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Phcenicia and Israel. 
 
 % Historical feag. 
 
 BY 
 
 AUGUSTUS S. WILKINS, M.A., 
 
 FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON J LATE SCHOLAR OF ST. JOHN'S 
 COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE J PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN 
 
 7ro?t,vfiepcJg Kal 7ro?\,VTp67vcog. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 KELSON & PHILLIPS. 
 
 CINCINNATI: HITCHCOCK & WALDEN. 
 
 1874. 
 

4. 
 
 TO THE RIGHT REVEREND 
 
 THE LORD BISHOP OF MANCHESTER 
 
 THIS ESSAY IS BY PERMISSION 
 
 DEDICATED ; 
 
 ONE OF THE LEAST AMONG THE MANY TOKENS 
 
 OF THE PROFOUND RESPECT AND 
 
 SINCERE ATTACHMENT WHICH HIS WORDS AND WORK 
 
 HAVE SECURED FOR HIM 
 
 AMONG THE NONCONFORMISTS OF HIS DIOCESE. 
 
 ■\^ 
 
This Essay obtained the Burney Prize 
 in the University of Cambridge for 
 the Year 1870. 
 
 The late Richard Burney, Esq., M.A., of 
 Christ's College, Cambridge, previously to his 
 death on the 30th November, 1845, empow- 
 ered his Cousin, Mr. Archdeacon Burney, to 
 offer, through the Vice-Chancellor, to the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge, the sum of ^"3,500 Re- 
 duced Three per Cent. Stock, for the purpose of 
 establishing an Annual Prize, to be awarded to 
 the Graduate who should produce the best 
 Essay on a subject to be set by the Vice- 
 Chan cellor. 
 
 On the day after this offer was communicated 
 to the Vice-Chancellor, Mr. Burney died ; but 
 his sister and executrix, Miss J. Caroline Bur- 
 ney, being desirous of carrying her brother's 
 intentions into effect, generously renewed the 
 offer. 
 
 The Prize is to be awarded to a Graduate of 
 the University, who is not of more than three 
 years' standing from admission to his first 
 degree when the Essays are sent in, and who 
 
viii The Burney Prize. 
 
 shall produce the best English Essay "on some 
 moral or metaphysical subject, on the Existence, 
 Nature, and Attributes of God, or on the Truth 
 and Evidence of the Christian Religion." The 
 successful Candidate is required to print his 
 Essay ; and after having delivered, or caused to 
 be delivered, a copy of it to the University 
 Library, the Library of Christ's College, the 
 University Libraries of Oxford, Dublin, and 
 Edinburgh, and to each of the Adjudicators of 
 the Prize, he is to receive from the Vice-Chan- 
 cellor the year's interest of the Stock, from 
 which sum the Candidate is to pay the expenses 
 of printing the Essay. 
 
 The Vice-Chancellor, the Master of Christ's 
 College, and the Norrisian Professor of Divinity, 
 are the Examiners of the Compositions and the 
 Adjudicators of the Prize. 
 
 In the event of the exercises of two of the 
 Candidates being deemed by the Examiners to 
 possess equal merit, if one of such Candidates 
 be a member of Christ's College, the Prize is to 
 be adjudged to him. 
 
 The subject proposed by the Vice-Chancellor 
 for the year 1870 was — The Influence of the 
 Phoenicians on the Political, Social, and Religions 
 Relations of the Children of Israel. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The following Essay cannot pretend to be a 
 complete discussion of the subject of which it 
 treats. This is so vast, and in many points so 
 obscure, involving as it does many of the most 
 perplexed and disputed questions of ancient 
 history, culture, mythology, and religion, that 
 it might furnish a worthy theme for scholars of 
 the most extensive learning and the greatest 
 intuitive sagacity. And the present volume 
 appears under special disadvantages. Written 
 in the midst of other pressing duties, where no 
 good library of modern theological works was 
 available for reference, and composed very 
 hurriedly under the restrictions as to time im- 
 posed by the conditions of a University compe- 
 tition, it is now printed, in accordance with the 
 University regulations, precisely as it was sub- 
 mitted to the adjudicators, with the exception of 
 verbal corrections and a few additional references. 
 
x Pre/ace. 
 
 But there are two considerations which diminish 
 the reluctance with which I allow this Essay to 
 appear. I believe it is the only work of the 
 kind in English (and as far as I know in French 
 or German) which aims directly at gathering in 
 a focus the scattered rays of light that we have 
 from many quarters upon one of the most power- 
 ful influences that tended to mould the character 
 of the Chosen People. And I think that, though 
 many authorities, which I should have been 
 glad to consult, were inaccessible under the cir- 
 cumstances in which the Essay was written, those 
 that have been employed have been the most 
 complete and trustworthy. M. Renan's " Histoire 
 des Langues Semitiques" appears to leave little 
 to be desired in its own department. And the 
 great work of Movers, without whose constant 
 aid I should never have attempted this subject, 
 is a complete repertory of all that up to the date 
 of its publication (1841 — 1856) had been learnt 
 about Phoenicia. The following pages would 
 not, I hope, be without their value, if they 
 only rendered more accessible to students of 
 history and theology the main results to which 
 his vast erudition and unwearied industry have 
 led him. To supplement his researches, I have 
 had recourse in many places to the works of 
 Professor Rawlinson and M. Lenormant, but not 
 
Preface. xi 
 
 without a certain amount of distrust, felt often 
 when it has not been expressed. It would be 
 of course ridiculous to depreciate the value of 
 the recent attempts to decipher the cuneiform in- 
 scriptions. But those scholars who have under- 
 taken to weave the fragmentary Assyrian records 
 into a consecutive history seem to have lost 
 sight far too often of the golden canon of the 
 historian : — 
 
 v(t(\)i k<u fxifxvaa <i7rirrTi7)> ' apuparavra rav (f>ptv<jjv. 
 
 In their eagerness to leave nothing unex- 
 plained, nothing uncertain, they appear some- 
 times to be building on the slightest foundations. 
 It is easy to understand the temptation to sub- 
 stitute assertion for suggestion; but when one 
 or two palpable instances of the operation of 
 this tendency have been discovered, a serious 
 blow is inflicted on the confidence of the 
 reader. Fortunately, the guidance of such 
 authorities is needed mainly on points less 
 immediately connected with the present sub- 
 ject ; and their theories, however uncertified, are 
 not likely to lead us far wrong in our principal 
 conclusions. 
 
 A word or two may be added as to the 
 interest of the questions discussed in this Essay. 
 I should be sorry to subscribe to the doctrine 
 
xii Preface. 
 
 of a distinguished Professor, that the study of 
 history is mainly valuable as casting light upon 
 the political problems of the present day. I do 
 not suppose that Cicero was thinking only of 
 the needs of a statesman when he wrote, " Nes- 
 cire quid antea quam natus sis accident, id est 
 semper esse puerum." If we are to have a 
 scientific study of history, that study must be 
 pursued, as the study of any other branch of 
 knowledge, purely from a love of truth, unac- 
 companied by any merely utilitarian considera- 
 tions ; for thus alone can we be preserved from 
 wresting the facts to suit our preconceived ideas, 
 and from searching for what we fancy should be, 
 rather than for that which is the truth. 
 
 Oh, if we draw, a circle premature 
 
 Heedless of far gain, 
 Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure 
 
 Bad is our bargain ! 
 
 Let us rather, like the patient scholars of old, 
 
 Earn the means first — God surely will contrive 
 Use for our earning. 
 
 But one lesson seems to lie on the surface of 
 such a discussion as the present. Many people 
 are distressed and alarmed at the growing ten- 
 dency to assimilate the history of the Jews to 
 that of other ancient nations ; to eliminate the 
 
Preface. xiii 
 
 miraculous, wherever it is possible to do so ; and 
 to regard the earlier portions of their annals as 
 largely imbued with the mythical element. This 
 is not the place to discuss how far this tendency 
 is in the direction of juster views. But may it 
 not be largely for good, if it leads us to dwell 
 rather upon the points in which the Jews re- 
 sembled other nations, than upon those on which 
 they differed from them ? Do we not gain 
 rather than lose by considering Israel as a typi- 
 cal instead of an exceptional people ? Miracles 
 are often spoken of as violations of the order of 
 nature : they are far rather revelations of the 
 true order of nature — glimpses given us for a 
 moment of the living Power that is working for 
 our blessing under the guise of a regular se- 
 quence of phenomena, but independent of and 
 far transcending all phenomenal manifestation. 
 And as the feeding of the five thousand lifts 
 for us the veil that hangs over the daily feeding 
 of the thousand millions of living men, so the 
 inspired record of the training of Israel for the 
 advent of the Lord is merely the key to the 
 right apprehension of the training of Rome, of 
 Greece, and of Germany, for the part they 
 should have in the Church of Christ. And if 
 we hold fast to this central truth of history, as 
 revealed to us first in the Hebrew prophets, and 
 
xiv Preface. 
 
 afterwards expanded to its full proportions in the 
 teaching of St. Paul, it will matter to us little if 
 the researches of modern criticism shall show us 
 that the living faith of the former in the Divine 
 teaching and guidance was mixed with some- 
 thing of error as to its extent and the modes of 
 its manifestation. The Old Testament becomes 
 to us not less, but. rather much more precious 
 when we find its records revealing to us, not an 
 isolated instance of favouritism, but a typical 
 instance of the training of all the families of 
 men for the coming of the Light and Life of 
 the world. The aim of this Essay will be fully 
 reached if it should be found to help any to see, 
 from a fragment of one of its strands, some- 
 thing of the beauty of the golden cord that 
 binds into one great whole the changeful history 
 of the tribes of man. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction ...... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Historical Sketch of the Relations 
 
 between phcenicia and israel . . 26 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Influence of Phoenicia upon Israel, 
 
 Political and Social ....&& 
 
 CHAPTTER IV. 
 
 The Religion of Phoenicia, and its In- 
 fluence upon Israel . . . . 136 
 
PHCENICIA AND ISRAEL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Aryan and Semitic Migrations — Early Semitic Population of 
 Canaan — Language substantially the same as Hebrew — 
 Character of the Population — The Descent into Egypt — Its 
 Date. 
 
 r ^HE earliest glimpses that we are able to 
 -*- gain of primitive history, show us the two 
 great stocks from which the civilization of the 
 world has proceeded, in process of migration 
 from their original abodes. From the uplands 
 of central Asia, to which all converging testi- 
 mony 1 seems to point, as the home of the 
 Aryan race, the streams that were to fertilize 
 
 i Gathered well by Pictet : " Les Aryas Primitifs," vol. i., 
 Paris, 1859 ; and by A. Kuhn in Weber's " Indische ' 
 Studien," vol. i. 
 
2 Phoenicia and Israel. 
 
 the regions of Europe and of Indo-Persian Asia 
 seem to have taken their rise. The former 
 poured on its western way, throwing off as it 
 went the branches which developed into the 
 Sclavonic, the Teutonic, the Greek, and the 
 Italian peoples ; and finally bore the Keltic 
 tribes to the utmost limits of the West. The 
 latter, diverging, after some indefinite lapse of 
 time from the early days when the stream that 
 was the first to leave its home had been severed 
 from it, took its course partly to the south-west, 
 to people the land of Iran, partly to the south- 
 east, to the country of the five rivers, thence in 
 long years to spread over the whole of the penin- 
 sula of India. Or perhaps the metaphor would 
 be more true if, instead of diverging streams, we 
 spoke of successive waves following each other 
 at distant intervals, but with all the various 
 sections of the European Aryans, ever pursuing 
 a westward course. 1 In this case philology is 
 hardly able as yet to decide between the two 
 expressions. But in the case of the Semitic 
 
 1 Schleicher's Compendium, p. u. This philologer. 
 however, differs from most other good authorities by 
 making the Slavo-German family break off from the main 
 body before the separation into Eastern and Western 
 peoples, or Aryas and Yawanas. 
 
Introduction. 3 
 
 peoples, there can be little doubt which is the 
 more correct. We find no traces there of a 
 movement, embracing at first the whole, or even 
 one great section, of the original stock, and 
 breaking off into various directions as isolated 
 bodies severed themselves from the general 
 mass. The most competent authorities teach 
 us rather to conceive of successive waves of 
 population, issuing from the mountainous country 
 near the sources of the Euphrates and the Tigris, 
 to which the narrative of Genesis points as the 
 cradle of the human race, and to which the 
 Mosaic accounts of the Deluge bring us back 
 as the centre from which the children of Noah 
 went forth again to people the earth. Of all the 
 migrations from the land of Kir (Amos ix. 7) 
 to the regions that lay south-west of it, that 
 which is of the greatest importance in the his- 
 tory of man is undoubtedly the one with which 
 the Bible connects the name of Terah. But this 
 was so far from being the first of the movements 
 in this direction, that it is much more likely to 
 have been the last. 1 The anthropomorphic lan- 
 guage of the Mosaic record is certainly not in- 
 tended to hinder us from the quest of secondary 
 1 Renan, " Histoire des Langues Semitiques," p. 28. 
 
4 Phoenicia and Israel. 
 
 causes for the change of abode, which it ascribes 
 to the direct command of the Deity. It was 
 probably partly in consequence of the barren- 
 ness of the upper valley of the Euphrates, that 
 rendered it little fitted for the home of a pastoral 
 tribe ; x partly from the establishment of a powerful 
 non-Semitic empire upon the banks of the Tigris, 2 
 leading, according to an old tradition, which may 
 be accepted in its general meaning, even if its 
 details bear the stamp of later invention, to the 
 persecution of those who clung to the purer faith, 
 that the family of Abraham found its way into 
 the more fertile and peaceful land of Canaan. 3 
 But the same causes which had urged him on, we 
 may believe to have been powerful with kindred 
 tribes. Other branches of the Semitic stock, 
 with the incapacity for military organization 
 which seems inherent in these nomadic children 
 of the desert, would have found themselves un- 
 able to withstand the overwhelming numbers 
 that obeyed the commands of the Cushite 
 despots. And it may be that, whatever the 
 
 1 Lenormant, " Ancient History " (E. T.), i., p. So. 
 
 2 Renan, p. 33. 
 
 3 Joseph. Ant., r, 7, 1. Cp. Stanley, "Jewish Church," 
 i., p. 17. 
 
Introduction. 5 
 
 moral and religious degradation into which they 
 afterwards fell, they still retained enough of 
 this primitive monotheism, to induce them to 
 shrink with horror from the gross idolatry of the 
 barbarous hordes to whose power they were 
 compelled to yield. Be this as it may, all evi- 
 dence that we have confirms the supposition 
 that long before the days of Abraham, Semitic 
 tribes had pressed along the path by which the 
 Divine guidance was to lead him, to the land 
 that should afterwards be possessed by his de- 
 scendants, as the sand that is by the sea-shore 
 for multitude. 
 
 Of these preceding tribes some had pushed on 
 beyond the limits of the Promised Land, into 
 the yet more fertile valley of the Nile. The 
 best recent authorities x teach us to see in the 
 Hyksos, who have furnished so much matter for 
 debate to historians, "a wave of Semitic nomads, 
 who disturbed for a time Egyptian civilization, 
 and finally yielded to the resistance which an 
 organized society always successfully opposes to 
 undisciplined force." 2 But many remained in 
 
 1 Movers, i. 32 ; Renan, p. 38, and the authorities there 
 quoted ; Ewald, L, pp. 389, 399. (E. T.) 
 
 2 Renan, p. 38. 
 
6 Phoenicia and Israel. 
 
 the land of Canaan, waging apparently ceaseless 
 war with the aboriginal tribes, the Rephaim, the 
 Zamzummim, 1 the Emim, and the Anakim, but 
 never meeting with entire success until the work 
 was taken in hand by the children of Israel, 
 hardened by the discipline of the desert, and 
 strong with the belief in a Divine " Captain of 
 the Armies of the Lord." 
 
 According to this account, Abraham, on his 
 first arrival in the Land of Promise, found the 
 population consisting, at least in a very large 
 measure, of tribes with which he would have 
 close affinities of blood and language. 2 This 
 seems, at first sight, utterly at variance with the 
 common conception of him as a solitary wan- 
 dering stranger in the midst of strangers. 3 And 
 yet the evidence would appear to bear it out. 
 For in the first place we have not the least hint 
 
 1 Renan seems to be right in considering this an onoma- 
 topoetic name for an " unintelligibly-speaking people," like 
 the (3d.pj3a.poi of the Greeks, the mlechha of the Sanskrit- 
 speaking Aryans. Cp. M. Muller : Lectures, i., p. 83, 
 with note. 
 
 2 Ewald, i., p. 231. 
 
 3 Herder (Geist der Ebraischen Poesie, p. 318, 1st ed., 
 Dial, x.) finds this so incredible that he asserts that the 
 Phoenicians usurped the language of the Jews, probably 
 for the sake of commerce. 
 
Introduction, 7 
 
 in the Biblical narrative that points to any 
 difference of language, such as we often have 
 when the Jews came into contact with nations 
 whose speech was really unintelligible to them ; 
 as, for instance, the Egyptians (Psalm lxxxi. 5, 
 cxiv. 1), the Assyrians (Isa. xxxvi. 11), and the 
 Chaldees (Jer. v. 15). On the contrary, we find 
 Abraham negotiating with the children of Heth, 
 Isaac making a treaty with Abimelech, king of 
 Gerar, Jacob and his sons " communing " with 
 the people of Shechem, without the slightest 
 reference to the need of any interpreter between 
 them. Again, the names of persons and places 
 in the early days when Abraham first visited 
 the land, we find to have been such as admit at 
 once of explanation from the Hebrew or the 
 Phoenician language. " Melchizedek " is "the 
 King of Righteousness ;" " Abimelech," " the 
 Father of the King;' " Kirjath-sepher," "the 
 City of the Book," and so on. A suggestion has 
 indeed been made that these are only Hebrew 
 translations of the original forms ; but this is 
 sufficiently disproved by the analogy of similar 
 cases, where w r e find no such translation to have 
 taken place. It is indeed most unlikely that, if 
 the nations of Canaan had spoken a dialect 
 
8 Phoenicia and Israel. 
 
 essentially different from that of the Hebrews, 
 the latter should have ever understood suffi- 
 ciently the meaning of the proper names in use 
 among their neighbours, to have translated them 
 into names of corresponding signification among 
 themselves. But the most convincing proof lies 
 in the fact of the clearly demonstrated identity 
 of race between the Canaanites and the Phoeni- 
 cians. The Biblical account in Gen. x., which 
 makes Sidon the first-born of Canaan, is abun- 
 dantly confirmed by independent evidence. The 
 Septuagint frequently renders Canaan and Ca- 
 naanite in the Hebrew by Phoenicia and Phoeni- 
 cian. 1 S. Augustine tells us that the Carthaginian 
 Phoenicians still retained the name : for " inter- 
 rogati rustici nostri quid sint, Punice respon- 
 dentes, Canani, corrupta scilicet sicut in talibus 
 una littera (accurate enim dicere debebant Cha- 
 nani) quid aliud respondent quam Chananaei ? " 2 
 The Phoenicians seem to have known their land 
 by no other name than Chna, "the low-lying" ; 3 
 and one of the coins of Laodicea still extant, 
 
 1 Kenrick, p. 42, note 3. 
 
 2 Epist. ad Rom., § 12, quoted very incompletely by 
 Kenrick, p. 42. 
 
 3 Movers, ii., p. 6. 
 
Introduction . 9 
 
 bears the inscription "a mother in Canaan." 1 
 Movers has indeed succeeded in showing that the 
 people known to the Hebrews under the name 
 of Canaanites did not form one united nation, 
 sharply distinguished from the surrounding 
 tribes ; that the appellation had originally a 
 geographical rather than an ethnological mean- 
 ing ; and that the district over which it extended 
 was peopled rather by successive immigrations 
 than by one united invasion. 2 Still, all this does 
 not shake the conclusion, to which we are 
 brought by very much evidence, that there was 
 such a similarity in language between the Phoe- 
 nicians and the rest of the inhabitants of the 
 
 • 
 
 Promised Land, as to cause the Israelites to 
 apply to the latter generally, a name which 
 belonged primarily and especially to the former. 
 Now, as we shall have occasion to notice at 
 more length further on, there cannot be the 
 least doubt as to the close connection between 
 the Phoenician language and Hebrew. They be- 
 long, not only to the same family of languages, 
 but also to the same subdivision of it. The 
 testimony of two of the Fathers, S. Jerome, 
 
 1 Movers, ii., pp. n (with note 36) and 120. 
 
 2 ii., pp. 62 — 82. 
 
io Phoenicia and Israel, 
 
 himself a learned Hebrew scholar, and S. Augus- 
 tine, born in a Punic-speaking district, is con- 
 firmed by the researches of later scholars ; and 
 Hebrew is found to supply the key to the Punic 
 passage in the Pcenulus of Plautus, 1 to the 
 etymology of the Phoenician and Carthaginian 
 names preserved to us, and to the Phoenician 
 inscriptions that have been gathered with care, 
 and interpreted with vast learning and brilliant 
 intuitive skill by Gesenius 2 and Movers. The 
 former scholar expresses his judgment on the 
 language of Phoenicia in the following decided 
 and decisive terms : " Omnino hoc tenendum 
 est, pleraque et psene omnia cum Hebrseis con- 
 venire, sive radices spectas, sive verborum et 
 formandorum et flectendorum rationem." 
 
 The demonstration of this substantial identity 
 between the language of Canaan and Hebrew, 
 " obviously leads," in the opinion of Mr. Twisle- 
 ton, " to the conclusion that the Hebrews adopted 
 
 i Best interpreted by Movers, Phon. Texte : Erster 
 Theil, 1845. 
 
 2 " Scripturae Linguaeque Phoenicia? Monumenta," 
 Leipzig, 1837. 
 
 3 Mon. Phcen., p. 335 (quoted in Diet, of Bible). Of 
 ninety-four words in the important Marseilles inscription, 
 seventy-four occur in the Old Testament. 
 
Introduction. 1 1 
 
 Phoenician as their own language j" 1 and Mr. 
 Kenrick says, still more positively, " The pro- 
 genitors of the Jews must have spoken Syriac 
 {i.e., Aramaean), not Hebrew, that is, Canaanitic." 2 
 But against this supposition, maintained by some 
 of the older critics, there are several con- 
 siderations which ought to weigh with us. In 
 the first place, nations, especially in primitive 
 times when difference of dialect was a greater 
 barrier than even now, are rarely found to 
 change their language, except for one of the 
 three following causes : it may be from con- 
 quest, as was the case of the Gauls when they 
 learnt the tongue of their Roman masters ; it 
 may be from the attractions of a higher civili- 
 zation, as with the Normans when they adopted 
 French ; it may be the result of close social 
 intercourse, of intermarriages, and of the neces- 
 sities of trade, as with the German immigrants 
 into the United States of America. But none 
 of these causes are found in the case which we 
 are now discussing. Abraham was never in 
 subjection to any of the surrounding tribes; 
 whatever may have been the case at the time of 
 
 1 Diet. Bible, ii., p. 863^ 
 
 2 Phoenicia, p. 49 ; Renan, p. in. 
 
1 2 PJioenicia and Israel. 
 
 the invasion of Joshua, they do not seem to have 
 attained in his days any height of civilization 
 superior to his own simple pastoral life ; and 
 this prototype of the Bedouin sheik, with his 
 herds and flocks, and his three hundred and 
 eighteen trained men born in his own house, 
 lived a free, self-sufficing life, in friendly but 
 apparently in slight relations with the neigh- 
 bouring chieftains. What possible inducement 
 could there have been for him to abandon the 
 language, endeared by memories of worship in 
 his early and distant home, and to adopt that of 
 the people around, with whom he had so little 
 intercourse ? And the probability of such a step 
 decreases with every expansion of the original 
 tribe-like household. It is much more natural 
 to suppose, with M. Renan, 1 that Hebrew, such 
 as we have it now in the Sacred Volume, was 
 developed in the course of the prolonged and 
 intimate contact of two nations speaking dialects 
 closely resembling each other, to begin with. 
 But this once established, we may reasonably 
 allow that of the two the language of the children 
 
 1 p. 112, who refers to Bertheau — " Zur Geschichte der 
 Israeliten," p. 179. "Phoenician may be called a tissue, in 
 which Hebrew forms the woof, and Syrian [Aramaic] the 
 warp." Bunsen, Philosophy of Universal History, i., p. 244. 
 
Introduction, 1 3 
 
 of Israel approached the more nearly to the 
 Aramaean, such as it was afterwards spoken in 
 the region from which Abraham came, and that 
 it contributed important Aramaic elements to 
 the later Biblical Hebrew. 1 
 
 We are thus brought back to the conclusion, 
 already stated, that when Abraham was brought 
 by the guidance of God into the land of Canaan, 
 he found himself in the midst of a population 
 which could not be regarded as wholly alien. 
 Nor do the inhabitants appear to have been of 
 a character which would repel all intercourse. 
 They had already abandoned, at least to a cer- 
 tain extent, their original pastoral and nomadic 
 habits, and we find them gathered together into 
 cities, leaving the open country principally to 
 the occupation of friendly strangers, such as 
 Abraham. But their civilization was but little 
 developed ; for good and for evil, they seem to 
 
 1 According to Mr. Kenrick (Phoenicia, p. 167, note 3), 
 " Movers (Ersch and Gruber, Encycl. Art. Phonizien) has 
 collected with great care the differences between the 
 Phoenician and the Bible Hebrew, and finds that the 
 former leans much to Aramaean forms." But this is to 
 be explained by the fact that the specimens of Phoenician 
 preserved to us are of a later date than the Hebrew. 
 Both languages seem to have passed through the same 
 Aramaising process. (Cp. Renan, Histoire, p. 189.) 
 
