the children of the Israelites as such : the oldest age of which, it was well known, could not exceed twenty the last age to which the designation of children, in contradistinction to men, could be applicable. It was not necessary then to specify the age at which the numbering should end, only that at which it should begin. From one month old and upward would be perfectly well understood at the time to mean from one month old to twenty years. (95.) To revert then to the question, from which we di- gressed (85), to enter on this; the numbers which came out at the Exodus. The entire number of adults of both sexes, (i. e. above the age of twenty,) as we have seen (85), having been 1,207,100, we have only to add to this the number of non-adults, of both sexes, i. e. under the age of twenty, or between one month old and twenty years, and we shall get the sum total of all who came out at the Exodus, male or female, adults or non-adults, exclusive of the tribe of Levi only. And as to the number of these non- adults, we shall probably see reason hereafter to conclude that every family among the Twelve Tribes, both before and at the Exodus, was consisting on an average of six members, the two parents, and four children, two of them males, and two of them females. On this principle, the number of the firstborn males, between the age of one month old and twenty years, in the second year of the Exodus, having been 22,273, the number of non-adult males, under the age of twenty, at the same time, may be assumed at 22,273 also. (96.) We have therefore at the Exodus the number of adults male, above the age of twenty . . . . . . . . 603,550 The number of non-adults male, under the age of twenty . . 44,546 Number of adults and non-adults male . . . . . . 648,096 2 Number of adults and non-adults male and female, exclusive of those of the Tribe of Levi .. .. .. .. 1,296,192 Add for the Tribe of Levi, 22,000 x 2 . . . . . . 44,000 Sum total of all the population which came out at the Exodus.. .. .V .. .. .. .. 1,340,192 quEST. x.] Increase of the Tribes in Egypt. 69 A very great number indeed to have been raised in 217 or 218 years from fifty-five founders only, but still much less than has been commonly supposed 2,000,000, or 2,500,000, or even 3,000,000 (Col. 39) , and much more in unison with what might be supposed implied of their actual numbers at the time, by Deut. vii. 7, than any of those other calculations would be. Let us now then proceed to consider in what manner even this might have been effected (as according to Scripture it must have been ) in the interval between the date of the Descent, B.C. 1778, and the date of the Exodus, B.C. 1560. QUESTION X. Increase of the Tribes in Egypt, and the mode In which it wa* probably effected. (Colenso, ch. xvii. pp. 102-106.) (97.) It is the doctrine of Holy Scripture, that whatsoever comes to pass in this world, whether of the class of moral, or of that of physical, events, whether according to a stated order which we call the course of nature, or after a manner, which in contradistinction to the natural, we call miraculous, God, in some sense or other, is the author of it ; God is the real efficient cause of it, either as doing it himself, without the intervention of any instrumental means, or by empowering or permitting some other agent to do it, which without his co- operation, or his sufferance, could do nothing. (98.) Still more undeniable, according to Scripture, is it, that if there is any one regular part of that complicated ceco- nomy which we call the course of nature, from which it is impossible to exclude the constant presence, the constant interposition and direction of the Divine Providence, it is the beginning, the progress, and the consummation of that mys- terious and inscrutable process by which every human soul, since the creation of the first man, has been successively brought into the world, in its proper human body, to act its proper part in the great drama of human life and human probation. 70 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, x. (99.) We should have been justified in inferring from Gen. iii. 16, that if the ceconomy of Paradise had continued undisturbed until it had answered the purposes, contemplated by its wise and beneficent author in its first institution, many fewer would have been born into the world, than have been born since the Fall. But the author of this distinction under all circumstances, must have been God. It must have been He who would have multiplied the conception of the woman, in a certain proportion, if there had been no Fall, just as much as it is He who has actually multiplied it in a much greater proportion in consequence of the Fall. (100.) On this point indeed it is almost superfluous to appeal to the testimony of Scripture. It was God, according to the Bible, who formed the first man and the first woman out of the ground, and adapted the sex of the one to that of the other. It was God who instituted the marriage union, and declared the final end of the institution from the first, by accompanying it with the command " to be fruitful, and mul- tiply, and replenish the earth." It is He, who by giving or withholding His blessing upon it, has rendered it effectual or ineffectual to such an end, ever since. It is He, who has granted or denied conception, who has opened or shut the womb, ever since. It is He, who has distinguished the sex of the future birth, according to a law of his own, before it was yet born. It is He, who, for every material tabernacle, thus gradually formed and moulded by His own plastic hand within the womb, still more independently of all human cooperation and instrumentality, of His own will and His own power, at the proper time, has created the immaterial and spiritual inhabitant ; and at the proper moment has infused the immortal soul into the ready-prepared mortal body. It is He, in short, who by this to us inscrutable and incomprehen- sible process, from the day of the creation of the first man to the present, in subserviency to the ends of his own moral government in general, has been forming both individual moral and responsible agents, and communities of such individuals, perpetually. (101.) With respect then to any such process as this in a particular instance, to expect us to trace it out, as far as it was capable of being investigated by ourselves, on the QUEST, x.] Increase of the Tribes in Egypt, 71 principle of keeping out of sight the Providential and super- natural element of the causation, would be to expect us to account for the effect on the principle of excluding from our consideration the only true cause of the effect. It makes no difference to the reality of this Providential element in such an effect as that of the formation of nations, that, as going forward at a particular time and in a particular instance at present, it is carried on, or seems to be carried on, in something like a fixed and prescribed manner, according to certain in- variable laws, discovered by long experience and observation. Certain ordinary rules and principles do appear to regulate the increase of mankind and the growth of nations at present, because none else are required for any such purpose at present. But were the case to arise, that the ordinary methods of proceeding, in such a business as this of the formation of a nation in a given time and under given circumstances, would be no longer competent to answer their purpose ; no one, who agreed with Scripture in resolving every effect of this kind into its only true efficient cause, would hesitate to expect that extraordinary means would be resorted to, to bring about the desired result. (102-.) And this brings us at once to the question, which we are proposing to discuss, that of the increase of the Tribes in Egypt, and the circumstances under which it took place. The jprima facie disproportion between the beginning and the end of the process, in this particular instance, is no new stumbling- block. On the contrary, it is one of the oldest, because one of the most obvious and most specious, of its proper class. It is that one of the objections to the prima facie truth of the Scriptui-e account which the sceptic, in all ages, has most instinctively fixed upon, as the best adapted of all to his particular purpose. And what, we may ask, is the reason why the defenders of the historical truth of Scripture are so often reduced to the necessity of arguing this particular question, as if it had never been discussed before ? Simply because the objector persists in treating it as an ordinary one of its kind, requiring no allowance for the exceptional character of the case. Simply because he insists that the defenders of the truth of Scripture, sincere believers themselves in the only true theory and ex- 72 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, x. planation of the increase or the decrease of nations, should agree with himself in excluding from their account of the process the only true efficient agency in its direction and progress throughout. It is impossible that the defenders of Scripture should ever consent to argue their cause on such terms as these. On the contrary, knowing to what the word of God was already pledged by his repeated promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to do for the increase of their seed during its sojourn in Egypt, to come to this question with an understanding before- hand that the Providential element of the causation was to be left out of sight, we should consider the same as to begin with assuming that the only thing, which Scripture declares to be really impossible with God viz. that God should lie, that God should break his own promise, and falsify his own word, was of all things that which was most possible with him; and knowing, as we must do, from his own assurances, what it was which he was bound by his own veracity to do, and the time within which it was to be done, and the very inadequate means, humanly speaking, in proportion to the time, with which it had to be done to insist on the application of the ordinary rules and principles of proceeding in such cases, to a special case like this, we should justly consider to be the height of prejudice and unreason. (103.) And yet we may equally justly contend that, while the only efficient cause of the result in this instance, and the only true explanation of the disproportion between the beginning and the end of the process, was the secret Pro- vidence of God ; even that Providence wrought no miracle to bring its own purposes to pass. It did not raise up children to Abraham, in Egypt, out of the stones ; and working as it might do all along, in its own way, and with an eye to its own ends, to all outward appearance it was working, in this instance also, in the ordinary way, and using the ordinary means which it has always used for the growth and formation of nations ; and those means simply these three, The union of the sexes in marriage at a certain time : The proportion of births, male and female, after a certain ratio : and, The increase of individuals composing the families so formed per- petually, in a certain ratio also. These three laws I say, QUEST, x.] Increase of the Tribes in Egypt. 73 i. Marriages, in a certain degree earlier than usual, yet still consistent with physical possibility, and the constitution of human nature ii. Births of males and females in the ordinary proportion to each other of equality iii. The average number of the individuals, composing the families so raised perpetually, two of the parents and four of the children these three con- ditions, and three assumptions, with one more, that of the co-agency and co-operation of the Divine Providence with each throughout, are all which are really necessary to account for the effect at last. (104.) i. With respect to the first of these, the regular time of the marriage union, while this process was still going on, and the consequent length of the generation the age of puberty as such, twelve or thirteen in males, eleven or twelve in females, for any thing known to the contrary, may be assumed to have always been the same from the creation downwards ; or, whatever doubt there might seem to be on this point at first, that it might be so assumed at this period, appears from the actual examples of the fact, produced supra (7.) On this principle, marriages might be assumed at thirteen years of age in males, and twelve in females, and generations accordingly, at thirteen years asunder. And did we assume them so in the present instance, we might justify the assump- tion by a remarkable instance of the fact, in the genealogy of Joshua, which happens to be on record in Scripture, and from which it can be made out, (and in my chronology of the Old Testament I hope it is made out,) that from the birth of Ephraim, B. C. 1785, to the birth of Joshua, B. C. 1616 there must have been 169 years, divisible among thirteen steps of descent, in the direct line, thirteen years each asunder. But we have no occasion, in the present instance, to avail ourselves of the analogy of this precedent. It is sufficient for our pur- pose to assume the stated age of the marriage union, during the sojourn in Egypt at sixteen years, or at the least fifteen, complete, and the length of the generation accordingly. (105.) ii. With respect to the proportion of male and female births to each other, during the continuance of the same pro- cess at present, and in this quarter of the globe, to judge from the ordinary returns and tables of that time, it is as nearly as possible that of equality, with a slight percentage of 74 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, x. excess in the number of males above that of females, in a given time. We may presume then that there can be no material error in supposing the same law to have regulated the propor- tion of male and female births at this period also, and in Egypt, even under ordinary circumstances ; much more under such extraordinary circumstances as we are now supposing. It is an assumption at least which every commentator on Scripture seems to have considered himself justified in making. There is none at least, who, having seen reason to estimate the number of males who left Egypt, at such and such an amount, does not think that, by doubling that amount, he shall get the whole number, both males and females, who must have gone out, on the same occasion, in conjunction. (106.) iii. With regard to the number of the individuals, who must have composed the respective families of which the Tribes themselves were made up ; we might, if we pleased, avail ourselves of the possible birth of twins, in repeated in- stances ; especially if we took into account the natural peculi- arities of the country, selected by the Divine Providence, as the fittest for this cecoiiomy of the multiplication of an hand- ful of souls, in a prescribed interval of time, into a numerous nation so favourable, according to the testimony of antiquity, for the increase of the human species, that the birth of twins was almost the ordinary law of its kind, and even the birth of seven at a time, according to Aristotle and Trogus, had been known to occur. But neither have we occasion to take any possibility of this kind into account. We need no assumption but one, which every one must allow to be moderate and probable, viz. that while this process of the formation of the Nation of the Israelites was going on, the average number of individuals in every family was six, two of the parents and four of the children. (107.) I shall now proceed to shew, in what manner, by simply taking these three conditions or laws of the process along with us perpetually, we may approximate at least to an explanation of the result; calculated to give us a general idea of the way in which it must have actually been brought about. And we shall assume for that purpose, that each of the Tribes had one founder respectively and we shall trace the increase of each, from this one founder, through the same QUEST, x.] Increase of the Tribes in Egypt. 75 steps of descent, and more or less at the same rate of increase, down to the last before the Exodus, in all alike, and we shall then multiply the resulting numbers of this last generation, in each instance, by the actual number of the founders of the Tribe in each instance also which should give us the total increase of the Tribe in question, down to the Exodus, accord- ing to our calculation : and from the comparison of this, with the actual increase* at the same time, specified by Scripture itself, we shall be enabled to judge of the truth of our own calculations, at last, and therefore previously also. 76 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, x. (108.) TABLE A. Founders of the Tribes in Egypt, and increase of each. Founders. Number. Increase. ii REUBEN : Hauoch, Phallu, Hezron, Carmi. Gen. xlvi. 9, Exod. vi. 14, Numb. xxvi. 5, 6, i Chron. .3. 4 46500 SIMEON : Jemuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jachin, Zohar, Shaul. Gen. xlvi. 10, Exod. vi 15, Numb. xxvi. 12, 13. 6 59300 iii LEVI : Gershon, Kohath, Merari. Gen. xlvi. u, Exod. vi. 16, Numb. iii. 17, i Chron. vi. i, Numb. iii. 15-39. (3) (22 ooo) iv JUDAH : Shelab, Pharez, Zarab, (Hezron, Hamul.) Gen. xlvi. 12, Numb. xxvi. 20,21, i Chron. ii. 3-5. 5 74600 V vi vii viii ix X xi xii xiii ISSACHAR : Tolah, Phuvah, Job, Shimron. Gen. xlvi. 13, Numb. xxvi. 23, 24, i Chron. vii. i. 4 54400 ZEBULUN : Sered, Elon, Jableel. Gen. xlvi. 14, Numb. xxvi. 26. 3 57400 GAD : Zipbion, Haggi, Shuni, Ezbon, Eri, Arodi, Areli. Gen. xlvi. 16, Numb. xxvi. 15-17. 7 45650 ASHEB : Jimnab, Isbuah, Isui, Beriab, (Heber, Malchiel.) Gen. xlvi. 1 7, Numb. xxvi. 44, 45, i Chron. vii. 30. 6 41 500 JOSEPH : Manasseh. Gen. xlvi. 20, Numb. xxvi. 28-33. 1 32 200 JOSEPH : Ephraiin. Gen. xlvi. 20, Numb. xxvi. 28,35, 3- i 40 500 BENJAMIN : Belab, Becher, Asbbel, Gera, Naamaii, Ebi, Rosb, Muppim, Huppim, Ard. Gen. xlvi. 21, Numb. xxvi. 38-40, i Chron. vii. 6-12, viii. i, 2. 10 35400 DAN : Hushim. Gen. xlvi. 23, Numb. xxvi. 42. i 62 700 NAPHTALI: Jabzeel, Guni, Jezer, Shillem. Gen. xlvi. 24, Numb. xxvi. 48, 49, i Chron. vii. 13. 4 53400 Total 55 603 550* * See the next page. QUEST, x.] Increase of the Tribes in Egypt. 77 * The particular numbers in each of the above instances, and the sum total of all collectively are given, once in the account of the census, Numb. i. 1-46 : and then again, in the account of the four camps, Numb. ii. 3-9, 10-1 6, 18-24, 25-3 1 : and the general number in each of these instances is the sum total of the parti- cular ones ; so that each confirms the other. This general number is further checked and confirmed by the number of Bekahs, or half-shekels, paid by each of the individuals who made it up ; Exod. xxxviii. 26, 603 550 also. Reduced to the shekel and the talent of the sanctuary, these amounted to 100 talents, and 1775 shekels, xxviii. 25. And 603,550 half-shekels being equal to 301,775 shekels, if 3000 shekels of the sanctuary went to one talent of the sanctuary, 301,775 shekels would be just equal to 100 talents, and 1775 shekels over of another. We may reckon it therefore absolutely certain that both the particular numbers which represent the male and adult part of each of the Twelve Tribes, and the general numbers, which represent the male and adult population of all of them collectively, at the Exodus, even as read in the Pentateuch at present, are genuine and authentic. Exceptions have been taken to these numbers, (Colenso, 50,) as being all of them multiples of ten or fifty ; and so undoubtedly they are : and yet, if there is no reason to call in question the readings of the numbers in the text at present, whatever explanation is to be given of that phenomenon, perceptible in them all, it cannot affect the question of the truth of the numbers themselves. The same phenomenon is perceptible in another instance that of the number of the Levites, from one month old and upwards, 22,000 of the genuineness of which as it stands, notwithstanding, there is even less reason to doubt, checked and confirmed as it is by that of the firstborn of the other Tribes, 22,273. If the Providential element in this oeconomy of the increase of the Tribes is to be purposely left out of sight, it might well be difficult to account for this remark- able phenomenon, on any other principle ; but allowance being made for the con- stant presence and influence of such a principle of causation and direction as the Divine Providence, it is easily explained. The numbers of the increase, both in the details and in the sum total, must have been purposely accommodated to the Decadal division and very probably with a prospective view to that distribution of the whole of the adult male population into tens, and fifties, and hundreds, and thousands, which, as it appears from Exod. xviii. 25, Deut. i. 1 5, was actually made at last. And if the increase of the people was thus regulated from the first by a pro- spective regard to this number, it would be only consistent with such a principle that its decrease also, whether in the ordinary, or in any extraordinary way, should have been regulated by a similar respect to the Decadal division. And that would account for the fact that in the second numbering also, Numb. xxvi. 2-51, both the particular numbers and the general numbers, (the sum total of the particular, in this instance as well as in the former,) were alike divisible by ten. It would account also for the fact that on those occasions, when the numbers of the congregation are seen to have been suddenly diminished by any special judg- ment if the numbers so cut off are specified, as at Numb. xvi. 49 (14,700), and xxv. 9 (24,000), these too are such as to be divisible by ten. 78 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, x. I NO* l in Cn M CM Cn CM QUEST, x.] Increase of the Tribes in Egypt. 79 (110.) The above scheme is not intended to shew the num- ber of those who were actually living, but simply that of those who were living-, and fifteen or sixteen years of age, at the beginning of each of these periods, from B. C. 1778 to B.C. 1560. Its object is merely to shew in what manner, on the very moderate and reasonable supposition of one founder for each of the Tribes, of the age of fifteen or sixteen years, at the beginning of the first of these periods, and two at the begin- ning of the second, four at the beginning of the third, and so on, perpetually, the increase of each might easily accumulate to the number actually assigned it by Scripture itself, at last. (111.) Though then no uninspired person could be authorized to say, that either this scheme, or any other which might be devised at the present day, represented the actual ceconomy of the process, which must have been going on all the time, (under the direction of the Divine Providence,) for the augmentation of the different Tribes ; yet that even this may be competent to convey an idea of what the actual process itself, both in the principle and in the details, might have been, and probably was, cannot be denied. If so, it is suffi- cient for our purpose as far as it goes viz. to account for the increase of nine out of the twelve or thirteen Tribes, to the required extent, and within the prescribed time, in question. Let us now proceed to consider that of the remaining four. 80 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xi. QUESTION XI. Increase of the Tribes which had one founder only, Dan, Manasseh, and Ephraim; and that of the Tribe of Levi. (Colenso, ch. xviii. pp. 107-112.) S3 -? s QUEST. XL] Increase of Dan, Manasseh, Ephraim, Levl. 81 (113.) If the growth of the Tribes in Egypt had been left from the first to the ordinary laws, which appear to regulate the increase of the human species at present ; one of the most natural and obvious of the anticipations, which could have been formed of the result, would have been this, that those Tribes which had the fewest founders would be seen to have increased least, and those which had most to have increased most. On this principle the Tribe of Benjamin, which had ten founders, ought to have been the most numerous ; and the Tribes of Dan, Manasseh, and Ephraim, each of which had only one founder, (108), ought to have been the least numerous: yet, though Benjamin was certainly somewhat more numerous at the Exodus than Manasseh, he was much less so than Ephraim ; and Dan, who had only one son, Hushim, at the Descent, B.C. 1778, had 62,700 sprung from his loins, B.C. 1559 almost as many as Judah, through his five sons or grandsons, 74,600. No doubt, to one who should look at the whole of this eco- nomy from a merely human point of view, this must appear very unaccountable ; but to an enlightened and believing mind, which has learnt to see and to recognize the finger of God in every thing, these seeming anomalies will look merely as if they were designed on purpose to teach us, that it was as easy for God to fulfil his own promises, and to work out his own ends, with the smallest amount of means, to all human appre- hension, as with the greatest. (114.) But whatsoever may have been the reasons of those distinctions which the comparative numbers of the different Tribes de facto exhibited at last, (reasons known in their ful- ness only to God,) all we have to do in these three instances also of Dan, Manasseh, and Ephraim, is to account for the results, on the same principles on which we have endeavoured to explain and account for them in the case of the other nine Tribes ; and this has been done in the preceding Table C (112), but with some modification of the general principle of the other Table, which I have considered myself justified in making in this, in order to adapt it to the exceptional charac- ter of these particular cases : that viz. of assuming that, while the number of generations, and the average length of each, should be the same in these cases as in all the rest, the rate of the increase in successive generations, in these particular G 82 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xi. instances, should be half as much again as in all before. In other words, that the male population of these three Tribes, Dan, Manasseh, and Ephraim, instead of doubling itself with every generation, should double and treble itself alternately. (115.) With respect to the Tribe of Levi, the disproportion of the increase of this Tribe, under the very same circum- stances, in comparison of that of the others which had no more founders than this or even fewer from which Dr. Co- lenso, regarding the whole of this oaconomy as an ordinary process of its kind, (126. 132), draws conclusions so prejudi- cial to the historical truth of these accounts, is in reality the strongest internal evidence of their credibility. (116.) It appears from the subsequent history of all the Tribes, that the Tribe of Levi was taken and consecrated to God, in lieu of the firstborn males of all the rest ; and there- fore we may presume was always intended to be so. It ap- pears too that the number of these firstborn, from one month old and upwards, was exactly 22,273, an ^ tne number of the Levites, males, from one month old and upwards, it also appears, was 22,000. Can any one doubt that these numbers must have been purposely accommodated to each other ? and consequently the increase of the Tribe of Levi in particular must have been so regulated all along, that it should bear this proportion at last to the firstborn of the rest ? Suppose the case to have been otherwise, and Levi, as setting out B. C. 1778 from three founders, to have gone on increasing like Zebulun, who did the same, to 57,000 B.C. 1560, and yet the same ceconomy, of the consecration of this tribe instead of the firstborn of the rest, to have required to be carried out at last What would have been the anomaly which must have been exemplified thereby? What, but that 57,000 Levites and upwards must have been taken as no more than equivalent to 22,273 firstborn of the rest of the Tribes? more than two souls of the most sacred Tribe for every firstborn of the rest. (117.) According to the Table then (C. 112), the number of the Kohathites at the Exodus was 8064 ; that of the Ger- shonites 7200; that of the Merarites 6144. The actual num- ber of the Kohathites, Numb. iii. 28, as the text stands at present, was 8600 ; that of the Gershonites, iii. 22, 7500 ; that QUEST, xii.] Institution of the Passover. 83 of the Merarites, iii. 34, 6200. But these numbers added tog-e- ther make up 22,300; whereas the actual number of the Le- vites, from a month old and upwards, iii. 39. 43. 46, was 22,000 only. There must consequently be an error of excess in the numbers in these other instances, amounting- in all to 300 and this error, instead of being distributable in any propor- tion among- them all, I should conjecture to reside exclusively in the numbers assigned to Kohath, 8600, instead of 8300 produced probably by some confusion between the Hebrew numeral for three and that for six**, QUESTION XII. The Institution of the Passover, (Colenso, ch. x. pp. 54-60.) (118.) The difficulties raised by Dr. Colenso on the above question, and on many more connected with it, an account of * It is here to be oberved that, besides the numbers' of these several families of the Levites, (the Kohathites, Gershonites, and Merarites,) from one month old and upwards, (amounting in all to 22,000,) their numbers are also given from thirty years old to fifty, respectively. And these stood as follows Numbers iv. 35, 36 . . Kohathites, 2750 39, 40 . . Gershonites, 2630 43, 44 . . Merarites, 3200 Numbers iv. 47, 48 . . Sum of all . . . . 