14 Phoenicia and Israel, 
 
 have retained much of their primitive character. 
 Where kings are mentioned, they approach more 
 nearly to the patriarchal heads of tribes than to 
 the barbarous despots of later days. We come 
 across no traces of the fearful moral corruption 
 that afterwards made " the land spue out ' ! its 
 inhabitants, except, indeed, in the wealthy and 
 luxurious Cities of the Plain. There the degene- 
 racy that was afterwards to bring the Divine 
 judgments upon all the nations of Canaan, had 
 rapidly run its fatal course. But the rest of the 
 land was still comparatively uncorrupted ; in 
 the story of Dinah, the conduct of Shechem and 
 Hamor displays a willingness to atone for the 
 effects of overmastering passion, that contrasts 
 very favourably with the treachery of the sons 
 of Jacob ; the tone of the court of Gerar, in the 
 intercourse of the king with Abraham and with 
 Isaac, appears to us singularly high ; and the 
 language of Ephron the Hittite is full of the 
 most graceful Oriental courtesv. But the scene 
 which most reveals to us the purity of religion 
 and morality which still remained, is that in 
 which the Father of the Faithful met the 
 mysterious figure who was " first by interpre- 
 tation king of righteousness, and after that king 
 
Introduction. 15 
 
 of Salem, which is king of peace." Whatever 
 spiritual or typical meaning we may consider 
 ourselves authorized to draw from the narrative, 
 its primary significance undoubtedly is, that in 
 the midst of the ever-increasing darkness there 
 was one at least whom Abraham acknowledged 
 as the priest of the Most High God. And even 
 one such centre of light cannot have been with- 
 out its influences in staying the advent of the 
 gloom that was soon to cover the nations. 
 
 With the journey of Jacob and all his house- 
 hold to join his sons in Egypt, the scene of the 
 sacred narrative is removed from Canaan ; and 
 when, following the journeyings of the chosen 
 people, we are brought back again to its confines, 
 the change that has passed over the country is 
 indeed surprising. But as this seems partly at 
 least to have arisen from the action of foreign 
 nations, it is needful that we should first turn 
 our glance upon these for a moment. 
 
 Our subject, fortunately, does not require us 
 to plunge into the complications of Egyptian 
 and early Jewish chronology. Numerous and 
 widely differing attempts have been made to fit 
 the one into the other, but a just caution will 
 lead us to follow the example of the late Dean 
 
1 6 Phoenicia and Israel. 
 
 Milman (quern honoris causa nomind) in refusing 
 entire assent to any. 1 Still numerous slight 
 indications warrant the conjecture that the 
 Pharaoh with whom Abraham was brought in 
 such friendly relations belonged to the dynasty 
 of the Shepherd Kings. The absence of any 
 reference to an interpreter, the simple Theism 
 implied in the recorded expressions of the king, 
 and the hearty and courteous welcome given to 
 the powerful chief of the nomad tribe, which 
 seems to have been closely connected by blood 
 and language with the conquering Hyksos in- 
 vaders, all lead us to the same conclusion. 2 
 
 When we come to consider the second descent 
 into Egypt under Jacob, the condition of affairs 
 is greatly changed. The imperial splendours of 
 the court, the power of the native priesthood, 
 (always repressed and discountenanced under 
 the alien dynasty), the suspicion and dread of 
 strangers, especially of such as belong to a 
 nomad pastoral tribe, the un-Semitic character 
 of the names recorded (as demonstrated by 
 Lepsius), all combine to prove that the intruders 
 
 1 " History of the Jews," i., p. 102. See especially the 
 very striking passage from Bredow quoted in the prefatory 
 note to Book vi. (p. 237, last ed.) 
 
 3 Cp. Ewald, i., pp. 392 — 400. 
 
Introduction. 1 7 
 
 had been by now expelled, and that the suc- 
 cessors to the ancient monarchs had regained 
 the throne. On the other hand, it seems pretty 
 certain that during the life of Joseph, Egypt 
 had not yet entered on that warlike policy of 
 agression an< ^ conquest that carried the vic- 
 torious arms of Sethos and of Rameses over 
 so large a portion of Western Asia. We shall 
 therefore be probably right in assigning the 
 entrance of the children of Israel into the land 
 of Goshen to some point within the period that 
 elapsed between the expulsion of the Hyksos 
 dynasty, and the accession of the conquering 
 nineteenth dynasty. If this be correct, the re- 
 lations of Canaan to Egypt will come out clearly. 
 During the greater portion of the time in which 
 the patriarchs were still in the Promised Land, a 
 friendly but independent alliance would seem to 
 have existed between them, changed towards 
 the end by the expulsion of the Shepherd Kings 
 into a feeling of strong aversion, which some- 
 times even broke out into open hostilities. M. 
 Lenormant 1 has brought evidence for believing 
 that probably with the approval and even the 
 assistance of the reigning eighteenth dynasty, 
 
 1 i., p. 92. 
 
1 8 Phoenicia and Israel. 
 
 the children of Israel had made several attempts 
 to win for themselves the land promised to their 
 fathers. " Thus mention is made of an expe- 
 dition of the sons of Ephraim against the people 
 of Gath, whose cattle they drove off, but who 
 slew them (i Chron. vii. 21). A daughter of 
 Ephraim built several cities in the land of 
 Canaan (1 Chron. vii. 24). Lastly, it is men- 
 tioned that the family of Shelah, son of Judah, 
 had made conquests in the territory of Moab 
 (1 Chron. iv. 21, 22)." 
 
 This is only part of the general policy, the 
 results of which are depicted on the contem- 
 porary monuments of Egypt. There we find 
 the Egyptian forces constantly engaged in the 
 reduction of the little forts of the petty kings 
 of Palestine. 1 But rulers like Amenophis and 
 Thothmes the First and the Third do not seem 
 to have cared to subdue the country entirely ; 
 they were satisfied with exacting an acknow- 
 ledgment of supremacy, the payment of tribute 
 and military service. The main struggle appears 
 to have been with the Khita, or Hittites, — not 
 that comparatively insignificant tribe whose 
 capital was Kirjath-Arba, but a much more 
 
 1 i., p. 228. 
 
Introduction. 1 9 
 
 powerful northern branch, which extended north 
 of Palestine from the Euphrates to the sea. 
 We cannot doubt that the heavy blows inflicted 
 on this Canaanitish empire by the conquering 
 kings of the eighteenth dynasty, and still more 
 by the monarchs who succeeded it, proved of 
 essential service in lightening the task that 
 afterwards lay before the army of Joshua. An 
 Egyptian poet of the time puts these exalted 
 words into the mouth of Amen, the Theban 
 sun-god : — 
 
 I am come — to thee have I given to strike down Syrian 
 
 princes. 
 Under thy feet they lie throughout the breadth of the 
 
 country. 
 Like to the Lord of light, I made them see thy glory, 
 Blinding their eyes with light, the earthly image of Amen. 
 
 The accession of a king "who knew not 
 Joseph " apparently denotes not only a change 
 of dynasty, but also a change of policy. The 
 measures of Joseph seem to have been directed 
 mainly to the development of the resources of 
 the country, especially by the encouragement of 
 agriculture in the fertile expanse of Lower Egypt. 
 But if we are right in assigning his viceroyalty 
 to the time of one or other of the two great 
 kings that bore the name of Thothmes, Dean 
 
20 Phoenicia and Israel. 
 
 Milman can hardly be correct in speaking of 
 the policy of this reign as pacific, 1 and con- 
 trasted sharply with the splendid Rameseid 
 period of war. There is no reign of this epoch 
 whose monumental records do not supply us 
 with long lists of conquered tribes and nations. 
 He is more happy in the stress he lays upon 
 the increasing importance of Thebes under the 
 nineteenth dynasty, as denoting a diminished 
 concern for the peaceful development of agri- 
 culture. But the cause of the change of policy 
 he does not dwell upon : M. Lenormant has 
 advanced a theory of it, which seems to be more 
 than an ingenious conjecture. 2 The close of 
 the eighteenth dynasty was marked by great 
 religious disturbances : Amenhotep IV., a prince 
 whose physiognomy differs strangely from that 
 of the other Egyptian kings, made a determined 
 attempt to change the religion of the country, 
 and to establish in the place of the polytheism 
 hitherto universal, the worship of a single god — 
 A ten — represented under the form of the sun's 
 disc, and possibly identical with the Hebrew 
 Adonai. Is it inconceivable that the children of 
 Israel, now wonderfully increased in numbers, 
 1 i., p. 112. 2 i., p. 238. 
 
Introduction. 2 1 
 
 and led perhaps by some one who had an in- 
 fluence at the court of the Pharaoh similar to 
 that afterwards won by Daniel, Mordecai, and 
 Nehemiah at the court of Persia, should have 
 contributed largely to this imperfect mono- 
 theism ? The monumental evidence of Tell-el- 
 Amarm, the new capital of Amenhotep, tends 
 to confirm this supposition. The chronology 
 exactly coincides, on the hypothesis which we 
 have adopted throughout. And when the dis- 
 orders were at last suppressed, and a new and 
 vigorous dynasty established, what could be 
 more natural than a fierce persecution directed 
 against the nation which had shown itself strong 
 enough already to shake to the foundation the 
 beliefs and the worship of the country ? To the 
 bitterness of religious animosity, the jealousy of 
 national antipathy was shortly added. The 
 Egyptian dominion in Syria was seriously 
 threatened by the great confederacy of the 
 Khitas, now formed into a single monarchy ; the 
 Canaanites of Palestine were naturally attracted 
 to them by community of race, and were eager 
 to throw off all dependence upon Egypt ; the 
 children of Israel were probably, as we have 
 seen above, closely connected with the Canaan- 
 
22 Phoenicia and Israel. 
 
 ites ; and nothing is more natural to suppose 
 than that this connection should have greatly 
 increased the suspicion with which they were 
 regarded by the Egyptians. We can readily be- 
 lieve that Rameses II., during the severe struggle 
 which was needed, as we know from the monu- 
 ments, before he could make any sort of peace 
 with this powerful people, exercised all manner 
 of severities upon the Hebrews in the land of 
 Goshen, with the very purpose, ascribed to him 
 in the Bible, " lest they multiply, and it came to 
 pass, that when there falleth out any war, they 
 join also unto our enemies, and fight against us." 
 The struggle in the north of Canaan, with very 
 important effects to be afterwards discussed, 
 which had filled so large a portion of the reign 
 of Seti, was terminated by a peace, upon some- 
 thing like equal terms, early in the reign of 
 Rameses, and the fifty years of quiet that 
 followed were occupied with the extensive build- 
 ing which proved such a burden to the children 
 of Israel. " In all the monuments of Rameses, 
 there is hardly a stone, so to speak, which has 
 not cost a human life. 1 The calm judgment of 
 history confirms the stigma fixed on him by the 
 
 1 Lenormant, i., p. 257. 
 
Introduction. 23 
 
 Bible." "And it came to pass in process of 
 time that the king of Egypt died : and the 
 children of Israel sighed by reason of the bond- 
 age, and they cried, and their cry came up unto 
 God by reason of the bondage." The nineteenth 
 dynasty marks the Augustan age of Egypt j 1 
 but it closes in gloom and darkness. " Not only 
 have the stately structures ceased to arise, the 
 expanding walls to be decorated with processions 
 of tribute-bearing kings and nations, but there 
 is a significant silence in the existing monu- 
 ments : the names and titles of their kings, in 
 their characteristic cartouches, are no longer 
 lavishly inscribed upon them ; but there are 
 signs of erasure, of studious concealment, as of 
 something which they would shrink from com- 
 mitting to imperishable memory. Some disaster 
 seems to have fallen upon the realm, which. 
 rather than commemorate, the records break off 
 and are mute." 2 The solution of this mystery is 
 furnished only by the Mosaic narrative. Mi- 
 renptah or Amenophis, the son of the great 
 oppressor, had hardened his heart, and refused 
 to let the children of Israel be led forth by 
 
 1 Rawlinson's Herodotus, it, p. 304. 
 
 2 Milman, L, p. 118. 
 
24 Phoenicia and Israel. 
 
 the hand of Moses and Aaron. But the time 
 had come for mercy and for judgment : the sins 
 of those who held the Land of Promise were 
 crying aloud for punishment ; the events of 
 centuries had been paving the way for its occu- 
 pation by the Chosen People ; and " God heard 
 their groaning : and God remembered His cove- 
 nant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, 
 and He saved them from the hand of him that 
 hated them, and redeemed them from the hand 
 
 of the enemv." 
 •> 
 
 In this sketch of the sojourn of Israel in 
 Egypt, needful to show the influences that were 
 moulding the Canaanite tribes, I have followed 
 in the main Dean Milman (whose view does not 
 differ much from those of Bunsen, Brugsch, and 
 other excellent authorities), though not without 
 a careful consideration of the schemes of Lenor- 
 mant, Poole, and Wilkinson. The first of these 
 supposes that Joseph was taken into favour by 
 one of the shepherd kings ; but the reasons 
 already adduced seem sufficient to disprove this. 
 Sir Gardner Wilkinson (with Ewald) makes the 
 Exodus to happen towards the close of the 
 eighteenth dynasty. But it is inconceivable, 
 
Introduction. 25 
 
 if this were the case, that even in the very 
 fragmentary state of the history given us by the 
 books of Joshua and Judges, we should find no 
 allusions in them to the numerous invasions of 
 Canaan by Seti and Rameses II. Mr. Poole's 
 theory, which places both the arrival of Joseph 
 and the Exodus within the period of the Hyksos 
 kings, seems to present more difficulties than any 
 other. The theory of Lepsius, which places the 
 arrival of Abraham after the accession of the 
 eighteenth dynasty, has not received the ad- 
 hesion of any scholar of note in England, France, 
 or Germany. 
 
 Canon Cook, in an Essay on the Bearings of 
 Egyptian History upon the Pentateuch (in the 
 " Speaker's Commentary," vol. i., pp. 443 — 475), 
 published since this essay was written, contends 
 that not only the visit of Abraham, but also the 
 migration under Jacob, is to be placed before 
 the invasion of the Hyksos kings, and that the 
 Exodus took place under Thothmes II. (of 
 the eighteenth dynasty). There is very much 
 evidence in favour of this view, but it does not 
 seem to me on the whole preferable to that 
 which has here been adopted. 
 
26 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE RELATIONS 
 BETWEEN PHOENICIA AND ISRAEL. 
 
 Canaan at the time of its Conquest — Extent of the Conquest — 
 Relations with the Phoenician Cities under the Judges — 
 Under the Kings — Histoiy of Tyre up to the Captivity of 
 Judah. 
 
 " T has been said above, that we find a great 
 **- change had passed over the land of Canaan 
 between the departure of Jacob and the invasion 
 of Joshua. The revolution had no doubt been 
 slow, but its effects were very visible. Like the 
 Hebrews themselves, the Canaanites had been a 
 purely pastoral people, but now they were de- 
 veloping agriculture ; the vine and the olive were 
 already widely cultivated, and fenced cities were 
 common. 1 A similar change was seen in their 
 political relations to each other. The kings with 
 
 1 Milman, i., p. 219. 
 
Tribes of Canaan. . 2 7 
 
 whom Jacob met were still the patriarchal heads 
 of tribes. In the time of Joshua we find either 
 local princes, taking their titles from the cities 
 that were the centres of government, or else, as 
 in the case of Gibeon, an aristocratic republic 
 already established. 1 The art of war had greatly 
 developed, and in the course of the continual 
 wars in which these tribes were engaged, either 
 against the Egyptian invader, or under his ban- 
 ners, against their powerful Khita brethren of 
 the north, abundant experience had been gained. 
 It is difficult to say whether the war-chariot was 
 brought to them from Egypt, or whether it was 
 not rather their original possession, and was 
 communicated to the Egyptians by the shepherd 
 kings. It is certain that the horse is never re- 
 presented on any sculpture of a date prior to the 
 Hyksos dynasty. 2 Be this as it may, their horses 
 and chariots very many seem to have proved at 
 this time their main reliance in war. But the 
 independent spirit of the Semitic race, always 
 averse to organization, and never forgetting that 
 its true centre was the tent and the tribe, 3 kept 
 the various Canaanite nations severed from each 
 
 1 Ewald, i., p. 241. 3 Renan, p. 13. 
 
 2 Rawlinson's Herodotus, ii. 
 
2 8 Historical Relations. 
 
 other, each in a defiant isolation, yielding but 
 incompletely even to the terror of a foreign in- 
 vasion. 1 We find the numerous cities of the 
 land, 2 excluding such as were still held by the 
 warlike and savage aborigines, loosely grouped 
 into four main divisions. 3 There are the Amorites, 
 or Highlanders, a fierce people (apparently the 
 farthest removed from the Canaanites proper) 
 " that dwelt in the mountains, 4 from the Scorpion 
 Range, south of the Dead Sea, to the hills of 
 Judah. The Hittites are their neighbours, 
 dwelling in the valleys, lovers of refinement at 
 an early period, and living in well-ordered com- 
 munities possessing national assemblies." 5 The 
 fertile lowlands by the course of the Jordan, and 
 along the coast of the Mediterranean, are held by 
 the Canaanites, 6 who, as possessors of the choicest 
 of the land, and by far the best known to 
 foreigners, often gave their name to the whole of 
 
 1 Lenormant, ii., p. 151. 
 
 2 The thirty-one cities that are mentioned in Joshua 
 xii. 9, 24, do not include even all that we have mentioned 
 in the course of the book. (Ewald, ii., p. 231, sq.) 
 
 3 Ewald, i., pp. 234—237. 
 
 4 Joshua x. 6, cp. Deut. i. 44. 
 
 5 Ewald, 11. s. 
 
 6 On x apa ~ v — terra depressa, from the verb y^, cp. 
 Movers, ii., p. 6. 
 
Tribes of Canaan. 29 
 
 the population of the country. These also were 
 much more addicted to commerce than to war, 
 in this resembling the fourth main division, the 
 Hivvites (Ewald) of the midland region, whose 
 principal city seems to have been the flourishing, 
 wealthy, but timorous Gibeon. Every hint that 
 we have points to a high state of civilization as 
 already existing \ x but this was accompanied 
 with the grossest moral depravity. A fitter oc- 
 casion will be afterwards found (in the section on 
 the religious influence of Phoenicia) for discussing 
 the causes that led to this condition. It is suf- 
 ficient now to notice that the Biblical narrative 
 always uses the strongest language in speaking 
 of the frightful degradation of the Canaanites, 2 
 which made the Lord to abhor them ; 3 and which 
 was at once the necessary and the sufficient 
 reason for the merciless destruction that the 
 children of Israel were commanded to bring upon 
 them. 4 
 
 One other nation in the land of Canaan seems 
 
 1 See especially Bochart's remarks on Kirjath-Sepher, 
 " The City of Books," and Keil on Joshua x. 38. 
 
 2 Lev. xviii. 3, xx. 23. 
 
 3 Deut. ix. 5, xii. 31, etc., etc. 
 
 4 The absolute need for such terrible severity has been 
 often showed by Christian apologists, against the cavils 
 
30 Historical Relations. 
 
 to have possessed already at least a portion of 
 the district that afterwards bore its name. The 
 uncertainty which, after all that has yet been 
 done by the scholars of Germany, still perplexes 
 our views of the early ethnology of the Land of 
 Promise, is nowhere so great as in the case of 
 the Philistines. But, on the whole, the frag- 
 mentary hints, which are all that we have upon 
 the subject, seem to point to the conclusion that, 
 even at the time of the Exodus, the southern . 
 coast of Palestine bore already the name of 
 Philistia, and even then was not without those 
 fortress cities that afterwards formed the nucleus 
 of the strength of the Philistines. 1 But in these 
 early times they seem to have been but weak, 
 and under the yoke of the alien Canaanites, to 
 whom they were always bitterly hostile. 2 And 
 even after the days of Joshua, though strength- 
 
 of unbelievers ; but never more forcibly than by Arnold, 
 Sermons, vol. vi., pp. 35 — 37. 
 
 1 Ewald, i., p. 245. 
 
 2 We shall have occasion to notice afterwards the heavy 
 blows that they inflicted on the power of Sidon. By 
 using the term " alien," I do not mean to imply my assent 
 to the theory of Hitzig ( Urgescliichte und Mytliologie der 
 Philistcier, Leipzig, 1845), who finds in the Philistines an 
 offshoot of the Pelasgi. His arguments do not seem to 
 me at all convincing, and unless M. Stark, — whose Fors- 
 
Philistines. 3 1 
 
 * 
 
 ened by numerous immigrants from their earlier 
 home in Crete, they broke their power by dashing 
 fruitlessly against the vastly superior forces of 
 Egypt, then ruled by Rameses III. 1 It was not 
 till the rapid decline of the Egyptian power had 
 left them free from even a nominal supremacy, 
 that, aided again by fresh accessions, they were 
 able to establish themselves securely, and reta- 
 liate in full measure for all the oppression that 
 they had endured. At the time of the invasion 
 of Joshua they probably formed but a small por- 
 tion of the composite population of the southern 
 coast land, the greater part of which was consti- 
 tuted by the peaceful agricultural Avvim, and 
 the numerous but unaggressive and commercial 
 Canaanites. 2 
 
 Such was the general distribution of the 
 various earlier inhabitants, when the children of 
 Israel crossed the borders of the Land of Pro- 
 mise. There is no occasion for us to review the 
 several stages of the invasion and conquest. 
 
 chungen, referred to by M. Lenormant (i., p. 123), I have 
 not been able to consult, — has others of greater force 
 to bring forward, it appears much safer to follow Ewald 
 and Movers in considering them a Semitic people. Le- 
 normant follows Hitzig. 
 
 1 Lenormant, i., p. 124. 2 Ewald, i., p. 248. 
 
3 2 Historical Relations. 
 
 But one point, which has been often overlooked, 
 deserves a passing glance. The strategy of the 
 leader of " the host of the Lord ' (Jahveh) was, 
 consciously or unconsciously, of the highest 
 order. Had the attack been made upon the 
 southern frontier, the invaders would have found 
 before them an ever-increasing mass of enemies, 
 and the successive mountain-ranges of Hebron, 
 of Jerusalem, and of Ephraim. But when the 
 Jordan was crossed near Jericho, that frontier 
 fortress captured, and the passes secured by the 
 ambuscade that destroyed the city of Ai, Joshua 
 was able to drive his army like a wedge into the 
 very heart of the hostile country, and strike his 
 blows right and left at the isolated divisions of 
 the enemy. 1 
 
 The battles of Beth-horon and of Merom 
 crushed the two great combinations of the 
 Amorite and the Hittite kings, and the suc- 
 cess of the invasion was secured. But six or 
 seven years of fighting left the work but half 
 accomplished. Many of the strongest posts in 
 the country still remained in the hands of the 
 Canaanites, and, curiously reversing the usual 
 
 1 See Stanley, i., p. 237, and M. Chevallier in Lenor- 
 mant, i., p. in. 
 
The Conquest of Canaan. 33 
 
 Canaanites, and, curiously reversing the usual 
 issue of an irruption of invaders that show 
 themselves the stronger in battle, the plains 
 continued to be held by their earlier occupants. 
 The enthusiasm of the Hebrew people for the 
 land in which their fathers were buried, the 
 lonmnpf of the desert-hardened warriors 1 for 
 
 o o 
 
 "the good land, the land of brooks of water, 
 of fountains and depths, that spring out of 
 valleys and hills ; the land of wheat and barley, 
 and vines and fig-trees and pomegranates ; the 
 land of oil olive, and honey ;" their firm belief 
 that the LORD their God was leading them into 
 the possession of this beautiful home, — all these 
 influences tended to make their onset irresistible. 
 The rude weapons and primitive tactics of the 
 children of Israel swept before them the serried 
 and confederate masses that followed the Ca- 
 naanitish kings. But such an invasion could 
 hardly be more at first than a razzia. 2 We have 
 reason, indeed, to suppose that in the panic 
 caused by the first great victories of Joshua, the 
 
 1 On the results of the desert training there are words 
 well worth noting in Mr. Baldwin Brown's " Soul's 
 Exodus," pp. 322 — 326. 
 
 2 Ewald, ii., p. 241. 
 
34 Historical Relations. 
 
 Canaanites on all sides gave in their submission ; 
 and it is probable that even Sidon, " the eldest- 
 born of Canaan," did not refuse to pay homage 
 to the conquering invaders. At least we find 
 that afterwards the rightful territory of Israel 
 is assumed to extend over Sidon and its sur- 
 rounding cities. 1 But if there was ever a tem- 
 porary submission, its effects were very transient ; 
 and we find the inhabitants of Phoenicia proper 
 "living quiet and secure," 1 undisturbed by the 
 neighbouring tribes of Israel. 2 They had now 
 been settled for a lon^ time in the cities of the 
 coast. We are able to determine, with tolerable 
 exactness, the date of their arrival there by the 
 help of one of the most curious and valuable 
 documents that have been given to the world 
 in the progress of hieroglyphic interpretation. 
 A hieratic papyrus, translated by M. Chabas, 
 contains the report of an Egyptian officer, sent 
 by Amenembe I., a king of the twelfth dynasty, 
 to examine into the condition of the princi- 
 palities of Edom and Tennu, then dependent 
 on Egypt, and to bring back information upon 
 the neighbouring tribes ; and it admits of proof 
 that none of the nations mentioned in this most 
 1 Judges i. 31. - Judges xviii. 7. 
 
Origin of the Canaanites. 35 
 
 interesting document belonged to the Canaanite 
 race. 1 
 
 On the other hand, on the arrival, of Abraham 
 in the Land of Promise, we find that " the 
 Canaanite and the Perizzite then dwelt in the 
 land," 2 a form of expression from which we may 
 probably deduce that they had not long been 
 there. Whence they came, is another of the 
 points much disputed by the best authorities. 
 All the native traditions that are preserved to 
 us of course represent them as autochthonous ; 
 but when we find this the case with people like 
 the Greeks, who can be shown most clearly to 
 be immigrants, 3 such statements cannot weigh 
 very much in the balance of the historian. The 
 Greek authorities are unanimous in pointing to 
 the banks of the Erythraean Sea, or Persian 
 Gulf, as the original home of the nation. 4 The 
 close analogy in many respects between the 
 religion and civilization of Phoenicia and of 
 
 1 Lenormarut, ii., p. 148. 2 Gen. xiii. 7. 
 
 3 On this point the theories of Dr. E. Curtius (see 
 especially i., pp. 62 — 64, of Prof. Ward's translation) de- 
 serve very careful consideration. 
 
 i Movers, ii., 1, pp. 38 — 48. The Bishop of Ely (on 
 Gen. x. 6) confuses the Erythrseum Mare with the modern 
 Red Sea. 
 
36 Historical Relations. 
 
 Babylon, each partaking of a very marked 
 Cushite character, is evidence in the same 
 direction. M. Renan's conclusion is that the 
 Phoenician people were the first to issue from 
 the common cradle of the Semitic race, — that is, 
 the mountains of Kurdistan, — and that it was 
 in the fertile plains of the lower Euphrates 
 that they developed a civilization which in 
 its departure from the simpler manners and 
 purer life of their pastoral brethren, made 
 them afterwards the objects of their exe- 
 cration. 1 M. Lenormant contents himself with 
 tracing them to the basin of the Euphrates, 
 and ascribes their expulsion thence to the Aryan 
 invasion of Babylonia, just at the time to which 
 other evidence points as the date of their invasion 
 of Palestine. 2 Movers, on the contrary, accepts 
 the tradition that their earliest settlements were 
 on the coast of the Mediterranean ; but his 
 arguments do not appear convincing, and he 
 is throughout disposed to assign far too much 
 weight to uncertain deductions from an obscure 
 mythology ; and, on the whole, we may agree 
 with Mr. Kenrick that in favour of the statements 
 of Herodotus, Justin, and Strabo, "we have a 
 1 Renan, p. 186. 2 ii., pp. 23 — 48. 
 
Stock of the Canaan i 'tes. 37 
 
 body of evidence which it would not be safe to 
 set aside." 1 The stock to which they belonged 
 is another perplexing question, which cannot 
 probably be set at rest until we have arrived at 
 something more like agreement as to the terms 
 to be employed in ethnology. The Biblical ac- 
 count in Genesis x. places them among the de- 
 scendants of Ham, while the language that they 
 spoke is evidently Semitic. The difficulty 
 vanishes if we may suppose, with Mr. Kenrick, 
 .that the classification in Genesis is based upon 
 colour, which would prevent the red Phoenicians 
 from being ranked with the paler Semites. And 
 we can easily understand then how Canaan 
 should be held to be the brother of Mizraim, if 
 we remember how constantly the Egyptian 
 monuments preserve the marked difference of 
 
 1 Phoenicia, p. 52 ; cp. the preceding pages. Professor 
 Rawlinson (Herodotus, Book vii., App. iL) accepts the 
 tradition of an immigration of the Phoenicians, but places 
 it as late as the thirteenth century B.C. This must stand 
 or fall with his rejection of the identity of the Phoe- 
 nicians and the Canaanites ; the only authorities for the 
 view that has here been maintained which he discusses 
 are Bochart and Kenrick ; but he has also to deal with 
 Gesenius, Movers, Bunsen, Ewald, Renan, and Lenor- 
 mant, a consensus of authority which is not easily shaken, 
 and which Dr. Dyer (in Diet. Geog.) and Mr. Twisleton 
 are content to follow. 
 
3 8 Historical Relations. 
 
 tint between the native warriors and their Semitic 
 enemies. Knobel and Hitzig (quoted by Renan, 
 p. 52,) attempt to confirm this view by the ety- 
 mology of the names Shem, Ham, and Japhet, 
 but apparently with little success. It is perhaps 
 better, with M. Renan, to regard the table of 
 nations in Genesis as simply geographical. One 
 of the principal difficulties in ancient ethnology 
 arises from the very lax notions which all our 
 authorities seem to have had upon the principles 
 of classification, and the arbitrary manner in 
 which they conjoin or dissever tribes upon no 
 intelligible grounds. Certainly they were not 
 guided by any comparative study of languages, 
 for it has been reserved for later scholars to dis- 
 cern, under superficial divergences, the essential 
 identity of kindred tongues. But if we regard 
 Japhet, Shem, and Ham as representing the 
 northern, central, and southern zones of popula- 
 tion respectively, 1 we shall not find any difficulty 
 in understanding how a Semitic nation like the 
 Phoenicians, that had dwelt in the midst of 
 Hamite tribes, and probably acquired no small 
 share of their habits and morals, should have 
 been classed among them. The same is probably 
 
 1 Renan, p. 50. 
 
Cities of Phoenicia. 39 
 
 the case with the Cushites, who seem to have 
 been nearly connected with the Phoenicians ; for 
 although they too are placed among the descend- 
 ants of Ham, it is certain that in the countries 
 that bore this name Semitic dialects were spoken 
 from a very high antiquity. 1 At any rate, it is 
 much more easy to conceive of a change of man- 
 ners and beliefs, than it is to imagine a nation 
 changing its language. 2 
 
 But be all this as it may, it is certain that the 
 children of Israel on their arrival in the Land of 
 Promise found the coast of Phoenicia studded 
 with thriving commercial cities. " The strong 
 city Tyre " is mentioned first in Joshua xix. 29, 
 but Sidon is known to Jacob at the time of the 
 blessing of his children. And even Sidon, ac- 
 cording to the native tradition, was compelled 
 to yield in antiquity to Byblus and Berytus, the 
 towns of a race distinct from the Sidonian 
 Canaanites, and at this time independent of 
 them. 3 Berytus, the modern Beirut, may indeed 
 
 1 Renan, p. 52, note i. ; cp. p. 186. 
 
 2 The Bishop of Ely (in the Speaker's Commentary, 
 Gen. x. 6) reverses this statement, and supposes that the 
 Canaanites were of Hamite origin, but adopted a Semitic 
 language from some (purely imaginary) Semitic race, 
 whom they found in possession of Palestine. 
 
 3 Movers, ii. ; pp. 105 — 113. 
 
40 Historical Relations. 
 
 contest with Damascus the honour of being- the 
 oldest city in the world that still continues to 
 prosper. But as far as the Jewish tradition 
 carries us back, Sidon takes its place at the 
 head of the Phoenician cities ; and this is the 
 true interpretation of the figure of speech that 
 makes Sidon "the eldest-born of Canaan." 1 
 Tyre, though as we have seen it was founded 
 before the invasion of the Israelites, was still in 
 a state of dependence on the mother-state ; and 
 the name of Sidon, as we see from the limits 
 assigned to the tribe of Zebulon, was applied 
 to the whole sea-coast, as far to the south as 
 Carmel. 
 
 We may therefore figure to ourselves the 
 strip of coast-land covered by the name " Phoe- 
 nicia" 2 tenanted at this time by a people un- 
 questionably allied very closely to the Canaanites 
 of the interior, but distinguished from them 
 by striking differences of manners, and a still 
 more advanced and peaceful civilization. Con- 
 fined to a narrow strip of land by the spurs of 
 
 1 Movers, ii., pp. 89 — 92. 
 
 2 Movers (ii., p. 15) has collected abundance of evidence 
 to show that both " Canaan " and " Phoenicia " (or more 
 properly Phoenice [Winer, RWB., s. v.]) were used in 
 a wider and a narrower sense. 
 
Phoenician Alphabet. 41 
 
 Lebanon, which served at the same time to 
 protect them to a great extent from incursions 
 from the east, the Sidonian people devoted 
 themselves at first to the fisheries from which 
 they drew their name. 1 But the numerous 
 harbours with which the coast was furnished, 
 tempted them to venture by degrees on longer 
 voyages than had ever been tried before. 
 Egypt, then under the rule of the kindred 
 Hyksos kings, was naturally the first country 
 with which they established commercial re- 
 lations, and at a very early age these had grown 
 into great importance. Bunsen may possibly 
 have over-estimated the effects of the intimate 
 connection which resulted ; but we cannot doubt 
 that the intercourse of the Phoenicians with the 
 country that was then in the forefront of the 
 civilization of the world, must have had a very 
 powerful influence in developing the arts and 
 sciences amongst them. Whether it was from 
 this quarter that the Phoenician alphabet was 
 derived, is a point on which it is much less easy 
 to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion : adhuc 
 sub iudice lis est. Ewald maintains, more suo 
 undoubtingly, that this inestimable benefit is due 
 1 Cp. Movers, ii. 3 p. 86, note (8). 
 
4 2 Historical Relations. 
 
 to the shepherd kings of Avaris, who obtained 
 it by a modification of the Egyptian hieratic 
 writing, 1 and the same view fundamentally is 
 supported by a number of savants, referred to 
 by M. Renan. 2 But that distinguished scholar 
 is himself of the opinion that the alphabet of 
 twenty-two letters had its origin in Babylon, 
 where the earliest specimens of it, he thinks, are 
 found ; 3 and that the Phoenicians, here as in so 
 many other points, were simply the medium 
 through which the discoveries of Babylon passed 
 into the western world. 4 This view does not 
 appear to harmonize with the admitted fact, that 
 the children of Israel were ignorant of the art 
 of writing when they went down into Egypt, 
 and had acquired the knowledge of it by the 
 time of the Exodus. 5 So that we are led to agree 
 with M. Renan that "1'origine de l'ecritufe, chez 
 
 1 Ewald, ii., p. 7 (E. T.), cp. i., p. 49. 
 
 2 P- 113. 
 
 3 p. 72. 
 
 4 p. 1 1 5. It is very noteworthy that the names of the 
 letters point to an origin among a pastoral rather than a 
 commercial people. See Diet. Bible, iii. 1790$. 
 
 5 This is abundantly proved by Renan, p. 117, and 
 Ewald, i., p. 47. There is not a single reference to writing 
 of any kind in the book of Genesis. It is first distinctly 
 mentioned in Ex. xvii. 14. 
 
Phoenicia and Egypt, 43 
 
 les Semites comme chez tous les peuples, se 
 cache dans une profonde nuit." At any rate 
 we may be certain, that when the Israelites 
 entered the Holy Land, the Phoenicians were 
 already carrying this priceless treasure where- 
 ever their commerce spread, though it was not 
 till centuries after that the Greeks had made 
 themselves familiar with its value. 1 The nature 
 and effects of this commerce will have to be 
 considered more at length in a subsequent 
 section of this essay. 
 
 From the accession of the eighteenth dynasty, 
 the Sidonians appear to have been tributaries of 
 the Egyptians, and to have remained content 
 with a nominal dependence, which left them 
 free to pursue their peaceful avocations in un- 
 disturbed security. We do not find the names 
 of any one of their cities recorded in the lists of 
 conquered rebels, which adorn the walls of the 
 temples of Thothmes III., Seti I., and Rameses II. 
 While all the other Canaanitish tribes were fur- 
 nishing constant material for the triumphs of 
 
 1 This seems one (we are tempted to write the one) 
 definite conclusion which has resulted from the vast mass 
 of controversial writing, originating in the publication of 
 F. A. Wolf's famous Prolegomena. 
 
44 Historical Relations,, 
 
 the Egyptian arms, the Sidonians seem to have 
 severed themselves entirely from their brethren 
 of the inland districts, and the frequent men- 
 tion made of them speaks only of the splendour 
 of their arts and the magnitude of their tribute. 
 In another most interesting account of the 
 country, which, like the one already quoted, has 
 been made accessible to us by M. Chabas, we 
 have valuable notices of the various Phoenician 
 cities. The account is thrown into the form of 
 an imaginary journey made through the land 
 by an Egyptian officer towards the end of the 
 reign of Rameses II., and throughout the traveller 
 speaks as if he were on Egyptian soil, " travel- 
 ling with as much freedom and security as if he 
 had been in the Nile valley, and even, by virtue 
 of his functions, exercising some authority." 1 
 
 It is evident that the kings of Egypt, like the 
 kings of Persia a thousand years later, felt that 
 they needed the services of the Phoenician 
 marine, and therefore treated these valued 
 vassals with marked lenity and favour, while 
 they in their turn, content with an almost 
 nominal subjection that left them the full en- 
 joyment of their national worship, laws, and 
 i Lenormant, ii., pp. 160, 161. 
 
Trade of Phoenicia. 45 
 
 customs, showed no desire to throw off the 
 yoke that lay so lightly. One result of this 
 sagacious mercantile policy was the rise of the 
 wealth and influence of Sidon to its culminating 
 point. This was the period when, as Humboldt 
 says, " their flag waved at once in Britain and 
 the Indian Ocean." Free as yet from the com- 
 petition of the bold Ionian mariners, who were 
 soon to drive them and their colonists alike 
 from the western waters of the Mediterranean, 
 they had no rivals in a trade, whose profits were 
 sometimes almost fabulous. 1 Aristotle tells us of 
 one visit to Tartessus, in which for the oil and 
 other products of little value with which they 
 had laden their vessels, they received so much 
 silver that they were unable to carry it, and at 
 last cut off the masses of lead which had served 
 them as anchors, and substituted silver in the 
 place of them. The science of comparative 
 mythology forbids us to follow M. Lenormant in 
 regarding the story of the Golden Fleece as in- 
 tended to symbolize the wealth that they drew 
 from their commerce with the Euxine, but the 
 
 type is not the less happy because very far 
 
 # 
 
 1 De Mir. Ausc, p. 147 (quoted by Mr. Kenrick, p. 
 
 211). 
 
4 6 Historical Relations. 
 
 from the original meaning of the myth. 1 When, 
 centuries later, the gold of Colchis, the tin of 
 the Caucasus, and the steel of the barbarous 
 Chalybes found their way to the markets of 
 Greece in the ships of Chalcis or Athens, 
 instead of the Sidonian galleys, no image could 
 be more than adequate to express the gain to 
 the people of Hellas. 
 
 Another, and, for our present purpose, a yet 
 more important result of this contented ac- 
 quiescence in the suzerainty of Egypt on the 
 part of the Phoenicians, was the extent to which 
 it divided their interests from those of the other 
 Canaanitish nations. Even in the great con- 
 federacy headed by Jabin, king of Hazor, we 
 find them taking no part ; and when this was 
 broken at the battle of Merom, the fugitives 
 are pursued to the borders of " great Sidon ' 
 (Josh. xi. 8), but there the pursuit apparently 
 ends. Accustomed as they were to see the 
 armies of Egypt pour into the country of 
 Canaan, year after year, they might well look 
 with comparative indifference on the progress 
 of a new invader. This peaceful relation be- 
 
 i Cp. Cox's Mythology of the Aryan Nations, ii., pp. 
 150—153. 
 
Land Trade. 47 
 
 tween the Israelites and the Phoenicians would 
 be promoted by the position and interests of 
 both the nations. 1 The district of Sidon had 
 apparently been included in the earliest scheme 
 of conquest. But it had not fallen to the lot of 
 either of the two most powerful and warlike 
 tribes, Judah and Ephraim ; it was destined for 
 the feebler and less energetic, Asher, Zebulon, 
 Issachar, and Naphtali. The impetuous rush of 
 the hardy warriors of the desert, thirsting for 
 the blessings of the Promised Land, had spent 
 itself in its early efforts, and the northern tribes 
 were well contented with the marvellous fertility 
 of the plain of Esdraelon, 2 which probably fur- 
 nished abundant supplies for their scantier num- 
 bers. The Phoenicians, on the other hand, 
 would have the strongest inducements to live 
 on terms of amity with their new neighbours. We 
 shall have occasion to notice hereafter how large 
 a portion of their commerce consisted in a carry- 
 ing trade by land. 3 Now at the time when the 
 wave of invasion was rolling towards the borders 
 
 1 Movers, ii., pp. 305, 599. 
 
 2 See Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, p. 348, sq. 
 
 3 This is fully discussed by Movers, vol. ii., part 3, pp. 
 128 — 147, and 200—313. 
 
48 Historical Relations. 
 
 of Phoenicia, it had already swept over southern 
 and central Palestine, and if the Canaanites had 
 not yet been extirpated from the land, at least 
 their kingdoms had been broken up, and their 
 power completely crippled. The great lines of 
 traffic with Egypt, Arabia, Babylon, and As- 
 syria were in the hands of the invaders, and 
 any hostilities with them must necessarily have 
 caused a ruinous suspension of commerce. 1 Per- 
 haps we may find a further reason for the policy 
 that was adopted, in the fact that just before the 
 arrival of the Israelites there seems to have been 
 a great extension of the power of the Amorites, 2 
 so that, in southern Canaan at any rate, it was 
 with these especially that the invaders came 
 into contact. But we have seen already that of 
 all the population of Palestine (excluding the 
 remnants of the barbarous aborigines), the 
 Amorites were those who were furthest removed 
 from the Phoenicians, and those, in consequence, 
 with whom they would have least sympathy. 
 The " fat bread " and " royal dainties " of Asher 3 
 would have far more attractions for the teeming 
 
 i Movers, ii., p. 305. 
 
 2 Movers, ii., pp. 68, 599. 
 
 3 Gen. xlix. 20. 
 
Phoenician Colonies.' 49 
 
 population of the Sidonian coast than any half- 
 recognized claims of kindred ; and the people 
 whose descendants long after "were nourished 
 by the king's country," 1 would be careful not to 
 close their markets against the grain of Galilee. 
 Still we must not go so far as Mr. Kenrick, 
 and say that the settlement of the Israelites in 
 Canaan "produced no visible effect on the 
 condition of the Phoenician cities." 2 We may 
 be sure that no small number of those who 
 " fled from before the face of the robber Joshua, 
 the son of Nun," would take refuge in the 
 kindred towns on the coast, and so, by increasing 
 the pressure of a population already super- 
 abundant, give rise to colonies, in the strict 
 sense of the term, as distinguished from the 
 trading posts and commercial factories which 
 were all that had previously been established. 
 The dense obscurity which envelops the early 
 history of Greece, and the hopelessness of all 
 attempts to establish a trustworthy system of 
 
 1 Acts xn. 20. 
 
 2 Phoenicia, p. 63. 
 
 3 The genuineness of the celebrated inscription in 
 Mauretania, reported by Procopius to contain these words, 
 has been disproved by recent scholars. See Kenrick, 
 pp. 67, 68 ; Ewald, ii., p. 230. 
 
 4 
 
50 Historical Relations. 
 
 chronology before the date of the first Olympiad,' 
 prevent us from speaking here with any con- 
 fidence ; but it is at least possible that one of 
 these was that which Cadmus is said to have 
 led to Thebes j 1 and the best authorities (Movers 
 and Munk) are willing to assign to this period 
 some of the earliest settlements in Africa, 2 those 
 to which the numerous cities of the Liby- 
 Phcenicians owe their origin. And further, we 
 may gladly accept the theory of Ewald, that 
 "the nobler part of the [Canaanite] nation, 
 unable longer to maintain themselves in the 
 interior, gathered their forces together on the 
 northern sea-coast for a new and more vigorous 
 life, and thus the regenerated remnant of the 
 people gained for themselves an honourable 
 place in the history of the world." 3 
 
 There is evidence, however, to show that the 
 superiority of the Israelite arms was soon 
 
 i Even Mr. Cox (Mythology of the Aryans, ii., 86, note) 
 is willing to admit that the manifest connection of Kadmos 
 with Semitic Kedem, " the East," is strong evidence for 
 such a colonization, and it was enough to satisfy the 
 scepticism of Niebuhr. But the date is a very different 
 thing from the fact. Cp. Grote, ii., p. 48. 
 
 2 Lenormant, ii., pp. 169 — 172. 
 
 3 Ewald, i., p. 242. 
 
The Northern Tribes. 5 1 
 
 changed into something very like subjection. 
 Not only did the tribe of Asher fail to "drive 
 out the inhabitants of Accho, of Sidon," 1 and of 
 the other Phoenician cities, but we find that 
 they " dwelt among the Canaanites, the inhabit- 
 ants of the land," a phrase in which Movers 2 
 (from comparing other instances in which it is 
 used) finds indications of at least a nominal 
 submission. 3 "The dainties of the king" as- 
 cribed to the same tribe in the blessing of Jacob, 
 he regards as a tribute paid to the court of 
 Sidon, and finds traces in the after-history of 
 the tribe of the contempt which this subservience 
 awakened. 4 In the language used of Issachar 
 in the same grand poem, we seem to have a 
 reference to the position of a tribe bordering on 
 a commercial nation, and acting as the trans- 
 porters of their wares. Zebulon and Naphtali, 
 in the same way, are brought into a close 
 connection, probably one of partial dependence, 
 with Phoenicia; and on the whole the northern 
 Israelites during this obscure period appear as a 
 kind of Metceci, with the possession of the land 
 secured to them, but also with certain burdens 
 
 1 Judges i. 31. 3 Gen. xlix. 19. 
 
 2 ii., 1, p. 307, sq. 4 1 Kings ix. 13. 
 
5 2 Historical Relations. 
 
 laid upon them. From what we know of the 
 policy of the Phoenician colonies in similar 
 cases, we can readily conceive that these bur- 
 dens were sometimes made to press very 
 heavily ; and it causes us no surprise when 
 we find the Sidonians mentioned among the 
 oppressors of Israel, in the touching record of 
 the faithlessness of the chosen people, and the 
 tender compassion of the Lord, when " His soul 
 was grieved for the misery of Israel." l The 
 charge of Amos (i. 9) that Tyre "had not 
 remembered the covenant of brethren, but 
 delivered up the whole captivity to Edom," 2 may 
 even point to a condition of vassalage, modified 
 by the stipulation that none of the children of 
 Israel should be carried away out of their own 
 boundaries. 
 
 Movers has gleaned one hint upon the con- 
 dition of these vassals from a very unexpected 
 quarter. Aristophanes (Aves, 505 — 507) has 
 these lines : — 
 
 Ueiad. x&Trod' 6 kokkvs dirot, k6kkv, t6t Slv oi QofriKes dTravres 
 
 TQVS TTVpOVS &V Kal TCLS KpldaS kv TOLS TTeSlOlS edepL^OV. 
 
 Eue\7r. tovt dp' enhv ,J fjU tovttos aXrjduis. kSkkv, \pu\ol, Trediovde. 
 
 The scholiasts here inform us that in Phce- 
 1 Judges x. 12, 16. 2 Cp. Joel iii. 6, 8. 
 
Vassalage of the Northern Tribes. 53 
 
 nicia the cuckoo appears at the time of harvest, 
 while in Greece the harvest is of course later, 1 
 so that the proverb is of Phoenician origin. 
 But ^//wXoi is here evidently a term of reproach, 
 and in this sense would not have been applied 
 by the Phoenicians to themselves. Besides 
 which, the practice of circumcision seems to 
 have been confined to a part of Phoenicia, and 
 not to have been universal even there. 2 Hence 
 the phrase was probably applied to serfs, com- 
 pelled to labour in the fields, to whom the 
 epithet would be appropriate ; and we know of 
 none such but the Hebrews. This interpretation 
 is strongly confirmed by the explanation given 
 in Suidas (s. v. OvpaZe) of the similar proverbial 
 phrase Ovpa^s Kapzg, ovket 'AvOtcrrtpia. 3 What- 
 ever may be the value of this argument — and it 
 is certainly greatly diminished by the fact that 
 we have not the faintest indication of the 
 period at which it originated — there seems to be 
 evidence enough to show that, while Phoenicia 
 
 1 Cp. Hesiod, Op. 457. 
 
 2 On this point Movers refers to his article on the 
 Phoenicians in Ersch and Gruber, p. 421. Herod., ii., 104, 
 is not sufficient to disprove this view. 
 