8580 And this brings a remarkable fact to light, viz. that whereas at the time of this census, (B.C. 1559, in the case of them all alike,) the entire popu- lation of the Merarites, from a month old and upwards, 6200, was 2100 less than that of the Kohathites (8300) the number of adults, Merarites, from thirty to fifty, 3200, was 450 more than the number of adults, Ko- hathites, from thirty to fifty also, 2750. This at first sight would look like an inconsistency. If the reader however will turn to the Table (C 112) he will see that the number of Kohathites, B.C. 1592, the epoch of the xii generation in the Table, being only 1536, and that of the Mera- rites at the same time being 2048 these latter at that lime would exceed the former by 512. It is evident then that, according to our Table, thirty- two or thirty-three years after B.C. 1592 (B.C. 1559 ) there would be 512 Merarites, between the ages of thirty and fifty, more than Kohathites and that is only sixty-two more than those which actually, according to the numbers in Scripture given above, existed at that time. 84 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xn. which will follow by and by, are so peculiar, and founded on so strange a misconstruction of the testimony of Scripture itself, that, in order to guard myself against the suspicion of having mistaken or misrepresented the author's meaning, I must state them in his own words. (119.) i. p. 54 (65). After quoting Exod. xii. 21-28, he ob- serves upon it, " That is to say, in one single day, the whole immense population of Israel, as large as that of LONDON, was instructed to keep the Passover, and actually did keep it. I have said, ' in one single day ;' for the first notice of any such Feast to be kept is given in this very chapter, where we find it written, v. 12, ' I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast/ " " P- 55 (^5)- " Let us now see what the above statement really implies, when translated into simple every-day matter of fact. (66) , ' Moses called for all the elders of Israel/ We must suppose, then, that the ' elders' lived somewhere near at hand. But where did the two millions live ? And how could the order, to keep the Passover, have been conveyed, with its minutest particulars, to each individual household in this vast community, in one day, rather, in twelve hours, since Moses received the command on the very same day on which they were to kill the Passover at even, E. xii. 6." iii. p. 60 (73). "And then we are to believe that every single household, throughout the entire country (county], was warned in twelve hours to keep the Feast of the Passover, was taught how to keep it, and actually did keep it ; and that, further, they were warned again at midnight, to start at once in hurried flight for the wilderness, when each family was shut up closely in its own house, and strictly forbidden to come out of it till summoned, and they could not, therefore, communicate the tidings freely, as by day, from one person to a number of others/' iv. p. 61 (74). "Here, then, we have this vast body of people of all ages, summoned to start, according to the story, at a moment's notice, and actually started, not one being left behind, together with all their multitudinous flocks and herds, which must (73) have been spread out over a district as large as a good sized English county." QUEST, xii.] Institution of the Passover. 85 v. p. 63 (75). " But this is but a very small part of the difficulty. We are required to believe that, in one single day, the order to start was communicated suddenly, at mid- night, to every single family of every town and village, throughout a tract of country as large as Hertfordshire, but ten times as thickly peopled; that, in obedience to such order, having first ' borrowed' very largely from their Egyp- tian neighbours in all directions, they then came in from all parts of the land of Goshen to Rameses, bringing with them the sick and infirm, the young and the aged; further, that, since receiving the summons, they had sent out to gather in all their flocks and herds, spread over so wide a district, and had driven them also to Rameses ; and, lastly, that having done all this, since they were roused at midnight, they were started again from Rameses that very day, and marched on to Suceoth, not leaving a single sick or infirm person, a single woman in childbirth, or even ' a single hoof/ E. x. 26, behind them." vi. p. 62, (76). "This is, undoubtedly, what the story in the book of Exodus requires us to believe." (120.) Such is Dr. Colenso's construction and version of the story in the book of Exodus, and such is the confidence with which the truth of the version is asserted. In opposition to this confident assertion, it shall be my endeavour, with God's help, to shew that the above is not what the story in the book of Exodus requires us to believe ; that the above repre- sentation of the circumstances of the Exodus is merely a fiction of Dr. Colenso's own imagining and only one more specimen of that peculiar manner of reading and reasoning from the simplest historical statements of Scripture, of exam- ples of which his book is so full. (121.) To make this appear, let us begin with the assump- tion, which lies at the bottom of all these impossibilities and these absurdities, consequentially and logically deducible from it, if true ; viz. that the Israelites had only twelve hours no- tice of the Passover, as destined to precede the Exodus, or only twelve hours notice of the Exodus, as destined to follow on the Passover. The first thing which we may undertake to prove is, that they^had at least fourteen days notice of both, even if they had no more. 86 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xn. (122.) The first announcement both of the Passover, as destined to precede the Exodus, and of the Exodus as destined to follow on the Passover, is contained in Exod. xii. This chapter opens as follows. Exod. xii. i: "And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, ver. 2, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months : it shall be the first month of the year to you." Now with respect to the meaning of this opening address, it is clear from its own words, that in its primary drift and reference it must have concerned the calendar of the time being ; it must have had it in view to prescribe the rule of the reckon- ing of civil time, from this time forward, among the Israelites in particular. And there are only two constructions, which, with such a drift and reference as that, can be put on the rule, so prescribed and so enjoined, itself: viz. either that the month, which was before the first, which was still at this time the first, should never cease to be the first, should always be reckoned as the first or that some other month, not before the first, from this time forward should become and be reckoned to be, the first. In other words, it must be evident from the terms of this address itself, that preliminary to any other injunction, or to any other observance, which it might be intended to notify on the same occasion, the Deity was intimating his own will and pleasure with respect to the reckoning of civil time among his own people, and either confirming the style de facto in existence against all possible change for ever, or correcting the style before in use, by sub- stituting some other in its stead ; and if it can be shewn that, under the circumstances of the case, He could not have been doing the former, it will follow that He must have been doing the latter. (123.) Now to prove that, under the circumstances of the case, He could not have been doing the former, all we have to do is to argue as follows : If these words were intended sim- ply to confirm the first month of the calendar for the time being in the possession of its place in the calendar for ever, they must have been spoken in the first month of the calendar of the time being and the month in which they were spoken having clearly been the month of the Exodus, the first month QUEST, xii.] Institution of the Passover. 87 of the calendar for the time being and the month of the Exodus must have been identical. If so, the season of the natural year, with which the first month of the calendar for the time was coinciding-, was the same with that at which the Exodus also was taking place ; and the season of the year at which the Exodus was taking place being certainly that of the spring, the first month of the calendar for the time being, on this principle, must have been falling in the spring too. And that would be contradicted by the whole history of the Primi- tive Calendar from the first, until this time itself; according to which, having once set out at the beginning both of natural and of human or civil time, on the first day of the natural year, April 25 at midn. A. M. i, B. C. 4004, and after once revolving through all the seasons of the natural year, and once again returning to the first clay of the natural year, in the course of a second revolution through all the seasons of the natural year again, in the year of the Exodus, A.M. 2444- 2445, B. C. 1561-1560, it was now falling in the autumn" 1 . (124.) There would be other difficulties in the above con- struction of Exod. xii. 2. But this alone is competent to prove that, without calling in question the whole history of the civil calendar from the beginning of things to the Exodus, it could not possibly be true. If then the Deity, in this open- ing address, preparatory to any thing intended to follow, was correcting the calendar, yet not simply in this way of confirm- ing the style at this time in use for ever, He must have been changing the style, and appointing the reckoning of civil or calendar time, among his own people at least, from this time forward to begin and proceed from some epoch from which it was not beginning or proceeding previously n . (125.) This point then being established, that the first and most immediate object of the address in Exod. xii. was to constitute some month, not before the first, from that time forward, the first; one of the most natural inferences from that state of the case, which could possibly suggest itself, is this that the day on which this change of the style was en- joined, and the day on which it was intended to begin, must have been the same. " This month shall be unto you the be- m Cf. my Fasti Catholic!, ii. 207, and my Three Witnesses, p. 84. n See my Three Witnesses, 80-89. 88 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xn. ginning of months ; it shall le the first month of the year to you." Such language on the first day of the new first month would be consistent and natural ; but not so on any day of this month later than the first on any such day, for instance, as the fourteenth , (the day on which Dr. Colenso must sup- pose these words to have been spoken,) when the month itself now for the first time constituted the first was already half over. (126.) This assumption then, that whatsoever the month, appointed to be the first in the calendar from this time for- ward, instead of that which before was so, the words which announced the fact of this constitution, Exod. xii. 2, must have been delivered on the first day of this month, being taken along with us ; let us continue our review of the chapter itself from where we left it off. Exod. xii. 3 : " Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house .... ver. 6, And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month ; and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening," (between the two evenings.} (127.) Knowing that these words were spoken on the first day of this month, could any one hesitate to infer from them that the notice, to take up these lambs on the tenth of the month, must have been given ten days beforehand ? and the notice, to sacrifice them on the fourteenth of the month, must have been given fourteen days beforehand ? If not, what is to be thought of the assertion, so confidently proposed (65) , that .all the notice which the people received, both that they were to take up and set apart these lambs, for a certain purpose, and to keep them set apart, for that purpose, and to sacrifice them at last, for that end and purpose, was only the last twelve hours before the Exodus ? Dr. Colenso is pleased to observe, p. 55 (65), on these several directions, "It is true that the story, as it now stands, with directions about ( taking' the lamb on the tenth day, and ' keeping' it till the fourteenth, are (sic] perplexing and contradictory:" and ^y^mwy for his own purpose, and contradictory to his own hypothesis, of only Cf. my Three Witnesses, pp. 84. 94-96. QUEST. XII.] Institution, of the Passover. 89 a twelve hours' notice between the issuing of these orders and the Exodus, they may well be said to be ; but perplexing that they are in themselves, or contradictory in any the least degree, inter se, I utterly deny. (128.) What then, it may be demanded, has he to say in his own excuse for so strange a misconstruction of the plain testimony of the story, as that of ignoring a ten days' notice to set apart the lambs for the Passover, and a four days' notice more to keep them so set apart, and a fourteen days' notice to sacrifice and eat them at last ? " I have said," he observes, p. 54 (65), " ' in one single day ;' for the first notice of any such Feast to be kept is given in this very chapter, where we find it written, v. 12, ' I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast.' " So then, because God, to whom the most distant future is as near as the present moment, to whose apprehension ever- lasting duration itself is only one ever-present now, speaking of what should be done by himself fourteen days or nights after this time, speaks of it as if the fourteenth night were already arrived or at hand, we also are bound to consider the whole of the interval between the first of the month and the fourteenth annihilated, and the day of the prediction, the first of the month, to have been identical with the day of the fulfil- ment, the fourteenth*. On this principle, when our Saviour, Luke xvii. 34, speaking of the events which should precede his second coming, uses similar language, I tell you, this night there shall be two men in one bed his hearers were bound to suppose he meant the night of the very day on which those words were spoken ! But what an ignorance or disregard, does this construction of ver. 12 shew, of one of the commonest modes of thought, and one of the commonest idioms of speech, even where the human apprehension, and the human anticipation only, of the future are concerned, whereby a still distant time, with its proper events, is so often spoken of, and represented, as already come ! (129.) But pp. 54, 55 (65), Dr. Colenso proceeds to observe, * The same language is used verse 8 also just before Belileh hezeh, this night though rendered there in the English version, by that niyht, and at verse 12 by this night. 90 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xn. " In the chapter preceding, xi. 4, we read, ' And Moses said (to Pharaoh), Thus saith Jehovah, about midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt, and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die/ where there can be no doiibt that the ' midnight' then next at hand is intended." And this is another, of the inconsiderate assertions in which this book abounds. So far from there being no doubt that the mid- night next at hand was intended by these words, there is every reason to doubt it, or rather it is morally certain that it could not have been so. First of all, there is no specifica- tion, xi. 4 itself, of the midnight there alluded to, as the mid- night next at hand ; and without authority from the text of Scripture it is gratuitous to assume it was. Secondly, it would necessitate us to suppose there was only twelve hours' inter- val, if so much, between the plague of darkness and that of the firstborn. For that Exod. xi. 4-8 is only the supplement of the account of what passed between Pharaoh and Moses, Exod. x. 24-29, as before related, either on the third day of the plague of darkness, or on the day after it, appears from xi. 8 : " And he (i. e. Moses) went out from Pharaoh in a great anger/' compared with x. 29, which proves that, if Exod. xi. 4-8 was not spoken while Moses was still in the presence of Pharaoh, (as he was, at x. 24-29,) it never could have been spoken in his presence at all and that would be contradictory to xi. 4-8 itself; which proves that it was deli- vered while Moses was still in his presence. (130.) The truth is, xi. 4-8 is properly supplementary to the account of what actually passed at this last interview of Moses with the king of Egypt, as related x. 24-29, at the end of the plague of darkness and xi. 4 should be read con- tinuously on x. 29. That is, xi. 1-3, as it stands, being con- sidered simply parenthetic, xi. 4-8 will take up and explain more circumstantially what is implied even at x. 29, in the account of that final interview. And xi. 1-3 (cf. xi. 9 also) seems to have been purposely interposed between x. 29 and xi. 4, to account for the prediction of the one judgment more after this of the darkness, as still in reserve for the Egyptians delivered by Moses on this very occasion, xi. 4-8 and con- sequently for the knowledge of it by Moses, even before this final interview. But though Moses at this time was certainly QUEST, xiii.] Circumstances preliminary to the Exodus. 91 aware of the futurity of that last judgment, in general, and of such of its circumstances as are specified xi. 4-8, there is no reason to suppose that even he yet knew more of the time when it was destined to happen in particular, than that it would be at midnight on some day or other, though on what day he did not yet know. This further circumstance of the threatened visitation, the most important and interest- ing, both to the Egyptians and the Israelites, of all,- it is manifest the Deity was still reserving for the time when it should be announced by himself, along with the correction of the calendar, and the institution of the Passover. (131.) Laying then these several considerations together, I think we may safely come to the conclusion that, if any one thing may more certainly than another be collected from the Scripture narrative of the proceedings more immediately pre- liminary to the Exodus, it is this, that, instead of one day's notice only of this event as at hand, the people had fourteen days' notice at least, from the first to the fifteenth of the first Abib, Exod. xii. i-ia, and virtually besides, the whole of the interval, whatsoever it was, between Exod. x. 29 and xii. I, from the end of the plague of Darkness to the inflic- tion of that of the Firstborn. I shall now proceed to the proof of another point, which, if it can be substantiated, will be still more decisive of the great hallucination under which the author of the Pentateuch critically examined has laboured in this part of his Review the fact that instead of one day's notice, or fourteen days', or twice fourteen days', notice, of such an event as the Exodus, and of the preparations which would require to be made against its arrival, the people in Egypt had three quarters of a year's notice, 269 days at least. QUESTION XIII. On the true interval of Time taken up by the Circumstances preliminary to the Exodus. (Colenso, ch. x. pp. 54-60.) (132.) When Moses, Exod. iii. and iv., had finally accepted his designation as the future deliverer of the people of Israel, 92 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xin. and was now ready to enter on the discharge of its duties, the first thing enjoined upon him after his return to Egypt, Exod. iii. 1 6 ; iv. 1-17, was " To gather the elders of Israel together, and to declare his commission to them/' and to work for their conviction the signs which he had been empowered to work, Exod. iv. 1-9. And w r e read accordingly, iv. 29, 30, that the first thing which he and Aaron did, on their return, was to gather those elders together, and to do these signs before their eyes. And though nothing is said, iv. 29, of any preliminary assembling of the people also, yet that the gathering of the elders together on such an occasion, and for such a purpose as this, was intended to include, and actually must have included, the people also, maybe inferred from iii. 15, 16, clearly imply- ing that this was always intended to be done, and iv. 30, 3 1 , equally clearly implying that it was done " That Aaron spake all the words which the LOED had spoken unto Moses, and did the signs, (which they had been commissioned to do,) in the sight of the people;" and "That the people, having heard those words and seen those signs, believed/' and being now convinced that the LORD had indeed visited them, and looked upon their affliction, in humble and grateful acknowledgment of his mercy, ' ' bowed the head and worshipped." (133.) Now it requires no argument to prove that if these things were said and done in the presence of all the people, all the people must either have been previously assembled in some quarter where they could be said and done before them all ; or must have been purposely assembled in some quarter, in order that they might be said or done before them. And of these two suppositions we shall see by and by that the former was more strictly the case ; that the people were already assembled in a certain locality in the land of Goshen, which will be explained as we proceed, before Moses and Aaron appeared among them. The question is then whether, having once received such an announcement of their approaching deliverance, and conse- quent departure from Egypt, all in a body, while they were thus assembled in a certain locality, they could ever after cease, as a body, to expect their deliverance and their departure ; or ever after cease, as a body, to make the necessary preparations on their part for it. (134.) It is very true that the appearance of Moses and QUEST, xiii.] Circumstances preliminary to the Exodus. 93 Aaron, with the first actual announcement of their commis- sion, before the King of Egypt, and the first actual demand that he should let the people go, in its immediate consequences, was so far from confirming the expectation thus raised of the approaching deliverance of the nation, that it seemed to fore- bode nothing so much as the hopeless continuance of the same state of subjection and bondage to their taskmasters, on harder terms for themselves than before. But this was before the proper judgment had yet followed on the first refusal of the demand; and consequently before any proof had thus been given that Moses and Aaron, in preferring this demand, were only the instruments of an Higher Power, both able and ready to resent and punish disobedience to the demands of his messengers, as an affront and an injury done to himself. Before the infliction on the refusal of this first of its proper penalties, the language of Pharaoh to Moses and Aaron was that of indignant remonstrance, that they should thus have interfered with the ordinary services of the people, v. 4 : " Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people from their works ? . . . ver. 5, Behold, the people of the land now are many, and ye make them rest from their burdens" i. e. Ye have already unsettled them, ye have already unfitted them for their proper duties, by filling their minds with vain and unfounded expectations. And his language to his own sub- jects at the same time was, ver. 7, " Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore : . . . ver. 8, And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them ; ye shall not diminish ought thereof : for they be idle ; therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God." And his language to the Israelitish overseers of the people, when they complained to him of the hardness and unreasonableness of such treatment, was in the same strain ; ver. 17, " Ye are idle, ye are idle ; therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice unto the LORD : . . . ver. 18, Go therefore now, and work; for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks." (135.) But after this first refusal and the judgment upon it, we read no more of any complaints about interference with the ordinary duties of the people to the Egyptians, no more of any insinuations about their idleness and unwillingness to 94 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xm. work. It was evidently from this time forward a question be- tween the King of Egypt and the God of the Hebrews, whether the latter by his power should compel the King of Egypt to an unconditional surrender of his people, bodily and for ever, or the King of Egypt by his obstinacy should wear out the power of God, or by his policy elude the effect of a forced compliance with his will, by retaining such an hold upon the people, that though let go nominally, and for a time, they must come back again as once he proposed to do after the plague of hail, and in apprehension of the plague of locusts, if they would have left their little ones as hostages, and again, after the plague of darkness, if they would have left their cattle behind. (136.) It is clear then that from the beginning of these pro- ceedings with the plague of Blood, the question at issue both really was, and was understood on both sides to be, the de- parture of the whole nation of the Israelites from the midst of their former masters, not for a temporary purpose, not for a season, but for good and for ever. It is no objection that Exod. v. 3; iii. 18, even the first demand ran in the terms of " Let us go, we pray thee, three days' journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the LORD our God" for no promise to come back, after the performance of this act of worship, nor any engagement to go no further into the desert than this three days' journey, when it was over, was implied in those words. And such being the state of the case, and such the question at issue, from this time forward, is it conceivable that the whole nation, though previously assembled before the beginning of this contest, and previously made aware of their personal interest in its decision, convinced too from the very first, that their God was in earnest in demanding and enforcing their deliverance would stand by from the beginning to the end of the struggle merely looking on, as admiring specta- tors of some astonishing and wonderful drama, in which God and the King of Egypt were the principal actors, without taking a single step, in the way of preparation, while the con- test was still going on, against the time of its decision ? (137.) It is no answer to say, the first demand that they should be let go had to be repeated ten times, before it pro- duced the desired effect. Was it preferred at first, or in QUEST, xiii.] Civcum 'stances preliminary to the Exodus. 95 any subsequent instance, except in the expectation that it would be complied with, or at least with the presumption that it might be ? If not, then the people would require to be prepared for such a contingency, as that of their being at liberty to depart, at any one of those ten epochs in this event- ful year, made by so many demands. Nor is it any answer to say that God himself (Exod. iii. 19, 20) had forewarned Moses, and Moses might have forewarned the people, that on& only of a series of judgments would be found effectual in extort- ing the consent of the Egyptians to their departure. It does not appear that even after xi. 1-3, or rather before xii. 1-12, the Deity had yet told Moses what that judgment would be, and when it was to be expected ; and until that information had been vouchsafed, for aught that Moses or the people yet knew, every judgment in succession after the first might be that one which was destined to be effectual ; and against every judg- ment after the first would the people be bound to be prepared as for the last, and to be in a condition to take instant ad- vantage of it, if it should be the last. So that instead of that one brief day of twelve hours, which is all that Dr. Colenso allows for so complicated a business as this of putting a million and upwards of human souls, with a proportionate number of flocks and herds, into a proper state for migrating from the land of their nativity, in a body, and for a foreseen sojourn of indefinite duration in the wilderness of Arabia, the true length of the period of notice and of preparation, which the Divine Providence placed at their disposal, was the interval between the first of the plagues and the last whatsoever that was. Let us then proceed to consider whether it does not admit of being determined. (138.) Now the date of the Exodus having been forty years before that of the Eisodus, and the true year of the Eisodus being infallibly determined by the first of the two miracles, affecting the sunP, to B. C. 1520, the year of the Exodus must have been B. C. 1560, and the year before the Exodus B. C. 156 1 . I had occasion to consider the chronology of this year- so much of it at least as was taken up by the events in Egypt, preliminary to the Exodus in my Fasti Catholici , which is of classical authority,) or \yy fived in English in all these modes of expressing it, the thing intended being, that the children of Israel went up divided into FIVES not jive in a rank, as it is rendered in the margin of the English Bible, but in FIVE bodies. And that this must be the meaning of the term in this instance, after what has been already collected, from other and inde- pendent data, of the circumstances under which they actually went out, i. e. divided into four bodies, each of them compre- hending a fourth part of the twelve Tribes, and therefore with a fifth, made up of the thirteenth, the Tribe of Levi, and ever after forming a camp of its own*, it appears superfluous to offer any further proof. And thus this text itself, which has hitherto been the Crux of commentators, comes in critically just where it is wanted, to confirm our previous inferences from antecedent probability, and the reason of things, as well as from the indirect testimony of Scripture, as completely as can be desired. * Exod. xii. 38, it is said, " A mixed multitude went up also with them, (cf. Numb. xi. 4,) besides very much cattle." But that multitude was no part of the Tribes ; and therefore cannot be considered included in the division of the Children of Israel as such. They would constitute, no doubt, a division by themselves, and consequently a sixth division. QUEST, xv.] Israelites dwelling in Tents. 