 3 M overs has overlooked this, but it is quoted in Kock's 
 note, ad loc. 
 
54 Historical Relations. 
 
 remained at peace with the nation of Israel, 
 some portions at least of the weaker northern 
 tribes were brought, originally perhaps by their 
 own action, into a state of dependence ap- 
 proaching to vassalage. 1 
 
 The curtain now falls upon Phoenicia, at least 
 so far as the Jewish annals are concerned, and 
 we get no further glimpses of the cities of the 
 coast, except in one passing reference to their 
 " quiet and secure life," until the establishment 
 of the monarchy. This is undoubtedly due in a 
 measure to the very fragmentary condition of 
 the records of the time preserved to us. The 
 composer of the Book of Judges was much 
 more careful to recount the striking instances of 
 the punishment that had fallen upon the people 
 for their sins, and the wonderful deliverances 
 granted to them, when they turned again in 
 penitence to Jahveh, than he was to draw up a 
 complete chronological history. And if the 
 opinion of Ewald be correct, that the " Book of 
 Covenants," on which the Book of Judges as we 
 have it now was based, was written by an author 
 belonging to the tribe of Judah, 2 we can the 
 
 1 Mainly from Movers, ii., i, 302 — 315. 
 
 2 Cp. i., p. 72^ and 140^ 
 
Egyptian Invasions. 55 
 
 more readily understand the paucity of our 
 information upon all but the most striking 
 events connected with Northern Palestine. 
 
 But all indications point to a peaceful alliance 
 between the Phoenician cities and the tribes 
 that bordered upon them. 1 Heeren (Historical 
 Researches, ii., p. 117) has well brought out the 
 importance of the corn supplies of Galilee to 
 the wealthy mercantile towns of the coast, and 
 we may believe that the absence of any men- 
 tion of conflicts between the two nations is not 
 solely due to the incompleteness of our chronicles 
 of the period. 
 
 We are not left, however, without information 
 from other sources to throw light on this period 
 of darkness, and profane historians help us to 
 understand the change that has taken place in 
 the internal condition of Phoenicia when we 
 find it next coming into prominence in the 
 Hebrew annals. We learn from hieroglyphic 
 inscriptions the immense importance attached 
 by the Egyptian kings to a secure possession of 
 the littoral region of Canaan, as forming the 
 military road by which their armies advanced 
 to the ever- recurring wars with the Khitas and 
 1 Cp. Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 363. 
 
56 Historical Relations. 
 
 the other nations of Northern Syria. 1 It may 
 indeed well be that the fear of a direct collision 
 with the power of Egypt was one of the prin- 
 cipal causes that led the children of Israel to 
 abstain from any direct attack upon the cities of 
 the coast. For as long as the road to the un- 
 subdued people of the North was still left open, 
 the Pharaohs were probably contented with a 
 merely nominal supremacy over the hilly inland 
 country, a supremacy which is not indeed 
 mentioned in the Biblical narrative, but to 
 which the circumstances of the case very de- 
 cidedly point. 2 It is at all events certain that 
 no mention is made of the conquests of Rameses 
 III. in the books of Joshua and of Judges, 
 though M. Biot has assigned them, on indubitable 
 astronomical evidence, 3 to the close of the four- 
 teenth century B.C., a period certainly included 
 in the time with which those books are con- 
 cerned ; and, on the other hand, the very full 
 monumental record of these conquests in the 
 temple of Medinet Abou, contains no reference 
 to the children of Israel. But the tablets of 
 
 1 Lenormant, i., p. 264, et scrpius. 
 
 2 lb., p. 263. 
 
 3 lb., p. 268, note. 
 
. The Philistines. 57 
 
 this temple depict many scenes from a war 
 which was indirectly of great importance to the 
 history both of Israel and of Phoenicia. Next to 
 the never-ending struggle with the Khitas, the 
 most important conflict that occupied the arms 
 of Rameses was that with the Philistines. We 
 have already had occasion to adduce reasons 
 for accepting the view of Ewald, that a portion 
 of this nation, though as yet in insignificant 
 numbers, had settled in the district, where their 
 presence afterwards was such a thorn in the side 
 of Israel. But now, apparently in alliance with 
 the Khitas, a much more numerous body had 
 arrived by sea, probably from the island of 
 Crete, and thrown themselves in the rear of the 
 army of Rameses. It was a national immi- 
 gration rather than an invasion, — the sculptors 
 represent them as followed by numerous rude 
 waggons, drawn by oxen, containing their wives 
 and children, — and the veterans of the Pharaoh 
 gained an easy victory. Others who followed 
 them shared their fate. But Rameses, em- 
 barrassed with a nation on his hands, contented 
 himself with assi^ninG: to them the land 
 round Gaza, Ashdod, and Ascalon, in imme- 
 diate proximity to strong Egyptian garrisons. 
 
5 8 Historical Relations. 
 
 But after the reign of Rameses III. the power 
 of Egypt rapidly declined ; her Asiatic do- 
 minions threw off even her nominal supremacy, 
 and the Philistines soon developed into a warlike 
 and powerful people. 1 Augmented probably by 
 constant accessions from their earlier home, 2 in 
 the course of about a hundred years they suc- 
 ceeded in bringing the whole of Southern 
 Palestine under their power, and for half a 
 century ruled the Israelites of that region with 
 a rod of iron. 3 But they did not confine their 
 activity to the continent. They had never 
 forgotten the maritime skill that had brought 
 them into Canaan, and they seem to have 
 devoted themselves largely to piracy. This it 
 was, apparently, which brought them into con- 
 flict with the Phoenicians ; and a valuable 
 notice in Justin 4 tells us of the Sidonians that 
 " post multos deinde annos a rege Ascaloniorum 
 
 1 In the monuments this nation is called Khairetana^ 
 which Mr. Poole indentifies with the people of Crete, and 
 consequently, according to the best authorities, with the 
 Philistines. Cp. Rawlinson's Herodotus, ii., p. 298, with 
 Lenormant, i., p. 266, Diet. Bible, art. Pliilistines and 
 Cherethites, and Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 256. 
 
 2 Hitzig, Philistaer, § 100. 
 
 3 Cp. Ewald, ii., 338. 
 
 4 xviii. 3, S '} in Movers, ii. 1, p. 150. 
 
Fall of Sidon. 5 9 
 
 expugnati, navibus appulsi Tyron urbem ante 
 annum Troianse cladis condiderunt." Justin's 
 date for the capture of Troy is probably 
 B.C. 1208, 1 so that we are able to fix with pre- 
 cision the time of the transfer of the hegemony 
 of Phoenicia from Sidon to Tyre. At the same 
 time we must notice that the words of Justin 
 need some qualification. Tyre, as we have seen 
 already, was known in the time of Joshua, and 
 the priests of the temple of Melkarth there 
 informed Herodotus/ that the city had been 
 founded 2,300 years before his time, a claim 
 which Movers is disposed to allow : 3 Sidon, again, 
 if ever destroyed, was soon rebuilt, and though 
 it never regained its position as first of the 
 Phoenician cities, still it had a long career of 
 great prosperity. But henceforth it is Tyre, 
 which is the capital of the cities of the coast, 
 and Tyre whose kings are brought into imme- 
 diate relation with Israel. 
 
 Again the curtain fails. The sacred narrative 
 makes no mention of Phoenicia till the days of 
 
 1 Cp. Kenrick, p. 342, Movers, ii., 1, p. 150 — 166. I 
 cannot discover the authority on which Prof. Rawlinson 
 (Manual, p. 39) adopts as the date B.C. 1050. 
 
 2 ii-, P- 44. 
 
 3 ii- ? h PP. 134—137. 
 
60 Histcfical Relations. 
 
 David ; * and all that we can gather from other 
 sources is a string of names that are mythical. 
 Phcenix, father of Cadmus and Europa, is a 
 personification of the country, or, according to 
 comparative mythologists, a still more shadowy 
 form, the lord of the purple region of the dawn. 2 
 Belus is of course the god Baal ; and Agenor, 
 like Phaidimos, the Sidonian of Homer, 3 is the 
 Greek translation of the epithet of some deity, 
 probably Melkarth. 4 But we are able to watch 
 the operation of the causes which were soon to 
 bring the kingdoms of Tyre and of Israel into 
 close connection with each other. First among 
 them we must place the growth of the power 
 of the Philistines. It does not appear that 
 after the campaign which resulted in the de- 
 
 1 i Kings v. I, vii. 14. 
 
 2 Cox, Aryan Mythology, i., p. 438. 
 
 3 Od. iv. 617. The curious fact that Homer, though seve- 
 ral times referring to Phoenicia and to the Sidonians, never 
 once mentions Tyre, may perhaps be best explained by 
 the hypothesis that he knew by tradition of a period when 
 Sidon was the leading city, and Tyre insignificant, and 
 that he uses the name of the former from a wish to give 
 an archaic colouring to his poem. But there are not 
 many scholars who will see in this fact, with Mr. Glad- 
 stone (Juventus Mundi, p. 144), satisfactory evidence 
 that Homer wrote before the fall of Sidon. 
 
 4 Kenrick, p. 347. 
 
Philistines and Phoenicians. 6 1 
 
 struction of Sidon they made any serious 
 attack upon Phoenicia. The narrow and barren 
 strip of coast that lay between the Philis- 
 tian and Phoenician cities, the district round 
 Dor and Joppa, could have offered to a pastoral 
 and agricultural people like the Philistines no 
 attractions comparable to those of the fertile 
 land of Judah j 1 and it was to this accordingly 
 that their arms were constantly directed. Still 
 we must consider their relations with the neigh- 
 bours on the north to have been those of sus- 
 picion, if not of positive hostility. We have 
 indeed several passages from the later prophets 
 in which they are apparently spoken of as allies. 2 
 
 1 " The most striking and characteristic feature of 
 Philistia is its immense plain of cornfields, stretching 
 from the edge of the sandy tract right up to the very wall 
 of the hills of Judah, which look down its whole length 
 from north to south. These rich fields must have been 
 the great source at once of the power and of the value 
 of Philistia ; the cause of its frequent aggressions on 
 Israel, and of the ceaseless efforts of Israel to master 
 the territory." — Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 258. 
 
 2 Jer. xlvii. 4 : " The day cometh to spoil all the Philis- 
 tines, and to cut off from Tyrus and Zidon every helper 
 that remaineth." Joel iii. 4 : " What have ye to do with 
 me, O Tyre, and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine." 
 Zech. ix. 3 — -5 : " Tyrus did build herself a strong hold, 
 and heaped up silver and gold. . . . Behold, the Lord 
 will cast her out, and He will smite her power in the 
 
62 Historical Relations. 
 
 But Movers 1 can hardly be right in assuming 
 from these that the friendly connection dates 
 from the period which we are now considering. 
 It is much more likely that it dates from the 
 time when the power of the Philistines had not 
 yet recovered from the heavy blows inflicted 
 upon it by David ; and the friendship with 
 Judah, if not with the northern kingdom, had 
 been broken off by the expulsion of the dynasty 
 of Hiram ; but at this earlier period an attitude 
 of jealousy is much more intelligible than one of 
 close alliance. 2 
 
 Another fact of the time which contributed 
 to bring together Phoenicia and Israel, was the 
 decline of the two great empires that had 
 hitherto overshadowed them both from opposite 
 sides. We have already referred to the decline 
 of the Egyptian power under the twentieth 
 and twenty-first dynasties ; but a similar loss 
 of strength seems to have befallen the empire 
 
 sea; and she shall be devoured with fire. Ashkelon 
 shall see it, and fear ; Gaza also, and be very sorrowful, 
 and Ekron," etc. 
 
 1 ii., I, p. 316. 
 
 2 We find them positively at war with each other at the 
 commencement of the reign of David. See Lenormant, 
 i.-, p. 137- 
 
Empire of David. 63 
 
 of Assyria, so that all her possessions west of 
 the Euphrates were taken from her by the con- 
 quering Khitas. 1 We can readily believe that 
 the way was thus made clear for the establish- 
 ment of a strong, compact, and independent 
 monarchy in Palestine, and nothing would more 
 contribute to this than a good understanding 
 with the powerful league of maritime cities. 
 They in their turn would be ready enough to 
 accept a position of secure amity. " It must 
 have been with no common interest that the 
 surrounding nations looked out to see on what 
 prey the Lion of Judah, now about to issue from 
 his native lair, would make his first spring." 2 
 And when, after crushing, for the time at 
 least, the power of the Philistines, the strength 
 of the new military organization of Israel was 
 turned upon the nations of the east and south; 
 when Edom, as a submissive slave, held the 
 sandal, which had been drawn off that the 
 monarch might wash his feet in Moab, as in a 
 basin destined for the vilest uses ; 3 when the king 
 
 1 Lenormant, i., p. 376. On these Khitas or Khatti, 
 cp. Rawlinson's Herodotus, i., p. 379. 
 
 2 Stanley, Jewish Church, ii., p. 79. 
 
 3 Psalm cviii. 9 ; cp. Herod., ii., p. 172. 
 
64 Historical Relations. 
 
 of Hamath, on the distant Orontes, became an 
 ally of the victorious David, we do not wonder 
 at finding Tyre contributing stores of cedar- 
 wood 1 to build him a house in the new capital of 
 the new and mighty empire. 2 
 
 The friendly relations, then if not previously 
 established, lasted without interruption to the 
 close of the reign of Solomon. The honours 
 which the young King Hiram (only twenty-eight 
 years of age at the death of David) 3 had gladly 
 paid to the aged poet-king would be granted 
 not less willingly to his youthful successor, for 
 whom he seems to have entertained a strong 
 personal affection. And the similarity between 
 the positions of the two princes would have 
 tended further to cement this alliance. Hiram, 
 like David, had just established his throne 
 securely upon the ruins of the rule of the 
 
 1 2 Sam. v. ii. 
 
 2 Eupolemus asserts that David conquered Hiram, and 
 made Phoenicia tributary, but in the silence of the Bibli- 
 cal narrative, which gives us such full details of the other 
 wars of David, this assertion cannot be accepted. Cp. 
 Movers, ii., i, p. 332. 
 
 3 Movers, ii., 1, p. 328. I do not know on what authority 
 Dean Stanley speaks of the "relation between the old 
 Phoenician and the young Israelite." Solomon cannot 
 well have been ten years younger than Hiram. 
 
Revolution in Tyre. 65 
 
 Shophetim, or judges, and raised his country to 
 a position of power and independence which it 
 had not previously enjoyed. And if his capital 
 was not, like Jerusalem, a new acquisition, the 
 extent to which he enlarged, strengthened, and 
 beautified it made it practically a new creation. 1 
 The influence of this close connection will have 
 to be considered afterwards ; in this rapid his- 
 torical survey it only claims a mention. 
 
 Within twenty years of the death of Hiram 
 his dynasty had fallen. His grandson, 2 Abdas- 
 tertus, had been murdered s by the sons of his 
 nurse, and the eldest of these had placed himself 
 upon the throne. Movers identifies this revolu- 
 tion with one which Justin, with his usual disre- 
 gard of chronology, puts much later, just before 
 the capture of the city by Alexander. Accord- 
 ing to his view, this was an uprising of the mer- 
 cenaries, aided by the numerous slaves and the 
 poverty-stricken commons, against the rule of 
 the patrician houses, resembling in its causes, 
 and probably also in the horrors with which it 
 
 1 Cp. Kenrick's Phoenicia, pp. 348 — 354; Movers, ii., 1, 
 
 P- 329. 
 
 2 Lenormant writes the name Abdastoreth ; I do not 
 know on what authority. 
 
 5 
 
66 Historical Relations.. 
 
 was accompanied, the terrible insurrections of 
 the mercenaries and the Liby-Phcenicians against ' 
 the tyranny of the Carthaginian plutocracy. The 
 reign of disorder appears to have lasted twelve 
 years, and to have had for its natural results the 
 expulsion of many noble families, who probably 
 fled to the colonies already existing, or founded 
 new ones, and constant wars with the neighbour- 
 ing cities that still retained their aristocratic 
 constitutions. 1 It is an ingenious and probable 
 conjecture of M. Lenormant that Shishak, king 
 of Egypt, who had contributed to the great re- 
 bellion in Israel by the encouragement which he 
 gave to Jeroboam, and who was at the time 
 meditating an invasion of Palestine, may have 
 been the author of the downfall of the dynasty 
 of Hiram. After the restitution of the royal 
 house in the person of Astartus, another grand- 
 son of Hiram, the numerous irregularities in 
 the succession show how severely the period of 
 anarchy had strained the Tyrian constitution ; 
 and during the time of disorder in the northern 
 kingdom marked by the murders of Nadab, 
 Elah, Zimri, and Tibni, hardly less disorder 
 
 i Movers, ii., i, p. 342. 
 
Jezebel. 6 7 
 
 seems to have reigned in Tyre. 1 In thirty-three 
 years we find five rulers, not one of whom was 
 succeeded by his natural heir. The establish- 
 ment of a lasting dynasty by Omri was nearly 
 contemporaneous with the accession of Ithobaal 
 to the throne of Tyre. It is probable that the 
 latter was the rightful representative of the race 
 of Hiram ; at least, we know that he held the 
 priesthood of Astarte, which was confined to the 
 royal family, and the security of his possession 
 of the throne seems some evidence of the legality 
 of his claim to it. 2 The marriage of his daughter 
 Jezebel (more correctly Isebel) to the son of 
 Omri, Ahab, was only a mark of the close con- 
 nection which would naturally be renewed as 
 soon as the two neighbouring nations found 
 themselves again under settled government. 
 To the important commercial relations, of 
 which we have already spoken, was now added 
 
 1 For the period between the accession of Hiram and 
 the flight of Elissa (980 — 826 according to Movers), we 
 have unusually trustworthy authorities in the numerous 
 fragments of the native historians, Dius and Menander, 
 quoted by Josephus, Antiq, viii. 5, 3, and in Apion. i., 17, 
 18. Cp. Movers, ii., i, pp. 190, 191, where they are ex- 
 tracted. 
 
 2 Movers, ii., 1, p. 345, but cp. against this Ewald, iii., 
 P- 170. _ . ^ . 
 
68 Historical Relations. 
 
 the need of a defensive alliance against the 
 growing and aggressive power of the kingdom 
 of Syria, whose capital was Damascus. And 
 we shall not be wrong, I think, in seeing with 
 Movers, 1 in this marriage an instance of the 
 policy, pursued with so much success by the 
 Phoenicians of Carthage, who again and again 
 bound the native princes to them by links of 
 affinity and by the powerful influence of their 
 brilliant and beautiful women. Certainly the 
 force of character, cunning, boldness, and regal 
 pride even in the hour of death, shown by 
 Jezebel, cannot but remind us of many stories 
 told us of Dido, of Sophonisba, of the wife of 
 Hasdrubal in the final siege of Carthage. 
 
 It is curious that we find no trace of any 
 attempt on the part of the king of Tyre, 
 Mattan, 2 the grandson of Ethbaal, to attempt 
 to revenge upon Jehu the murder of his aunt 
 Jezebel, and the massacre of the worshippers of 
 Baal in the temple of Samaria. This may be 
 partly due to the peaceful policy of Phoenicia. 
 
 1 ii., i, p. 347- 
 
 2 On the various forms of this name, identical with the 
 Muttines of Livy (xxv. 40, 41, ed, Weissenborn), see 
 Movers, ii., 1, p. 353, note 64, and Mommsen, ii., p. 149. 
 
Dido. 69 
 
 But it is at least a singular coincidence, if 
 nothing more, that we find in the very year in 
 which Jehu ascended the throne, an expedition 
 of Shalmaneser, which resulted in the payment 
 of tribute by Tyre, Sidon, and Jebal, and also 
 the record l of a valuable present made by 
 Jehu to the Assyrian monarch. It is probable 
 that Shalmaneser would not readily allow an 
 attack to be made on a valued tributary. But, 
 again, it is all but certain that the internal dis- 
 sensions must have already begun which finally 
 led to the expulsion of Elessar, 2 and so to the 
 foundation of Carthage. Movers has collected 
 much evidence to show that this movement, of 
 such interest not only to Phoenician but also 
 to universal history, originated in a rising of the 
 commons against the ruling aristocratic houses. 3 
 Mattan had left the royal power to be shared 
 by his son Pygmalion (or Piimeliun, according 
 to Lenormant), and a daughter, Elessar, several 
 
 1 On the black obelisk in the British Museum. The 
 name is read there as Jahua son of Khumri, i.e., Jehu son 
 of Omri ; on which see Dr. Hincks's note in Rawlinson's 
 Herodotus, i., pp. 378 — 380, and cp. Lenormant, ii.,p. 185. 
 
 2 So in Etym. Magn., s. v. Dido, quoted by Movers ; 
 cp. pp. 362—391. 
 
 3 ii-, 1, PP. 350—364. 
 
70 Historical Relations. 
 
 years his senior. But a popular emente, for 
 which the disorders of many preceding years 
 had paved the way, deprived the princess of 
 all share in the government, and surrounded 
 the young king with democratic councillors. 
 Probably in order to strengthen her position 
 by the support of the priestly party, Elessar 
 married Sicharbaal, 1 the high-priest of Melkarth, 
 brother of the late king, and chief functionary 
 of the national religion. His position not only 
 brought him in much revenue, but also gave 
 him rank next to the king, and made him, 
 during the minority of the latter, his legal re- 
 presentative. 2 To rid himself of so formidable 
 a rival, Pygmalion, as soon as he had grown to 
 manhood, caused him to be assassinated. His 
 widow, burning for revenge, formed a conspiracy 
 among the nobles to dethrone her brother, and 
 restore the aristocratic constitution ; and -the 
 failure of this led to the flight of Elessar, ac- 
 companied by numerous nobles and their ad- 
 herents. It seems to have been only after her 
 arrival in Libya that she received the name of 
 Dido, "the fugitive." The confusion that sprang 
 
 1 Cp. Movers, note 67. 
 
 2 See Movers, ii., 1, pp. 543 — 545. 
 
Athaiiah. 7 1 
 
 up afterwards between the queen so denoted 
 by reason of her exile, and the moon-goddess 
 Astarte, who bore the epithet, as the wanderer 
 in the heavens, 1 is very curious as affording 
 an instance of one of the most fertile sources 
 of mythology, but does not bear directly upon 
 our present subject. What is of importance 
 for us to notice is that Tyre must have been 
 so weakened by this long period of disorder, 
 followed by the loss of many of its wealthiest 
 citizens, as to have little wish or power to in- 
 terfere in the concerns of its neighbours. Its 
 influence during this period was mainly felt 
 in the extension of the worship of Baal by 
 Athaiiah, the wicked daughter of a wicked 
 Tyrian mother, Jezebel ; and the dangers which 
 threatened the northern kingdom came from the 
 east, not from the west, from the kingdoms of 
 Damascus and Nineveh, bitterly hostile to each 
 
 1 Compare the lines of Shelley — 
 
 Art thou pale for weariness 
 Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, 
 
 Wandering companionless 
 Among the stars that have a different birth ? 
 
 The Ety'm. Magn., s. v. Dido, explains At5w by ir\avTjTts, and 
 Movers identifies X*TH with KTH3 " die Umherir- 
 rende," p. 363, note 92. See also Kurts' Mythologie, p. 62. 
 
7 2 Historical Relations. 
 
 other, but each alternately laying a heavy hand 
 of oppression on the kingdoms of Israel. The 
 only references that we have to Phoenicia during 
 this period are found in one of the two great 
 prophets of the northern kingdom, Amos. He 
 threatens that " the Lord will send a fire into 
 the wall of Tyre, and it shall devour her 
 palaces, for three transgressions and for four, 
 because they delivered up an entire captivity 
 unto Edom, and remembered not the covenant 
 of brethren." 1 This seems to refer to the raids 
 of small bodies of slave-hunters, rather than to 
 any collective action on the part of the nation. 
 The yet earlier prophet of the southern king- 
 dom, Joel, represents these bands as penetrating 
 even into the land of Judah, and selling " the 
 sons of Judah and the sons of Jerusalem to 
 the sons of Javan, that they might be removed 
 far from their own border." 2 And Homer gives 
 us some vivid pictures of their treachery and 
 cunning in kidnapping the children of the 
 Greek chieftains, 8 and carrying them beyond 
 the sea for sale. The Edomites, like the 
 
 1 i., p. 9. 2 Hi., p. 6. 
 
 3 Odyss., xiv. 287, 298; xv. 415 — 429. "While pro- 
 fessedly describing an uncertified past, his combinations 
 
Invasion of Sargon. 73 
 
 Midianites of the days of Joseph, were the 
 carriers of the desert, and "the children of 
 Javan," or Grecians, as the authorized version 
 rightly calls them, had by this time established 
 most extensive commercial dealings with the 
 Phoenicians. 
 
 We are surprised to find how quickly Tyre 
 recovered from the loss inflicted upon her by 
 the flight of the founders of Carthage. As in 
 all the Greek tyrannies, which sprang up for the 
 most part shortly after the period now under 
 consideration, we find that the attempt of the 
 Tyrian commons to shake off the rule of the 
 few, only resulted in establishing the despotic 
 rule of one. 1 But, as in Athens under the 
 Peisistratids, Corinth under the Cypselids, Sicyon 
 under Cleisthenes, Argos under Pheidon, this 
 despotism was far from checking the prosperity 
 of the state. The only direct effect of it which 
 we can trace with clearness is the disaffection 
 that it seems to have produced in the other 
 cities of the Phoenician league. We find that 
 in the great trouble that was soon to come upon 
 
 are involuntarily borrowed from the surrounding present." 
 — Grote, i., p. 454. 
 