105 QUESTION XV. The Israelites dwelling in Tents. (Colenso, ch. viii. pp. 45-47.) (155.) Again, among the other preparations either for the life of soldiers in the camp, or for that of sojourners in the desert, nothing would appear more indispensable, nothing would sooner be thought of, than the provision of tents. The difficulties, raised on this point in the Eighth Chapter of the Pentateuch critically Examined, are utterly imaginary, except on one supposition, the falseness of which has been sufficiently exposed already, viz. that this great host of future soldiers, or this numerous caravan of future wanderers in the wilderness, had all their preparations, with a view to either of those contingencies, and this of tents among the rest, to make in less than twenty-four hours' time, instead of nine months. (156.) It is not easy to divine from this eighth chapter, whether in the opinion of the author the truthfulness of Scrip- ture is committed to the fact that the Israelites, during the whole of this sojourn in the wilderness, dwelt in what the Hebrew calls aelim, and the English, tents, or to the fact that, for the same length of time, they lived under cover of what the original styles succoth, or saccoth, and the English ver- sion booths. He admits (53), on the testimony of Exod. xvi. 1 6, that, immediately after the Exodus, the people must have been living in tents ; and yet he finds in that state of the case an apparent inconsistency with the inference, liable, as he supposes, to be drawn from Levit. xxiii. 42, 43, implying prima facie that, for the whole of the interval between the Exodus and the settlement in Canaan, they must have been living in booths, altogether the same in point of construction as those in which, after their settlement in Canaan, and as a perpetual memorial of this very fact, they were commanded to live seven days every year, on the tops of their houses. And he sees a difficulty in this as well he may if the only habi- tations of the entire nation, for the whole period of their nomadic life, are to be supposed to have been such booths as those of the feast of Tabernacles, made of the boughs of trees; 104 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xiv. to which Dr. Colenso has devoted the Ninth Chapter of his Review. That the verb so rendered, with the Masoretic punctuation, is liable to be translated by harnessed, and con- sequently with that punctuation is ambiguous, I am ready to allow ; but that, without this punctuation, there is any ambi- guity in it, I utterly deny. Simply so read without points, it could be taken for nothing so naturally as the plural of the Hebrew numeral for five, or the passive participle plural of a verb made out of that numeral in the sense of to divide into, or to reckon by, jives. And on this construction it could mean neither more nor less in the Hebrew than what would be meant in Latin by quintati, or in Greek by TreTrefiTrao^ieW or Tre/uTraa-tfeVres, (from Tif[j.Trafa, which is of classical authority,) or \>y Jived in English in all these modes of expressing it, the thing intended being, that the children of Israel went up divided into FIVES not five in a rank, as it is rendered in the margin of the English Bible, but in FIVE bodies. And that this must be the meaning of the term in this instance, after what has been already collected, from other and inde- pendent data, of the circumstances under which they actually went out, i. e. divided into four bodies, each of them compre- hending a fourth part of the twelve Tribes, and therefore with a fifth, made up of the thirteenth, the Tribe of Levi, and ever after forming a camp of its own*, it appears superfluous to offer any further proof. And thus this text itself, which has hitherto been the Crux of commentators, comes in critically just where it is wanted, to confirm our previous inferences from antecedent probability, and the reason of things, as well as from the indirect testimony of Scripture, as completely as can be desired. * Exod. xii. 38, it is said, " A mixed multitude went up also with them, (cf. Numb. xi. 4,) besides very much cattle." But that multitude was no part of the Tribes; and therefore cannot be considered included in the division of the Children of Israel as such. They would constitute, no doubt, a division by themselves, and consequently a sixth division. QUEST, xv.] Israelites dwelling in Tents. 105 QUESTION XV. The Israelites dwelling in Tents. (Colenso, ch. viii. pp. 45-47.) C155.) Again, among the other preparations either for the life of soldiers in the camp, or for that of sojourners in the desert, nothing would appear more indispensable, nothing would sooner be thought of, than the provision of tents. The difficulties, raised on this point in the Eighth Chapter of the Pentateuch critically Examined, are utterly imaginary, except on one supposition, the falseness of which has been sufficiently exposed already, viz. that this great host of future soldiers, or this numerous caravan of future wanderers in the wilderness, had all their preparations, with a view to either of those contingencies, and this of tents among the rest, to make in less than twenty-four hours' time, instead of nine months. (156.) It is not easy to divine from this eighth chapter, whether in the opinion of the author the truthfulness of Scrip- ture is committed to the fact that the Israelites, during the whole of this sojourn in the wilderness, dwelt in what the Hebrew calls aelim, and the English, tents, or to the fact that, for the same length of time, they lived under cover of what the original styles succoth, or saccoth, and the English ver- sion booths. He admits (53), on the testimony of Exod. xvi. 1 6, that, immediately after the Exodus, the people must have been living in tents ; and yet he finds in that state of the case an apparent inconsistency with the inference, liable, as he supposes, to be drawn from Levit. xxiii. 42, 43, implying prima facie that, for the whole of the interval between the Exodus and the settlement in Canaan, they must have been living in booths, altogether the same in point of construction as those in which, after their settlement in Canaan, and as a perpetual memorial of this very fact, they were commanded to live seven days every year, on the tops of their houses. And he sees a difficulty in this as well he may if the only habi- tations of the entire nation, for the whole period of their nomadic life, are to be supposed to have been such booths as those of the feast of Tabernacles, made of the boughs of trees; 106 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xv. and if in the desert, of such boughs as the sands of Arabia would have been competent to supply : and not for one year only, but for forty years. (157.) It may help to clear up this apparent inconsistency, to point out to the reader first of all, this distinction, that the word used in every other allusion to the proper habitations of the Israelites during this sojourn of theirs in the wilderness, is aelim ; and the word used in this solitary instance of Lev. xxiii. 42, 43, in explanation of the feast of Tabernacles, according to the Masoretic punctuation, is succoth, according to my own mode of reading and pronouncing it, is saccoth, Secondly, that these terms were so related between them- selves, that aelim, in one point of view, would not be distin- guishable from succoth, and succoth, in another point of view, would not be distinguishable from aelim. (158.) For, i. I find from Gesenius that the root of this noun ael, or aelim, may be considered a verb, (or a certain tense of a verb, denoting to change,} the proper meaning of which would be, to change one's place of abode, to migrate from place to place. On this principle, the first and proper sense of the noun substantive derived from it, (compare aAAos in Greek, alius in Latin, else in English,) would be that of a shifting and migratory, and consequently a temporary, habita- tion. And every one must see that, while such a name might with the utmost propriety be given to a variable place of abode, like a tent, the name itself could not have been taken from the nature of the thing described by it in general, an habitation or place of abode, under any circumstances, but from a certain accident of that nature, whereby such a place of abode as a tent would stand discriminated from all other habitations in general ; viz. that while all other habitations, once fixed in a particular locality, are ever after stationary there, the tent is that kind of habitation, which, whereso- ever set up, is never stationary on the same spot, is perpetu- ally changing its place constantly liable to be taken down in one spot, and set up again in another. We see then that, if there be any other property in which even such an habita- tion as the tent must agree with every other kind and place of human abode in general, this word ael, so common in the languages of the east, in its application to the proper dis- QUEST, xv.] Israelites dwelling in Tents. 107 tinctive habitation of the occupants of the desert, leaves that entirely out of sight. (159.) ii. On the contrary, this other term, saccoth or succoth, I find from Gesenius also, is the feminine plural of a noun sak, or suk (compare here too, the Greek . a Apud Euseb. Prsep. Evang. ix. 29. 423. 16. b Ant. Jud. ii. xvi. 6. c Gen. xlv. 10, xlvi. 28, 29. 34, xlvii. 1.4. 6. 27, 1. 8 : Exod. viii. 22, ix. 26 : (cf. Josh. x. 41, xi. 16, xv. 51.) d Cf. Gcsenius in voce. f Prsepa- ratio, ix. 23. 391.3. QUEST, xvi.] Israelites armed. Ill Its name in the o' is so like the Hebrew for rain, as almost to authorize the inference that it must have been so called, be- cause in that quarter of Egypt, besides the irrigation, there was rain ; and as a natural consequence of both, a constant supply of pasturage for flocks and herds for that Goshen was a land of pastures, appears from the texts just referred to. (165.) I take it for granted also that the principal city of Egypt, and the residence of the kings of Egypt, not only before and at the Descent, but still, all the time of these pro- ceedings preliminary to the Exodus, was On or Heliopolis'' : and that whensoever, in the course of these proceedings, the city as such is alluded to, (as at Exod. ix. 29. 33,) this city of On is meant. Memphis s was not yet in being. Thebes was probably in existence; but nothing so considerable as yet, as it afterwards became 11 . And as, even when both Thebes and Memphis were now in being, On was still classed with them as one of the three oldest and most influential cities in all Egypt and as, even when the palm of antiquity was awarded by some to Thebes, and by some to Memphis, the second place in that respect by common consent was assigned to On 1 that, in the opinion of all impartial judges, ought to be the best proof which could be desired, that On was in reality the oldest of all. Moses himself, according to Manetho k , was a native of On; and, according to the tradi- tion of the Heliopolitans 1 , the king, in whose time the Exodus took place, and who went out in pursuit of the Israelites, and perished with his army in the Red Sea, set out from Helio- polis or On. It is manifest therefore, that as the proceedings, preliminary to the Exodus, began and were carried on in the land of Goshen, on the one hand, yet at On, or in the neigh- bourhood of On, on the other, Goshen must have included On, or On must have been contiguous to Goshen. (166.) Now it is observable that, Gen. xlvii. n, the land of Goshen is called the land of Rameses ; and Exod. xii. 37, Numb, xxxiii. 3. 5, when the people set out at last, they set out from Rameses. It is observable also that, Exod. i. n, f Fasti Catholic!, iv. 448 . Ibid. 438-448 : Three Witnesses, 160. h Fasti Catholici, iv. 248. i Ibid. 450 n. k Apud Joseph, contra Apoll. i. 26. 28, cf. ii. 2. l Artapanus, apud Euseb. Prsep. Evang. ix. 27. 43- 35-37- 112 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvi. Pithom and Raamses or Rameses are mentioned as the names of two cities, called treasure-cities, which the Israelites are said to have built for the Egyptians. We observe however that they are mentioned in such an order that, if both were not built at once, Pithom was probably first built, and then Rameses. (167.) Now with respect to one of these two, Pithom, both the city so called, and its name, appear to have gone down to posterity. The learned at least are agreed that the Pithom of the Exodus was very probably the YldrovfAos of later times, in the Heroopolite Nome, according to D'Anville, alluded to by Herodotus m , and mentioned by Stephanus". And Harov^os, as an Egyptian word, resolvable into the article Ila and TOUJUOS, being explained to have meant a narrow place, sur- rounded by mountains, the name itself, so interpreted, is a voucher for the reality of the city so situated, and of the pur- pose to which it was applied a treasure-city, built from choice in a narrow place, surrounded by mountains, and therefore so much the more easy to be defended. (168.) Of Raamses or Rameses, (which I assume to have been only accidentally different, and which in fact are both the same in the Hebrew without points,) no memorial seems to have descended to posterity : none at least is discoverable in later times. Rameses indeed is a name of frequent occurrence in the Monumental and Dynastic history of the Egyptians ; and the greatest of their Monumental kings themselves is supposed to have borne that name. But the Monumental and Dynastic history with me passes for nothing? ; though I see no reason why even its testimony should not be considered competent to bear witness to the simple fact of the existence of a proper name of this kind, of the highest antiquity, among the Egyptians. As to the meaning of the name, (though some have explained it to denote " the son of the sun,") I am not aware that any thing satisfactory has yet been proposed. The first of its elements seems to be the same which with the article Phe or Pka enters the name of Pharaoh or The King^\. (169.) From this distinction in the subsequent history of these two cities, we may probably infer that, while the city ii. 158. n In voce. Gesenius, in voce. P See my Three Witnesses, 160 sqq. 1 Fasti Catholici, iv. 446 and n. QUEST, xvi.] Israelites armed. 113 of Pithom had been built some time before the Exodus, the city of Rameses was still in the act of being built when the proceedings before the Exodus began, and was still unfinished at the Exodus itself. If so, it is an obvious inference from this fact that, long before those proceedings began, this work of building the second of these treasure-cities having been begun long before the same time too, all the male and adult population of the Israelites must have been already assembled in that locality, to take their respective parts in this task. And if the whole of the male population, the whole of the female too ; and consequently their families with them, and very probably also their flocks and herds. And they must have been still assembled in the same quarter, and still labour- ing in common on the same service, when Moses and Aaron appeared among them. (170.) It follows that, being all assembled here, with their wives and children and possessions, before these proceedings began, they must have continued assembled there, while they were still going on. And here they would probably be living, promiscuously with native Egyptians, in houses or dwellings of their own, such as are alluded to Exod. xii. 19. 22, 23, long before the appearance of Moses and Aaron ; and would continue to be living up to the eve of their departure, Exod. xii. 22, 23. And here too, as living in innumerable instances either in the same houses as the native Egyptians, or in neighbouring ones, they would be placed in such cir- cumstances as to be capable of rendering a literal obedience to the injunction at Exod. iii. 21, 22, xi. 2, to ask of the na- tive Egyptians, (the inmates of their houses, or their neigh- bours,) agreeably to the customs of the east, whatsoever they would, before their departure from among them. And Rame- ses itself being situated in the land of Goshen, and yet being also the sole residence of the people of Israel all the time that these proceedings, before the Exodus, were going on, it is no wonder that, Gen. xlvii. II, the land of Goshen itself, as comprehending this, the most remarkable locality both in the history of the Israelites and in that of the Egyptians, should be called the land of Rameses. (171.) After these explanations it will now appear to be only matter of course that, when the Israelites set out at last, i 114 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvi. it should be said, both Exod. xii. 37 and Numb, xxxiii. 3, 5, that they set out from Rameses. And the date of this de- parture being assumed as April 10 at midnight, or soon after, B. C. 1560, which that year was theferia quinta, let us follow their march from this locality to the quarter where they crossed the Red Sea*. (172.) The first day's march, Exod. xii. 37, Numb, xxxiii. 5, was from Rameses to Succoth ; and the time of the arrival at Succoth being assumed as Pitching time would be an hour before sunset at least, April 10 also ; and I have already ex- plained (160) that this first pitching of the camp of the Israelites for the night in this locality, and the first consequent spreading of the almost innumerable array of Succoth or Tents, necessary to accommodate so large an host, and the striking spectacle thereby exhibited for the first time, very probably gave it the name, which it appears to have borne ever after. (173.) The next day's march being assumed to have begun from Succoth, about an hour before sunrise, April n, theferia * We cannot indeed do this with absolute certainty, not knowing either the exact site of Rameses, from which they set out, or the rate of their day's march. It may be assumed, however, that, under ordinary circum- stances, they would begin their march, every day, an hour before sunrise, and continue to march until an hour before sunset with some interval probably of rest between, which would vary, according to circumstances. At this period of the year (the vernal equinox) they would be marching on this assumption, from five A.M., or a little earlier, to five P.M., twelve hours of mean solar, or kairic, time, divided probably between ten hours of motion, and two of rest. And the rate of their march being supposed two Roman miles an hour, ten hours' march would be twenty Roman, = sixteen English, miles. The best authenticated of these first three stations, Succoth, Etham, and Pi-hahiroth, is the last, from its position relatively to the Clysma. If we measure twenty Roman miles from the north cape of the Clysma, due north, it brings us to a little beyond the site of the Arsinoe or Cleopatra of later times, as the probable site of Etham ; and if we measure twenty miles more due north-west, from this site, it will probably bring us to that of Succoth ; and twenty miles more, in the same direction, it might be supposed, should bring us to Rameses. It should be remembered, however, that the first day's march, which began so soon after midnight, would probably be much longer than either of the two following days' marches ; and that, to recover the site of Rameses under such circumstances from that of Succoth, we should have to go back thirty miles, more probably than twenty; and that would bring us very nearly to the site of the ancient On or Heliopolis. QUEST, xvi.] Israelites armed. 115 sea-fa, was terminated for the day, Exod. xiii. 20, Numb. xxxiii. 6, by the arrival at Etham, about pitching time, as we may presume, and an hour before sunset, in this instance also. The designation of this locality, Etham, on the edge of the wilderness, points to the boundary line which separated the inhabited from the uninhabited part of the country; i.e. the land of Egypt, and especially that part of it called the land of Goshen, on the west and south, from the desert of Arabia Petrsea to the N. E. Another name of this desert of Etham must have been that of the wilderness of Shur also r , some- times described as lying before, i. e. in front of Egypt. There cannot be much uncertainty in assuming this edge of the wilderness as the boundary line, drawn on the maps from the northern extremity of the Sinus Heroopolites to Rhinocorura or Rhaphia, on the way from Egypt to Palestine, to the N. E.; and the site of Etham itself, on the very edge of the wilderness, as very probably near to that of the Arsinoe or Cleopatra of the Ptolemaic ara, the northern extremity of the Sinus Heroopolites, or Gulf of Suez, itself. (174.) And here, after passing the night of the Julian April n, and the evening of iheferia septima, according to the primitive reckoning, on the morning of April 12, the morning of the/ma septiwa, instead of continuing their route into the wilderness straight before them, N. E. or E., they received the command of God, Exod. xiv. 2, Numb, xxxiii. 7, to turn, and march due south, with the .coast of the Red Sea on their left, until they should come to a locality called Pi-hahiroth, and circumstantially described as lying between one locality called Migdol, and another, on the sea, called Baal-zephon. (175.) Now with respect to these names, and the places so called, there is in all the maps of Egypt, at the distance of a moderate day's journey southward from the head of the Gulf of Suez,ui remarkable double range of mountains, opposite to each other, one on the north and the other on the south, running parallel, from as far back as the site of the ancient Memphis, as low' down as the coast of the Red Sea, on the east, or south-east, yet not terminating at the sea itself, but in a strip of land, of a certain breadth, between these mountains * Exod. xv. 22 ; Numb, xxxiii. 8 ; cf. Gen. xxv. 18 ; xvi. 7 ; i Sam. xv. 7. I 2 116 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvi. and the sea. According to Bruce 8 , one of these mountains (that on the south) is called at present Gewoube, the other, on the north, is called Jibbel Attakah, and the valley between them the valley of Badeah and both open into the low and flat stripe of land, which runs north and south between them and the sea. (] 76.) Most of the commentators on the Scripture account of the Exodus have seen reason to conclude that they find the Pi-hahiroth of the Exodus in this quarter, in the opening- be- tween these two mountain ridges, still in existence; and this conclusion is strongly confirmed by the meaning of this name of Pi-hahiroth itself, treated as an Hebrew term, and not as an ancient Egyptian one ; for as so explained, according to Gesenius, it means the Mouth of Caverns a name very- likely a priori to have been given to the entrance of a valley, flanked by two high mountain ridges, which might almost have met midway over it, and so presented the appearance externally of a continuous chasm or cavern*. It is con- firmed also by the coincidence that, opposite to the northern ridge, Jibbel Attakah, there is still a cape, or headland, on the sea, very well adapted for the site of a watch tower, a lighthouse, an observatory of any kind the name of which, according to the idiom of the Hebrew language, might still, with the utmost propriety, from this property of its situation, be called Baal-Tsephon, the Master of Observa- tion, the Lord of the Observatory*. It is confirmed also, and perhaps most strongly of all, by the coincidence that, in all the maps of Egypt too, the arm of the sea, just opposite the * Treated however as an Egyptian term, this word, Pi-hahiroth, accord- ing to Gesenius, denoted, " a place adorned with green grass," and that would probably suit even better than the other to the circumstances of the case. The valley of Badeah between the two mountain ridges in question, having the benefit of the waters which fell from these two ridges, was probably a fertile spot, and covered with verdure ; and that might have given its name to the whole valley, as that of Pi-hahiroth, the place of green grass or verdure. It would account also for the selection of this spot as the halting-place of the Israelites, after the third day's march ; for the sake of their cattle at least, which might have found pasture there in abundance. Travels, (Dublin, 1790, 8vo.) i. 240. t Cf. Gesenius in voce, also in Tsaphe. QUEST, xvi.j Israelites armed. 117 gorge of the mountain -pass in question, is laid down under the name of the Clysma, i.e. the KAw/uta, or Kara/cAvcr/jos, the Flood or Overwhelming as if tradition 11 had always handed it down that some time or other, and in this part of the sea, something had once been overwhelmed by a great overflow of the waters of the sea, as the Egyptians must have been with all their army at the Exodus. And it is quite in unison with such a tradition that the natives, according to Bruce x , still call this part of the sea Bafmr Kolzum, or the Sea of Destruction ; and that the cape just opposite to Pi-hahiroth, (the site of the Baal-zephon of the Exodus,) is still called lias Musa, or the Cape of Moses. And it confirms these local traditions on the western or Egyptian side of this arm of the sea, that the Red Sea being supposed to have been crossed here, three days' journey from the coast on the opposite side, due east, into the wilderness, brings the traveller at present to the springs of Korondel, the waters of which are brackish and bitter at present, as three days' march into the desert before them, from the quarter where they crossed the sea, brought the Israelites to Marah, the waters of which were bitter at that time too. And the springs of Korondel, according to the local tradition", are the springs of Marah. (177.) I will assume then that this Clysma of the Red Sea was the locality of the passage of the Exodus. According to Bruce y, the breadth of the sea in this quarter is somewhat less than four leagues, which would be equivalent to twelve English miles. But this is only a conjectural estimate. According to D'Anville, it could have been scarcely so much as ten Roman miles, equal to eight English ; but at that, I will take the liberty of assuming it. The opposite coast, according to Brucey, is low and sandy at present, and very easy for landing upon. The depth of the sea in mid channel is about fourteen fathoms, (eighty-four feet,) and near the sides, or by the coast, about nine fathoms, or fifty-four feet. (178.) Let us now then proceed to consider the circum- stances of the passage itself, premising only that, as it was made in the night, (after sunset at least, only seven or eight days after the equinox of spring, when the sun would set u Fasti Catholici, i. 334. x i. 243. V Ibid. 244. 118 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvi. within a quarter of an hour after six P.M.,) and as the moon also was new April 9, about six A.M., only three or four days previously a , the night of the passage, April 12 from sunset, to April 13 at sunrise, under ordinary circumstances could have had no light of any kind. i. The first observation which requires to be made on the Scriptural account of these proceedings is, That, as the people had made a regular day's journey from Etham to this locality, and on their arrival here were directed to encamp at the mouth of the Pi-hahiroth, as if for the night, it may be presumed that the time of their arrival was much about the usual time of halting and pitching, in these journies or marches of theirs, i. e. about one hour before sunset. ii. The next is, That some time probably after this halt, but before they could yet have had time to encamp in a regular manner for the night, the Egyptians also must have come in sight, (Exod. xiv. 9, 10, 13,) for whose appearance at this critical moment it would not be difficult to account, by supposing them to have set out in pursuit of the Israelites, the day after their departure, April n, and by means of forced marches, and by taking the hypothenuse of the triangle of which the Israelites had described the two sides, (which would probably, for a part of the way at least, be through the valley of Badcah, between the two ridges above mentioned ) to have reached the same spot in two days, and one night, which it had taken the Israelites three days and two nights to reach *. iii. The Israelites, in consequence of this sudden appear- ance of their enemies behind them, having been commanded to go forward, Exod. xiv. 15-22, and Moses, at the same time, to " stretch out his hand over the sea," (which was simply the preliminary to its being divided,) the precise * There is no difficulty with respect to the collection of the army of the Egyptians for this pursuit, whether the military castes of the Egyptians were in existence at this time, as in subsequent times, or not. Nothing is more probable than that all Pharaoh's military strength would be as- sembled in the vicinity of On, either for the whole of the year which pre- ceded the Exodus, or for the greater part of it ; though nothing is said in Scripture about that fact. a Three Witnesses, 841 and 260 note R. QUEST, xvi.] Israelites armed. 119 time when it was so divided, and the bottom was laid bare, it may be presumed must have been that of this command and this act, Exod. xiv. 16; and consequently that too of the setting in of the strong east wind, ver. 21 not designed to cooperate with the power of God Almighty in the pro- duction of the opening, but simply as the instrumental means of drying and hardening the bottom so laid bare for the Israelites the better to pass over it. It is scarcely necessary to observe on this oeconomy, that, as the Red Sea itself in this quarter lay almost due north and south, an east wind in that quarter must blow right across it. iv. The precise time when the Israelites thus entered the sea, being intimated xiv. 15-22, from the fact next men- tioned (vers. 19, 20) that, simultaneously with this movement in advance, the Angel of God in the pillar of the cloud, who was going before in front of the people, removed and went behind them, between them and the Egyptians, and from that time forward the pillar was a cloud and darkness to their pursuers, (cf. Joshua xxiv. 7,) while it gave light by night to the people and from the effect declared to have ensued on this distinction, that the one came not near the other all the night, I think we are justified in inferring that the time when they entered the sea must have been as nearly as pos- sible the beginning of night as such, and the time taken up by the passage must have been the whole of the night as such*. And the whole of the night as such being neither more nor less at all times, than the natural interval between the end of twilight after sunset, and the beginning of twilight before sunrise, at this season of the year, only seven or eight days later than the equinox, the length of the night as such * And this inference from Exod. xiv. 15-22, appears to me to be strongly confirmed by the language of Moses to the people, xiv. 13, when the Egyptians first came in sight : " For the Egyptians, whom ye have seen to-day, ye shall see them again no more for ever." If they first appeared only just before the close of daylight and under the circum- stances of the case could not be seen again during any part of the night as such, and by the return of daylight the next morning should themselves have perished, it might well be said of them, That though they had seen them once, alive and pursuing, that day, (the day just begun at sunset by the primitive reckoning,) they should see them again alive no more for 120 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvi. would be the interval between April 12 about 7.30 P.M. on the one hand, and April 13 about 4.30 A.M. on the other, nine hours of mean time, and, at this season of the year, of kairic time, alike. v. The next question then is that of the probable rate of the march across the sea, or the time which would be taken up by it. And here it is to be observed that, as the people had already made a good day's march, for an army composed like theirs, before they were directed to encamp at Pi-hahiroth, and so soon after* they had received that order were com- manded to go forward still, though, it may well be presumed that God, who imposed this duty upon them of a march through the night, following on one through the day, would himself take care that neither hunger or thirst, nor the fatigue of travel, should interfere with the execution of his own commands; we may reasonably presume also that this night-march, following with so little delay on the march by day, would be proportionately slow, and could not be assumed at more than one of our miles an hour. vi. On this supposition, the breadth of the Clysma being eight miles, the length of the march across it, both to those who entered it first and to those who entered it last, would be eight hours : and if the whole night, as we have concluded, was occupied by the passage, and the length of the night as such was nine hours, from 7.30 P.M. to 4.30 A.M., it is easy to see that, on this principle, the head of the marching column or columns of the Israelites must have entered the sea at 7.30 P.M., the beginning of night, and landed on the opposite side, at 3.30 A.M., an hour before the end of night, and the rear must have entered the sea an hour after the beginning of night, 8.30 P.M., and landed on the other side, at the end of night, 4.30 A.M. And between the head and the rear of this column or these columns, there must have been an interval, equal to one mile's distance in space, and to one hour's march in time. vii. And this may lead to the discovery of the marching * When I say so soon after, I would still wish it to be understood that there might have been an interval, devoted to rest and refreshment, both of the people and of their cattle, of two or three hours' duration, at least, before they resumed their march. . xvi.] Israelites armed. 121 order of the Israelites, not only on this occasion, but from the first ; viz. an order of such a kind that, between the van and the rear of the marching column, there must have been a mile of space in depth ; and a mile being equivalent to 1 760 yards, if there was only one yard's interval in a straight line, between man and man, (and Vegetius^ allows no more to the Roman soldiers,) whatsoever the breadth of the marching column in rank, as it is called, in file it must have been 1760 men. viii. Now the Israelites, as we have seen, (149, 150,) having been formed from the first into four divisions, each of them comprehending a fourth part of the Twelve Tribes, distinct from that of Levi the entire population of these Twelve Tribes, male and female, adult and non-adult, as we have also seen (95), having been 1,396,192 souls, a fourth part of this number would be 324,048 or 324,000 ; and 324,000, formed into a marching column of 1760, a yard asunder in file, would require a front as nearly as possible of 184, a yard asunder in rank. There would be four columns of this mag- nitude, and so distributed, from the first, in the Twelve Tribes. There would be a fifth, not included in any of these, for the Tribe of Levi the numbers of which, male and female, adult and non-adult, Numb. iii. 15. 39, having been 22,000 x 2, or 44,000 at least they were considerable enough in them- selves, though much less than each of the other divisions, to have constituted a camp of their own, and a marching column of their own, from the first and a camp of that kind, after the analogy of the other four, probably so formed as to present the appearance of a column 100 yards in breadth, and 440 yards (the fourth part of a mile) in depth the place of which too, from the first, and ever after, on the march, Numb. ii. 5-17, x. 17-21, may be assumed to have been the middle of the other four, between the second of that number, and the third. And besides these, we have still the mixed multitude, and the flocks and herds which accompanied them, to take into account; and both these together could hardly have required or taken up less room than a fourth part of the Twelve Tribes. So that on the whole the marching order of the Israelites, from the first, must have been that of six 122 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvi. columns, five of the Tribes, and one of the mixed multitude, and the cattle, very nearly of equal size. ix. And if this was the order in which they set out at first it may be presumed it must have been that in which they arrived at Pi-hahiroth, on the third day's march, and in which they entered the sea at last. And this leads at once to the question, To what extent the sea would require to be opened, to admit six such bodies as these ? That it could not be less, under such circumstances, than six times 184 yards, is self- evident; but, unless these six bodies are supposed to have been all formed for the passage into one dense and serried mass not much short of a mile square every way if there was only to be some space between column and column, large enough to prevent the movements of one from interfering with those of another it is equally evident it must have been much more. Let us then suppose the least interval of this kind between each of them, which could be considered competent to ensure the end intended by it; viz. fifty yards; and let us suppose also that, as the first and the last of these columns had the waters, one on their right hand, the other on their left, Exod. xiv. 22. 29, xv. 8, each of these two was separated from the waters near to it, by a similar space. With these data, we may calculate the extent to which the sea would require to be laid open as follows : Marching order of the Israelites, at the passage of the Red Sea. i Waters on the right hand, and column i. . . 50 yards. ii Column i. and column ii. (184 + 50) = . . 234 iii Column ii. and column iii. . . . . . . 234 iv Column iii. and column iv. . . . . . . 150 v Column iv. and column v. . . . . . . 234 vi Column v. and column vi. . . . . . . 234 vii Column vi. and waters on the left hand . . 234 Total breadth of columns of march . . 1370 Fifty yards more than three quarters of an English mile, 1,320 yards. Nor should any one be startled even at such a conclusion as this. For, if the sea must be laid bare at all, QUEST, xvi.] Israelites armed. 123 OMNIPOTENCE being the agent of the required effect, it is the same thing to suppose it laid open to the extent of a mile, as to that of an hair's breadth. If we admit of a miracle at all all miracles, whether greater or less to human apprehension, being the same thing to Almighty power, all we have to con- sider in a given instance of the exertion of that power, is what the circumstances of the case must have required, not how it was to be brought to pass. It is far from improbable, in my opinion, that even the above computation is in defect, rather than in excess, of the truth. x. To resume then the thread of our reasoning ; I cannot help thinking that the time when the last man in these marching columns of the people must have quitted the sea and stepped on terra firma, is intimated Exod. xiv. 24 : " It came to pass, that in the morning watch the LOED looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, ver. 25, And took off their chariot wheels, that they drave them heavily/ 7 For the morning watch would begin at 3 A. M. April 13 ; and 4.30 A.M., the time at which, as we have calcu- lated, those who entered the sea at 8.30 P.M. the evening be- fore, would land on the opposite shore the next morning, would be exactly the middle of the morning watch and the object of that looking unto the host of the Egyptians, as de- clared by the effect which followed upon it, having evidently been to retard their march, between this time and the time preordained for their destruction that too is explained by the fact that 4.30 A.M. that morning it was still night, though the day might be ready to break; and yet, if this great work of the Lord's on his own enemies was not to be done in the dark, but openly and before the eyes of his own people, it must still be delayed somewhat longer. The probable time then when the rod of Moses was again, by command of the Deity, stretched over the bed of the sea, followed by the return of the sea to its strength, was about 5.15 A. M. or, as the Scripture itself expresses it, Exod. xiv. 26, 27, " When the morning appeared" half an hour before sunrise itself, 545 A.M. (179.) Let us then in the last place consider the circum- stances of both these acts, as alike concerned in the miracu- 124 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvi. lous effect ; both the act of restraining for a time, and the act of restoring again, this strength of the sea. By the former, the bed of the sea laid bare eight miles in breadth, three quarters of a mile in length the waters on either side piled up, off the coast, to an height of much more than fifty-four feet, and in the middle to an height of much more than eighty-four feet and this mass of waters, rigid and stiff under the restraining power, resembling nothing so much as a solid wall of ice, Exod. xiv. 22. 29, xv. 8, on the right hand of the Israelites and on the left. By the latter, both these walls of ice suddenly melted instantaneously restored to their natural fluidity, let loose, both at once, in a moment, to rush together again and mingle and coalesce as before, with all the rapidity, all the power and might, of the watery element held so long in a state so contrary to its own nature, and suddenly released from it. What, we may ask, in such a commotion and such a collision of the watery element as this, not, could have lived, until equilibrium and tranquillity was restored, but could have sunk ? What substance, however much heavier than water, exposed to the action of two torrents like these, rushing together from opposite sides, could have sunk to the bottom in such a maelstrom as this while it lasted? What wonder then, that the dead bodies of the Egyptians should have been cast by myriads on the opposite shore, Exod. xiv. 30 : cf. Ps. cvi. 1 1 especially if we take into account what is implied in Exod. xv. 10, the setting in of another great wind, which must have been a west wind, along with the melting of the waters, the final end of which could have been nothing so probably as this driving of the drowned bodies of the Egyptians in crowds upon the eastern shore *. And if the bodies of the Egyptians were thus liable to be washed ashore, by the mere action of these waters and this wind, so would the armour upon them, including their swords and their shields, both which, while they were still marching, would be carried attached to their persons ; and so, a fortiori, would the lighter and unattached parts of their * Compare also Ps. Ixxvii. 16-18 which probably refers to this same occasion, and specifies some more of the remarkable phenomena of the time, rain from heaven, thunder, lightnings, and an earthquake. %EST. xvii.] Camp, and Necessities of the People. 125 equipments their spears, their bows, and their arrows, and the like be. (180.) It is easy then to see that under such circumstances as these, the miracle of this day, April 12-13, B.C. 1560, could not fail, as one of its natural and necessary conse- quences, to supply the want of every description of arms, whether for defence or for offence, under which the Israelites might have been previously labouring as far at least as the army of the Egyptians was competent to furnish them. Nor do we require any other explanation, but the known interven- tion of this miracle, to reconcile together two seemingly in- consistent facts one, that before the passage of the Red Sea, the Israelites must have been without arms, the other, that directly after, when they were attacked by the Amalekites, they must have been possessed of arms. QUESTION XVII. The Extent of the Camp, and the daily Necessities of the People. (Colenso, ch. vi. pp. 38-40.) (181.) The subject of this chapter of Dr. Colenso's, so far as concerned the duties of the Priests, in certain instances, involving the question of the relative position of the Taber- nacle and the camp, was considered supra (35 sqq.). I revert to it here, for the sake of the further question, (reserved at that time (38) for future consideration,) of the size or extent of the camp from which, and a mistaken apprehension of the site of the Tabernacle relatively to the general encampment, and a mistaken construction of Deuteronomy, xxiii. 9-14, Dr. Colenso has drawn the inference (45) that it was incumbent on the 22,000 Lcvites only, to say nothing of the rest of the people, to walk every day a distance of six miles, even for the daily necessities of human nature, even ad alvum levandam. (182.) Knowing as we now do the probable amount of the entire population of the Israelites at the Exodus, we are in a better condition than we should have been without that know- ledge, to form an idea of the size of the camp which must 126 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvn. have been wanted to contain, and to accommodate, all of it. It is to be observed however first, That, as to the site of this camp relatively to the Tabernacle, or vice versa, it has been seen (40 sqq.) that the Tabernacle was never, as Dr. Colenso supposed, and as the drift of his reasoning required him to suppose, erected in the midst of the stationary encampment of the people but that, as often as both the Tabernacle and the camp were pitched for any length of time, the Tabernacle itself was set up at a certain distance from the camp. Se- condly, as to this distance, it has also been shewn (42) that, after the Tabernacle had once been erected, often as, in the account of subsequent proceedings, mention occurs of the congregation's being called together to the door of the Tabernacle, nothing is meant except that they were sum- moned to the gate of the court of the Tabernacle, a spacious entrance, laid open on such occasions, and commanding from without a full view of the Tabernacle in front, and of every thing going on within the court and therefore there must always have been a vacant space between the court of the Tabernacle and the camp purposely left for the assembling of the congregation upon it, 011 such occasions, and answering under the Tabernacle both to the men's and the women's court under the Temple. (See 22, 23, 24 sqq.) (183.) And this being the object and purpose for which this space between the Tabernacle and the camp was always left, it follows from this fact that, if the numbers of the con- gregation, even as confined to the male adults, were not less than 600,000, this vacant space must have been large enough to afford convenient standing-room for 600,000 men at least, and occasionally, without much inconvenience, even for twice as many grown up persons of both sexes. Assuming then that every such grown up member of the congregation would want a square yard of ground to stand upon, we cannot esti- mate the extent of the space, so required and so reserved between the Tabernacle and the camp, at less than half an English mile every way, 880 x 880 yards, or 774,400 square yards though that would be abundantly sufficient to accom- modate 603,550 adults at any time, and on extraordinary occasions, without much personal inconvenience, even twice as many. QUEST, xvii.] Camp, and Necessities of the People. 127 (184.) To this very probable argument of the extent of the space 'in question, we may add the following. Ac- cording to the tradition of the Jews, (handed down from the earliest antiquity,) the proper measure of that, which in aftertimes was called a Sabbath day's journey, was determined in the first instance by the distance between the court of the Tabernacle, and the furthest extremity of the general encampment which, it appears from Numb. ii. 3, x. 14, was the camp of Judah. And though the Jews in later times appear also to have considered the measure of the Sabbath day's journey, differently exprest, the same thing as 2000 cubits in our Saviour's time, the journey in question, in terms of any other measure of distance, as it may be collected from Acts i. 12, Luke xxiv. 50, John xi. 18, must have been reckoned equal to the distance from Mount Olivet to Jeru- salem ; fifteen stades, in terms of the Olympic stade, and one mile and an half of our measure, at the rate of ten Olympic stades to one English mile. (185.) The entire distance then of the court of the Taber- nacle from the furthest extremity of the camp, having been one English mile and an half and the particular space be- tween the court of the Tabernacle and the nearest extremity of the camp, by the reason of things, and the necessity of the case, having been already so nearly determined to half a mile, this coincidence leaves it scarcely doubtful that the Taber- nacle itself was always situated half a mile from the nearest extremity of the camp, and a mile and an half from the furthest. (186.) And this leads at once to the discovery of the pro- bable size of the camp. For the camp of Ephraim being the nearest to the court of the Tabernacle, and the camp of Judah the furthest from it if the court of- the Tabernacle was half a mile from the former, and a mile and an half from the latter, the camp of Ephraim must have been just one mile distant from the camp of Judah : and these two camps lying due east and west of each other, the length of the camp, due east and west, must have been one English mile. But whether its length from north to south also was one mile too, can- not necessarily be inferred simply from the fact that such was its length or breadth from east to west. It must be 128 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvn. determined, if at all, by the numbers of the entire population, and by the space which would be required for their accommo- dation. (187.) Now the entire population of the Twelve Tribes being assumed at 1,296,192, the number of tents, at the rate of six persons to every tent, (two of the parents, four of the children,) which these would require would be 216,032. And each of these tents being supposed to have occupied an area or ground floor of seven yards by four, (twenty-eight yards,) altogether they would require an area of 6,048,896 yards. An oblong square of two English miles (3520 yards) in length, and one mile (1760 yards) in breadth, would enclose a space of 6,195,200 yards 146,304 more than 6,048,896. It is manifest therefore that within an oblong square of this description it would be possible to arrange 216,032 tents, each standing on a ground floor of twenty-eight yards, in three ( = four) sets of parallel rows, each of them containing a fourth part of the whole, 54,008 tents one for each of the four particular camps, included in the one general camp and yet allowing space for one general passage, across the camp from east to west, of twenty yards in breadth at least, and for two more, from north to south, separating the camp of Judah from the camp of Reuben and the camp of Dan, on the one hand, and the camp of Reuben and the camp of Dan from the camp of Ephraim, on the other, each of them ten yards broad at least. (188.) Such, to the best of my judgment, is the idea which may be formed at present, from the data supplied by Scrip- ture at least, both of the four smaller camps of the Israelites in the wilderness, and of the one great camp, comprehending them all. And it appears to me to be much confirmed by the description of the prospect of both, which must have been exhibited to Balaam, from the heights of Moab, when he uttered the words at Numb, xxiii. 10, "Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel ?" And still more, on a later occasion, when he saw Israel abiding in his tents, Numb. xxiv. 2, and broke out into the exclamation, ver 5, " How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel \" For so they would be presented to his view one large collection of Tents, arranged in this QUEST, xvii.] Camp, and Necessities of the People. 129 goodly array, yet subdivided into four smaller collections of the same kind, each disposed in the same orderly manner. (189.) With regard then to the question, which still re- mains to be answered, That of the daily necessities of the people Where and How to be attended to, during this state of things under the Tabernacle and in the camp ? the reader will search in vain for any directions on that point in the Pentateuch itself. And if so, he will probably .agree with me in thinking it were much better left in the silence in which Scripture (perhaps purposely) has wrapt it up, than dragged into open discussion at the present day. To refer to Deuter. xxiii. 9-14, as specifying the rule of observance in this respect during the life which the people had been leading for the last forty years before those words were spoken, would be to do, as Dr. Colenso has done (44), mistake what was intended of the future, as if historical of the past. It is clear, from the language of this passage itself, that it enjoins a future rule of conduct of a certain kind ; and that both the injunction, and the terms in which it is expressed, are adapted to a case which might be of frequent occurrence in time to come, but had never yet occurred that viz. of the na- tion, after its settlement in the promised land, its going forth on a military expedition against any of its enemies, and that of God, as their only recognised King and Leader, both in peace and in war, his going forth with them ; and the neces- sity consequently laid upon them of living for a longer or a shorter time in the open field in the camp as such in the presence, and as it were under the eyes, of God himself. For that this was one of the promises specially held out to, and conferred on, the chosen people of God, both as an encourage- ment to obedience on their part, and as the reward of it also that God himself would go forth, on such occasions, with their armies is certain ; and that he did actually accompany them, on such occasions, in the recognised symbol of his pre- sence, under the theocracy, the ark, is certain also. That the Priests, whose duty it was to attend on the ark wherever it went, were bound to take part in any military expedition, as matter of course, may be collected from Deuter. xx. 1-4; cf. Numb. xiv. 44. The ark, as we read Josh. vi. 4-20, and the Priests its attendants, marched between the van and the K 130 Historical Character of tie Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvii. rear of the army of the Israelites at the beginning- of their wars in Canaan, on each of the seven days' compassing of Jericho. The ark, as we read i Sam. iv. 3, 4, was purposely fetched to be present at the battle of Ebenezer or Aphek, when it was permitted to fall into the hands of the Philistines : and we learn, from an incidental allusion, 2 Sam. xi. u, that the ark, as well as the soldiers of Israel, was encamped in the open air while the siege of Rabbah, in the reign of David, was still going on. (190.) It is the personal presence of the Deity on such occasions as these, attested by that of the ark, and his walk- ing in the midst of the camp in that sense, which is the foun- dation of the injunction, Deut. xxiii. 9.12-14, to keep every thing offensive to decency out of his sight. It had nothing to do with the rule which might have been observed for the last forty years in the wilderness. I confess that, if the Tabernacle had always been pitched in the midst of the camp, the spirit and principle of this injunction might have been applicable to the life in the camp, in the presence of the Tabernacle, and of the ark. But the Tabernacle de facto was never pitched in the midst of the camp and one reason why it never was, among others, might have been this, that while the residence of God was protected by its own position from any defilement ab extra, the enforcement of cleanliness in the camp might be left to the ordinary sense of propriety, and the ordinary rules, which regulate such things in civilized social life every where *. * Before Dr. Colenso had allowed himself to bring forward the objection insisted upon in his Sixth Chapter (44, 45), he would have done well to reflect on the peculiarity of the diet of the Israelites, during their forty years' sojourn in the wilderness, and what allowance would require to be made for that on this particular question of the daily necessities of the people. This peculiar diet, as every one knows, or ought to know, from the sixteenth day of the second month, in the first year of the Exodus, May IT, B.C. 1560, (Fasti Catholici, ii. 231-235: Origines Kal. Hellenics, i. Prolegomena, Ixi : Three Witnesses, 95,) to the sixteenth of the Paschal (and very probably the same) month in the first year of the Eisodus, B.C. 1520, (cf. Exod. xvi. 35, Joshua v. 10-12,) (an interval of forty years, and very probably forty years complete,) was Manna. For the next forty years then, after the beginning of this dispensation, (though it QUEST, xvii.] Camp, awl Necesnties of the People. 