 1 Lenormant, ii., p. 187. 
 
74 Historical Relations. 
 
 Tyre, few if any of its subject towns stood by 
 it, but all hastened to make submission to the 
 invader. This was S argon, the father of 
 Sennacherib. There is reason to believe that 
 he was a usurper, and the founder of a new 
 and vigorous dynasty. 1 On his inscriptions he 
 claims the honour of the capture of Samaria, 
 and the completion of the captivity of Israel. 
 From other sources we learn that he made a 
 determined attack upon Phoenicia, which was 
 indeed the natural result of his possession of 
 Damascus. During the earlier years of the 
 Assyrian empire, its monarchs had been con- 
 tented in the main with conducting their 
 commerce with the west through the agency 
 of the desert tribes, who served as carriers 
 for the Phoenicians. But the absorption of 
 the Chaldaeans had given a more purely 
 military and aggressive character to the king- 
 dom of Nineveh. 2 The kingdom of Damascus, 
 which, itself a dangerous neighbour to the 
 maritime states, had still served as their ad- 
 vanced guard against the Assyrians, had been 
 greatly weakened by the victories of Joash and 
 
 1 Rawlinson's Herodotus, i., p. 385. 
 
 2 Cp. Kenrick, p. 372, and Movers, ii., 1, p. 376, sqq. 
 
Capture of Samaria. 75 
 
 Jeroboam II. ; and finally fell an easy prey 
 to "the Tiger Lord of Asshur " (Tiglath- 
 Pileser), who captured Damascus, and slew the 
 last of its monarchs, Rezin. A firm alliance 
 between Syria, the two Jewish kingdoms, and 
 Phoenicia, might possibly have interposed an 
 effectual barrier to the growth of Assyria, 1 but 
 divided by mutual jealousies, they were power- 
 less to resist the conqueror's march. 2 The 
 trans-Jordanic tribes were swept into captivity; 
 the successor of the Tiger-king again attacked 
 the land of Israel, 3 and either he or the monarch 
 who seems to have supplanted him completed 
 the ruin of the northern kingdom. The narra- 
 tive in the Book of Kings leaves us with 
 
 1 Movers has shown reason for believing that within 
 the kingdom of Israel there was a strong party in favour of 
 Assyria (ii., I, p. 378), which the monarchs of that country 
 fostered in accordance with their policy at that time. 
 
 2 We find only one instance of any attempt to form 
 such a league. Towards the close of the reign of Tiglath- 
 Pileser, Mutton, king of Tyre, made an alliance with 
 Pekah, and they both refused to pay tribute to Assyria. 
 But an army was sent to enforce obedience. Hoshea 
 formed a conspiracy, slew Pekah, and then made terms 
 himself with Assyria, and Mutton finding himself de- 
 serted, was obliged to follow his example. — See Lenormant, 
 i., 391 (cp. p. 172, where there is a more doubtful instance 
 of the same kind). 
 
 3 Lenormant, i., p. 392. Cp. p. 1 75. 
 
76 Historical Relations. 
 
 the impression that it was Shalmaneser who 
 captured the city of Samaria ; but this is not 
 directly asserted, and his successor, Sargon, 
 claims the exploit for himself in one of the 
 Khorsabad inscriptions. It seems most probable 
 that the latter was Tartan, or commander-in- 
 chief of the Assyrian army ; and that the block- 
 ade of Samaria was commenced by Shalmaneser; 
 but that on his death, either after he had 
 returned to Assyria, or else in the land of 
 Israel, or perhaps even in consequence of a 
 rebellion at home occasioned by the long 
 absence of the monarch from the capital, 1 
 Sargon succeeded in establishing himself on the 
 throne. It is certainly to him that we must 
 ascribe the important campaigns that followed. 
 The inscription already referred to recounts, 
 probably with truth, numerous other conquests 
 which followed that of Samaria, all marked by 
 the same extensive deportations of the con- 
 quered nations. 2 But in one case the monu- 
 mental record is incomplete, or rather false. 
 After describing the battle of Raphia, in which 
 
 Rawlinson's Herodotus; i., p. 387. 
 2 For the objects of this policy see Ewald's good re- 
 marks, iii., pp. 302, 303. 
 
Siege of Tyre. 77 
 
 the king of Gaza, and SJiebek? king of Egypt, 
 were routed, and compelled to promise " tribute 
 of gold, spices, horses, and camels," Sargon goes 
 on to say : " Master of battles I crossed the 
 sea of Jamnia in ships, like a fish. I annexed 
 Kui and Tyre." The annals of Tyre, preserved 
 by Josephus (Ant. IX., 14, 2), give a very 
 different and probably truer story. 2 " Elulseus, 
 to whom they gave the name Pya, ruled for 
 thirty-six years. Upon the revolt of the 
 Kittians, 3 he sailed against them, and reduced 
 them to submission. Shalmaneser, having sent 
 an army against these people, overran the whole 
 of Phoenicia, and then, having made peace with 
 all, returned home. But Sidon, and Ake, and 
 Palae-Tyrus, and many other cities, revolted 
 from the Tyrians, and gave themselves up to 
 the king of Assyria. Then, as the Tyrians 
 had not submitted to him, the king marched 
 against them again, and the Phoenicians con- 
 tributed a fleet of sixty ships and eight hundred 
 row-boats (liriKWTrovg). But the Tyrians sailing 
 
 1 So, according to the Masoretic pointing in 2 Kings xvii. 
 4, but cp. Ewald, iii., 316, note 1. (First German edition.) 
 
 2 Cp. Movers, ii., 1, pp. 383 — 385. 
 8 Chittim, of Cyprus. 
 
7 8 Historical Relations. 
 
 against these with twelve ships, scattered the 
 enemy's fleet, and took about five hundred 
 prisoners, and all in Tyre won much honour by 
 this. So the king- of Assyria returned home, 
 after posting guards at the river [apparently 
 the copious spring of Ras-el-Ain, praised so 
 by Nonnus, xl. 360] * and the aqueducts, to pre- 
 vent the Tyrians from drawing water. But the 
 Tyrians held out for five years, and got their 
 water from wells that they dug." 2 Here, as per- 
 haps in the Jewish annals, Shalmaneser is con- 
 fused with Sargon ; but this furnishes no ground 
 for speaking of the account as " probably unhis- 
 torical." 3 Movers has well pointed out the im- 
 portance of Cyprus (probably an old possession 
 of the Assyrians in their earlier palmy days), 4 
 not only from its great productiveness, but also 
 as the only station for a fleet, intended to operate 
 against Phoenicia and Egypt, which would be 
 accessible to the Assyrian monarchs. It is pro- 
 bable, therefore, that the revolt of Cyprus against 
 
 1 Kenrick, p. 346. 
 
 2 Translated from the original, cp. Movers, /. c. The 
 version by Lenormant is not very correct (i., p. 396). Cp. 
 Cheyae's Isaiah, p. 91. 
 
 3 Rawlinson, u. s., p. 386, note 4. 
 
 4 See Movers, ii., 1, p. 292. 
 
Result of the Siege. 79 
 
 the Tyrian rule was the work of Assyrian policy, 
 and was supported by Assyrian arms. The 
 appeal to the monarchy of Nineveh at this time 
 has a parallel in the appeal to the king of Persia 
 afterwards when the island seemed in the way 
 to become a powerful Greek kingdom under 
 Evagoras. 1 The connection of this campaign 
 with the battle of Raphia will readily be under- 
 stood if we remember that to Egypt the Israel- 
 ites, the Phoenicians, and the Philistines all were 
 looking as their ally against the threatening 
 domination of Assyria. It was the discovery of 
 a conspiracy of Hoshea with Seveh, or Shebek, 
 king of Egypt, that led to the complete captivity 
 of the northern kingdom ; and the prophets of 
 the period have constant references to the con- 
 nection of interests and (intermittingly) of action 
 between the various objects of the ambition of 
 Assyria. The earlier Zechariah, in words already 
 quoted, speaks of the alarm that should fall upon 
 Askelon and Ashdod at hearing of the fate of 
 Tyre ; and Isaiah in several passages speaks of 
 Egypt as the hope of Phoenicia, though he does not 
 fail to point out how untrustworthy this hope was. 2 
 
 1 Grote, vii., pp. 17 — 20 (8 vol. ed.) 
 
 2 Is. xx. 5, 6,xxiii. 5. Cp. Ewald, iii., p. 316; Movers, ii., 
 1, p. 394, sq. 
 
80 Historical Relations. 
 
 The result of this blockade of the island-city 
 of Tyre is not stated definitely by any authority, 
 for the Khorsabad inscription may refer only to 
 Palae-Tyrus. But Movers 1 supplies some very 
 strong arguments for believing that the reduction 
 of the city was at last effected, not the least 
 forcible of which is the very suspicious silence of 
 the fragment of Menander (ap. Josephum 2 ) as to 
 the final issue. The capture of some five hun- 
 dred prisoners would hardly have been dwelt 
 upon so much if it had been cast into the shade 
 by a five years' successful defiance of the whole 
 power of Assyria. It is only one of the sadly 
 numerous instances in which M. Lenormant turns 
 unsupported conjectures into unqualified asser- 
 tions, 3 if he writes, "the siege lasted five years ; 
 and at labt the lieutenants of Sargon, tired of 
 their useless efforts, and seeing no probable end 
 
 i ii., i, p. 397—400. 
 
 2 Antiq., ix., 14, 2. Mr. Cheyne draws just the opposite 
 conclusion from the language of Menander (Isaiah, p. 56); 
 but this is alike less natural in itself, and opposed to the 
 many other indications of the result. Sargon, in one of 
 his inscriptions now in the British Museum, distinctly 
 says that he "has destroyed the city of Tyre." Cp. 
 Cheyne's Isaiah, p. 239. 
 
 3 Cp. Edinburgh Review for July, 1870. 
 
Tyre and Assyria. 8 1 
 
 to their undertaking, decided on raising the 
 siege." 1 And again: "At the end of this long 
 and fruitless siege, the Assyrians were compelled 
 to retreat." a There seems, however, reason for 
 believing that the terms conceded were honour- 
 able, and that Tyre was left in a condition of 
 wealth and prosperity. 3 
 
 Now we have again a long period of darkness, 
 all authorities failing us, with the exception of 
 the cuneiform inscriptions, which here and there 
 shed some gleams of light upon the position of 
 the Phoenician cities in relation to Assyria. 
 Movers, writing before any of these records were 
 deciphered, represents the century which elapsed 
 between the siege of Tyre by Sargon's generals, 
 and its capture by Nebuchadnezzar, as one of 
 peaceful submission on their part to the Ninevite 
 empire. 4 The evident desire of the Assyrian 
 monarchs to bind together the various provinces 
 that owned their sway by the ties of commerce 
 and friendly intercourse, and to weld them into 
 a compact and united kingdom, leads us to 
 imagine that they would have furnished every 
 
 1 ii., p. 190. 3 Kenrick, p. 380. 
 
 2 i., p. 396. 4 ii., I, pp. 400—402. 
 
 6 
 
82 Historical Relations. 
 
 protection to the lucrative trade of Tyre. And 
 that this was the case in the main is evident 
 from the great prosperity which the city enjoyed 
 during this period. We have a vivid picture of 
 this in the words of the contemporary prophet 
 Isaiah (xxiii. 7) : 
 
 Who hath decreed this against Tyre, 
 
 The city that dispensed crowns, 
 
 Whose merchants were princes, 
 
 Whose traffickers the honoured of the land ? 
 
 And a magnificent description of the same city, 
 under the emblem of a ship, its wealth, strength, 
 and luxury being symbolized by the beauty and 
 firm structure of one of its own state galleys, 
 is furnished to us by the somewhat later prophet 
 Ezekiel. 1 But in spite of the great material 
 advantages resulting from a close connection 
 with Assyria (counterbalanced, however, to a 
 certain extent by losses arising from the inter- 
 ruption of trade with countries at war with 
 Assyria, and from the establishment of Assyrian 
 colonies), 2 the attractions of the old alliance with 
 Egypt, and the impatience of foreign rule, break- 
 
 1 Chap, xxvii., of which an excellent translation is given 
 by Kenrick, pp. 192 — 195. 
 
 2 Movers, ii., 1, pp. 409 — 412. 
 
Revolts against Assyria. 83 
 
 ing out occasionally with unexpected fierceness 
 in the Phoenician race, sometimes shook their 
 fidelity. We find, for instance, that upon the 
 death of Sargon, Elulaeus, the king of Tyre 
 mentioned before, profited by the temporary 
 confusion that ensued to extend his rule over 
 the other Phoenician cities, and to throw off the 
 yoke of Assyria. The first campaign of Sen- 
 nacherib was directed against the rebel monarch, 
 and seems to have resulted in his expulsion, after 
 the capture of his capital. 1 The next instance of 
 resistance was offered by Sidon, 2 during the dis- 
 turbances which followed the assassination of 
 Sennacherib ; but his successor, Esarhaddon, 
 marched in person into Phoenicia, and quelled 
 the revolt. He says himself of Sidon, in an in- 
 scription : " I have put all its grandees to death ; 
 I destroyed its walls and its houses ; I threw 
 them into the sea ; I destroyed the sites of its 
 temples." 3 
 
 Not twenty years after this, 4 we find the Phoe- 
 nicians again in revolt, this time supported by 
 the Ethiopian king of Egypt, who succeeded 
 Tirhakah ; but the Assyrian monarch, Asshur- 
 
 1 Lenormant, ii., p. 191. 3 Lenormant, ii., p. 192. 
 
 2 Rawlinson, i., p. 390. 4 Rawlinson, i., p. 395. 
 
84 Historical Relations. 
 
 banipal, after a successful campaign in Egypt, 
 reduced them again to submission. 
 
 The great Scythic invasion of B.C. 620 (circ.) 
 seems to have had but little permanent effect 
 upon any of the nations over which it swept like 
 a whirlwind. But the revival of Egyptian power 
 under Psammetichus, and the capture and de- 
 struction of Nineveh by the Medes and Baby- 
 lonians, were far more fruitful of results. 1 When 
 Necho, the son of Psammetichus, advanced into 
 Syria to share the spoils of the Ninevite empire, 
 the Phoenician cities seem to have welcomed 
 him with alacrity, and aided him with their fleet 
 in his probably successful attempt to circum- 
 navigate Africa. Josiah, faithful to his Babylo- 
 nian allies, in vain endeavoured to stop the course 
 of the invader at Megiddo, and was slain in 
 battle there ; but the Egyptian army suffered a 
 complete defeat at Carchemish, at the hands 
 of Nebuchadnezzar. Syria was utterly lost to 
 the Pharaohs, and when afterwards the kings of 
 Egypt attempted to protect their frontier by 
 securing the alliance of the kings of Judah, they 
 only brought ruin on their allies. At the time 
 of the capture of Jerusalem, in the reign of 
 
 1 Ewald, iii., p. 424, sq. 
 
Siege of Tyre. 85 
 
 Jehoiakim, 1 and again when it suffered the same 
 fate under Jehoiachin, Nebuchadnezzar seems to 
 have had no leisure to turn his arms against 
 Phoenicia, and its citizens began to feel them- 
 selves secure. 2 But Ezekiel warned them in 
 words of eloquent denunciation of the desola- 
 tion that should soon come upon them : " Because 
 that Tyrus hath said against Jerusalem, Aha, she 
 is broken that was the gates of the nations : I 
 shall be replenished, now she is laid waste : there- 
 fore thus saith the Lord God, Behold I am 
 against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many 
 nations to come up against thee, as the sea 
 causeth his waves to come up. And they shall 
 destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her 
 towers." The prophecy was soon, at least in 
 spirit, to be fulfilled. It was probably after the 
 capture of Jerusalem that Nebuchadnezzar 
 
 1 See, however, Stanley, " Jewish Church,'' ii., p. 539. 
 
 2 There seems even to have been at this time some 
 alliance between Phoenicia and the Chaldeans. At least 
 Apries (Pharaoh Hophra) is said to have taken Sidon by 
 storm, and fought a naval battle with the Tyrians (Herod., 
 ii., p. i6t). Perhaps they changed sides after the battle of 
 Carchemish, or at least were neutral. Lenormant how- 
 ever places this invasion of Uahprahet (as he calls him) 
 after the capture of Tyre. But see Sir J. G. Wilkinson's 
 note in Rawlinson's Herodotus, /. c. 
 
86 Historical Relations. 
 
 marched against the Phoenician cities, which 
 seem (willingly or by compulsion) to have joined 
 the coalition of Zedekiah and Pharaoh Hophra, 
 with the Moabites, the Ammonites, and the 
 Edomites, against the Babylonian conqueror. 1 
 Tyre was the only one which offered any lasting 
 resistance, and against this the full force of 
 Nebuchadnezzar was directed. The thirteen 
 years' siege that ensued was one of the most 
 famous in history ; but, as in the case of the 
 leaguer of Sargon, we are quite unable to speak 
 with confidence as to its termination. It has 
 usually been supposed that Tyre was taken and 
 destroyed ; but this supposition rests upon the 
 assumption that the prophecies of Ezekiel must 
 have had a complete and exact fulfilment. The 
 instance of Jonah at Nineveh shows us that this 
 need not have been so, and other words of the 
 prophet, spoken sixteen years after his first de- 
 nunciations, seem to imply that the fate which he 
 had threatened did not actually fall upon Tyre. 
 
 i See last note on the preceding page ; cp. Movers, ii.. 
 I, pp. 426 and 450 — 458. 
 
 2 Ezek. xxix. 1 7. Cp. Kenrick, pp. 388 — 390, and Diet. 
 Bible, s.v. Tyre. Hitzig on Ezek. xxvi. denies that the 
 prophecy was ever fulfilled. Fairbairn naturally takes the 
 opposite view. 
 
PJiocnicia subject to Babylon. 87 
 
 Movers has discussed the question with his 
 usual exhaustive completeness (ii. I. 427 — 449), 
 and comes to the conclusion that the city finally 
 submitted, but on honourable conditions, and 
 that at any rate the island-city was never cap- 
 tured by force. Be this as it may, the long 
 duration of the sie°;e must have inflicted a 
 serious blow upon the prosperity of Tyre ; and 
 though we find a series of kings filling the 
 throne down to the days of Alexander, they 
 were little more than satraps of the kings of 
 Babylon, and afterwards of Persia. The inde- 
 pendent national life of the Phoenician cities 
 terminated with their absorption into the empire 
 of Nebuchadnezzar. The same limit may be 
 assigned for the purposes of the present essay 
 to the national life of the children of Israel ; 
 and here we may close this rapid survey of the 
 exterior history of the mutual relations of the 
 two great peoples of Palestine. The following 
 chapters will contain a consideration of the re- 
 sults, political, social, and religious, of these 
 relations. 
 
88 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF PHOENICIA UPON ISRAEL, 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. 
 
 Common Race Characteristics — For the most part lost — 
 Canaanite and Phoenician Influence tending in the same 
 direction — Counteracting Influences — Vows — Civic Leagues — 
 Literature — Manufactures — Phoenician carrying Trade — Direct 
 ♦Commerce. 
 
 " ' I V HE earliest period of antiquity was an age 
 t*- when nations were not crowded together 
 in large loose masses, but lived one beside the 
 other, like so many families, each retaining its 
 own sharply defined character and distinct cul- 
 ture ; and when even the smallest tribe shut itself 
 up in its own individuality, and relied solely on 
 its own resources to attain whatever appeared to 
 be its highest good. . . . Just as Athens and 
 Rome, with the smallest possible territory, could 
 gain a place in the history of the world, so also 
 could a nation of Palestine. Now two nations 
 of Palestine, we know, above all others that met 
 
Common Semitic Characteristics. 89 
 
 there, bore away this palm, — two nations so dif- 
 ferent that it is hard to imagine a stronger con- 
 trast, and even acting upon each other in virtue 
 of this very contrast to intensify their divergence, 
 yet both of them so constituted that the result 
 of their endeavours became permanent, and 
 among* the most conspicuous fruits of the world's 
 history." 1 
 
 Before we attempt to determine the nature 
 and results of their action on each other, two 
 stumbling-blocks must be removed that present 
 themselves at the very commencement of our 
 path. The Israelites, as we have already seen, 
 probably belonged to the same great stock, if 
 not to the same division of it, as the Phoenicians; 
 and for centuries they had within their borders the 
 remnants of conquered tribes that had the closest 
 affinity to the population of the maritime cities. 
 If then we find any points of resemblance to 
 the latter in the political, social, and religious 
 conditions of the former, we shall have to attempt 
 the preliminary inquiry how far these are due to 
 the inherent tendencies of the Semitic stock, and 
 how far they may be ascribed to the internal 
 action of the Canaanite tribes ; and it is only 
 1 Ewald, i., pp. 223, 234. 
 
90 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 that which still remains unaccounted for by the 
 action of these constant, and, so to speak, primary 
 influences, that can fairlv be traced to the con- 
 scious or unconscious agency of the Phoenicians. 
 The first of these questions admits the more 
 readily of at least partial solution, but in both 
 we shall probably have to content ourselves with 
 an approximation to the truth. 
 
 The evidence of language, here apparently 
 incontestable, proves that the Phoenicians be- 
 longed to the Semitic stock, 1 but the historian is 
 fairly puzzled to find the prevalent Semitic cha- 
 racteristics entirely wanting among the Phoeni- 
 cians. " The proper characteristic of the Semites 
 is to have no industry, no political spirit, no 
 municipal organization ; navigation and coloni- 
 zation seem distasteful to them ; their action 
 confined itself to the East, and entered into the 
 current of the affairs of Europe only indirectly. 
 In Phoenicia, on the contrary, we find an in- 
 dustrial civilization, political revolutions, the 
 most active commerce that was known to an- 
 tiquity, a nation incessantly penetrating in all 
 directions into the outer world, and mingled in 
 all the destinies of the Mediterranean nations. 
 
 1 See above, p. 10. 
 
Phoenician Characteristics. 91 
 
 In religion there is the same contrast : instead of 
 the severe monotheism, the lofty conception of 
 the Deity, the pure ritual which characterizes 
 the Semitic nations, we find among the Phoe- 
 nicians a coarse mythology, base and ignoble 
 gods, voluptuousness raised to an act of religion. 
 The most sensual myths of antiquity, the 
 phallic rites, the trade in prostitutes, the infa- 
 mous institutions of the Galli and the ItpoSovXoi 
 come in great measure from Phoenicia. Perhaps 
 if we had to point out among all the nations of 
 antiquity those whose physiognomy contrasted 
 most with that of the Semites, we should be 
 tempted to name the Phoenicians. And yet 
 this is the nation which linguistic facts prove to 
 have been in the closest fraternity with the 
 Hebrews." 1 The only solution of this enigma is 
 to suppose that the Phoenicians, separating 
 early from the general stock, and rapidly de- 
 veloping a luxurious commercial life, abandoned 
 their primitive character, but not their language, 
 and so became soon very distinct from and 
 almost the opposite of their nomadic brethren. 2 
 
 1 Renan, "Histoire des Langues Semitiques." pp. 183, 
 184. 
 
 2 This is of course directly opposed to the theory of 
 
92 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 M. Renan reminds us of the marvellous change 
 which, with all its narrow and exclusive patriot- 
 ism, has passed over the Jewish nation ; and 
 tells us that the baseness and the degrada- 
 tion of the Arab who pursues commerce and 
 handicrafts in the towns of Barbary furnishes a 
 striking" contrast to the natural pride of the true 
 Arab, the Arab of the desert. 2 Benedict Spinoza, 
 Moses Mendelssohn, and Heinrich Heine are 
 alone enough to show how little race charac- 
 teristics can be regarded as immutable. We may 
 therefore assume with confidence that all or 
 nearly all the points of resemblance between the 
 Phoenicians and Israelites in their primeval home 
 had become obliterated in the course of the 
 centuries which had witnessed them living such 
 diverse lives. 
 
 It is much less easy to determine the effect 
 that the Canaanitish kinsmen of the Phoeni- 
 cians had in producing after the arrival of the 
 
 Prof. Rawlinson, that the Phoenicians did not come into 
 the land about Tyre and Sidon till long after the entrance 
 of the children of Israel on the Promised Land ; but we 
 have seen already that this view is supported by no com- 
 petent authorities, and very few noteworthy arguments. 
 