131 might have required some time to reconcile the people who came out of Egypt at first to this peculiar diet,) it may be taken for granted that the Israelites in the desert lived principally, if not entirely, on Manna. We read at least of no miraculous supply of food of any other description, after this had once begun to be provided for them, except the second miracle of quails, (Numb. xi. 4-6, 18-23, 3 X ~34) at Kibroth-Hattaavah, in the second or third month of the second year of the Exodus. And though we do read of complaints about the Manna, (Numb. xxi. 5,) in the last year of the Exodus, as if the people were tired of living so long on that kind of food only, we read of no provision of any other kind to gratify their appetite on that second occasion, as had been done on the former, Numb. xi. 6; but on the contrary, of a judgment expressly in- flicted for the murmuring about the Manna, at this time, in the plague of the fiery serpents, Numb. xxi. 6-9. It does not appear that, during the intermediate period from the first year of the Exodus to the last, even the milk of their flocks and herds, much less the flesh, was ordinarily used by the people for food. Every thing which is actually on record, bearing on this question, conspires to the inference that during the whole of this sojourn in the wilderness, the only, and certainly the principal, means of the subsistence of the Israelites, was the daily supply of Manna. Dr. Colenso, if I rightly collect his opinion from his own admissions, is not indisposed to believe in the miracle of the Manna ; and if so, I take it for granted that he would not be disinclined to agree with any one else, who believed in a miracle of that kind, that the Manna, so provided, could not have been in any sense, or in any degree, the ordinary food of man. The ordinary food of mankind is either vegetable or animal and the Manna was neither of these. It was certainly not an animal substance : and though there have been expositors of Scripture foolish enough to ima- gine it was a natural production of the desert of Arabia, called by the same name at present we may safely venture to say, it was no more a vegetable substance of any kind, in the sense of a natural production of the ground or of trees, at present, than an animal one. It is clear from the language of the people about it (MANNA ! What is this?) that they knew nothing of it before they saw it for the first time on the morning of the i6th of Zif or Jar, May 11, B.C. 1560, Exod. xvi. 15, 31, cf. Deut. viii. 3 : and it is certain that after the morning of the isth of Zif or Jar, B. C. 1520, they never saw it again, except in the omerful of it, laid up by command of the Deity himself, Exod. xvi. 32-34, soon after it began to be given, as a memorial of its former existence to all future generations. It might resemble some known vegetable production in shape, as we are told it did coriander seed, and other natural substances in colour, as we are told it did bdellium ; and some natural substance, or some of the artificial productions of the confectioner, (as fresh oil, or as wafers made with honey,) in taste Exod. xvi. 31, Numb. xi. 7, 8, xxi. 5 : but it was none of those things itself. It descended every night along with the dew; Exod. xvi. 13, 14, Numb. xi. 9. Our Saviour calls it Bread from heaven; John vi. 31, 32. So does the Psalmist, cv. 40; and in another instance, Ixxviii. K 2 132 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvii. 23-25, the Corn of heaven to send down which God expressly com- manded the clouds, and opened the doors of heaven ; and in eating of which, so sent him down from heaven, man did eat Angels' food. Cf. Ne- hemiah ix. 20 also. Let us then consider for a moment with what pecu- liar rules and restrictions this dispensation of Manna, in order to answer the end and purpose for which it was intended, was accompanied from the first, i. That it was to be gathered, every day for the day, and by each individual, or for each individual, of the same family, alike, ii. That the same rate or amount of it was to be gathered for each, without distinction, for any thing which appears to the contrary, of age or sex. iii. That the limit of this rate or amount, in every case, was to be the same so much as was defined and exprest by an omerful. iv. The peculiarity of this measure of an omerful, which occurs for the first and the last time in Scripture, in connection with the prescribed rate or amount of the Manna, which was to be gathered by every individual, or for every indi- vidual, member of the congregation, every day necessarily leading to the inference that this peculiar measure came into existence with and for this particular use and application of it, in this dispensation of the Manna, and went out again, as soon as that dispensation came to an end. v. And lastly, besides all this, and even after the Manna had been collected, sub- ject to the restrictions enjoined, as it might be supposed, by each indivi- dual for himself, or for every member of his own household, as well as for himself the special interference of God himself, to work a miracle, if necessary, (possibly every day,) lest the actual quantity gathered or con- sumed should be either more or less than the prescribed amount. Exod. xvi. 17: "And the children of Israel did so, and gathered some more, some less. ver. 18, And when they did mete it with an omer, he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack." It seems to me that laying these several peculiarities of the dispensation together, and especially, taking this last of them into account we can come to no other conclusion, with respect to the true nature and properties of this particular food, which, after the Israelites of old, we still call Manna, but which Scripture calls Angels' Food, than this ; That as there could have been nothing defective in it, when applied and used in the proper manner for its proper purpose, so there could have been nothing redun- dant; and consequently it must have differed from every other kind of food, whether vegetable or animal, by which human life is capable of being sustained, and the daily wear and tear of human strength is capable of being repaired in leaving no Treptrrco/ia nothing superfluous, and requir- ing to be carried off through the intestinal canal after supplying the necessary wants of the body. The Rabbis of the Jews have recorded many wonderful things of the peculiar diet of their forefathers in the desert; and, if I am not mis- taken, this among the rest, that it left nothing superfluous, like ordi- nary food, behind it, no Trepirroj/za, or excrementum. And though we are not bound to believe every thing of this kind, on the authority of the QUEST, xviii.] Cattle in the Desert. 133 QUESTION XVIII. The Sheep and Cattle of the Israelites in the Desert. (Colenso, ch. xii. pp. 65-81.) (191.) Page 65 (79) : "And the children of Israel did eat manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan." E. xvi. 35. " The people, we are told, were supplied with manna. But there was no miraculous provision of food for the herds and flocks. They were left to gather sustenance, as they could, in that inhospitable wilderness. We will now go on to consider the possibility of such a multitude of cattle (2,000,000) (71) finding any means of support, for forty years, under these circumstances." (192.) Such is the question proposed in this chapter the rest of which is taken up with the proof both from arguments of its own, and also from the testimony of those who have visited and explored the scene of the wanderings of the children of Israel, of what, I for my part should have been ready to concede, as a self-evident proposition that the desert of Arabia Petraea could not have been competent of itself, to maintain the flocks and herds of the Israelites for a single day, much less for forty years. And though Dr. Colenso does not himself in so many words draw the obvious inference from this state of the case, that, if actually taken along with their Rabbis, yet some traditions, on so extraordinary and interesting a fact as that of the peculiar food of their ancestors during their forty years' life in the wilderness, could scarcely fail to go down to posterity ; and among these, none perhaps would be a priori more credible than this to which I have just adverted. If so, (arid to return to the question with which we set out,) the difficulties raised by Dr. Colenso, in his Sixth Chapter, relating to the daily necessities of the people, if. he had reflected at all on the probable state of the case during their sojourn in the desert, might have appeared even to himself to be purely imaginary, and quite inapplic- able to the circumstances of the time and place. 134 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvm. owners into this desert, and there left to themselves, these flocks and herds must speedily have perished, he evidently expects it to be drawn by his readers, or, as their only alternative, if they would escape from that conclusion, to be believed, (as he is manifestly disposed himself to believe,) that these flocks and herds were never taken from Egypt into the desert at all, and that the Scripture account of the Exodus, in that one of its particulars, is unhistorical and untrue. (193.) That the desert of Arabia, the destined scene of these wanderings of the Israelites, with every thing belonging to them, for forty years, could have afforded subsistence for their flocks and herds, any more than for themselves, in my opinion, as I have already observed, it is superfluous to deny, and it would be a waste of time to disprove. I propose to join issue with Dr. Colenso on these two questions of fact only, Whether, if taken into the desert along with their owners at the Exodus, under such circumstances as they are represented to have been, they could have been taken thither merely to perish ? or if they could not find subsistence in the natural productions of the desert, Whether no miracle would be wrought to provide it for them in some other way ? (194.) To come however to a right judgment on this ques- tion in particular, What was or was not to be expected of God a priori in behalf of the cattle of his people, as much as of themselves, we must begin with a more general one, that of the rule or principle of the Divine proceedings in favour of those, whom God had once taken into covenant with himself (like the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), and once made the special objects of covenanted promises. (195.) That temporal blessings were of the number of these promises and privileges, and among temporal blessings, what- soever in these times most properly constituted wealth, it re- quires no argument to prove ; and that riches as such, in these times, and especially in the east, where social life was still almost every where Pastoral and Nomadic life, must have con- sisted chiefly of flocks and herds, is equally indisputable. The Hebrew term for cattle, Mecouneh, is just as often used for Substance in the sense of riches also ; riches in these primitive times consisting principally of possessions of this kind, more than of any thing else. QUEST, xvin.] Cattle In the Desert. 135 (196.) Thus in various passages of Genesis , we read of Abraham and Isaac, that, besides silver and gold, and men- servants and maidservants, they had cattle of every descrip- tion also, in great abundance; and in others d , of a special O3conomy of the Divine Providence itself, for the very pur- pose of increasing the possessions of Jacob of this kind also, during the last six or seven years of his sojourn with Laban. And among the other temporal blessings which the people of God, after their settlement in Canaan, on condition of obedi- ence to all the laws of God, were both authorised and entitled to expect from Him, this of the increase of their cattle is just as often, and as specifically, insisted on, as any thing else 6 . (197.) On this principle of the covenanted dealings of God with those whom He had once chosen, to stand in a peculiar relation to Himself, it was a priori to be expected that, if it made part of the plan of His Providence to multiply an handful of souls, standing in that relation to Himself, into a numerous nation, it must have entered into the same Pro- vidential oaconomy to multiply their possessions of every kind, and especially their flocks and herds, in something like the same proportion. Accordingly in that manifestation of God to Abraham, Gen. xv. 1-21, of which I gave an account supra (66 sqq.), it was distinctly promised, (ver. 13-16,) that the seed of Abraham, having previously gone down to Egypt, and previously been raised into a nation there, when they came out at last to return to their own land, should do so " with great substance" where the Hebrew term is one which, according to Gesenius, means Kr?jju,dra what they had ac- quired and gotten in Egypt and could describe nothing so properly at the Exodus, as the additions made to their flocks and herds during their residence in that country. It was no doubt with a view to the augmentation of their possessions of this kind, apparently in the natural way, during this sojourn, that Providence so ordered it that they were placed at the Descent itself in that part of Egypt, where only possessions c Gen. xii. 16 ; xiii. 2. 6; xiv. 14-16; xx. 14; xxiv. i. 35 ; xxv. n ; xxvi. 12-14. d Gen. xxx. 31-43 ; xxxi. 7-1-1 : cf. xxxi. 18 ; xxxii. to, 13-21 ; xxxiii. 17. e Exod. xxiii. 26: Deuteron. vii. 13, 14; viii. 13-18 ; xi. 15 ; xxviii. 4-1 1 ; xxx. 9. 136 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvui. of this description could appear to increase and multiply independently even of the Divine Blessing- upon them the Land of Gosh en because there only, as we have seen (164), there was abundant subsistence for flocks and herds all through the year. (198.) And though nothing is expressly said of this in- crease of their cattle, during the interval between the Descent and the Exodus, as well as of themselves, that it must have gone on all the time pari passu with that of the people, may be inferred from the facts of the year which preceded the Exodus. We read for instance, Exod. ix. 1-7, that, in the plague of murrain, all the cattle of Egypt died; and yet, vers. 19-26, even after this, at the time of the plague of hail, that the Egyptians had again cattle of all kinds in the fields many of which too must have become the victims of that second visitation. And how is this fact to be explained so as to be consistent with the other ? Simply by the fact, on the one hand, specified before, Exod. ix. 4, 6, 7, that of the cattle of the Israelites not one died in the plague of murrain, and by the fact on the other hand, that between this plague and that of the hail, there was another, that of the boils and consequently between the plague of murrain and the plague of hail, very possibly there was an interval of as much as two months, during which the Egyptians, having lost all their pos- sessions of this kind by the murrain, had time and opportu- nity to replace that loss, by buying others from the Israelites, before the plague of hail. But on this supposition the Israelites must have had enough and to spare of the same kind of posses- sions. In a word, as we read of the promise of the augmenta- tion of their wealth of this kind, during their sojourn in Egypt, Gen. xv. 14 so do we of its fulfilment at Exod. xii. 38 " In the mixed multitude, and the flocks and the herds, even very much cattle" which went out with them at the Exodus also : where the original word is again Mecouneh and should here also have been rendered by substance, as we explained supra such substance as in these times constituted wealth i. e. possessions, consisting of cattle in particular. (199.) And that all the possessions of this kind, acquired previously in Egypt, were intended from the first to be taken away with them at the Exodus, mav be inferred from Exod. QUEST, xviii.] Cattle in the Desert. 137 x. 9, before the plague of locusts, " We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds will we go :" (cf. viii. 26 also, after the plague of flies :) and especially from x. 24-26, just after the plague of darkness, and just before the plague of the firstborn : ver. 26, " Our cattle also shall go with us ; there shall not an hoof be left behind." And yet, in the face of all these promises, and all these engagements of the Divine veracity, and all these special arrangements and providences to carry them into effect; in spite of all this care and soli- citude that the temporal possessions of the people of God of this kind, in Egypt previously, should thus be multiplied, and every thing of that kind so multiplied thus be taken along with them at last, so that even an hoof should not be left behind it is seriously inculcated by a Christian bishop that, if they were taken out of Egypt at all, along with their owners, they were taken out only to perish in the wilder- ness of hunger and thirst. (200.) But not to insist on any such inconsistency as this, simply to argue this question as one of fact I would demand of those who are not prepared to deny that the cattle of the Israelites must have gone out with them at the Exodus, yet are prepared to deny, or at least disposed to doubt, that any extraordinary provision was made for their support in the wilderness how they account for the fact that, more than a month after the departure from Egypt, at the time of the arrival at Rephidim, Exod. xvii. 1-7, Numb, xxxiii. 14, the cattle were still alive, and in want of nothing at that time but water ? Or how they account for the fact that, two months after the Exodus, just on the eve of the delivery of the Law, the cattle, which ought to have been starved to death long before this time, were still alive, and to all appearance at this very time in want of nothing except to be restrained from feeding too near the mount? (Exod. xix. 12, 13; cf. vers. 21, 23 ; and Hebrews xii. 20.) Or how they account for the fact, that fifty days later, at least, they were still living, and still feeding, in the same security as before, on what was yet to be found for their support in the vicinity of mount Horeb ? Exod. xxxiv. 3. Or how they account for the fact that, in the second month of the second year of the 138 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvm. Exodus, the cattle of the people in general were so numerous that the firstling's only among them, were equal in number to the cattle of the Levites collectively, and the cattle of the Levites in general were taken in exchange for the firstlings of the cattle of the people, as no more than equivalent to them, Numh. iii. 41-45 ? Or how they account for the fact that, a month after this, and fourteen months after the Exodus, just before the second miracle of quails, the flocks and the herds, which had been living all this time on nothing but what the desert of Arabia could afford them, were still so numerous that, in the opinion of Moses, Numb. xi. 22, they were com- petent to have furnished a month's subsistence for the people among whom he was, 600,000 footmen at least, if not more than twice that number of all ages, and both sexes ? How again, will they account for the fact that, thirty-nine years after the Exodus, when the scene of Rephidim and Massah, in the first year, was repeated at Meribah-Kadesh in the last year, Numb. xx. 2-13; (cf. xx. 8;) xxvii. 14: Deut. xxxii. 51, the cattle belonging to the congregation were still alive, as well as themselves, and again, at this time, in want of nothing ap- parently, no more than they, but water ? Or, how will they account for the fact that, even after this, just on the eve of the Eisodus, this description of the possessions of all the Tribes, in the case of three, the Tribe of Reuben, the Tribe of Gad, and half the Tribe of Manasseh, had become so numerous as to lead to a special petition on the part of their owners, and a special concession on the part of Moses, that they should receive their share of the common inheritance on that side of the Jordan, in the recently conquered country of Sihon and Og, because that was a region adapted to posses- sions of this kind in particular? Numb, xxxii. i ; Deut. iii. 19. It cannot be said, these were merely their share of the spoils of those two kingdoms ; for on that principle the flocks and herds of the rest of the Tribes must have been as numerous as theirs ; and the same request might for just the same reason have been preferred by any of them. But if not, then these flocks and herds of the Reubenites, Gadites, and Manassites, must have been in a great measure the natural descendants of those which came originally out of Egypt, and instead of diminishing in the desert, much less perishing all of them QUEST, xviii.] Cattle in the Deaert. 139 meanwhile, had not only lived, but multiplied beyond what they were at first. (201.) Now that this could have been brought about by natural means, that the bare sands of Arabia could have fed 2,000,000 head of cattle, (according to Dr. Colenso's calcula- tion,) regularly and plentifully, with their own spontaneous productions, exceeds all credibility. But if it could not have been the effect of natural means, by what could it have been done, but preternatural ? If these flocks and herds were not only maintained from day to day, and from year to year, and not only thereby kept alive, but, as living in the midst of plenty, enabled also to increase and multiply, by what could they have been thus maintained, in the desert of Arabia, independently of the desert, and independently of their owners, but the power of God ? (202.) But to this obvious explanation of the fact, Dr. Colenso objects, that there is no account on record of a mira- culous provision like this for the necessities of the cattle of the Israelites ; leaving it to be inferred that, if none such is actually recorded, none such could have been made. Whether the fact is, as it would thus be assumed to be whether there is not, after all, something in Scripture from which such a miraculous provision for the cattle of the Israelites may be consequen- tially inferred, I hope to inquire by and by. Meanwhile I beg leave to demur to the principle which seems to me to lie at the bottom of the objection, viz. That if God wrought a miracle on any occasion, in a given order and course of things of which Scripture was giving an account, it must necessarily be noticed in that account. This assumption, it appears to me, makes a great deal more of miracles, than Scripture, on its own principles, would be disposed to do, or would authorise us to do. There is no such thing in Scripture as Nature as the Laws of Nature as the order and course of Nature no- thing but God, and God's Laws, and God's order and course of things. God, in Scripture, mediately or immediately, per- missively or personally, is the doer of every thing. God is all in all. It is God's will, God's power, God's Providence, God's appointment, which does every thing and orders every thing in Scripture which made every thing what it is, which keeps it what it was made while it continues such, which suspends, 1.40 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xviii. or modifies, or changes, its original constitution, as it thinks fit. Regarded in this point of view, nothing, which comes de facto to pass, in the opinion of Scripture can be miracu- lous, as referable to its only true efficient cause, and true Author ; and even to our own apprehensions, the ordinary and the extraordinary, in the actual course of things, with the same relation to the only true Author of either, should both appear miraculous, or neither. (203.) What reason then, on this principle, would there be to expect that in the account of God's own dealings with His own creatures, in His own world, and for His own purposes, an account too dictated and recorded by His own Spirit, every special interposition of His Power and Providence, every miracle as we should consider it, should necessarily be related, as if it must needs be something as wonderful in the estima- tion of Scripture, or of the Spirit which dictated Scriptiire, as it might be in ours ? It may very well be questioned with the evidence of 2 Kings ii. 19-22 ; iii. 16-20 ; iv. 1-44 ; v. 2- 14,26,27; xiii. 14-21, 25 before us whether all the miracles, performed by the Prophets under the old Dispensation, are actually recorded in the Old Testament; but it must be cer- tain from John xx. 30, xxi. 25, as well as from the internal evidence of the Gospels themselves, that an incalculably small part only of those of our Saviour has been left 011 record : and equally so, from the Acts of the Apostles, that we have not a tithe of those which were afterwards performed by the Apostles, and the rest of the first Preachers of Christianity, historically related in that work. (204.) So much then for the argument against the fact of a miracle in a particular instance, from the silence of an in- spired account about it. But what if express testimony to such a fact in a particular instance is wanting ? Is our own reason, nevertheless, incompetent to infer it for itself, if the premises which lead to such an inference are actually on record in Scripture ? Let us apply this argument from silence, to a particular case. Suppose Deut. viii. 4, xxix. 5, and Nehemiah ix. 21, absent at present from the page of Scripture as they might be, so far as the occurrence of either in the proper order of the history is concerned. If any one, who reflected on the cir- cumstances under which the Israelites must have been living QUEST, xviii.] Cattle in the Desert. 141 perpetually between the Exodus and the Eisodus that is, as a body of men and women, constantly moving about on foot, for forty years, yet excluded from all intercourse with other nations had seen reason to infer that such necessary wants even under those circumstances, as change of clothing or change of shoes, in their case must have been provided for in some extraordinary way, will any one, with the incidental allusion to that way, both Deut. viii. 4, xxix. 5, and Nehemiah ix-2i, before his eyes, maintain that such an inference must have been wrong, because the fact itself was not historically related ? (205.) And what need, we may further demand, for express testimony to a miracle of a certain kind, with such testimony actually on record to a miracle the same in kind, but much greater in degree? Must not the lesser miracle be included in the greater, where the principle of both was the same, and the end and object of both, mutatis mutandis, were the same also ? And must not the fact of the greater, under such circumstances, vouch for that of the lesser ? (206.) When I speak of a greater miracle of this kind, the fact of which duly attested is, or ought to be, a competent voucher for the fact of a lesser one of the same kind, and directed to the same end and purpose, the reader will of course understand that I mean the provision of sustenance for the Israelites themselves, in the shape of the Manna, (which the Psalmist as we have seen calls Angels' food, and our Saviour, Bread from heaven?) the best attested, and the most unques- tionable in point of fact, of all the extraordinary circum- stances and characteristics of this extraordinary aera. If God thus took the whole nation of the Israelites, and every individual household among them, into His own keeping, every day for forty years, is it surprising that he should have taken every thing belonging to them, which stood in need of daily sustenance as much as themselves, for the same space of time, into His own keeping also ? Would not the same goodwill towards His own people, which moved Him unasked to do the one, induce Him of His own accord to do the other ? or will it be seriously maintained that the Power which was able to rain Manna down from the air, every day, for forty years, was not able to make the grass spring from 142 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvm. the surface of the ground, for the same length of time ? And if there was both an adequate motive to originate, and an adequate power to effectuate, even such a dispensation as this in favour of the flocks and herds of the people, what more do we require to certify us of the fact of it ? It is undeniable that on more than one occasion f , the same water, which was pro- vided (and by miracle) for the people, was provided for their cattle also ; and food to eat being as essential to the daily subsistence of beast as well as man, as water to drink, who can consider it probable that one of these necessities would be provided daily for either, and not the other also ? In a word, so natural and so necessary must the connection between these two things, the maintenance of the people, and the mainte- nance of every thing belonging to them, during the whole of this sojourn of both in the desert, either both in the ordinary or both in the extraordinary way, appear to common sense, that we could desire no better proof of the latter than the clear and indisputable testimony which Scripture itself has left on record to the former. And this brings us to the ques- tion, to which I alluded supra (202) Whether Scripture, after all, is so silent, as Dr. Colenso and those who think with him assume, either as to the fact in general, or to the mode in particular, of an express provision like this for the daily wants of the flocks and herds, as much as for those of the (207.) And on this question, I begin with observing that, if there are any two ideas more distinct from, and more opposed to, each other, and less liable to be confounded in the habits and modes of thought of the inhabitants, or neighbours, of the Desert, in the East, than any others, they are these two, that of the DESERT, and that of the FIELD, which in the Arabic is called the TELL. The geography of the wild ARAB, bordering on Egypt, knows of no comprehensive distinctions of the sur- face of the earth, but these three, of the DESERT, the TELL, and the RIVER, meaning by this last, the NILE : and in his apprehension, what is not the DESERT is either the TELL or the RIVER, and what is not the TELL or the RIVER is the DESERT. There is a remarkable illustration of this in Bruce' s Travels 8, in the account of his interview with the Shekh of f Exod. xvii. 1-3 ; Numb. xx. 4, 8, u. i. 146-153. QUEST, xviii.] Cattle in the Desert. 143 the Tribe Ababde and of the oath, by which he and his people are there represented to have bound themselves, for his security among them, and wheresoever their influence extended 11 ; whereby they declared themselves and their chil- dren accursed, if ever they lifted their hands against him in the TELL, or Field, in the DESERT, or on the RIVER : i. e. on any part of the surface of the earth, of which they had any knowledge, or with which they had any thing to do. (208.) Now this, which in the nomenclature of the Arabs is called the TELL, in the Hebrew is precisely the same thing as the SHEDEH ; the first instance of the occurrence of which is Gen. ii. 19, 20, in the mention of the Heithheshedeh, or Beasts of the Field, as then and there brought to Adam, to receive from him their names. Heithheshedeh, as I have shewn in my Three Witnesses ', is that description of animals, which, whether wild or tame, is naturally graminivorous and ordi- narily ruminant ; and consequently was necessarily from the first associated with the SHEDEH, because there, and there only, was its natural subsistence to be found. For this word, SHE- DEH, in the Hebrew, according to Gesenius, denoted nothing so properly as the open, and generally speaking level, part of the surface of the earth, the natural covering of which is GRASS ; the natural food of all grazing animals as such. In that sense, it stood opposed not only to the arable part of the earth's surface, (the shedeh broken up by the plough, and sown with grain of any kind,) but even to the shedeh itself, as covered indeed with grass, but those grasses allowed to mature or ripen their seeds, i. e. the shedeh turned into a meadow. SHEDEH, in short, in the Hebrew was nothing but the natural surface of the earth, covered as yet with nothing but grass, and such grass too, as was meant in the Hebrew by Basse, in contradistinction to dseb, the more mature and ripened vege- tation, cf. Gen. i. n, 12, Deut. xxxii. 