 2 Renan has well brought out the effects of a nomadic 
 life, p. 498- 
 
Influence of Canaanitcs. 93 
 
 Israelites some degree of assimilation. These 
 Canaanites were very far from being a bar- 
 barous nation ; on the contrary, we have many 
 indications that they had already attained to a 
 high but terribly corrupt civilization, — " a sort of 
 over-ripeness in their beautiful land, which may 
 probably have been largely due to their never- 
 ceasing divisions, through which every petty 
 town could manufacture its own laws, — the 
 worse, the better." 1 The fresh energy of the in- 
 vading hosts, their consciousness of a divine guid- 
 ance, and, we need not fear to add, the direct 
 assistance of Jahveh (vouchsafed to the chosen 
 people), carried the Israelites victorious through 
 the first great battles of the war. But though 
 they established themselves firmly in the strong- 
 holds of the hill country, il walking," as their 
 poets loved to express it, " on the high places of 
 the land," 2 the fertile valleys remained to a large 
 extent in the hands of the Canaanites, and the 
 settlements of the Israelites were often " like 
 islands shaken by a stormy ocean." 3 As soon as 
 the firm controlling hand of Joshua was removed, 
 
 1 Ewald, i., p. 241. 
 
 2 See references in Ewald, ii., p. 264. 
 
 3 Ewald, ibid. 
 
94 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 the invaders became at once disorganized and 
 disunited, and to the isolated communities the 
 neighbourhood of the luxurious and cultured 
 Canaanites must have furnished constant sources 
 of attraction and temptation. The story of the 
 sin of Achan gives us just a glimpse into the 
 wealth which, even thus early, traffic with the 
 East must have brought into the land ; and 
 there are not wanting indications of manufac- 
 turing industry. The " prey of diverse colours," 
 which the mother of Sisera is represented as 
 anticipating, may well have been the product of 
 the looms of the conquered Canaanites. We 
 must certainly ascribe to their influence, and not 
 to that of the Phoenicians, during this early 
 period at any rate, the constant lapses from the 
 worship of Jahveh into the foul and idolatrous 
 cult of Baal and Ashtaroth. The simple words 
 of the Book of Judges bring this forcibly before 
 us : " And the children of Israel dwelt among 
 the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and 
 Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites : and they 
 took their daughters to be their wives, and gave 
 their daughters to their sons, and served their 
 gods. And the children of Israel did evil in the 
 sight of the Lord, and forgat the Lord their 
 
Counteracting Influences. 95 
 
 God, and served Baalim and the groves" (Ash- 
 taroth). 1 Yet, in the midst of all the effeminate 
 vice that is implied in these words, the character 
 of the Jewish nation seems to have retained much 
 of its primitive simplicity. We must never forget 
 that the dangerous attractions of the Canaanites 
 were counterbalanced to a certain extent by the 
 bitter hostility that must have lain beneath tem- 
 porary alliances and connexions, and that there 
 were rarely wanting some faithful adherents of 
 Jahveh to call the people back to their alle- 
 giance to the God of their fathers. 2 A victory 
 like that of Deborah and Barak must have 
 swept away the results of years of treacherously 
 peaceful intercourse. And on the whole the 
 impression that we derive from the chronicle of 
 this period is that of primitive simplicity rather 
 than luxurious civilization. " The disorders of 
 the time breathe always the air rather of the 
 desert than of the city." 3 Many little phrases 
 still in use remind us of the nomadic life of the 
 desert; 4 and the story of Ruth, as "she stood 
 
 1 Judges iii. 5 — 7. 
 
 2 Compare the story of the overthrow of the altar of 
 Baal in Ophrah, by Gideon. 
 
 3 Stanley, "Jewish Church," i., p. 294. 
 
 4 Cp. Stanley, //. s., p. 295. 
 
96 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 in tears amid the alien corn," is full of a delicious 
 pastoral freshness. 1 The whole constitution of 
 Joshua was directed to the establishment and 
 maintenance of the bulk of the nation in the 
 condition of small yeomen farmers ; 2 and any 
 one who has studied with care the internal his- 
 tory of the Roman Republic 3 will understand 
 the vital importance of his salutary regulations 
 as to the tenure of land to the strength and 
 stability of the nation. In spite of the many 
 temptations from the Canaanites, it was possible 
 to preserve, at least in the parts of the country 
 furthest removed from the corrupting atmo- 
 sphere of the larger towns, a national life funda- 
 mentally pure and wholesome. This might 
 have been attained in a far higher degree if 
 the Divine commands had been faithfully exe- 
 cuted, the Canaanites rooted out, and each free 
 citizen placed in possession of his share of the 
 fertile territory. Even as it was, this period had 
 its gleams of light breaking through the dark- 
 
 1 Cp. Ewald, i., p. 154 ; ii., p. 320. 
 
 2 Cp. especially Milman, " History of the Jews," i., pp. 
 161 and 230 — 233. 
 
 3 The land-question at Rome is admirably discussed by 
 Ihne, " Romische Geschichte," vol. i., book ii., cc. 7 and 
 17 ; book hi., c. 3. 
 
General Simplicity of Life. 97 
 
 ness, or perhaps we should rather say that if we 
 could penetrate the veil that too much hides it 
 from us, we should find that what is covered 
 is far less gloomy than we might have 
 imagined. We need not follow Ewald in his 
 somewhat arbitrary and dogmatic assignment of 
 the Biblical narrative to various authors, whose 
 dates and tendencies he fixes with so much con- 
 fidence. 1 But we may be willing to admit that 
 the main object of the compiler of the Book of 
 Judges was to point out the evils that resulted 
 from anarchy, and from a desertion of the one 
 true God, and that he passed over all that would 
 not tend to impress this the more deeply on the 
 minds of his readers. 2 
 
 The veil is lifted for us once ; and though the 
 view that we get then shows us the life of 
 Northern Israel at a somewhat later time than 
 that which we are now considering, we may well 
 
 1 Cp. i., pp. 159—163. 
 
 2 It is hard to see the force of Ewald's arguments for 
 assigning the work to two early authorities and a later 
 redacteur. There is nothing unnatural, it seems to me, 
 in supposing that the same writer, living in the reign of 
 one of the good kings, wished to exalt both the advan- 
 tages of monarchy, and the blessings that accompanied 
 fidelity to Jahveh. 
 
 7 
 
9 8 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 believe that for our present purpose it may be 
 taken as a faithful representation of the condi- 
 tion of things at an earlier period. The beau- 
 tiful " Song of Solomon" is probably but little 
 later than the days of the great monarch whose 
 name it bears, for this idyllic drama must have 
 been composed before Tirzah had ceased to be 
 a capital city almost rivalling Jerusalem. 1 It 
 breathes throughout a spirit of reaction against 
 the splendour of the court of Solomon, and the 
 polygamy that threatened to corrupt the simple 
 domestic life of the people. While on the one 
 hand it points to a condition of no small literary 
 development, on the other hand it is fragrant 
 with the freshness and innocence of rustic life, 
 contrasted sharply with the luxury and effemi- 
 nacy of the city and the palace. We cannot 
 believe that the picture of the fairest among 
 women that went her way forth by the foot- 
 steps of the flock, and fed her kids beside the 
 shepherds' tents, is drawn entirely from the 
 fancy of the poet. In all the temptations to vice 
 that abounded in the groves of Ashtaroth, there 
 must have been many a fresh and simple heart, 
 
 1 See Ewald, iii., pp. 173 — 175. Renan assigns it to the 
 lifetime of Solomon. See the Preface to his translation. 
 
Position of Women. 99 
 
 that murmured to itself, " My dove, my unde- 
 fined is one, she the one of her mother, she the 
 choice of her that bare her." x 
 
 The surest test of the moral elevation of an 
 age we find in reverence for women, 2 and if we 
 find them, even in the more corrupt and dis- 
 organized tribes of Northern Canaan, distributing 
 the spoil in the rejoicings after victory, 3 and in 
 general enjoying unusual freedom and respect, 
 we cannot believe that the heart of the nation 
 can have been deeply tainted. We find indeed 
 outbursts of licentious passion, resulting in 
 horrible outrage, but the words with which such 
 deeds were spoken of, "such folly should not be 
 wrought in Israel," point to a national life still 
 sound and morally awake. 4 
 
 Two points dwelt upon by Dean Stanley as 
 instances of Phoenician influence would seem to 
 be more justly ascribed to the intercourse with 
 
 1 Cant. vi. 9. 
 
 2 We cannot fail to remember how Tacitus loves to 
 bring this out in his contrast of the fresh Teutonic tribes 
 with his own fast-sinking country. Compare, too, the 
 Penelope and Nausicaa of Homer with Pericles' idea ol 
 woman, and the wife of Xenophon's (Economicus. 
 
 3 Judges v. 11 ; Ps. lxviii. 11. sq. ; Is. ix. 5 (from Ewald, 
 
 ii-, P- 355)- 
 
 4 Cp. Ewald, ii., p. 351. with references in note 2. 
 
I CO Political and Social Influence. 
 
 the Canaanites. The first is the tendency to 
 the frequent use of vows. " The impulse from 
 his early oath, which nerved the courage and 
 patriotism of Hannibal from childhood to age in 
 his warfare against Rome, may fitly be taken 
 as an illustration of the feeling which, in its 
 highest and noblest forms, led to the consecra- 
 tion of Samson and Samuel, and in its unautho- 
 rized excesses to the rash vows of the whole 
 nation against the tribe of Benjamin, of Jeph- 
 thah against his daughter, of Saul against 
 Jonathan. These spasmodic efforts after self- 
 restraint are precisely what we should expect in 
 an age which had no other mode of steadying 
 its purposes amidst the general anarchy in which 
 it was enveloped, and accordingly in that age 
 they first appear, and within its limits expire." 1 
 But it must 'not escape our notice that all the 
 instances here adduced are drawn from the very 
 tribes that must have been exposed the least 
 to purely Phoenician influences. It is going 
 far from the most immediate and potent cause 
 to trace such influence in the case of the trans- 
 Jordanic Jephthah. The striking parallel of 
 Hannibal's oath only tends to confirm our 
 1 Jewish Church, i., p. 294. 
 
Oaths and Vows. 101 
 
 belief in the fundamental identity of the Canaan- 
 ites and the Phoenicians, and not to induce us 
 to ascribe to the latter what may well be traced 
 to the former. Similar reasoning seems to hold 
 good as regards Dean Stanley's second instance. 
 Ewald rightly lays much stress upon the change 
 from a purely tribal constitution to a confederate 
 civic life, such as that displayed by the league 
 that placed itself under the protection of Baal- 
 Berith, the ''Covenant God." 1 But when he says 
 that the example of such civic life and civic 
 leagues was obviously given to the northern 
 regions by their Phoenician neighbours, and by 
 the ancient Canaanite customs, we may fairly 
 ask what need there is to assume the agency of 
 the former, when the influence of the latter was 
 of itself adequate to produce the results. Indeed 
 there are indications in the account of the league 
 of Baal-Berith, of which Shechem was the cen- 
 tre, to show that it was at least semi-Canaanite 
 in its composition. 
 
 On the other hand, we may fairly ascribe to 
 more direct Phoenician influence the develop- 
 ment of art and of literature among the Israel- 
 
 1 Ewald, ii., pp. 341 — 344. Cp. Judges viii. 33, and 
 Stanley, i., pp. 293 and 352. 
 
102 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 i'tes of the time of the Judges. The origin of 
 writing, and the date of its first employment, 
 are subjects which have been much debated, 
 and the paucity of evidence makes it probable 
 that we shall never be able to arrive at any posi- 
 tive conclusion. " L'ignorance ou nous sommes 
 des vrais rapports des Hebreux d'une part avec 
 ies Hyksos, et de l'autre avec les Pheniciens" 
 d'une epoque reculee, est ici, comme sur une 
 foule de points, la source de grandes perplexites." 1 
 But the opinion of the best authorities appears 
 to be that writing was unknown to the Israelites 
 before their descent into the land of Egypt ; 
 that from some source (probably wholly un- 
 connected with hieroglyphics) they acquired it 
 there, but that it did not come into general use 
 till after they had settled in the land of Canaan. 2 
 At any rate it is certain that a vigorous popular 
 literature was developed during the time of the 
 Judges. There are not only many historical 
 fragments which the most unsparing criticism is 
 compelled to ascribe to this era, but we also 
 find lyrics which unite the greatest boldness and 
 animation with a finished artistic structure. To 
 
 i R<fnan, Histoire, p. 118. See above, pp. 41 — 43. 
 
 2 Cp. Renan,pp. 1 12— 118; Ewald, i. ; 45—53 ; ii., 19—21. 
 
Literature. 103 
 
 take the most striking instance, the Song of 
 Deborah \ x " The solemn religious commencement 
 — the picturesque description of the state of the 
 country — : the mustering of the troops from all 
 quarters — the sudden transition to the most 
 contemptuous sarcasm against the tribes that 
 stood aloof — the life, fire, and energy of the 
 battle — the bitter pathos of the close," 2 combine 
 to make it all but unrivalled in the literature of 
 any nation. The moral elevation, and the firm 
 reliance on the protection of Jahveh, the con- 
 fidence in the final overthrow of His enemies, 
 must have been drawn from the heart of the 
 Chosen People, where there lay deep down 
 something better than the Arab's love of wild- 
 ness and isolation, something better than the 
 Phoenician's greed of gain. 3 Bat the perfection 
 of the form in the midst of the archaic simplicity 
 of tone may surely have owed something to the 
 influence of the civilized neighbouring nation, 
 that even then seems to have possessed a 
 
 1 " Le cantique de Debora, dont l'authenticite a enleve 
 les suffrages des critiques les plus difficiles." — Renan, 
 p. 124. 
 
 2 Milman, i., p. 246, where there is a beautiful rhyth- 
 mical translation given. 
 
 3 Ewald, ii., p. 350. 
 
104 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 copious literature. 1 And " a people which on 
 every higher occasion felt itself elevated by 
 refined poetry, and in which songs full of art 
 and wit, sung in alternate choirs by all who 
 bore part in the solemnity, formed the real life 
 and best consecration of a popular festival 
 (and Deborah's songs are clearly of this kind), 
 cannot be considered to stand upon any low 
 level." 2 
 
 It is not easy to determine the extent to 
 which arts and manufactures were to be found 
 among the Israelites at this period. Some 
 among them, at any rate, had acquired no little 
 skill in this respect during their residence in 
 Egypt, for when we are told in the account of 
 the construction of the tabernacle that "the 
 Lord put wisdom and understanding in the 
 heart of Bezaleel and Aholiab, and every wise- 
 hearted man, to know how to work all manner 
 of work for the service of the sanctuary," we 
 are probably only to see in this an instance of 
 
 i The extent to which this argument may be pressed 
 will of course depend upon the amount of adhesion which 
 we give to the theories which would make Jacob's Bless- 
 ing, and Miriam's Song of Triumph, the productions of a 
 later age. See Renan, p. 124. 
 
 2 Ewald, ii., p. 355. 
 
Arts and Manufactures. 105 
 
 the pious and true conception of the Hebrews, 
 who saw in all artistic powers, however acquired, 
 tokens of the favour of the Author of every good 
 and perfect gift. On the other hand, we find 
 that Solomon was obliged to fetch all the skilled 
 workmen for the building of his temple from 
 Phoenicia ; and this seems to point to a great 
 decay rather than an advance in the industrial 
 capacities of his own people. It is natural of 
 course to suppose that the disturbed state of the 
 country during the period of the Judges, and 
 the repeated invasions and oppressions by foreign 
 nations, should have produced this. But we 
 may also attach much weight to the neighbour- 
 hood of the iroXv^ai^aXoL SiSwviot, as Homer 
 calls them. When a highly civilized manufac- 
 turing nation is brought into contact with one of 
 inferior social advancement, it not unfrequently 
 happens that its influence on the native industry 
 of the latter is all but fatal. We can readily 
 conceive that those of the Israelites who re- 
 tained some knowledge of the various processes 
 of manufacture that they had learnt in Egypt, 
 would find themselves driven from the markets 
 of their own towns and villages by the superior 
 artistic excellence, and possibly greater cheap- 
 
1 06 Political and Social Influence* 
 
 ness (the result of slave labour), of the goods 
 that were brought in constantly by the Phoe- 
 nician hucksters. 1 They would thus naturally be- 
 take themselves to agriculture, thereby making 
 their former rivals their eager customers, and 
 all knowledge of higher art-workmanship would 
 die out by degiees from among them. This 
 view is of course not inconsistent with the exist- 
 ence of a certain amount of domestic industry. 
 Of this we have evidence in the picture given us 
 in the Book of Proverbs of the virtuous woman 
 who "maketh fine linen and selleth it : she de- 
 livereth girdles to the Canaanite." 2 The use of 
 the Gentile name, found in Hosea and Isaiah 
 also, as a synonym for merchant or pedlar, may 
 arise from the identity of the Phoenicians and 
 the Canaanites ; but it seems more probable 
 that the ancient inhabitants of the country, de- 
 prived of all their land, had to betake them- 
 selves to petty trade as the only means of a 
 livelihood open to them. 3 
 
 1 On these see Kenrick, p. 232. More is said of them 
 below. 
 
 2 See De Wette's version, xxxi. 24 ; xii. 7 ; xxiii. 8 ; 
 cp. Movers, ii., 3, p. 12, and Renan, Histoire, etc., 
 
 p. 183. 
 
 3 Kenrick, p. 232. 
 
Commerce. 107 
 
 Hitherto the problem of distinguishing between 
 the influence of the Canaanites in the land, and 
 the Phoenicians on its borders, has been difficult ; 
 it may be, indeed, insoluble. But when we 
 come to consider the results of commerce on a 
 wider scale, we find ourselves on safer ground. 
 Professor Rawlinson has called attention to the 
 fact (already referred to) that " Scripture does 
 not introduce to our notice the real artistic and 
 commercial Tyrians and Sidonians till the 
 reigns of David and Solomon." x But if we are 
 not wrong in following something like a con- 
 sensus of authorities, and in attributing the 
 Phoenician settlements in Canaan to a period 
 antecedent (and probably long antecedent) to 
 the Israelitish conquest, their commerce must 
 already have been very important. There is no 
 doubt that the peace and prosperity of the land 
 under David and Solomon must have greatly 
 increased it ; and therefore in what remains to 
 be said on this subject, the remarks made will 
 apply especially to the period of the kings. But 
 when we find the Phoenicians spoken of almost 
 invariably by the ancients as the inventors of 
 
 1 Herodotus, vol. iv., p. 202. 
 
io8 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 commerce, 1 when Herodotus (i. i), represents the 
 Phoenicians as bringing Egyptian and Assyrian 
 wares to Greece in the very dawn of the mytho- 
 logical period, and when w r e find the cities of 
 Northern Phoenicia, Byblus, Berytus, and Aradus 
 sending out numerous colonies at a time which 
 Movers 2 (perhaps too definitely) places before 
 B.C. 1600, we cannot doubt that the Phoenician 
 commerce was widely extended at the very 
 commencement of the historic period. Just as 
 their trade by sea had its origin in the fishing 
 excursions to which Sidon owed its name, 3 so 
 their trade by land would naturally arise from 
 the need that they had of the agricultural pro- 
 ducts of the inland regions. But the petty 
 trade that had these small beginnings soon 
 developed into a far-reaching commerce. The 
 fortunate position of Phoenicia, " the sole 
 medium of communication between the Semitic 
 race and the rest of the world," i on the coast 
 of the Mediterranean, soon brought it into close 
 commercial relations with Egypt and Assyria. 
 
 1 "Mercaturas invenerunt Poeni," Plin.,vii., p. 57. See 
 many more authorities in Movers, ii., 3, p. 14. 
 
 2 ii-, 3, P. 21. 
 
 3 Movers, ?/. s., p. 15. 
 
 4 Renan, p. 115. 
 
Land Traffic. 109 
 
 The products of the former were perhaps the 
 more immediately valuable, but the trade with 
 the latter was indirectly the most extensive. 
 For through its territories flowed in a ceaseless 
 stream the riches of the remoter East, and the 
 spices and precious stones of India had all to pass 
 through Tyre or Sidon on their way to the western 
 world. Movers rates so highly the value of this 
 commerce in the earliest times, that he holds 
 the trade of Sidon in the five centuries that 
 preceded her capture by the Philistines, to have 
 been equal to that of Tyre in its palmiest days. 1 
 It was carried on partly by means of colonies 
 planted along the most frequented routes, partly 
 by settlements of Phoenician traders in foreign 
 towns, 2 but mainly, perhaps, by the travelling 
 merchants, going from fair to fair, and forming 
 caravans of asses and mules for their shorter 
 journeys, but camels and dromedaries when- 
 ever they had to cross the desert. 3 These 
 caravans were usually managed by the Arabs, 
 so that the prophet was describing what he had 
 seen already, in a measure, when he said of the 
 
 1 ii "X d 22 
 
 2 Movers, ii., 3, pp. 112 — 126. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 128, and the Biblical references in note 3a. 
 
1 1 o Political and Social Influence. 
 
 future glory of Israel, " The stream of camels 
 shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midlan and 
 Ephah ; all they from Sheba shall come ; they 
 shall brinsr crold and incense." 1 For their on- 
 venience, ''highways in the desert' had been 
 constructed at a very early period, and supplied 
 with wells and caravanserais. 2 Now most, and 
 sometimes all of these routes, passed through 
 the land of the children of Israel ; and apart 
 from the strong security for peace between the 
 two people that was thus afforded, the direct 
 advantages must have been very great. The 
 Phoenician traders would gladly save themselves 
 the burden of carrying provisions with them, 
 until they reached the borders of the desert, and 
 so both for their daily needs, and also, it is 
 probable, for their stock for the desert journey, 
 they would be dependent upon the Jewish 
 peasant proprietors along their route. Where 
 they could, of course they would pay in their 
 
 1 Isa. lx. 6. The passage gains in force if we suppose 
 (accepting the hypothesis of a later origin for Is. xl. — lxvi.) 
 that the prophet was writing at Babylon, and describing 
 one of the caravans that were constantly bringing the 
 wealth of the desert thither. The country with which the 
 historic Isaiah was especially familiar would lie somewhat 
 out of the direct line of this commerce. 
 
 2 Many references in Movers, ii., 3, p. 133. 
 
Value of Silver. 1 1 1 
 
 own manufactured goods, but in many cases 
 silver would be preferred. 
 
 The extent of the whole trade of Phoenicia 
 with the Holy Land, including direct and im- 
 mediate commerce, as well as this traffic, so to 
 speak, en passant, may be guessed at by the 
 comparative plenty of silver. Even in the time 
 of Abraham it was far from uncommon, and its 
 value does not seem to have been excessively 
 high. It is the recognized currency: the patriarch 
 buys a field for 400 shekels of silver, " current 
 with the merchant;" and all the pecuniary 
 penalties in the Mosaic law are assessed in the 
 same way. Now when we remember that this 
 was long before the age of barter had passed 
 away in Greece or in Persia, 1 that silver is very 
 much less widely distributed, and much more 
 difficult to procure than gold, so that the only 
 important silver-mines known before the dis- 
 covery of those at Laureum were the mines of 
 Tarshish ; when we remember, further, that all 
 the silver drawn from this source must have 
 
 1 Perhaps I should rather have written Bactria, for the 
 authority on which I speak is the absence of any men- 
 tion of money in the Zend-Avesta. Cp. Movers, //. s., 
 and Schleicher's Indogermanische Chrestomathie, p. 119, 
 and Compendium, p. 5. 
 
112 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 passed through the hands of the Phoenicians, we 
 may form some notion of the extent of the 
 traffic with Canaan, which made silver not only 
 the established, but also an abundant circulating 
 medium. 1 
 
 The direct trade of Phoenicia with Israel must 
 have been very extensive. We have noticed 
 already the immense importance of the produce 
 of Palestine to the over-peopled Phoenician cities 
 on the coast. Then, as in later times, " their coun- 
 try was nourished by the king's country." 2 Hence 
 we naturally find that Ezekiel places first of the 
 the articles of commerce, Minnith wheat, 3 and 
 Panneg (possibly millet). 4 Indeed, the value of 
 this trade was such that it seems to have been 
 mainly in the hands of the kings, 5 who had large 
 
 i See Movers' very interesting discussion of this ques- 
 tion, ii., 3, pp. 27—57. 
 
 2 Acts xii. 20. 
 
 3 " Judah and the land of Israel were thy merchants : 
 wheat of Minnith and Panneg, grape-honey, and oil and 
 balsam, they brought into thy markets." Movers thinks 
 that Minnith-wheat had come to be used as a generic 
 name for the finest kind. Cp. ii., 3, p. 209. 
 
 4 See Kenrick, p. 194, note 6, and Diet. Bible, in voc. 
 
 5 We may compare the care which the Roman emperors 
 exercised over the corn-supply. The prcefectus annonae 
 was one of the three most important officers in Rome. 
 Cp. Tac. Ann., i., 7, with Orelli's note. 
 
Corn and Oil. 1 1 3 
 
 crown estates themselves in the plain of Sharon. 1 
 The wheat and barley, oil and wine, which Solo- 
 mon eave to the servants of Hiram, were but 
 specimens of the produce that was always flow- 
 ing from the one country into the other. In the 
 north of Palestine they were conveyed by asses, 
 the usual beasts of burden, along the great cara- 
 van roads ; and in this branch of commerce, 
 remunerative, but sometimes attended with de- 
 grading subservience, the tribe of Issachar took 
 a leading part. " Issachar is a strong ass couching 
 down between two burdens, and he saw that rest 
 was good, and the land that it was pleasant ; 
 and he bowed his shoulders to bear, and became 
 a servant unto tribute." 2 The southern district, 
 on the other hand, sent its produce to Joppa, 
 whence it was carried by sea to Tyre and Sidon. 
 The corn trade followed the same line for centu- 
 ries ; we find that even under the Romans the 
 Jews had to send their tribute through Joppa to 
 Sidon, where it was sold for the benefit of the 
 
 1 Movers, ii., 3, p. 210 ; ii., I, pp. 314 and 524. 
 
 2 See above, p. 51 ; and cp. Movers, ii., 1, p. 309/; 
 Ewald, ii., p. 327, who thinks that the same charge 
 might be brought against the other northern tribes, but 
 but that the etymology of the name Issachar {he is a 
 hired servant) caused him to be selected. 
 