2, the first sprouts of grass, the tender and succulent grass, the still nascent and springing, and not yet adolescent, much less mature, vegeta- tion of the surface of the earth, the most suitable of all for grazing animals to feed upon. (209.) This word in the Hebrew, SHEDEH, in the English version is uniformly rendered by FIELD; and to enumerate h i. 152. ' Three Witnesses, 65-67. 144 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvm. the instances of its occurrence, so rendered, would be almost endless. Let a few specimens from Genesis only suffice : as Gen. xxiv. 63 : "And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide/' xxv. 27 : " And Esau was a cunning- hunter, a man of the field:" (cf. xxvii. 3 : "Go out to the field:") xxvii. 27 :" The smell of afield which the LORD hath blessed/' xxxiii. 19 : " And he bought a parcel of afield." xxxiv. 5 : " Now his sons were with his cattle in the field" (cf. ver. 7 : " Came out of the field.") xxxiv. 28 : " That which was in the city, and that which was in the field:" xxxvii. 15 : "A certain man found him (Joseph), and behold he was wander- ing in the field" xlvii. 20 : " For the Egyptians sold every man his /^/' xlvii. 24 : " For seed of the field." In all these instances, the FIELD evidently means what we have explained the Hebrew SHEDEH to do the plain and open surface of the ground, the natural covering of which is the herbage, in which grazing and ruminant animals find their proper food ; designed consequently by nature first and pro- perly for pasturing yet capable also of being broken up, and sown with corn. (210.) Now such being the proper sense of the Hebrew SHEDEH and the English FIELD, and such the essential dif- ference of the FIELD as such, and the DESERT as such, let the reader attend to the following coincidence ; viz. That, in the account of proceedings after the Exodus, when there can be no doubt the people had long been in the midst of the desert, this word field occurs twice where we should have expected, under such circumstances, that the word employed would have been the desert. The first is Exod. xvi. 25, in reference to the cessation of the gift of the manna on the sabbath, " To-day ye shall not find it in the FIELD " the other, Levit. xvii. 5, in the ordinance there enjoined, That from that time forward, all animals intended by their owners to be killed for food *", should be brought for that purpose to the door of the * It is not indeed certain whether this was the object of those sacrifices, or whether, as may also he inferred from ver. 7, they were not properly sacrifices. But it makes no difference to the argument from the use of the term field, in reference to the circumstances under which these ani- mals were before slain, whether they were intended as food, or as sacri- fices, or as both. Cf. Deut. xii. 15. 21. QUEST, xviii.] Cattle in the Desert. 145 Tabernacle, and not be slain, as they had been until then, in the open FIELD, or as it is in the original, in the face of the FIELD ; " To the end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices, which they offer in the open FIELD, even that they may bring them unto the LORD, unto the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation/' (211.) What could be inferred from the phraseology of these two passages, by one, who with a competent knowledge of the Hebrew, were to read them detached from their context, and in ignorance of the circumstances under which they were really spoken, except that both the speakers, and those to whom they were speaking, must have been at the time some- where in the FIELD, in the OPEN FIELD, i. e. in the midst of the open country, in the midst of green fields and pas- turing grounds at least ? And were he to be told that both, at this very time, were in the desert of Arabia, surrounded, it might be supposed, by nothing but an unbounded expanse of sand, how could he reconcile that fact with the prima facie meaning of the description of the same locality in each of the above passages, as the FIELD, except by supposing that, in these instances, by some means or other, the DESEET itself, for the time, had been turned into the FIELD ? (212.) Now let the reader reflect for a moment what must have been the extent of this FIELD, round about the camp, which was competent to receive the manna, daily let fall upon it, for the daily subsistence of the whole people k ; and what the magnitude of that other FIELD, in which all the flocks and herds of this great multitude before and up to the time of Lev. xvii. 5, must have been daily pasturing and daily roam- ing, if, before that command was delivered, whosoever had occasion to make use in any way of his own property in them, was until then accustomed to find and to kill them in the face of that FIELD. (213.) The great desert of Arabia indeed is an open plain, miles upon miles in extent, on all sides ; but it is an expanse, of this boundless description, of nothing but sand, or gravel, or granite yet here, both Exod. xvi. 25, and Levit. xvii. 5 the Israelites were in the midst of an open field on every side, * Exod. xvi. 14-31, Numb. xi. 7-9, Deut. viii. 3. 16. L 146 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvin. an expanse in every direction of grass and verdure. And though they might not perhaps at this time be in the great desert of Arabia, yet, wheresoever they were, it was still in the neighbourhood of mount Horeb. And, without en- tering at present on the much disputed question of the true site of the Horeb of the Exodus, I will still declare my own opinion on one point viz. that, wheresoever it was situated, if it was not an isolated rock, standing alone in solitary grandeur, and rising abruptly from the ground on every side, and con- sequently capable of being encompassed by the whole camp of the Israelites, or by a fence, if necessary k , one of its sides at least, fronting the camp, must have done so 1 ; and opposite to this there must have been an open plain, on which the people themselves were encamped" 1 , and on which there was room for them to assemble between the camp and the mount 11 , to hear the Law delivered in which too, when not occupied by the people , the cattle must have been accustomed to pasture : and a plain, still open to the same uses, still supplying pasture for cattle, forty or fifty days at least laterP. (214.) What inference then could reason and common sense draw from such premises as these, except that the Israelites, though marching all the time in the desert, and encamping, as often as they did encamp, in the desert, and consequently, as it might be supposed a priori in the midst of barren sands, in some manner or other, whensoever and wheresoever they pitched their tents, found themselves in the midst of the FIELD in the midst of a plain covered with grass ? And if so, not for appearance' sake not for their own comfort's sake but for the sake of their cattle. Let us then proceed to consider the circumstances under which these movements of theirs in the desert, according to the account of Scripture, must have been made perpetually. (215.) Scripture is express to the fact that from the begin- ning to the end of their forty years' journeyings in the wilder- ness, they never stirred a step, they neither marched nor halted, except as they were directed by their Heavenly Guardian; condescending all this time to act the part of their conductor k Cf. Exod. xix. 12, 13, 21-73: Hebr. xii. 18-20. 1 Exod. xix. 17, tt. xx. 1 8. m xix. 2, 17, cf. xx. 1 8. n xix. 17, xx. 18. o x ix. 12, 13, 21-23. P xxxiv. 3. QUEST. xviii.J Cattle in the Desert. 147 and not invisibly, through his unseen but equally effectual Providence, but openly, and with a visible symbol of his per- sonal presence at their head, the pillar of the cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night P " Who went in the way before you, to search you out a place to pitch your tents in, in fire by night, to shew you by what way ye should go, and in a cloud by day 9." The pitching places of the people then, in all their journeyings, were chosen not by themselves, but by their All- wise and Almighty Leader for them : and that being the case, we may be sure they were always the best and fittest, for every purpose contemplated by them, and especially for the provision of three such indispensable requisites to the daily subsistence of so numerous a following both of his rational and of his irrational creatures, as manna for the former, and grass for the latter, and water for both. Especially, as soon as it is understood, (and as it may be proved with very great probability from Scripture itself,) that the scene of their journeyings was not the limited space between Kadesh- Barnea and the granitic district of the Sinaitic peninsula on the south and west, as it has commonly been supposed, but the great desert of Arabia on the east 1 ". (2] 6.) Now with respect to those three requisites to the daily subsistence of the followers in the train of their Divine conductor, over the surface of this desert perpetually, manna for the people, grass for the cattle, and water for both, to say nothing more of the first at present, (which to the best of our own judgment would seem to be equally capable of being sup- plied in the same way every where,) and to confine ourselves to the two last ; though it behoves us to speak of the Divine estimate of things with all diffidence in our own judgment, that, which to a mere human apprehension would be most likely to give the law to the other perpetually, we may venture to say would probably be the provision of water, rather than the provision of grass. With respect to this latter, if the mode of the provision every where was simply this, of turning the surface of the desert, for the time being-, P Exod. xiii. 17, 18, ai, 22, (cf. Numb. xiv. 14,) xLv. 19, 20, 24, xvi. 10, xxiv. 15-18, xl. 34-38 : Numb. ix. 15-23, x. 11,12: Ps. Ixxviii. 14, cv. 39: Nehem. ix. 19 : i Cor.'x. i. Deut. i. 33. r Cf. Deut. i. 19, 31, ii. 7, viii. 15, xxxii. 10 : Jerem. ii. 6 : Hosea xiii. 5. L 2 148 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvin. to the extent which the necessity of the case required, from an expanse of sand into one of grass, for ought which we can see to the contrary, any part of the desert a priori would seem to have been as suitable for such a change as another. But with respect to the provision of water the case might be dif- ferent. (217.) There are natural supplies of water in the desert of Arabia or Syria, even at present ; known of too to the roving inhabitants of those regions, and to the caravans, which tra- verse them every year at stated times : and no doubt there were such, equally well known of, in ancient times. There were probably more in former times, and probably are more at present, which were unknown formerly, and are unknown still but which would be known to Omniscience formerly as much as at present. One means consequently of the daily supply of this daily necessity, which the Divine leader and guide of the Israelites might have employed, might be this, of taking them to the spots where these natural springs were to be found, either in the shape of wells, already dug, or though still concealed from outward view, so near the surface as to be easily accessible. And we have an example of the former in the twelve wells of Elim, Exod. xv. 27, Numb, xxxiii. 9, and of the latter, in the revelation of the spring, called Beer on that very account, Numb. xxi. 16-18 (cf. 22), so near to the surface that it could be laid open by the staves of the Princes of the congregation only. And in all such cases as these, the miraculous ceconomy would probably reside not in the dis- covery of the water, so made known, but in the mode whereby it was rendered effectual for the end and use designed by it the supply of this one of the wants of so large a collection both of men and of animals. And that, to judge from the analogy of parallel instances on record in Scripture (the barrel of meal, and the cruse of oil, the widow of the pro- phet's pot of oil, the twenty loaves of the hundred, the five loaves of the five thousand, and the seven loaves of the four thousand ) would probably consist in making a small spring adequate to so great a demand constantly drawn upon by the people and their cattle, while they were still in its neigh- bourhood, yet never exhausted, never allowed to fail. (218.) With respect however to what may be considered QUEST, xvin.] Cattle in the Desert. ] 49 the standing mode of the provision of this one want, all through these journeyings in the wilderness, I am inclined, both from the testimony of Deut. viii. 15 (confirmed by Ps. Ixxviii. 15, 1 6, 20, cv. 41, cxiv. 8, Nehem. ix. 15) which seems to be given historically to the fact, and from the testimony of i Cor. x. 4, however figuratively expressed to believe that it must have been by bringing it out of the rock. The first instance of water so provided actually recorded is at Exod. xvii. 1-7, within little more than a month after the Exodus ; and that was on every account a remarkable case of its kind, and evi- dently here related as such the water, so produced, and apparently for the first time, having been purposely called Massah, Tentation, and Meribah, Contention as if to com- memorate the fact that the people had there and in that way chidden or contended with God, and there and in that way had put it to the proof by actual trial, whether he was really pre- sent with, and among them, or not. The next is Numb. xx. 2-13 (cf. xxvii. 14, Deut. xxxii. 51) ; and that is still more remarkable, not only because of its consequences to Moses and Aaron, but for its bearing on this question, Whether there was not a standing mode of the supply of water in the wilderness, and that mode this, of bringing it out of the rock. (219.) St. Paul, as I have observed, i Cor. x. 4, argues that the contemporaries of the Exodus did all drink the same spiritual drink because they did all drink of the spiritual rock which followed them, (or, as it would be more strictly rendered, of a spiritual following rock,} which rock was the Christ. And though this is figurative language, yet as even figure and metaphor must have some literal truth to rest upon, what matter of fact could have been the foundation of the metaphor in this instance, except that the water, of which the Israelites did literally drink in the wilderness all along, was literally brought out of the Rock ? Or what other fact could have been the foundation of the Jewish Tradition, that the Rock, which gave out its water for their use first at Re- phidim or Massah, followed them ever after, rendering them the same service perpetually? We are not bound to accept this tradition literally; and yet we may argue from it that the recognised mode of the supply of water in the wilderness, 150 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xvin. handed down among the Jews, must have been this, of bring- ing it out of the Rock; and that Rock too, we may also believe, on the testimony of St. Paul, always intended as a type and symbol of the true spiritual Rock the Dispenser of the Waters of Life and Salvation to all Believers, Jesus the Christ. (220.) And this conclusion, it appears to me, is strongly confirmed by the account of the second supply in this way, which has been left on record, at the second Meribah, and in the last year of the Exodus, as the other was in the first, just referred to. For before any thing had yet been said of the peculiar mode in which the water was to be supplied on this occasion, or any the least intimation given of its being in- tended to come out of the Rock, the LORD, Num. xx. 8, said to Moses : " Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto THE ROCK before their eyes ; and IT shall give forth His water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of THE ROCK." There was then some Rock, already designated to that use, and some water, contained in it, destined to come out of it, before any murmuring of the people, at the want of that water, had yet been heard, or any steps taken, as if in consequence of those murmurs, to supply it. Cf. vers. 10, n. (221.) This however being assumed as the standing mode of providing for this particular want, the encampments of the Israelites, it is to be presumed, would be regulated by a pro- spective regard, which no conductor but God could have exerted perpetually, to those localities, where Rocks, proper to become the subjects or instruments of this oaconomy, might always be found though whether such waters were naturally contained in those rocks, or were created, and made to come out of them for the occasion every one is at liberty to judge for himself. It is no objection to these explanations, that two cases only of the actual provision of water in this way are on record, the first at Rephidim, Exod. xvii. 1-7, in the first year of the Exodus, the waters of Massah, (Num. xxxiii. 14,) the second, in the last year, at the waters of Meribah- Kadesh, Num. xx. 2-13. It appears from Deut. viii. 2, 3, 15, 16, that there were times and occasions when God purposely suffered the people both to hunger and to thirst in order to QUEST, xix.] Population of the Land of Canaan. 151 humble them by a sense of their constant dependence for their very subsistence on something- beyond themselves, and to put to the proof their absolute trust in himself. Those waters of Massah, and these waters of Meribah, the one at the very beginning, the other at the very end, of the miraculous ceconomy of this kind, evidently belong to this category of exceptional cases, and might have been purposely left on record in illustration and confirmation of Deut. viii. 3, 3, 15, 1 6, itself*. QUESTION XIX. The Numbers of the Israelites, the Extent of the Land of Canaan. (Colenso, ch. xiii. pp. 83, 83.) (222.) It is not easy to see the precise drift of this chapter, which raises a double question, one Whether Judaea, by means of the population which must have been settled in it at the * Dr. Colenso (44, 85, vii. 88) insists strongly on the difficulty, under which the Israelites must have laboured perpetually during their sojourn in the Desert, of procuring fuel for various necessary purposes. It does not seem to have occurred to him to reflect that the same difficulty, in the case of the inhabitants of the same deserts, must exist at present, and probably to a much greater degree at present, than at the time of the Exodus, so far at least as concerns any natural supplies of that kind which the desert itself is capable of furnishing and yet that the inhabitants of the desert at the present day are conscious of no great privation in that respect. The truth is, they find a simple and never-failing supply of all the fuel which they require, in the dung of their own cattle, especially their oxen and their camels. That cows' dung was wont to be used in these quarters, even for culinary purposes, at a very remote period, appears from Ezek. iv. 15. Nor can there be any doubt, that when dried and hardened by exposure to the burning suns of the east, almost at any time of the year, it is extremely well adapted to serve for fuel; and being simply the TrepiVrcu/ia or superflu- ous part of the natural food of graminivorous animals, it has nothing par- ticularly disagreeable or offensive about it. Of fuel of this description, the flocks and herds of the Israelites, (particularly on Dr. Colenso's calcula- tion of their numbers,) would furnish a never-failing supply, as long as it was wanted. 152 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xix. Eisodus, was not adequately replenished with inhabitants ; the other, if it was, Whether its inhabitants could have been in any danger from the inroads of beasts of prey and con- sequently, (what seems to have been the object of these ques- tions from the first,) Whether it was not a very superfluous announcement to be made, as if from the mouth of God himself, in the texts premised to this chapter, to the first settlers in the country, Exod. xxiii. 37-30, (cf. Deut. vii. 22,) that he would not drive out its former possessors from before them all at once, lest the Beasts of the Field should increase upon them. (223.) Now, with respect to the first of these questions, a country is adequately peopled at a given time, when it con- tains within its limits, at that time, the utmost amount of in- habitants which it is physically competent to maintain. The numbers, which the land of Canaan received at the Eisodus, according to Dr. Colenso (92), were 2,000,000; according to my own calculation (96) including the Levites, as well as the rest of the Tribes, of both sexes and of all ages, were 1,340,192 ; and even these, however considerable at first sight in them- selves, could not have been sufficient to people an area of 11,000 square miles, 7,000,000 acres, according to Dr. Colenso (91), in extent; much less to the utmost amount of what it was capable of receiving and maintaining. The productive capabilities of the land of Promise, the land set apart by the Creator himself at the Creation, as the future habitation of his Church and People the land which even after the Fall, and after the Deluge, was still more or less the heir of the privileges and distinctions assigned at the beginning of things to the Garden of Eden 8 the land which he himself* calls the glory of all lands the land which he had repeatedly pledged himself to bless and to render fertile, in a special degree the capabilities of such a land as this notwithstand- ing what Dr. Colenso is pleased to insinuate (169, pag. 142 n) of parts of it are not to be measured by the ordinary standard of the proportion of the number of its inhabitants at a given time to its geographical or superficial extent. 8 See my Three Witnesses, 61. * Ezekiel xx. 6, 15 : cf. Deut xi. 12 :. Dan. viii. 9, xi. 16-41 : Zechariah vii, 14. QUEST, xix.] Population of the Land of Canaan. 153 (224.) With respect however to this question, of its actual Population, at different times, from the Eisodus downwards, I had occasion to consider it in my Dissertations on the Principles and Arrangement of an Harmony of the Gospels ; and for the particular results of that inquiry I would beg- to refer the reader to that work u. It is sufficient at present to observe that, in the reign of David, (circ. B. C. 1018-1017,) the entire population, exclusive of Benjamin and Levi, (four times that of the fighting men,) amounted to 6,280,000 ; and in the reign of Jehoshaphat, (circ. B. C. 911,) two Tribes only, Judah and Benjamin, supplied a total of 4,640,000. (225.) Dr. Colenso indeed is in the habit of throwing dis- credit on all the numerical statements of this kind, in the Old Testament history ; but what will he say to the assertion of Josephus? that, in his time, in Galilee alone, while no town in that part of Judaea contained less than 15,000 inhabitants 31 , there were 204 such towns or cc5//aty on which supposition Galilee alone must have had a population of 3,060,000 souls : and Galilee not having been more than a third part of all Juda3a, east and west of the Jordan, the whole country, if peopled in the same proportion, must have contained 9,000,000 of souls. Or what will he say to the statement of Dio Cassius z ? that in the War of Adrian, 985 Kw/xat ofojuaaroVarai, as he terms them, were laid waste by the Homans. These too, if peopled in any thing like the same proportion as the KWJUCH of Galilee, according to Josephus, must have contained an aggregate of nine or ten millions at least and that too only seventy years after the desolation produced by the war of Nero and Vespasian, A. D. 66-75*. (226.) Make what allowance we may for possible exaggera- tions of the matter of fact, in the above statements, still, in the face of such testimonies, no one could think of denying that Judaea, in its proper geographical extent, as the repre- sentative of the Land of Promise, must have been competent to contain an ordinary population of five or six millions at least, and therefore could never be considered adequately peopled by the numbers received into it at the Eisodus; iv. 486-507. x Bellum, iii. iii. 2. ' Vita, 45. z Ixix. 14. * See my Dissert, iv. 98-116. 154 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xix. scarcely a fourth of that amount. And this brings us to the second question, raised in this chapter of Dr. Colenso's; Whether a population, as yet scarcely a fourth of the ordi- nary population of such a country, put into possession of it as entirely deprived of its former inhabitants, would or would not be in danger from the increase of beasts of prey before they could yet have filled the country. (227.) The answer to this question is simply the proper answer to a question of fact Whether Judsea itself, even in the most settled and populous times, was liable to be infested by beasts of prey ; for if it was, much more must it have been so, under such .circumstances as those of the Eisodus with a population as yet scarcely equal to one fourth of its proper amount. And that it must have been so liable even in the most settled and populous times, may be inferred first from the number of allusions to wild beasts of the most formidable kind especially the lion and the bear and the various images taken from their instincts and habits, which occur in the poetical parts of the Old Testament. Secondly, from the frequent occasions, recorded in Scripture, when one or the other of these two in particular, (especially the lion,) acts an historical part as for example, the young- lion of Samson b , the lion and the bear of David c , the lion of Benaiah d , the lion of the prophet of Bethel 6 , the lion of Micaiah f , the she-bears of Elishag. And though in some of these instances both those animals may have acted merely as instruments to fulfil certain penal purposes of the Divine Providence, that makes no difference to the present question, unless it should be con- tended that the animals so employed were created for the purpose. (228.) That the lion was known to lurk in the coverts of the Jordan, and was liable to be driven out thence into the open country by the annual overflowing of the river, appears from Jeremiah xlix. 19, 1.44. But on this question of the liability of Judaea in particular, if desolated of inhabitants, or only imperfectly peopled, to be infested by beasts of prey, the most apposite example to which we could appeal is 2 Kings b Judg. xiv. 5, 6. - c i Sam. xvii. 34-37. d 2 Sam. xxiii. 20 : i Chron. xi. 22. e j Kings xiii. 24-28. f i Kings xx. 36. 2 Kings ii. 24. QUEST, xx.] Rites, and Celebration, of the Passover. 155 xvii. 25, 26 from which we see that the country of the Ten Tribes, recently denuded of its proper inhabitants, and as yet very inadequately replenished by the settlers transplanted thither from Upper Asia was actually exposed to this very plague of the increase of the beasts of the field on the inha- bitants of the land, and that too in the shape of lions. And though this also is represented as a Providential oaconomy, designed to bring these new inhabitants of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes to a knowledge of " the God of the Land/' that, as I have already observed, makes no difference to the question whether Judaea was liable to the inroads of beasts of prey and those of the most formidable kind when no longer restrained and kept within bounds by its own population unless these lions too in the time of Shalmanezer were created on purpose, for the part which they are seen to have performed, in furthering the designs of Providence with respect to the successors of the Ten Tribes. QUESTION XX. The Priests, and their Duties at the Celebration of the Passover. (Colenso, ch. xxi. pp. 131-138.) (229.) It is assumed in this chapter that, according to the rule of the Paschal ritual from the first, if it was not the duty of the Priests to sacrifice the Paschal victims in behalf of the people, it was at least their duty to receive the blood of the victims so sacrificed by the people for themselves, in the court of the Tabernacle, and to offer it there on the altar, in their stead. And taking this assumption with him to the con- sideration of the first memorial-Passover, Numbers ix. '5, and calculating the number of victims, the blood of which would have to pass, on this occasion, through the hands of the Priests, at 150,000, and the number of Priests through whose hands it would have to pass, (Aaron and his two sons, Eleazar and Ithamar,) and the utmost length of time allowed it for so passing, (two hours at most,) Dr. Colenso (161) has 156 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xx. little difficulty in coming to the conclusion that it was impos- sible that the blood of so many victims could have passed through the hands of so few ministering Priests within the time prescribed. (230.) We need not object to this reasoning that as the numbers of the entire population at this time did not exceed 1,340,000, the number of victims required for this occasion, at the rate of one to every fifteen souls, could not have ex- ceeded 90,000. I am ready to admit that the blood of every one even of these could not reasonably be supposed capable of passing through the hands of three individuals only in the space of two hours. The question, on which I propose to join issue with Dr. Colenso, is this, Whether it was in reality part of the Paschal rule, and Paschal ritual, from the first, that the blood of the Paschal victims should pass through the hands of the Priests, or even that the Priests should have any thing to do with the Paschal sacrifices of the people at all. (231.) Numb. ix. I : We read, "And the LORD spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year, (either the solar Abib, March 27 April 26, or the lunar, March 29 April 28,) after they were eome out of the land of Egypt, saying, ver. 2, Let the children of Israel also keep the Passover at his appointed season, ver. 3, In the fourteenth day of this month, at even, (marg. between the two evenings]) ye shall keep it in his appointed season : according to all the rites of it, and according to all the ceremonies thereof, shall ye keep it." Such was the in- junction, commanding the observance of the first memorial Passover : and of the way in which it was obeyed, we read as follows : ver. 4, " And Moses spake unto the children of Israel, that they should keep the Passover, ver. 5, And they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month at even, (either the fourteenth of the solar Abib, April 9, or the fourteenth of the lunar, April n,) in the wilderness of Sinai : according to all that the LOED commanded Moses, so did the children of Israel. " (232.) The above is all, which is extant in Scripture, of the circumstances of this Passover, unless it be what follows* 1 , con- cerning the Passover of the second month, the institution of h Numb. ix. 6-14. QUEST, xx.] Rites, and Celebration, of 'the Passover. 157 which, humanly speaking, arose accidentally out of this me- morial one in the first month. It is evident, from the former part of this account, that, with respect to the rule of this Passover, nothing was prescribed in terms but the time, the fourteenth of the first month ; all the rest was generally exprest, according to all the rites, and according to all the ceremonies, thereof and that must necessarily have implied that it both had, and was known to have, certain prescribed rites and ceremonies, which there was no necessity to specify afresh for this particular occasion. If so, to know what these were, or would at this time be understood to be, we must begin with tracing the history of this observance, from its first institution, down to the present time. (233.) Now the institution of the Passover, as every one must be aware, is found on record Exod. xii. 3-14, 15-20, 21, 22, 24 (fourteen days, as I shewed supra (121 sqq.), before the Exodus, partly in the words of the LORD to Moses, partly in those of Moses, repeating to the people what he had him- self just received in charge from the LORD. There is a second allusion to it in the same chapter, xii. 43-49, which comes in after the account of the first Passover, and after the account of the Exodus, in the words of God himself to Moses, laying down and prescribing its rule as an ordinance, afresh, which it may be presumed was intended to be supplementary to xii. 14 in the account of the first institution. There is a third, the date of which would seem to have been the day of the Exodus also, Abib 15, April 10, (cf. xiii. 3, 4,) yet as arising out of the injunction, relating to the firstborn just recorded, xiii. 2 ; and in the words of Moses to the people, explanatory of that injunction, xiii. 3-10. And these are all the allusions to this particular observance, and its rule or ritual, which occur in the history before the delivery of any part of the Law. (234.) With respect to those which occur between the delivery of the Law and Numb. ix. 5, the first is Exodus xxiii. 15, the next xxxiv. 18, 25, the next Levit. xxiii. 5-8. Laying then all these references to one and the same observ- ance, and all these specifications of its proper rule and ritual, together, we shall see that none of the later ones (Exod. xxiii. 15, xxxiv. 18, 25, Levit. xxiii. 5-8) adds any thing to 158 Historical, Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xx. the particulars specified in all their circumstantiality in the very first injunction of the same kind, Exod. xii. 3-14, 15- 2O, 2,1, 2,2,, 2,4, except the sequel of Levit. xxiii. 9 14, which prescribes, for the first time, the offering- of the wave sheaf, or firstfruits of barley harvest, with its accompanying sacri- fices, on the morrow after the sabbath, the morrow after the first day of the feast of unleavened bread, Abib 15 yet, with this important qualification, that, even as an additional cir- cumstance of the ritual of the same occasion, it was not to be observed until the people should have come into the land which the Lord should give them. (235.) The only recognised and authoritative standard then of the ritual of the Passover, between its first institution and Numb. ix. 5, must still have been the first injunction of that kind, Exod. xii. 3-14, 15-30, 21, 22, 24, 43-49; xiii. 3-10. And if we extend our survey of the history of this observance to the end of the Pentateuch itself, we shall find nothing on record, between Numb. ix. 5 and the last page of Deutero- nomy, bearing on this question, except Numb, xxviii. 16-25, and Deut. xvi. 1-8, both belonging to the last year of the Exodus ; nor any thing added to the ritual of the ordinance by either, except the particular sacrifices for each of the seven days of the Azyma, by the former, and the particular locality where the Passover itself was always to be observed, (but only after the settlement of the people in the land of their inhe- ritance,) by the latter neither of which could have any thing to do with the rule of the observance at first, or still, in the second year of the sojourn in the wilderness. (236.) The above review therefore of the history of this institution, and of the ordinances relating to it, must satisfy an enquirer into this question, that to know what could have been supposed its proper rule and ritual, Numb. ix. I, he must go back to Exod. xii. And here, the first thing which it may occur to him to remark is, that he finds there a double prescription of the ritual of the observance, one much more particular than the other, Exod. xii. 3-14, 15-20, 21, 22, (cf. also xiii. 3-10) the other more concise indeed, yet substan- tially to the same effect, xii. 43-49. But it will probably also occur to him to remark, that the former was prescribed before the Exodus, and preliminary to it, the latter, for any QUEST, xx.] Rites, and Celebration, of the Passover. 159 thing which appears to the contrary, as I observed supra (233), might have been intended as supplementary to the former, and explanatory of it, whether delivered after the Exodus, or before it. (237.) It may occur to him also to observe that, among the ceremonies enjoined on that first occasion, some there were which the reason of things would imply to have had a special reference to the circumstances of that first celebration; and unless such circumstances should be supposed capable of occurring again, could not have been intended for perpetuity. Such, for instance, was the injunction, Exod. xii. 1 1 : " And thus shall ye eat it ; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand ; and ye shall eat it in haste :" and the reason assigned for that injunction, " It is the LORD'S Passover, ver. 1 2, For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night." For this was a description of the atti- tude of travellers, ready equipped for a journey, and expect- ing eveiy moment a summons to set out literally applicable to the case of the observers of the first Passover, who had scarce had time to finish their first Paschal meal, before they were thrust out in haste, xii. 39'. Such also it may be pre- sumed was the injunction, xii. 22 : " And none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning." Such too must have been the injunction, Exod. xii. 7, 13, 22, 23, relating to the use which was to be made of the blood of the victims in this first Passover, in part, if not altogether ; viz. in sprinkling the outsides of the doors of their houses : at least, if the state of the case which necessitated this use of the blood on that first occasion could never again be matter of fact on any future occasion. (238.) On this principle the real prescriptive ritual and ceremonial of the Paschal ordinance in all its integrity and all its distinctness even as laid down on this first occasion, yet as intended to be of perpetual obligation must have been Exod. xii. 3-6: 8-10 : 14-17: 18-20: 24, (fourteen days before the Exodus,) on the one hand, and xii. 43-49 the same repeated, (possibly on the day of the Exodus,) on the other as regarded the children of Israel, simply with the omission of such particulars as were peculiar to the first Pass- 1 Cf. xii. 33, vi. I : xi. i . 160 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xx. over, and as regarded any one else, simply with the addition of the terms on which the stranger, and his household also, should be privileged to partake of it along with them. (239.) And this being the case, the substance of every pre- scription, intended to be of perpetual obligation, for this par- ticular observance, and enjoined in both these passages, with that view, beforehand, may be summed up as follows : i. That no uncircumcised person, whether born in the land, or a stranger, should be permitted to partake of it. ii. That all the congregation without exception should take part in it. iii. That the mode in which they should do so, should be by households or Paschal companies, iv. That each Paschal company should have its own Paschal victim, v. That these Paschal victims should be lambs or kids, males, of the first year. vL That they should be taken up and designated for the Paschal Sacrifice on the tenth of the Paschal month ; four days before they were sacrificed, vii. That all should be sacrificed at one time, each for its proper company ; and that time the fourteenth of the Paschal month, between the two evenings, viii. That the victims, so sacrificed, should be pre- pared to be eaten by being roasted with fire, and prepared entire, and eaten entire ; and with unleavened bread and bitter herbs : and in the same house, and before morning or if ought remained uneaten till the morning, it should be burnt. And this is all in both those passages, which can be said to concern the ordinance of the Passover, and the rule of its ob- servance, as such. What follows in the first in particular, xii. 15-20, concerns the Feast of unleavened Bread, the or- dinance of the Azyma, not that of the Passover. (240.) Such then having been the ritual, and such the ceremonial, of the Passover, both as adapted at first to the accidental circumstances of the Pascha JEgyptiacum, and as modified immediately after, and adapted for perpetuity, what could have been ' the rites thereof/ and what ' the ceremonies thereof/ according to which it was both commanded and ex- pected to be observed, on the very next occasion of its cele- bration, Numb. ix. 1-5, but these ? Could this have been the rule prescribed the year before, and yet not be the rule in force the year after ? And among these prescribed rules of the observance both at first, and for the future, what injunc- QUEST, xx.] Rites, and Celebration, of the Passover. 161 tion was more prominent and more express beforehand than this, That every householder should take up a lamb for him- self and his house, That every house and its family should count for one lamb ? or, at the time of the sacrifice, than this, That the whole congregation should kill these lambs at the same time, between the evenings ? But kill them by whom ? By the Priests, or by themselves ? And how could it have been, in this first instance, by the Priests, in the legal accep- tation of the term, when there were as yet none such ? And how could the entire congregation, as a body, kill all these lambs themselves, at one and the same time, unless every householder, and every head of a family, among them, was killing his own particular victim for himself and his family, at once ? (241.) That the first Paschal Sacrifices then must have been offered by individual householders, acting as their own Priests, there can be little question; and if the first could be so offered, or rather must have been, while yet there was no Levitical Priesthood, why might not the second, or rather why must not the second, though there was then a Levitical Priest- hood, if the rites and ceremonies of the second were not to differ from those of the first ? and if the reasons, which re- quired individual householders to officiate as their own Priests, on the first occasion, did just as strongly and as peremptorily require them to do so on the second ? (242.) On such a question as this, which concerns the rule de facto of the very first memorial-Passover, the very second Passover which was ever celebrated, it is an varepov irporepov of the most unreasonable kind, to refer to any Passovers of later date; especially such as those of Hezekiah, or Josiah to which Dr. Colenso has appealed, as to cases in point (159) : as if the lapse of a thousand years, and the constant tendency of a ceremonial system like the Levitical, to assimilate to its own peculiar ritual even an institution which, though originally prior to, and independent of, itself, had yet been incoqiorated in it, from the first could have superinduced no novelty on the proper Paschal rule, as laid down at first. Though as to these two Passovers, in particular, (that of Hezekiah, B. C. 724', and that of Josiah k , B. C. 622,) and with respect to the i 2 Chron. xxx. 15-20. k i Kings xxiii. 21-23 . 2 Chron. xxxv. 1-19. M 162 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xx, evidence, which either of them may seem at first sight to furnish, of any ministerial agency in offering the proper sacri- fices, but that of the people themselves, it would not be diffi- to shew 1 that both were exceptional cases of their kind, and neither of them was any criterion of the true Paschal ritual even then, much less from the first. (243.) But, as I have just intimated, there was something in the Paschal Institution and Paschal Sacrifice, in contra- distinction to the Levitical Institutions and Sacrifices in general, which was only consistent with such a difference between them from the first as this, That while the Levitical Sacrifices could be offered through no ministerial agency but that of the Levitical Priesthood, the Paschal Sacrifice might be, or rather must be, offered by the people in general for themselves ; i. e. by each individual master of a family for him- self and his family in particular. There were three positive institutions, each of them incorporated in the Law, yet each of them older than the Law, and consequently in its origin independent of the Law The consecration of the Seventh Day, The rite of Circumcision, and This institution of the Passover. The religious sanctity of the seventh day was as old as the Creation, the rest of the seventh day was first enjoined by the Law. Circumcision, as our Saviour told the Jews m , though enjoined or required by Moses, was not of Moses, but of the Fathers ; and as St. Paul tells the Romans", as first instituted, was intended as the sign not of legal and ceremonial righteousness, but of the righteousness which is by Faith. The Paschal institution was sixty-five days at least older than the delivery of any part of the Law. (244.) Now St. Paul has taught us , with respect to the Law, as a covenant of "Works in contradistinction to the cove- nant of Grace, 430 years older than itself, that it was alto- gether a Parenthetic Dispensation, expres*sly interposed between the Promise to Abraham and its Fulfilment, to answer a very necessary end and purpose, preliminary and subservient to the due effect even of the covenant of Grace itself. It is con- ceivable then that there might have been no such intermediate Dispensation, between the Exodus and the birth of the Pro- 1 Cf. my Dissertations on the Principles, &c., iii. 147 TO. m John vii. 11. n iv. n. Galat. iii. 17-20. QUEST. xx.J Rites, and Celebration, of the Passover. 163 mised Seed, as that of the Law. But is it conceivable that there could have been the Exodus from Egypt such as we read of in the "Bible without the Paschal Institution and Paschal Sacrifice, critically subservient to the deliverance of the people of God from their Egyptian bondage at first, and strictly commemorative of it ever after ? And who would be prepared to consider that possible, who was aware of the spiritual bondage, the antitype of this Egyptian one, to which even the people of God, without some deliverance from it, were naturally subject, and of the true Paschal Sacrifice, typified by this first Paschal Sacrifice, which was the appointed means of that deliverance?? (245.) The Paschal Institution then, and Paschal Sacrifice, with this concealed reference from the first to the great Chris- tian Sacrifice, and to the deliverance from a worse than Egyp- tian bondage, thereby destined to be effected in behalf of the people of God, we may well be permitted to believe would have been necessary, even had there been no Law ; and if a Paschal Sacrifice, a Paschal Priesthood which, under such circumstances, could have been nothing but that of every father of a family among the people of God, for himself and his own household. This was the true essential distinction between the Paschal Sacrifice and the Levitical Sacrifices, that the former was prior to the latter in coming into being, and founded in reasons prior to and independent of the Law ; the former pointed from the first to ends and purposes, effects and consequences, either not contemplated, or not attainable, by the latter. And such was the difference between the Pas- chal Priesthood and the Levitical Priesthood, that the former was a National Priesthood, the latter was a Family, or at the most a Tribal, one. (246.) Nor even down to the time when the Paschal Sacri- fice itself found its full and entire consummation in the sacri- fice of the Cross, and the Paschal Institution, as a memorial rite and observance, its proper antitype in the Christian Eucharist, is there any proof extant any where, that it ever lost this original characteristic distinction of being eminently the one sacrificial act of a National Priesthood. Nothing is P Cf. my Three Witnesses, ch. i. sect. xi. pp. 89-98. M 2 164 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xx. on record in the later history of the Old Testament, or in Josephus, to imply, directly or indirectly, that for this one service even under the Law the ministerial agency of the Nation for itself, through its particular heads of families, was not sufficient, without the instrumentality of the Aaro- nical Priesthood; while as to the contrary, we have the positive testimony of a contemporary of the Apostles, speak- ing from repeated experience and observation of his own the most learned Jew of his time, Philo- Judseus so express to the point, that I think it will be considered decisive even by Dr. Colenso and so little liable to be misunderstood, that it will suffice simply to produce it, translated into English, as closely to the original as possible, but without note or comment of any kind. i. Philo- Jud., Opp. ii. p. 169, 1. 16-24; De Mose iii. Edit. Mangey q. "In this month then, about the fourteenth day, the lunar circle being on the point of becoming full of light, are kept the Over -passings, a feast at which the Congregation appears, the thing which in Chaldee is called Pascha (Pass- over) in which (feast) the common people indeed do not bring the victims to the altar, and the Priests sacrifice them, but by injunction of Law the nation all together acts as Priest for itself; each of them in particular at that time bringing up, and with his own hands operating upon, the sacrifices in behalf of himself." ii. Ibid. ii. 206, 16-22, De Decem Oraculis: "And that (feast) which Hebrews in their father tongue term Pascha (Passover) in which they sacrifice each of them throughout the Con- gregation, not waiting for their Priests the Law having freely granted a Priesthood to all the nation for one day in particular every year, in order to an operation of sacrifices through themselves." iii. Ibid. ii. 292, 1. 16-44, De Septenario et Festis Diebus : " But after the new moon is a fourth feast, the Ov er -passing s } which the Hebrews call Pascha (Passover); in which they sacrifice through all the Congregation, having made a be- ginning at midday, until evening not waiting for Priests. And that which was then done, (i. e. at the time of 1 Cf. my Dissertations on the Principles and Arrangement of an Harmony of the Gospels, iii. 146. QUEST, xxi.] Provision for the Priests. 165 Passover,} the Law hath given leave to do once for all, everv year, to remind them of the duty of gratitude And every house at that time is clothed round about with the habit and solemnity of a temple, while the victim which has been slain is being got ready for the suitable kind of good cheer, and those, who have been collected for the different common meals, have been purified with sprinkling instruments adapted to cleansing. And these guests, such as have come for the occasion, not as to the other kinds of drinkings-together, in order to gratify a belly through wine and meats, but in order to fulfil to the letter, with both prayer and hymns, an usage derived from their fathers. And the sacrifice, thus common to all the Congregation, is kept on the fourteenth of the month.'" QUESTION XXI. The Number of Priests at the Exodus, com- pared with their Duties, and the Provision made for them. (Colenso, ch. xx. pp. 122130.) (247.) With respect to*the difficulties raised under these heads, it is to be observed, that there was a class of offerings under the Law, called, by way of distinction, Holy ; and as such, required to be eaten by the ministering Priests, the same day on which they were offered, in the Holy Place, or in the fore part of the Tabernacle or Naos itself (supra 21, 24). And assuming that this injunction was intended from the first to apply to the state of things in the wilderness, when the num- ber of ministering Priests was still limited to Aaron, and his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, Dr. Colenso objects, That in various instances, these offerings must have been so numerous, that it must have been physically impossible for three individuals only to have eaten them in the time prescribed. But, to admit for the present the truth of the assumption on which this difficulty is founded, (of which more, by and by,) the ob- jection overlooks an important qualification, with which this injunction is accompanied in some of these instances ; and 166 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xxi. which, whether specially mentioned in others or not, yet from the reason of things, from the analogy of parallel circumstances, and from the applicability of the principle of the exception as much to all such cases in general, as to any one of them in particular, must be understood to accompany the rest, viz. That if this particular class of sacrifices could not be eaten by those whose duty it was to eat them in one day, if aught of them remained until the morning it should be burntq. (248.) Dr. Colenso further objects that the standing provi- sion made for the maintenance of the sacerdotal Family in particular, (the various items of which he has minutely enu- merated (154, 155),) was out of all proportion to its possible wants at this time, when it consisted of three individuals only, and their respective families. But what an objection is that to be seriously urged as an argument of the unhistorical cha- racter of all these proceedings and all these regulations, which are related in the Pentateuch ? as if the Law as such could possibly have limited its prospective provision for the neces- sary support of the ministerial orders of its own appointment, the Priests and the Levites, to the scale of their wants at the time when the Law itself was promulgated, and not have extended its view to the future exigencies of 1630 years to come, the actual interval between the Exodus, B.C. 1560, and the dissolution of the Jewish Polity both in Church and State, A. D. 70. (249.) That the ordinances relating to the Priests and their portions did not contemplate simply the supply of existing wants, but looked forward to those of a still distant future, may be inferred from Lev. vii. 36 (cf. xxv. 32-34). And how- ever considerable the provision made for the temporal needs of the two ministering orders, the Priests and the Levites, may appear to have been at first, no one can read the later Books of the Old Testament, or the Antiquities, and the War, of Josephus, and not see reason repeatedly to conclude that ample as it might seem to have been originally, in the course of time, and in the practical application of this part of the injunctions of the Law perpetually, it must often have been found barely sufficient for its purpose. 1 See Exod. xxix. 34, and cf. Levit. vii. 15-17, viii- 32, xix. 5-7. QUEST, xxi.] Provision for the Priests. 167 (250.) Dr. Colenso appears to argue on this particular question, as if he thought the Priests as such, the lineal descendants of Aaron, always constituted a mere handful of individuals, in ^comparison of the rest of the nation, as they must certainly have done at first ; and he intimates a doubt of the authenticity or the credibility of those parts of Scrip- ture (158, p. 130), which would have opened his eyes to a very different estimate of the state of the case in that respect, in the reigns of David and Solomon at least r. But what will he say to the statement of Josephus ", (himself a Priest, and of the course of Joarib,) that the number of the Priests in his time was not less than 20,000, males, and grown up ? which, including males and females, of all ages, belonging to their families also, must have implied a total of 80,000 at least, if not of 120,000. And that this was no exaggeration of the actual state of the case in his time, may be inferred from a variety of allusions to the Priests as such, which occur obiter in the War, and in the later Books of the Antiquities, and without intending any such impression, are calculated to con- vey a very high idea of their actual number. (251.) It appears also to Dr. Colenso a very extraordinary, and even suspicious circumstance, that to these two, or at the utmost three, representatives of the sacerdotal order, Eleazar, Ithamar, and Phinehas, at the time of the division of the Land 1 , Thirteen cities and their suburbs should have been assigned, 'And all/ he observes (158), ' in the immediate neigh- bourhood of Jerusalem, where the Temple was built, and where the presence of the Priests was especially required, but in a later age.' This objection, as far as concerns the apparent excess of the standing provision for a particular want above the immediate need, has been anticipated (248). These cities and their suburbs, whether all required by the Priests and their Families, at first, or not, would come to be required by their descendants in the course of time, and would then be found to be no more than enough for them. And even at this time, what was there in the nature of the case, why these cities, with their proper sites, and their proper limits* and boundaries round about them, should not have been made r i Chron. xxiii-xxvi. s Contra Apion. ii. 8. p. 1245. edit. Oberthur. t Joshua xxi. 13-19 ; i Chron. vi. 57-60. 168 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xxi. over to the representatives of the Priesthood, whether more or fewer, for the time being, as the right and property of their order at least for ever ? And why should not even three Families, with their respective component parts and members, including among them very possibly an hundred or two of souls, be as competent at this time to occupy thirteen cities as the six hundred Benjamites, the only survivors of their Tribe, after the civil war, in a subsequent time, to reoccupy the vacant cities of their own Tribe", twice as numerous as these thirteen cities of the Priests x ? (252.) And as to the particular coincidence, which to the eye of Dr. Colenso looks so suspicious, that all these cities of the Priests should have lien in the tribe of Judah or Ben- jamin, and in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem ; it may well appear strange to my reader, as it does to me, that the prin- cipal reason for suspecting the historical character of these accounts, in the opinion of Dr. Colenso, should have been that one of their circumstances in which every commentator on them hitherto has discovered the most remarkable internal evidence of their truth, in the proof thus brought to light of the wonderful Providence which directed all these arrange- ments from the first ; and knowing even then that the time would arrive when Jerusalem should become the centre both of the civil government and of the national worship, of its own people, yet foreseeing also the separation of the Ten Tribes from the Two, and the division of the kingdom of Israel from the kingdom of Judah, and along with that the introduction of an idolatrous worship in the kingdom of Israel, in opposition of the worship of its own establishing at Jerusalem foreseeing all this, provided so long before against such a contingency as the defection of its own ministers in particular, by causing the lot of their inherit- ance to fall within the limits of the kingdom of Judah, and in the immediate neighbourhood of Jerusalem, where they would be in no danger either of being constrained by the power of the kings of Israel, against their will, or of being seduced by the example of their too sequacious subjects, with their own consent, to join in the common idolatry. (253.) But the true answer to all such difficulties and u Judges xx. 47 ; xxi. 12-14, 2O ~-3 i xx - 4^- x Joshua xviii. 