 8 
 
1 14 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 imperial exchequer. Movers by an elaborate 
 calculation, which of course can give but an 
 approximation to the truth, in the state of our 
 knowledge on the subject, estimates the value of 
 the wheat annually sold by the Jews in the 
 market of Sidon at more than ^"2,000,000 ster- 
 ling. 1 The trade in olive-oil was the special 
 source of the wealth of southern Palestine, as 
 the corn trade was to the northern tribes ; for 
 " the whole hill country between the high ridges 
 of mountains on which Jerusalem and Hebron 
 lie, is the very country for the olive." 2 But 
 from its very abundance, and the comparatively 
 small demand for it where it was produced, its 
 price was low, and the chief portion of the profit 
 must have been made by the Phoenicians, who 
 sold it into foreign lands, where its reputation 
 was high, 3 and especially to Egypt, where the 
 native oil was bad. Phoenicia produced so much 
 wine itself, that it would have little occasion to 
 import any, so that this department of commerce 
 
 1 Movers, ii., 3, p. 212/. 
 
 2 Ritter, quoted by Movers, ii., 3, p. 215. 
 
 3 Hosea xii. 1 ; Isaiah lvii. 9. But in the latter pas- 
 sage Mr. Cheyne supposes Baal to be the king to whom 
 reference is made. 
 
Other Exports of Palestine. 1 15 
 
 seems to have been of little importance. 1 On 
 the other hand, one of the most valuable exports 
 was honey? under which term we must include 
 not only the produce of bees, but also date- 
 honey, 3 and a kind of inspissated grape-syrup, 
 which is still an export of Palestine, under the 
 name of dibs. Among the other articles of raw- 
 produce which Phoenicia obtained from the 
 children of Israel were wool, flax, linen, and 
 the much-debated byssus. The wool came 
 naturally from the hill country of Gilead and 
 of Judah, while the flax was grown in abun- 
 dance in Galilee. Both were of great im- 
 portance for the Phoenicians, whose trade con- 
 sisted so largely of dyed goods. But the raw 
 material generally did not pass into their hands 
 before it had been woven into fabrics of various 
 kinds, the Galilean women weaving linen espe- 
 
 1 Hitzig (referred to by Renan, p. 207) has pointed out 
 the curious fact that the various words relating to wine 
 among the Semites are not Semitic. Nothing is less 
 likely than that dtvos was borrowed from f^ ; but the re- 
 verse seems probable. See Diet. Bible, hi., p. 1775^. Cp. 
 Curtius, " Griechische Etymologie," p. 363. 
 
 2 &y\ (Ezek. xxvii. 17). 
 
 3 Cp. Plin. xiii. 9, Movers, ii., 3, pp. 216 and 234, note 
 126, with Kenrick, p. 194, note 7. 
 
1 1 6 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 cially, the women of Judah woollen cloth. 1 We 
 may remember how prominent a feature this 
 industry is made in the picture of the virtuous 
 woman given in the Book of Proverbs. That it 
 was highly profitable is shown by Movers from 
 a passage in the Mischna, which rates the weekly 
 earnings of a woman at from five to ten shekels 
 of silver. The linen of Palestine seems to have 
 been particularly famous ; at a later time we 
 find that which came from Scythopolis ranking 
 above all other known kinds. Byssus, which 
 was grown in Canaan from a very early age, 
 Movers holds to have been a kind of cotton, 
 gathered not from the cotton-tree, which was 
 not known till a later period, but from a species 
 of annual shrub. 2 Whatever it may have been, 
 it furnished another article of commerce for the 
 Phoenician traders. If we add to these products 
 dates, resin (the so-called balm of Gilead), styrax, 
 ladanum, asphalt, and, most precious of all, the 
 
 1 Movers, ii., 3, pp. 216, 217. 
 
 1 u. s., pp. 218, 219. Cp. Sir J. G. Wilkinson's note to 
 Herod., ii., p. 86, note 6. " Byssus in its real sense was 
 cotton, but it was also a general term." On the other 
 hand, Mr. Yates (Textrinum Antiquorum, p. 276), and 
 Mr. W. A. Wright (Diet. Bible, ii. p. 123^), hold that it 
 was strictly fine linen. 
 
Imports of Palestine. 1 17 
 
 true balsam, that was worth twice its own weight 
 in silver, we shall have completed the list of the 
 principal exports of the land of Israel. 
 
 Of her imports from Phoenicia we are able to 
 form a less definite conception. The linen and 
 woollen cloth woven by the women of Israel 
 would doubtless be brought back to them dyed 
 in the famous Tyrian purples ; and articles of 
 luxury of every kind would be carried from 
 house to house by the Canaanitish pedlars 
 already referred to. But there are only two 
 important items of commerce on which we 
 can speak with definiteness. In Jerusalem the 
 Tyrians had established a trade in fish, 1 probably 
 the salted tunnies of the Euxine, that were a 
 favourite food at Athens, possibly even the 
 pickled fish of Gades, which the Carthaginians 
 valued so highly that in the days of their rule 
 of Spain they forbade any to be exported, save 
 to their own metropolis. 2 Besides this, we may 
 be sure that it was from Phoenicia that the 
 
 1 Nehemiah xiii. 16. On the Phoenician tunny-fisheries 
 there is much information collected in Nilsson's " Die 
 Ureinwohner des Scandinavischen Nordens," pp. 75 — 77. 
 Nilsson holds that the people of the Bronze Age in 
 Scandinavia were Phoenicians. 
 
 2 Aristotle, quoted by Kenrick, p. 225. 
 
1 1 8 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 Israelites derived all their vessels and utensils of 
 bronze ; iron they had apparently in their own 
 land ; x but the tin which was absolutely needful 
 if the copper, which they dug out of the hills, was 
 to be of any use to them, could only reach them 
 from the few and distant places where it was 
 found, 2 by the agency of Phoenician merchants. 3 
 In inscriptions of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
 dynasties in Egypt, Phoenician vases of bronze 
 are frequently mentioned, and figured in the 
 wall-paintings. 4 Glass-making and pottery were 
 arts in which the natives of Sidon excelled ; and 
 articles of jewellery and carved ivory, found in 
 the recent excavation, show the skill and taste 
 to which they had attained. It is probable that 
 the ornaments of the Jewish women, of which we 
 have so long a catalogue in Isaiah (iii. 18 — 23), 
 were almost all of Phoenician workmanship. 3 
 
 1 Deut. viii. 9, " whose stones are iron." 
 
 2 Kenrick, p. 2\iff. 
 
 3 M. Lenormant (ii., pp. 157, 158) has some very good 
 remarks, chiefly taken from M. de Rougemont's L'Age 
 du Bronze, mi les Semites en Occident, on the early im- 
 portance of the tin-trade ; but it would take us too far 
 from our immediate subject to follow him. 
 
 4 Lenormant, ii., p. 215. 
 
 5 Cp. Heeren, " Historische Werke," xi. 94, notet ; and 
 Nilsson, " Das Bronzealter, — Nachtrag," p. 32. 
 
Imports. 1 1 9 
 
 But when we have given due weight to all these 
 various imports, there will probably be a balance 
 of trade against the Phoenicians, to be adjusted 
 by payments in silver ; and this supposition is 
 confirmed by the fact that we can trace a marked 
 depreciation in the comparative value of silver 
 during the Jewish history. 1 
 
 One very important branch of the trade of 
 Phoenicia with Israel remains to be spoken of, 
 that is, the trade in slaves. The Phoenicians 
 were known as slave-dealers from the earliest 
 times. Reference has been made already to the 
 passages in which Homer speaks of their kid- 
 napping young princes and princesses, to sell 
 them across the seas. The chorus in the Helena 
 of Euripides is composed of maidens who had 
 been brought to the Egyptian market by Phoe- 
 nician merchants. Numberless other instances 
 could be quoted to the same effect ; 2 it will be 
 sufficient to notice the fact (which rests upon the 
 authority of Strabo) that at Delos, their prin- 
 cipal centre for the western trade, 10,060 slaves 
 had been known to be sold in a single day. We 
 cannot doubt that a large proportion of the 
 
 1 1 Kings x. 21, 27 ; but cp. Movers, ii., 3, p. 39. 
 
 2 Cp. Movers, ii., 3, pp. 70 — 86. 
 
1 20 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 slaves that they brought with them from Tyre 
 or Sidon were drawn from the land of Israel. 
 It is true that our earliest Greek authorities do 
 not make any distinct mention of Hebrew 
 slaves ; but it is highly probable that they 
 ranked them under the wider name of Syrians, 
 which occurs in this connection very frequently. 
 In the earliest times this commerce seems to 
 have been the most extensive; under the Judges, 
 several of the northern tribes, as we have seen 
 above, were at least partially in subjection to the 
 Phoenicians, 1 and others were rendered incapable 
 of resistance by the oppression of the Philistines. 
 At the same time, in the impoverished and un- 
 settled condition of the Hebrew nation, the ties 
 of commerce would not be so binding as they 
 afterwards became. It was probably in the 
 reign of David or of Solomon that the treaty 
 was made, to which we have afterwards refer- 
 ences, to the effect that the Phoenicians should 
 not carry Hebrew slaves out of the country 
 against their will 2 But after the disruption of 
 Solomon's empire, we find bitter complaints 
 uttered by the prophets against the Tyrians 
 
 1 See Movers, ii., 1, pp. 306^ and above, p. 52. 
 
 2 Movers, ii., 1, p. 313. 
 
Slave-trade. 121 
 
 because they had "forgotten the covenant of 
 brethren," 1 and kidnapped the sons of Judah 
 and the sons of Jerusalem to sell them to the 
 Grecians. And when the final overthrow came, 
 we can fancy the Phoenician merchants flocking 
 to the camp of the Assyrian or Chaldean army, 
 just as we find them following in the train of 
 Alexander even as far as India, 2 and buying, 
 in the forcible language of Joel, " a boy for the 
 hire of a harlot, and a girl for a draught of wine." 
 Doubtless there were many razzias made into 
 Galilee, during the early and unsettled times, 
 with the express view of carrying off slaves ; the 
 Canaanites who dwelt in the land might often 
 be willing, when they had the upper hand, as 
 was not seldom the case, to sell the subjected 
 Israelites to their kinsmen on the coast ; and 
 further than this, we find traces of the custom 
 that a man sold not only his children, but even 
 himself into slavery. 3 But on the whole it seems 
 that we must confine this trade to the time of 
 the decline of the Jewish kingdoms, and to the 
 
 1 Amos i. 9 ; Joel iii. 6. 
 
 2 Arrian, Anab. vi., 22. So also a thousand slave- 
 dealers followed the Syrian General Nicanor in his cam- 
 paign against Judas Maccabasus, 1 Mace. iii. 41. 
 
 3 Exod. xxi. 7 ; Lev. xxv. 39. 
 
122 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 period which preceded the establishment of the 
 monarchy. 
 
 On the other hand, it was just during the 
 reigns of prosperous princes, and especially 
 that of Solomon, that the Phoenicians had the 
 most powerful and beneficial influence in ex- 
 tending the commerce of the Israelites. The 
 empire of Solomon, as has been noticed already, 
 commanded all the main caravan roads that 
 led into Phoenicia, and a mutual understand- 
 ing between the two nations was thereby ren- 
 dered necessary. This seems to have taken the 
 form of mutual concession. At least we find 
 that the Phoenicians, though long in exclusive 
 possession of the extremely profitable trade with 
 Arabia, and so with India, 1 did not make any 
 attempt to check the formidable rivalry of the 
 newly-established ports of Ezion-geber and 
 Elath ; but that Hiram sent thither, for the use 
 of Solomon, " ships, and servants that had know- 
 ledge of the sea ; and they went with the ser- 
 vants of Solomon to Ophir, 2 and took thence 
 
 1 Movers, ii., i, p. 332. 
 
 2 The best authorities (Lassen, Ritter, Ewald, etc.) 
 place Ophir in India ; others hold it to have been 
 Arabia, and to this opinion Mr. Twistleton in the Dic- 
 tionary of the Bible inclines. The question is of little 
 
Trade by Sea. 123 
 
 four hundred and fifty talents of gold, and 
 brought them to king Solomon." 1 Here we have 
 an instance of friendly co-operation which might 
 have been thought a priori exceedingly impro- 
 bable. On the other hand, the Jews do not 
 seem to have made any attempt to enter into 
 rivalry with the Phoenicians with respect to their 
 Mediterranean trade. Joppa might perhaps have 
 been made available as a harbour sufficiently 
 good for the purpose, though it is at best but a 
 dangerous one. But the numerous stories which 
 we have of the extreme jealousy with which the 
 Phoenicians kept to themselves the knowledge 
 of the navigation of the western seas, 2 incline us 
 very little to believe that they would have al- 
 lowed any other nation, however closely allied 
 to them, to share their profitable secrets. The 
 case of the Arabian trade was different, because 
 they had never had intercourse with these fertile 
 regions except by land ; and they would have 
 lost much more by the interruption of this traffic 
 
 importance to the present discussion. Cp. Ewald, iii., 
 p. 77 ; Max Miiller, Lectures, i., p. 202^" 
 
 1 2 Chron. viii. 18, cp. ix. 10, and 1 Kings ix. 27. 
 
 2 See Kenrick, p. 190. Blakesley's Herodotus, Intro- 
 duction. 
 
124 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 than they could have lost by the rivalry of any 
 sea-traders, especially when they seem them- 
 selves to have enjoyed equal privileges with the 
 latter. It is generally admitted now that "the 
 navy of Tarshish " spoken of in the Biblical nar- 
 rative only denotes large ships, such as those 
 that used to be sent to Tarshish, and does not 
 by any means imply any direct commerce on 
 the part of Solomon with Tartessus. 1 That this 
 navy did not go to Spain is evident from the 
 mention of ivory, apes, and peacocks among the 
 things that were brought back in it. 2 
 
 If we now come to consider what was the 
 effect of this constant and extensive commerce 
 between Phoenicia and Israel, we shall find it 
 very various and far-reaching. There is of 
 course, in the first place, the purely economic 
 effect. The one great benefit arising from inter- 
 national commerce is that each nation is hereby 
 enabled to employ its productive forces more 
 
 i Cp. Ewald, iii., p. 76, note 1 ; Kenrick, p. 357. This 
 supposition however implies an error on the part of the 
 writer of 2 Chron. ix. 21. Cp. (or contrast) E. H. P. in 
 Diet. Bible, iii., p. 1347^, and E. T., ib., 1440^. 
 
 2 With all Ewald's dogmatism, it is hardly fair for Mr. 
 Plumptre to pass this objection of his over without dis- 
 cussion as " arbitrary." 
 
Influence of Commerce. 125 
 
 efficiently, — that is to say, each produces a 
 larger amount of wealth than it would otherwise 
 have produced, because each nation is able to 
 devote its energies wholly to that which it can 
 do best, leaving any needs that this does not 
 satisfy to be met by supplies from without. 1 
 The nation of Israel was much the wealthier, 
 because it was able to give itself almost entirely 
 to agriculture and the simpler form of manu- 
 facture, leaving the finer manufactures and the 
 products of more elaborate art to be furnished 
 by Phoenicia. And wealth so acquired brings 
 with it a certain increase in civilization. Tastes 
 are developed, ideas enlarged, and graceful 
 forms and beautiful colours brought into homes 
 which would otherwise have remained in igno- 
 rant simplicity. But advantages of this kind 
 may easily be bought too dear. The first and 
 plainest result was perhaps the most conspicuous 
 in the northern kingdom. The gulf between 
 the rich and the poor became widened ; the 
 former in the luxury and wantonness of their 
 life gave way to drunkenness and licentiousness 
 of every kind, and the latter were oppressed 
 
 1 That this is the true view is clearly shown by Air. 
 Mill, Political Economy, book hi., c. xvii., § 5. 
 
126 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 and down-trodden miserably. The prophets 
 who were sent to the land of Israel shortly 
 before the fall of Samaria, give us a terrible 
 picture of the moral degradation of the people. 
 " They have erred through wine, and through 
 strong drink are gone out of the way ; the 
 priest and the prophet have erred through strong 
 drink, they are swallowed up with wine, they 
 are out of the way through strong drink ; they 
 err in vision, they stumble in giving judgment : 
 for all places are full of vomit and filthiness, so 
 that there is no place clean." 1 Even great ladies, 
 who are compared to the fat cows or heifers 
 of Bashan, that fed on the rich mountains of 
 Samaria, say to their lords, " Bring and let us 
 drink." 2 The Lord had a controversy with the 
 inhabitants of the land, because there was 
 neither truth nor mercy nor knowledge of God ; 
 only by swearing and lying and killing and 
 stealing and committing adultery, one vast inun- 
 dation of crime was sweeping over the country. 3 
 Of course all this was not the result solely of the 
 influx of wealth. But it is not too much to say 
 that it was mainly, if not entirely, due to the 
 
 i Is. xxviii. 7, ,8. 3 Hosea, iv. i, 2 (Pusey). 
 
 2 Stanley, ii., p. 359. 
 
3 f oral Corruption. 127 
 
 Phoenician influence, and that this influence was 
 immensely strengthened by the material advan- 
 tages of a close connection with the cities of the 
 coast. The house of Omri had greatly pro- 
 moted the influx of the foreign civilization by 
 the marriage of Ahab with Jezebel, daughter of 
 Ethbaal, and had extended it to the southern 
 kingdom by the alliance of Athaliah with Je- 
 horam, the son of Jehoshaphat. And Athaliah, 
 "matre turpi filia turpior," guided her son Ahaziah 
 in the ways of the house of Ahab, for his mother 
 was his counsellor to do wickedly. 1 But how- 
 ever great the effect of these unholy alliances 
 may have been for the time, we cannot doubt 
 that the main cause of the evil lay much deeper 
 and was far more permanent. It was not the 
 example of one or two powerful and wicked 
 queens that could taint the fountain of the 
 nation's life. There was a large leaven of the 
 old Canaanite element left in the land by the 
 cowardice, sloth, and disobedience of the earliest 
 conquerors, which must have been constantly 
 exercising a corrupting influence. But the most 
 pernicious action was probably that of the 
 traders brought into the land by the commerce 
 
 1 2 Chron. xxii. 4. 
 
128 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 with Phoenicia. Many of these were only travel- 
 ling merchants, but their repeated visits would 
 not be without effect. In the first place, we 
 have reason to believe that their commercial 
 morality was low ; " Phoenician lies" were pro- 
 verbial, 1 and wherever violence was out of the 
 question (as must have been usually the case 
 in their dealings with the Israelites) they would 
 have recourse to any mean and dishonest trickery 
 to secure the enormous profits which their 
 trade seems generally to have brought them. 2 
 Perhaps the originators, certainly the most in- 
 fluential disseminators, of that system of weights 
 and measures which, under the name of " Baby- 
 lonian" (as Bockh 3 has shown) was widely cur- 
 rent in the East, it may well be supposed that 
 they would often take advantage of the igno- 
 rance and simplicity of the rustic population to 
 defraud them for their own advantage. We 
 have seen in our own time, and unhappily some- 
 times with our own countrymen, too many 
 instances of the evil wrought by unfair dealing 
 
 1 See quotations in Kenrick, p. 190, and Movers, ii., 3, 
 p. 105. 
 
 2 Cp. Hosea xii. 8 : "As for the Canaanite, deceitful 
 balances are in his hand." 
 
 3 " Metrologische Untersuchungen," Abschn. viii. 
 
Objects of Art. 129 
 
 with native tribes, at first unsuspecting, and 
 then all-suspecting, to fail to recognize the mis- 
 chief that must have been done in this way by 
 the Phoenician merchants to their Palestinian 
 neighbours. 
 
 But this was not all. The wares in which 
 they dealt were often not less pernicious than 
 their method of dealing. The character of a 
 nation's art cannot fail to be deeply affected by 
 the nature of its religion ; and when we come to 
 see what the religion of the Phoenicians was, we 
 shall be able to understand that the numerous 
 objects of art that they were constantly bring- 
 ing into Israel may have tended greatly to 
 corrupt it. There are chambers in the Museo 
 Borbonico which show us that what has now to 
 be hidden away from the eyes of men, was even 
 in the Italian cities freely presented in the orna- 
 ments and even the utensils of ordinary life. 
 What was possible in Pompeii and Hercula- 
 neum is hardly likely to have been wanting in 
 the factories of Tyre and Sidon." The famous 
 Sidonian nwAoi, necklaces, earrings, and brace- 
 lets, may have been, and probably were, all 
 wrought so as to do honour to the deities of 
 Phoenicia, and grievous dishonour to the Holy 
 
 9 
 
130 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 One of Israel, who is of purer eyes than to look 
 upon iniquity. 1 
 
 But besides these travelling " Canaanites," 
 there were other merchants who were settlers in 
 the land for a longer time, and whose influence 
 would be the more powerful, as it was so con- 
 tinuous. 2 In the later times they seem to have 
 been confined to a suburb "before the gate" of the 
 town, which they chose for their habitation, but 
 there are many traces in the earlier literature of 
 their residence in the midst of the burghers. 3 
 The luxury and at the same time the shameless 
 profligacy of these wealthy resident merchants 
 are strikingly depicted in the account of the 
 strange [i.e. foreign] woman in the Book of Pro- 
 verbs, "which flattereth with her words." 4 Her 
 husband is evidently a trader who has gone his 
 rounds to make purchases in the country dis- 
 tricts, which he will bring back to the city by 
 the day appointed, i.e. (according to the mar- 
 
 1 Cp. Movers, i., p. 52. 
 
 2 Movers has collected many passages relating to this 
 class of traders in vol. ii., part 3, pp. 112— 126. Cp. i., 
 
 p. 49# 
 
 3 Cp. Neh. xiii. 16, 20, and Zeph. i. 10, 11, with Zach. 
 xiv. 21, Joel iv. 17 ; and see Movers, ii., 3, p. 202. 
 
 4 Cp. the use of peregrina in Donat. ad Ter. Eunuch., 
 i., 2, 27 ; and see Movers, i., p. 53. 
 
Resident Merchants. 1 3 1 
 
 ginal rendering and De Wette) in time for the 
 fair at the appearance of the new moon. 1 Well 
 might the wise king utter his words of warning 
 against this foreign temptress, " for she hath 
 cast down many wounded ; yea, many strong 
 men have been slain by her. Her house is the 
 way to the grave, going down to the chambers 
 of death." That these alluring but accursed 
 portals were open in every city, was due in no 
 small measure to the influence of the Phoenician 
 commerce. 
 
 But where the Tyrian and Sidonian mer- 
 chants were gathered, as often, in large commu- 
 nities, other and still more dangerous influences 
 were brought to work. For we find it a constant 
 article of stipulation in the commercial treaties 
 that have been preserved to us, that the settlers 
 should live in the free exercise of their national 
 customs and religion. This involved the erec- 
 tion of shrines to Baal and Moloch, the dedi- 
 cation of proves to Astarte, and therewith the 
 constant presence of a fascinating kind of 
 temptation, before the eyes of a people already 
 disposed to fall before it. The "high places 
 which were before Jerusalem, which were on the 
 On these fairs see Movers, ii., 3, pp. 135^ 146. 
 
132 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 right hand of the mount of corruption, which 
 Solomon the king of Israel had builded for 
 Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians," 1 
 may have had their origin in the idolatrous 
 wishes of one of his wives ; but they were cer- 
 tainly maintained during the centuries which 
 elapsed before they were destroyed by Josiah, 
 by the Tyrian merchants who dwelt in the 
 quarter of Jerusalem known as Machtesh. 8 It 
 is probable indeed that Josiah was emboldened 
 to take this step by the fact that his hostility 
 to Egypt necessarily involved a breach of all 
 friendly relations with Phoenicia. 3 The subse- 
 quent section of this essay will furnish a more 
 fit occasion for discussing the influence of this 
 worship at length. It will be sufficient here to 
 notice that this was probably the greatest of all 
 the curses that Phoenician intercourse brought 
 upon the Jews, sapping their national life at its 
 very basement, and by inevitable laws bringing 
 upon them the degradation, the ruin, and the 
 shame that must visit every nation, in these days 
 
 1 2 Kings xxiii. 13. 
 