1 1-28. QUEST, xxi.] Provision for the Priests. 169 objections as are brought forward in so exaggerated a form, in these two chapters, the xxth and xxist of Dr. Colenso's Ex- amination, in my opinion is this, That, unless the whole of the Law, (or the whole of what Dr. Colenso, p. 123, x, terms the sacrificial system,) as laid down and prescribed in the Books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, was intended to come into operation as soon as delivered, and where it was delivered they have no foundation to rest upon. And this is simply a question of fact, on which I do not hesitate to join issue with him. (254.) In explanation of this subject, I begin with observ- ing that, knowing as we do from the testimony of St. Paul 7, that the Law, as a covenant of Works enforced by the pro- mise of Blessings and Rewards on condition of performance, and by the denunciation of Penalties and Punishments in case of non-performance, was, as I styled it supra (244), a Paren- thetic Dispensation, purposely interposed between the proper date of the covenant of Grace, or Promise, and the proper time of its fulfilment by the appearance of the Promised Seed, and purposely intended to subserve the final end of the covenant of Grace itself, by putting to the test meanwhile the boasted sufficiency of human nature, to earn its own acceptance with God, and consequently to work out its. own salvation, irrespectively of Justification by Faith, and Faith alone that the Law, I say, as the instrumental means of an experimental process like that, and directed to such a prac- tical proof of the hopelessness of human salvation by any mod^e but that of Faith in the Christ, and the free grace of God, should be digested and promulgated down to the mi- nutest jot and tittle of all its injunctions and requirements, before such an experiment could begin I consider too obvious to require any proof. Nor can there be much doubt that one of the ends, contemplated by the Deity, in not taking the people at once from Egypt to the land of Canaan by the nearest route 2 , (whatsoever other reasons there might have been for it,) must have been this, of conducting them first to the locality where he intended to announce to them the Law, in all its fulness and completeness, subject to which y Gal. hi. 17-20. z Exod. xiii. 17, 18. 170 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xxi. they were to live in the land of Canaan, and which they must receive before they could be settled there. (255.) And this being the case, to suppose that the Law so delivered, and so intended, as a necessary preliminary to this settlement in Canaan, and to the beginning of the great and momentous experiment, which must be instituted and tried there and then only, was designed to be the rule of public or private life during the sojourn in the Wilderness is con- futed by its own absurdity. On the contrary, even after the erection of the Tabernacle, and after the consecration of the Aaronical Priesthood, it may well be questioned whether any part of the Ritual and Liturgical system of the Levitical Polity was intended to come into operation, before the settlement of the Tribes, except perhaps the morning and the evening sacrifice*, and such of its ceremonies as that of Levit. xvii. 1-7, considered supra (210), which were both the fittest and the easiest to be observed even during the life in the wilderness* though neither of these things is a certain point. (256.) On this principle, even had no such event as the rebellion of Kadesh-Barnea occurred when and where it did, there might still have been an interval between the first promulgation of the Law of Works, and its first coming into regular and systematic operation, equal to that between the Eisodus and the conquest and division of the country i. e. six or seven years at least. The rebellion in question, following so closely on the first approach of the people to the promised land, though foreknown to the Deity, yet, to all human apprehension of the future course of things, having been an unforeseen contingency ; if in consequence of that the Eisodus was necessarily to be postponed thirty-eight years, the in- auguration and instalment of the Law of Works too, within the sphere of its proper jurisdiction, and in its proper force, must be postponed for thirty-eight years also and however * Add to these the injunctions relating to the plague of leprosy, Lev. xiii. i-xiv. 32, the uncleanness attaching to which, while it lasted, must necessarily have entailed exclusion from the congregation and camp, even in the wilderness cf. Numb. v. 1-4; though the cases of its actual occurrence during that state of things in all probability would be very few. a Exocl. xxix. 38-42 : Numb, xxviii. 2-6 sqq. QUEST, xxi.] Provision for the Priests. ] 71 complete and perfect in itself it must lie in abeyance, all this time, little better in appearance than a dead letter until the season of temporary suspense and inactivity should have come to an end. (257.) That this is a just representation of the state of the case, with regard to the Law and its authority, or its ob- servance for the" whole of this interval between the first arrival of the people on the borders of Canaan in the second year of the Exodus, and their second, in the last year, may fairly be inferred, first from Amos v. 25, and Ps. Ixxxi. 12 ; cvi. 36, 27 ; (confirmed by Acts vii. 42, 43 also ) the former, by itself, leading- to the inference that even during- the whole of the forty years' sojourn in the Wilderness, no sacrifices of any kind had been offered to God, by the people ; and along with the latter, authorising in the way of inference even more than this viz. that the people themselves, for the whole of this interval too, had been given up to their own hearts' lust left to follow their own counsels, or their own imaginations whether still to worship God, or instead of Him, any other object of their own choosing. It is impossible, under such a state of things to conceive of the Law as in active force. If all sacrifice during its continuance was intermitted, even the daily sacrifice must have been suspended also. Dr. Colenso (146, x) has quoted this text of Amos ; but only to infer from it what ought to have been done during all this time ; as if that was the question in the present instance, and not what was done. (258.) It may be inferred, secondly, from the fact, of which we are made aware by Joshua, v. 2-9, that for this same interval also even the rite of circumcision was suspended ; so that, of the entire number of males and adults, all who were under thirty-eight years of age, on the day of the passage of the Jordan, March 26, B. C. 1520, were still uncircumcised. Josh. v. 2 : " At that time the LORD said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time. ver. 3, And Joshua made him sharp knives, and circumcised the children of Israel at the hill of the fore- skins, ver. 4, And this is the cause why Joshua did circum- cise : All the people that came out of Egypt, that were males, even all the men of war, died in the wilderness by the way, 172 Historical Cftaracter of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xxi. after they came out of Egypt, ver. 5, Now all the people that came out were circumcised : but all the people that were born in the wilderness by the way as they came forth out of Egypt, them they had not circumcised ver. 7, And their children, whom He (the LORD) raised up in their stead, them Joshua circumcised : for they were uncircumcised, because they had not circumcised them by the way." Now the sum total of males, who stood to the rest of the congregation in the relation of "the children of Israel" (92), at the Exodus, as we have seen (96), having been 44,546, the number V males, adults, at this time, above the age of thirty-eight years, could not have been more than 44,546 : and the entire number of males and adults, above the age of twenty, in the last year of the Exodus having been 6oi,73O b , the number of those among them, who had been born since the second year of the Exodus, and were still uncircumcised, must have been 601,730-44,546, i.e. 557,184. (259.) Now, if the rite of circumcision, the appointed means of admission into the covenanted relation of the children of Abraham to God, and externally the sign and seal of that relation, had been suffered to fall into abeyance for the last thirty-eight years, what other injunction or observance of the ceremonial Law could have been enforced during the same interval of time ? Could the Passover, according to its proper rites and ceremonies, have been once celebrated all this time ? the Passover, of which no uncircumcised person, whether born in the land or a stranger, was privileged to partake. And without this outward badge of circumcision, what could there have been during this interval to discriminate even the children of Israel, as the people of God, and the heirs by nature of the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, from the rest of the world in general, or from the Egyptians in particular, among whom they had been born and bred, and from among whom they had been taken, as exclusively the people of God ? Uncircumcision as such, the external badge or token of a state of non-relation to God, and of non-heirs of covenanted privileges and distinctions, in opposition to those who were so in the persons of the natural descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and . of the heirs by nature of the *> Numbers xxvi. 31. QUEST, xxi.] Provision for the Priests. 1 73 privileges covenanted in behalf of them and their children, was to them a reproach, while it lasted reducing them, in point of nearness to God, and of spiritual distinctions entailed by that relation, to the level of the Egyptians whose countrymen even the children of the Patriarchs at the Exodus might be said to have been. And this explains the language of the Deity to Joshua, as soon as the rite of circumcision, so long suspended, had been renewed in the persons of these contemporaries of the Eisodus, and this reproach had thereby been removed : ver. 9, " And the LORD said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you." (260.) Thirdly, and lastly, On this particular question of the time and place, when and where, the ceremonial Law, as a system of rules and observances, both in public and in private life, extending to all the details and minutiae of both, was designed first to come into active operation, and ever after to be of perpetual obligation, we cannot refer to a better author- ity than Deut. xii. 5-9, 10-27 > confirmed also by xiv. 23-26, xv. 20 ; delivered by Moses, as the interpreter of the inten- tions and will of the Author of that Law, from the first and in particular, Deut. xii. 8, 9 which so plainly asserts that those, whom he was addressing, though not for a moment exempt from the restraints of the moral Law, yet at that very time, (and by parity of reason, under the same circumstances, all along, before that time,) were under no manner of restraint from the ceremonial Law ; and so plainly also assigns the reason why ; viz. That all this time they had been leading the life of sojoumers and wanderers in the wilderness, to which a rule and a discipline like that of the Law was never intended to apply. Deut. xii. 8 : "Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes. ver. 9, For ye are not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance, which the LORD your God giveth you." 174 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xxn. QUESTION XXII. The War on Midian. (Colenso, ch. xxii. pp. 139-146.) (261.) Dr. Colenso, being now arrived at that stage of his Critical Examination of the Pentateuch, at which it was necessary for him to review the circumstances of this War on Midian, takes occasion (172) to express his thankfulness that, after the many proofs of " the inconsistencies and impossibili- ties, which exist in the story of the Exodus as it lies before us in the Pentateuch," (165) "he is no longer obliged to believe, as a matter of fact, of vital consequence to his eternal hope, the stoiy related in Numb, xxi, where we are told that a force of 12,000 Israelites slew all the males of the Midianites, took captive all the females, seized all their cattle and flocks, and all their goods, and burnt all their cities, and all their goodly castles, without the loss of a single man and then by command of Moses, butchered in cold blood the women and children, ' except all the women children, who had not known man by lying with him'" (48,000, as Dr. Colenso calculates their numbers, ordered by Moses to be killed.) " The Tragedy of Cawnpore," he adds, " where 300 were butchered, would sink into nothing, compared with such a massacre, if indeed we were required to believe it." (262.) And I too, being arrived at this stage of my Con- sideration of his Critical Examination, would take occasion from this observation of Dr. Colenso's itself, to draw a salutary warning for the safeguard of my own soul and that of my readers against the temptation to doubt, under any pretext however specious, (the right of private judgment, freedom of thought, candid and impartial inquiry, or the like,) when to believe is the plain and obvious dutv lest doubt, once un- advisedly permitted, much more presumptuotisly entertained, in the logical prosecution of its own reasonings, through a series of steps, one rising above another in hardihood, as necessary in their consequences, as irresistible in their tenden- cies, should culminate at last in blasphemy of the worst de- scription. There are few sceptics in the truth of the Bible, QUEST, xxii.] War on Midian. 175 who, at the outset of those speculations which have made them what they are, would not have been horrified to have been told that the infallible result of their free inquiries would be to charge even the great Moral Governor of the universe, or His ministers, acting by His command, and under His sanction, with a tragedy worse than that of Cawnpore. (263.) If the accounts in the Pentateuch in general, and this of the War of Midian in particular, according to Dr. Colenso's euphemism in speaking of them, are unhistorical, in plain English, they are untrue; and if they are untrue, they are false ; and if they are false, they never happened ; and if they never happened no one is accountable for them, probable or improbable, good or bad, as they may appear to be. But if after all they are true as they may be, for any of Dr. Colenso's irrefragable proofs, as yet produced, to the contrary and as they must be, if the uniform belief and testimony of the universal church, from the days of Moses down to the present day, is worth any thing then, Who is really responsible for this war on Midian, Moses and the Israelites, who acted ministerially only in carrying it into effect, or the God of Moses and the Israelites, who laid it in charge upon them, Numb. xxv. 17, 18 when the crimen delicti which rendered the Midianites obnoxious to this visi- tation of his retributive justice, had just been committed to wage it against them, some time or other who himself, Numb. xxxi. 2, reminded Moses of that charge, when the proper time for executing it was now arrived by whose orders consequently, and in resentment of an injury done to himself, xxxi. 3, as much as to them, ver. 2, these soldiers from his own army were sent on this errand of vengeance, whose directions they were merely obeying, xxxi. 7, in their treatment of the Midianites, on the expedition and whose will and pleasure, merely expressed through the mouth of Moses, xxxi. 13-31, disposed of the captives and the spoil? And on whom, in this case, must the reflection of having been the author of a tragedy, incomparably worse than that of Cawnpore, ultimately fall : Moses and the Israelites, or the God of Moses and the Israelites? (264.) The moral difficulties of Scripture, as they are called, arising out of the historical facts accepted and treated as true 176 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xxn. the objections which appear to lie to the moral character or qualities of some of the things recorded in Scripture, some- times with the approbation of God after they were done, sometimes as by His command before they were done, and as the cause of their being done, (such for instance as this treatment of the Midianites, before the Eisodus, the extermination of the natives of Canaan, at the Eisodus, the destruction of the Amalekites, in the time of Saul, the act of Jael, in putting Sisera to death, and the like,) all such anomalies as these, whereby the moral qualities of the things done, as they may appear to us, and the moral attributes of the Author or Approver of them, seem to be placed in contradiction and antagonism to each other, would be escaped from at once, by giving up the histo- rical truth of the things themselves ; but admitting the matters of fact themselves, it is impossible for any one to claim the right of criticising, or reflecting on, the qualities of the things done under such circumstances, by human agents indeed as the instruments, but by the Divine impulse, as their true first cause, or with the Divine sanction, as stamping them with their true moral character, without claiming the right and asserting the competence of the creature to sit in judgment on his own Creator. (265.) These objections, however, as presupposing the histo- rical certainty of the facts on which they are founded, belong to a totally different class, from those with which we have hitherto been engaged and to which our attention must still be con- fined. The moral difficulties or anomalies of Scripture history admit of a satisfactory explanation ; but the truth of Scripture facts, if called in question, must first be established. I shall therefore take no further notice of any of the questions which appear to be raised in this chapter, except such as are simply reducible to this issue of the matter of fact. (266.) The first of these is the Chronology of this War on Midian. Between the first event specified in the narrative, with a date, the death of Aaron, on the first of the fifth month , and the last after it similarly specified, the beginning of the proceedings in Deuteronomy, the first of the eleventh month , Dr. Colenso (173, 174) contends that there could not have been time for all the intermediate particulars, which are also c Numb, xxxiii. 38, 39 ; xx. 22-29. d Deut. i. 3. QUEST, xxii.] War on Midian. 177 on record, in this limited space of six months. And it must be confessed that, according to his own conjectural estimate and assumptions of the time taken up by each, there was not. But I do not hesitate to say that no estimate and no arrange- ments could have been made more at random, or err more on the side of excess, than these, which he proposes (173, 174). (267.) I had occasion, as I have already explained, long before these objections and difficulties of Dr. Colenso's had probably yet been thought of even by himself, to consider the chronology of this part of the Old Testament with the same care as that of any other ; and assuming the true Julian date of the death of Aaron, (the first of the fifth month in the last year of the Exodus 6 ,) to have been July 15, B. C. 1521, and the first of the eleventh month, the beginning of the proceed- ings in Deuteronomy, January n, B. C. 1520, and the inter- val between them just six months of thirty days each, 180 days in all, I found no difficulty in bringing every distinct event of the intermediate period which was upon record, within these limits, and yet allowing as ample a space of time to each, as the circumstances of the case to the best of my judgment required. (268.) Dr. Colenso has offered no proofs of the truth of his arrangements, and it would be contrary to the plan of this work to enter at any length here on that of mine. One probable argument however of the absurdity of his chronology, and one similar argument of the correctness of my own, I will take the liberty of pointing out even here. i. Between the death of Aaron, (July 15, B.C. 1521,) and the conquest of the kingdom of Sihon, the chronology of Dr. Colenso assumes an interval offve months ; and between the same date and the reduction of the kingdom of Og, an interval of six months. On this supposition this latter must have been going on, Dec. 12, B. C. 1521 Jan. n, B. C. 1520; and the former, Nov. 12 Dec. 12, B. C. 1521 a period in the natural year, at which for the climate of Peraea, where this kingdom of Sihon was situated, we need not hesitate to say the vintage must have been over at least two months. And yet there is internal evidence, (Numb. xxi. 22, cf. xx. 17,) in the Scripture account of the reduction of this kingdom itself, that it must have been e See my Three Witnesses, p. 85. N 178 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xxn. going on when the vintage was approaching to maturity, if not already ripe and consequently, for the climate of Persea, some time between Sept. 13, and Oct. 13, much more probably than between even Oct. 13, and Nov. 12 much less Nov. 12, and Dec. 12. ii. According to my own chronology, all these interme- diate particulars, (the reduction of those two kingdoms, the proceedings connected with the history of Balaam, the Midian- itish expedition, the return of the army, the seven days of its exclusion from the camp,) having been brought to an end, consistently with each other and with every note of time on record, only a very few days before the end of the tenth month, Jan. 10, B. C. 1520, the proceedings in Deuteronomy, the most solemn and serious of the public transactions in the life of Moses (see 30 supra), taking their rise on the first of the eleventh month, Jan. n, B.C. 1520, are found to have been thereby determined to fheferia prima of the hebdomadal cycle, the most likely a priori to have been selected, if the circum- stances of the case allowed of it, for the beginning and decursus of a course of things, of so much gravity, so much importance, and so much interest, as this. And the particulars of these transactions having taken up, as they well might do, the space of one month exactly, Jan. n-Feb. 9, both inclusive, the death of Moses, the first thing after the close of all of them, is found determined, agreeably to the Jewish tradition on that point, to the first of the Adar of this sera, the first of the twelfth month, Feb. 10, B. C. 1520; after which there is no uncer- tainty about the times and dates of subsequent events, down to the day of the passage of the Jordan, the tenth of the Abib of this sera, the Nisan of a later period, March 26, B. C. 1520, < the/m# quinta. (269.) Again, (172) it appears incredible to Dr. Colenso, That so small a force as was sent on this expedition should have done so much, taken so many castles, brought away so many captives, and so much booty, without the loss of a single man ! To which we may reply, that a fact like this, gravely related of one of the campaigns of Napoleon Buonaparte, or of the Duke of Wellington, (cf. Colenso, 169,) (viz. that a de- tachment of his army, sent to invade an enemy's country, after executing their commission, defeating all resistance in the QUEST, xxii.] War on Midian, 179 field, conquering, desolating 1 , and spoiling every thing before them, had returned without the loss of an individual soldier,) might well have appeared extraordinary ; but as one of the incidents, and one of the characters, of what are called the WARS of the LORD*", I will make bold to say, so far from being incredible, it is the very thing which under the circumstances of the case was a priori most to be expected. (270.) When will Christian commentators on these accounts and these transactions begin to be consistent, and either agree to exclude the supernatural element of causation from every thing of which they read in Scripture, between the opening of the commission of Moses in Egypt, and the settlement of the Israelites in Canaan, or if they recognise it at all, admit it in its totality, and allow it free scope as the real mover, director, and effectuator of every thing ? Whose soldiers were these who went on this Midianitish expedition, and by whose command, and with whose orders, did they go forth ? Who was He who appeared to Joshua, in the form of a man, and as the Captain of the Host of the Lord, at the very outset of the Wars in Canaan, and gave directions himself respecting the siege and capture of Jericho, the first incident of those Wars ? What army was ever before, or ever after, so com- manded, as that of the Israelites ? And what army so com- manded could possibly have been exposed to the ordinary casualties of war ? (271.) These Wars in Canaan, once begun, lasted six years at least before their further prosecution was suspended for a time, in order that the division of the conquered country among the people might begin ; and during all this time there is no evidence, (at least in Scripture,) that a single Israelite lost his life by the sword of the Canaanites, except the thirty-six, Josh, vii. 5, struck down in the first attempt to capture the city of Ai and that too only at a time when their Defence had been withdrawn from them, and their whole army was under the ban of the curse, entailed upon it by the crime of Achanf. And though it may be objected that Scripture itself is just HK silent about the contrary fact, that no life was actually lost in these wars, the reason of things, and the peculiar circum- { Numb. xxi. 14 ; cf. Joshua x. 13 ; i Sam. i. 18. * Cf. Joshua xxii. 20. N 2 180 Historical Character of the Pentateuch. [QUEST, xxn. stances of the case, would authorise us to interpret its silence in favour of this latter presumption, much more than in favour of the former. And strange as it may seem to Dr. Colenso, I have little doubt myself that, if the history of these Wars had come down to us, in the Book of those Wars, or in the Book of Jasher, before referred to (269), it would have been seen that what appears to him the most incredible circum- stance of the Midianitish expedition, was one of the most ordi- nary and familiar characteristics of all these Wars, viz. that while the armies of the God of Heaven, wag-ing these wars, had yet done, and were still doing, nothing to forfeit His protection, they went through all the campaigns of those Wars, without the loss of a single man. Not a man was lost in these Wars with the kings of the south h , beginning with the battle of Gibeon ; nor in those with the kings of the north', beginning with the battle of the waters of Merom. And as a consequence of all this, among the numbers who crossed the Jordan on March 26, B.C. 1520, in the first year of the Eisodus, with the slight exception pointed out supra (at the siege of Ai), when these soldiers of the LORD came to receive their share of the common inheritance at last, pro- bably not one was found to be missing k . (272.) Preservation from the usual dangers of war, and victory over however superior numbers, were among the privi- leges more than once promised and guaranteed to the people by God, on His part, on condition of obedience to himself on theirs 1 ; and what even the individual strength and prowess of one man, assisted and empowered by God, was capable of effecting, we may learn from the history of Samson, or from that of the Worthies of David m . (273.) I have thus gone through all the objections to the historical character of the Pentateuch, which are distinctly brought forward and specially insisted on, in the first Part of the " Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically examined/' The above review will shew that on each of these points the duty of the defender of Scripture has been the very h Joshua x. 1-43. ' xi. 1-23, cf. Joshua i. 5-9, xii. 1-24, xiv. 6-15. k Cf. Joshua xxi. 43-45, xxiii. 14-16, xxiv. 11-18. 1 Numb. x. 9, cf. xxxi. 6 : Levit. xxvi. 7, 8: Deut. vii. 24, xi. 25 : Joshua i. 5-9, xxiii. 9, 10. m 2 Sam. xxiii. 8-17, 18-39 : ' Chrori. xi. 10-19, 2,0-4.7, xxvii. 6. QUEST, xxii.] War on Midian. 181 simple one of pointing out some error of judgment cor- recting some falsehood of assumption on some question of fact or other, by which the author of these objections must have deceived himself, before he could have attempted to mislead others ; and the principal difficulty with which he had to contend in the discharge of this duty was that of exposing the mistakes of judgment and assumption on which these objections were founded, with all freedom and openness of speech, and yet sparing the feelings of the objector himself. It has been my aim and endeavour, and certainly my wish and desire, all through the preceding discussions, to pay equal regard to both these obligations ; to do simple justice to the truth, by plainly exposing the mistakes of Dr. Colenso, and yet to respect the law of Christian charity by saying as little, personally offensive to himself, as possible. THE P:ND. A 000037897 6