 2 Cp. Zeph. i. 1 1 (with Henderson's note), and Movers, 
 i., p. 50. 
 
 5 See above, p. 84. 
 
Temptations to Vice. 133 
 
 as in days of old, where vice is identified with 
 pleasure, and woman has grown impure. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone has probably gone much too 
 far in assigning almost all that is evil in the 
 religion of Greece to Phoenician influence. 1 If it 
 would not lead too far from the present subject, 
 it would be easy to show, on the one hand, that 
 many of the myths which he regards as Phoe- 
 nician are the common property of the Aryan 
 race, and, on the other hand, that pure and 
 beautiful as they were at the beginning, they 
 were yet capable cf a natural, and all but in- 
 evitable misinterpretation, which should change 
 their fresh young grace into loathsome foulness. 
 But whatever may have been the case with the 
 Greeks, it cannot be doubted that to the He- 
 brew nation the Phoenicians played the part of 
 the serpent in the Mosaic account of primitive 
 man. They gave to the simple tribes, pre- 
 served, if not in innocence, at least in com- 
 parative purity, by the hardy life of the desert, 
 the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good 
 and evil, and they did eat. And the eyes at 
 least of the noblest among them, the " Seers," 
 
 1 Quarterly Review, January, 1 868, and Juventus Mundi, 
 passim. 
 
134 Political and Social Influence. 
 
 were opened, and they were ashamed, and the 
 burning language which gushed forth from 
 them 1 remains to us still as the most impres- 
 sive warning to those who for love of luxury, of 
 sloth, or of lust forsake their fathers' God, and 
 turn to the idols that are worshipped by those 
 who seem to be prospering round about them. 
 
 But there is another and a brighter side to this 
 page in the history of the Chosen People, which 
 it were faithless not to recognize. As the Fall 
 was, in Schiller's daring words, a gigantic stride 
 in the development of humanity, so that which 
 is in some respects its antitype in Hebrew his- 
 tory can be and ought to be regarded in the 
 same light. Those whose joy it is to trace, so 
 far as they may, the methods of the Divine 
 education of the world, will not fail to notice 
 how, after the centuries of national vice and 
 ever-increasing degradation had borne their 
 bitter fruit in the desolation of the national life, 
 the Jewish people came forth from the trial 
 weakened, scattered, and all but crushed, but 
 
 1 The literal meaning of the Hebrew word for " prophet" 
 seems to be " one who involuntarily bursts forth with 
 spiritual utterances." See Gesenius in voc. Nabi, and 
 Stanley, vol. i., lect. xix. 
 
Ultimate Results. 135 
 
 henceforth never to be shaken in their fidelity to 
 the One Living God. and never as a nation to 
 relapse into the sensual vice inseparable from 
 Eastern idolatry. 1 We may venture to believe 
 that the struggle of the Church with the moral 
 corruption of pagan Greece and Rome was 
 greatly aided by the fact that it found in every 
 city a leaven of faithful Jewish preachers of 
 chastity and self-control. And this the Jews 
 could never have become, had they not been 
 suffered to drink to the bitter dresrs the Circe 
 cup of the great Phoenician enchantress, by 
 whose sorceries the nations were deceived. 
 
 1 " The results of this discipline of the Jewish nation 
 may be summed up in two points — a settled national 
 belief in the unity and spirituality of God, and an ac- 
 knowledgment of the paramount importance of chastity 
 as a point of morals." — The Bishop of Exeter, in " Essays 
 and Reviews," p. 11. It is perhaps worth while adding, 
 that the passage in the text, and a similar one at the close 
 of the following chapter, were written eight or nine years 
 after I had read Dr. Temple's essay, when all conscious 
 recollection of his argument had been lost ; and that it 
 was only on reading the essay again that I found how 
 completely his view coincided with that to which an 
 entirely different course of discussion had appeared to 
 lead. 
 
136 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE RELIGION OF PHOENICIA, AND ITS 
 INFLUENCE UPON ISRAEL. 
 
 Early Monotheism, Aryan and Semitic — Traces of Polytheism — 
 Israel in Egypt — Tendency to Idolatry there — Their Religious 
 Condition in the Desert — The Religion of Canaan and 
 Phoenicia — Baal worshipped under various aspects — Worship 
 of Ashtoreth — El worshipped by all Semitic Nations — History 
 of Baal-worship in Israel — Conclusion. 
 
 ^HE recent researches of comparative my- 
 -*- thologists carry us back to a period in the 
 history of the Aryan races of which it may be 
 said that polytheism was not yet in existence. 
 The purely philological arguments of M. Pictet, 1 
 deeply interesting as they are, would not of 
 themselves perhaps carry conviction with them. 
 But more value may be attached to the con- 
 clusions which are drawn from a study of the 
 oldest remains of literature. Homer has more 
 
 i Les Aryas Primitifs, vol. ii., pp. 652 — 660, and pp. 
 707—728. 
 
Arya?i Monotheism. 137 
 
 than one passage in which the light of a purer 
 faith is seen struggling through the clouds and 
 darkness of a comparatively late mythology. 
 And the Vedas speak in yet clearer language. 
 We find there, it is true, the names of several 
 gods ; by the side of the supreme Dyaus are 
 Indra, and Varuna, Surya and Vishnu, to say 
 nothing of more evident personifications, like 
 Agni and the Maruts. But Professor Max 
 Miiller has taught us to see in these no distinct 
 abandonment of the faith in the One Supreme. 
 Rather, the worshipper in every case addresses 
 himself to that embodiment of the Divine and 
 Invisible Spirit to which his thoughts at the 
 time were most immediately directed. Some- 
 times he regards Him as the all-embracing 
 heaven, " hoc sublimen candens, quern omnes 
 inuocant Iouem ; " 1 sometimes as the life-giving 
 sun ; sometimes again as the Lord of Thunder, 
 that dashes apart with his bolt the stormy 
 clouds, and makes them yield to men the trea- 
 sures of rain that they bear within them. But 
 in all cases it seems to be the One Great God 
 to whom he is offering his prayers and praises, 
 putting out of his mind entirely for the time the 
 
 1 Ennius in Cic. de Nat. Deor., ii., § 4. 
 
1 3 8 Religious Influence. 
 
 other forms in which the Deity is supposed to 
 manifest Himself to mortals. It is easy to see 
 how this poetic language would become in time 
 the natural parent of a numerous and finally a 
 debasing progeny of legends. But the great gift 
 which comparative mythology, the youngest of 
 the sciences, has given to us, is the increased 
 conviction that it was not with the vile and 
 shameful, but rather with the pure and simple, 
 if as yet all vague and childlike thoughts of 
 the Divine, that the souls of our earliest pro- 
 genitors were filled. Unfortunately, we have 
 not hitherto succeeded in obtaining anything 
 like the same amount of evidence with re- 
 gard to the early beliefs of the Semitic peoples. 
 But all the indications that we are able to find 
 seem to be converging towards a period of a 
 somewhat similar creed. M. Renan delights 
 to dwell upon the " natural instinct ' of the 
 Semitic peoples towards monotheism j 1 but the 
 facts of the case bear out his theory only to a 
 very limited extent. It is true that the branch 
 of the Semites which he calls the Terachites (the 
 
 1 In his " Histoire des Langues Semitiques," and in a 
 separate brochure, " Nouvelles Considerations sur le Ca- 
 ractere general des peuples Semitiques, et en particulier 
 sur leur Tendance au Monotheisme." 
 
Semitic Monotheism. 139 
 
 sons of Terah), has remained for the most part 
 faithful to its belief in the One God ; but with 
 the second, the " political ' : branch, the reverse 
 is notoriously the case. Professor Max Miiller 
 has attacked M. Renan's theory of a " mono- 
 theistic instinct," with all his wonted ability, 1 
 and traces the comparative absence of poly- 
 theism among the Semites to their freedom 
 from the allurements of mythological language ; 
 but the firm adhesion to the unity of the Deity 
 to a special revelation made to Abraham. Be 
 this as it may, we find in the earliest times 
 among the Semites just the same tendency, as 
 among the Aryans, to regard the Divine Spirit as 
 embodying Himself under various forms for the 
 worship of individual nations. This was pro- 
 bably not so much the recognition of different 
 gods, as the acknowledgment that different 
 nations might worship the same great Power 
 under various names and aspects. But by 
 degrees, at least with the Hebrews, the concep- 
 tion was somewhat modified ; and they seem to 
 have come to the belief that there were many 
 gods, each with his own nation, to watch over 
 and support to the best of his power, but 
 
 1 Chips, etc., i., pp. 342—380. 
 
140 Religious Influence. 
 
 that their own God, Jehovah, or rather Jahveh, 
 was by far the greatest of all in power and 
 purity. We know, for instance, that Terah and 
 his family served " other gods " than the God of 
 Abraham, 1 and that in the days of Joshua it 
 might be at least regarded as an open question 
 whether the nation should serve these deities of 
 their early ancestors, or the gods of the Amo- 
 rites, in whose land they dwelt, or Jahveh, the 
 God of the Mosaic law. And though the na- 
 tion, animated and impressed by the noble 
 words of Joshua, renewed their covenant with 
 Jahveh, "who had brought them out of Egypt," 
 still we can see that this was not regarded as 
 the only possible alternative. There was danger 
 not only of forsaking Jahveh, but also of serving 
 other gods, the gods of the nations round them. 
 Monotheism, in the strictest sense of the term, 
 can scarcely be regarded as the " instinct " of a 
 people to whom the challenge of Joshua was 
 possible. Traces of the same feeling are to be 
 found late in the subsequent literature of the 
 nation. For instance : " Among the gods, there 
 is none like unto Thee, O Jahveh ; neither are 
 there any works like unto Thy works." Nor could 
 
 1 Joshua xxiv. 2. 
 
Traces of Polytheism . 141 
 
 a poet have spoken of God as " the great king 
 above all gods," had the gods of the heathen 
 been recognized by him as what they really 
 were — " mighty shadows thrown by the mighty 
 works of God, and intercepting for a time the 
 pure light of the Godhead." x 
 
 Plainer traces of polytheism are to be found 
 in the teraphim of Laban and of Rachel, which 
 are enough of themselves to show that the lofty 
 spiritual views of the head of the family could 
 not always be communicated to other and espe- 
 cially to female members of it. 
 
 The readiness even of a man like Abraham to 
 recognize other conceptions of the Divine than 
 that which he had formed for himself, comes 
 out clearly in the story, undoubtedly extremely 
 ancient, 2 of his intercourse with Aielchisedec. 
 At the time the Father of the Faithful wor- 
 shipped El Shaddai, the Omnipotent, and had 
 not yet been permitted to know the full mean- 
 ing of the name Jahveh, even if the word was 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Chips, i., p. 371. We must not lose sight 
 of passages like " All the gods of the nations are idols," 
 but they are found almost exclusively in the writings of 
 the later psalmists. Cp. Ewald, ii., pp. 122, 123. 
 
 2 Ewald, i., p. 321. 
 
142 Religious Influence: 
 
 already used by him. 1 The Canaanite Priest- 
 King, retaining the simplicity of what we have 
 reason to believe was the earliest faith, but 
 clothing his creed in different language, wor- 
 shipped El Eliun, 3 the highest God, possessor 
 of heaven and earth. We cannot fail to be re- 
 minded here of the passage of Sanchoniathon, 
 which tells us of Eliun, called Hypsistus (vxpiarog) 
 of whom was begotten Epigeus, whom they 
 afterwards called Ouranos, and who had a sister 
 by the same parents, called Ge. In all the con- 
 fusion of this genealogical cosmogony, we seem 
 to trace the remembrance of an old Semitic con- 
 ception, vivid and true in the days of Mel- 
 chisedek, but obscured by the bewildering after- 
 growth of Phoenician mythology. At any rate 
 Abraham did not fail to acknowledge the unity 
 that lay beneath the apparent diversity, and in 
 his oath by "Jahveh, the most high God, the 
 possessor [or Creator] of heaven and earth," he 
 identifies the two conceptions. Both these ten- 
 dencies, — the one leading to the recognition of 
 
 1 Cp. Exod. vi. 3. The Bishop of Natal ("The Pen- 
 tateuch," part v., chap, xix.) endeavours to prove the 
 Phoenician origin of the name Jahveh ; I think with little 
 success. Movers decidedly opposes this theory. 
 Gen. xiv. 18—22. Cp. De Wette's version. 
 
Israel in Egypt. 143 
 
 gods other than the national Jehovah, and 
 greatly, immeasurably inferior to Him, and the 
 other that which saw under various names the 
 same great Deity ; the latter the more philo- 
 sophically true, the former perhaps the better 
 preservative against temptations from without, 
 — will be found of vast importance in the sub- 
 sequent religious history of Israel. 
 
 The sojourn in Egypt was undoubtedly a 
 crisis of as much importance for the religious as 
 for the national life of the Hebrew people. On 
 the one hand, many of their number seem to 
 have fallen into positive idolatry. " Put away 
 the gods," says Joshua, 1 "which your fathers 
 served on the other side of the flood [i.e. the 
 river Euphrates], and in Egypt." Ezekiel 2 brings 
 the charge as plainly: "Then said I unto them, 
 cast ye away every man the abominations of his 
 eyes, and defile not yourselves with the idols of 
 Egypt ; I Jahveh am your God. But they re- 
 belled against me, and would not hearken unto 
 me : they did not every man cast away the 
 abominations of their eyes, neither did they 
 forsake the idols of Egypt." But it is curious 
 to notice that in the specific charges brought 
 xxiv. 14. 2 xx. 7, 8. Cp. also xxiii. 3. 
 
144 Religious Influence. 
 
 against the people by Amos (v. 26), and re- 
 peated by St. Stephen (Acts vii. 43), it is not 
 distinctly Egyptian deities that they are said to 
 have worshipped. They " took up the taber- 
 nacle of Moloch, and the star of their god 
 Remphan (or according to Amos Chiun 1 ), figures 
 which they made to worship them." Now to 
 say nothing of Moloch, who certainly was not 
 Egyptian, the best authorities (e.g. Mr. R. S. 
 Poole, in the Dictionary of the Bible, s. v. 
 Remphan) teach us that Remphan and Chiun 
 [Renpu and Ken] were in Egypt foreign deities, 
 probably Phoenician, and identical with Baal 
 and Astarte. They were worshipped in Lower 
 Egypt, and Mr. Poole thinks that the presence 
 of a large foreign population there points to the 
 fact that the shepherd-kings were still in power 
 at the time of the Exodus. But apart from the 
 probability that the Israelites adopted this idola- 
 trous worship during the earlier years of their 
 sojourn in the land, there is little ground for 
 supposing that all .the Canaanitish population 
 should have been expelled with the Hyksos 
 dynasty. It is much more probable that a 
 large body remained in Egypt, to be subjected 
 But see LXX. version of Amos. 
 
Tendency to Idolatry. 145 
 
 to the same oppression as the children of Israel, 1 
 and possibly to join them in their final Exodus. 
 On the other hand, if we find already proofs 
 of the attraction of the Phoenician idolatry, we 
 know also that this was the time of the con- 
 solidation of that pure religion that was des- 
 tined to struggle against it for so many centuries, 
 and, often. defeated for the time, to win the vic- 
 tory at last for all succeeding ages, " saved so as 
 by tire." Here was developed first the idea of 
 the Theocracy — " one among many kinds of rule 
 and polity ; as unstable and changeable as any 
 other ; passing through the most varied changes 
 and admixtures in Israel, often distorted until 
 all likeness was lost, and weakened so as to 
 threaten total decay ; and in semblance found 
 among other nations of antiquity ; and yet, in 
 its actual form, unique in this one people, and 
 wholly new on earth — the sole true life and un- 
 dying breath of its history, always renewing 
 itself on the deepest basis, all chances and 
 changes notwithstanding, and in the course of 
 its development only unfolding itself again to a 
 fuller and riper perfection, till at length it attains 
 to the only true and adequate realization possible 
 
 1 Exod. xii. 38 : Numbers xi. 4; cp. Ewald, ii., p. 82. 
 
 10 
 
146 Religious Influence. 
 
 to it," 1 in the spiritual rule of the King that rules 
 in righteousness, mighty to save. 
 
 The religion of the Egyptians was too sen- 
 suous, too subtle, and too formal and petty in 
 its details to present any very great attractions 
 to the simpler and less artificial Hebrews ; and 
 it was soon made still more distasteful to them 
 when its adherents became their cruel oppres- 
 sors. So, led by the genius and the inspiration 
 of Moses, they embraced with eagerness the 
 great conception of a National God, Jahveh the 
 Deliverer, before whom the gods of the heat'hen 
 were not Elohim, but Elilim ; not gods, but 
 rather no-gods. 2 We cannot ascribe to Moses 
 anything like a complete revelation of the cha- 
 racter of the Deity. The literature of the nation 
 as late as some, not only of the Davidic, but of 
 the later Psalms, 3 shows us how imperfect was 
 the knowledge even then of "the Lord God, 
 merciful and gracious, pardoning iniquity and 
 transgression," and requiring His people to fol- 
 low the Divine Example. But to Moses we 
 may fairly assign, in the words of Ewald, 4 " the 
 '•'pure healthy germ of all truth respecting a 
 
 1 Ewald, ii., p. 1. s Psalms xxxv., Ixix., etc. 
 
 2 Ewald, ii., p. 123. < ii., p. 54. 
 
The Teaching of Moses. 147 
 
 spiritual God, and the first powerful inexhaust- 
 ible impulse given by the establishment of the 
 community to the enduring preservation and 
 fruitful development of that germ." Novalis 
 has called Spinoza a " Gott trunkner Mann." 
 The epithet is dubious in this application of it; it 
 would have been more just if applied to Spinoza's 
 nation. When once they had risen to the con- 
 ception of a Divine Being, who had taken them 
 to Him as a people, and was unto them a God ; 
 when once they had found the true Deliverer, 1 
 for whom the pagan nations were blindly feel- 
 ing, if haply they might find Him (though He 
 was not far from any one of them) ; when they 
 knew Him to be their special Healer (Ex. xv. 26) 
 and Guide into the Land of Promise, 2 they won 
 a sense of His living presence, and continuous 
 activity amongst them, to which nothing in the 
 ancient world is comparable. 
 
 This intimate relation with the Unseen and the 
 Divine did not confine itself to the sphere of the 
 spiritual. A Psalm like the hundred and fourth, 
 or a passage like Job xxxvi. — xxxviii., is enough 
 
 1 Cp. Ewald, ii., p. 109^ 
 
 2 Cp. the beautiful erpocpocpoprjcrev of Acts xiii. iB. (Lach- 
 mann and Tischendorf.) 
 
148 Religions Influence. 
 
 to show how in every operation of nature they 
 delighted to see the working of the Holy One 
 of Israel. But it was the sense of the possible 
 communion of spirit with spirit, a communion 
 utterly foreign to the pagan mind, that gave 
 its strength to the religion of Moses. To quote 
 once more from the great historian whose piety, 
 profundity, and eloquence make us regret the 
 more deeply his arbitrary dogmatism : " He 
 whose spirit finds its true place in the Eternal 
 Spirit, in that act receives an infinite power, 
 which raises him above the world and time, and 
 suffers him to find rest only where the most 
 blessed contentment dwells in union with an 
 unfailing zeal to participate in the Divine 
 energy. . . . With the fundamental thought of 
 God the Deliverer, there arise within the human 
 soul at once the ability and the courage to 
 recognize all the truth of the Divine Spirit who 
 confronts it, and to open itself to his living in- 
 fluence. And this is a life which, when once it 
 has struck vigorous root among men, can never 
 perish, but advances with ever-multiplying fruits. 
 . . . Here then we perceive in its germ that 
 which made the history of the ancient people of 
 Israel a world- history ; that while among other 
 
Religious Condition of Israel. 149 
 
 nations that torpidity of soul, paganism, was 
 assuming more and more rigid forms, until it 
 became quite incurable by the few scattered 
 spirits among them who looked deeper, and 
 attempted bolder things, among the Israelites, 
 even in a relatively very early time, and before 
 the heathenish tendencies in them could be fully 
 unfolded, that freedom and boldness of spirit 
 grew up, which, after once beholding the purity 
 and power of the Divine light, can never wholly 
 weary of turning towards it a larger and fuller 
 gaze." x The heathenish tendencies again and 
 again broke out during the desert wanderings ; 
 even at the foot of Sinai, the timorous people 
 made for themselves a golden calf, possibly as a 
 symbol of Jahveh's presence, but possibly also 
 in honour of the " heifer-Baal" 2 that they had 
 learnt to worship in Lower Egypt; — the licentious 
 dances which accompanied the worship confirm 
 this latter view. The lonely desert life kept 
 them free from the temptations of foreign idola- 
 try, and the only instance of any attempt to for- 
 sake the service of Jahveh was when one of the 
 
 1 Ewald, ii., p. 112. 
 
 2 Tobit, i., 5, cp. Diet. Bible, iii., 1028^. But see on the 
 other hand Ewald, ii., p. 183 ; his treatment of the whole 
 incident seems to be in his most arbitrary style. 
 
150 Religious Influence* 
 
 " mixed multitude " blasphemed the Name. The 
 punishment appointed by the law followed at 
 once, the offender was stoned, and we hear no 
 more of any unfaithfulness. We do not wonder 
 to find the prophet Hosea long years afterwards 
 speaking of the desert as the place where com- 
 munion with God was the closest (ii. 14 — 20) : 
 " Behold, I will guide her tenderly, and bring her 
 into the wilderness, and speak unto her heart ; x 
 and from thence I will give her vineyards, and 
 the valley of trouble for a door of hope, and she 
 shall sing 2 there as in the days of her youth, and 
 as in the day when she came up out of the land 
 of Egypt. . . . For I will take away the names 
 of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall be 
 no more remembered by their name. And I 
 will betroth thee unto me for ever.; yea, I will 
 betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in 
 judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies : 
 I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness ; 
 and thou shalt know the Lord." One omen of 
 evil alone clouded the brightness of their glad 
 and triumphant entrance into the Land of 
 Promise. Balak, the king of Moab, had sum- 
 
 Cp. the Hebrew. 
 2 " Intellege autem carmen fletuset precunv' — Gesenius. 
 
Baal-Peor. 1 5 1 
 
 moned Balaam to curse the goodly tents of 
 Jacob ; the prophetic utterances had only taken 
 the form of blessing, but the treacherous coun- 
 sels of the seer were far more fatal than any 
 imprecation. It was not improbably at his sug- 
 gestion that the Midianites " called the people 
 unto the sacrifices of their gods ; and the people 
 did eat, and bowed down to their gods ; and 
 Israel joined himself to Baal-Peor ; and the 
 anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel." 
 The character of the worship is plainly shown 
 by the derivation of the name of the god, his 
 identification by Jerome with Priapus, 1 and the 
 story of Zimri and Cozbi. But we must not fail 
 to notice that if there were some of the children 
 of Israel ready to fall before shameful tempta- 
 tion, the worship was by no means general, and 
 was suppressed with terrible severity by the in- 
 dignation of Moses, supported by the elders and 
 the majority of the community. We must con- 
 sider this episode as a proof rather of the weak- 
 ness of a portion of the nation, than of a wide- 
 spread corruption and apostasy. On the whole, 
 it was a nation of loyal and faithful worshippers 
 of Jahveh, strong with a vivid consciousness of 
 
 1 Cp. Hosea ix. 10. 
 
152 Religious Influence. 
 
 His favour and His power to bless, that crossed 
 the Jordan under the command of Joshua. 
 
 We have now to endeavour to gain a clear 
 conception of the religion of the tribes with 
 whom the struggle had to be waged, and of the 
 wealthy and powerful maritime cities with which 
 the invaders would be brought into close and 
 constant intercourse. 
 
 Here we have still less difficulty than we had 
 before in deciding upon the substantial identity 
 of Phoenicians and Canaanites. Even those 
 scholars who contend for an original distinction 
 of race, would not deny that at the time of the 
 invasion of the children of Israel the deities 
 worshipped on the coast and in the inland cities 
 were substantially the same. Substantially, and 
 not exactly ; for there are several lesser divi- 
 nities of the Sidonians which do not appear to 
 have been known or worshipped by the Canaan- 
 ites. But the basis of their religious beliefs, 
 and no small part of the superstructure, were 
 precisely identical. 
 
 Phoenician polytheism — we might almost say 
 all polytheism — had its origin in nature-worship. 
 By this I do not mean fetish-worship, which the 
 Positive philosophy, with its usual arbitrary dog- 
 
Phoenician Religion. 153 
 
 matism, asserts to have been the earliest stage 
 in all human development. Of such a stage we 
 do not find a trace. Much rather, one section 
 of the early Semites, probably that which we 
 have already referred to as having been the first 
 to leave the original home in the mountains of 
 Kurdistan, went through an experience analogous 
 to that of some divisions of the Aryan stock. 
 For these, at least, M. Renan's words are of 
 dubious accuracy: "Ayant detache beaucoup 
 plus tot sa personnalite de l'univers, elle en 
 conclut presque immediatement le troisieme 
 terme, Dieu createur de l'univers ; au lieu d'une 
 nature animee et vivante dans toutes ses parties, 
 elle concut, si j'ose le dire, une nature seche et 
 sans fecondite." 1 On the contrary, the Canaanite 
 peoples, looking out into the world around them, 
 
 1 Histoire, etc., p. 497. His words form a striking con- 
 trast with those of M. Lenormant. " The divine being, 
 the primordial Baal, was almost identified with the 
 material world. He was superlatively a nature-god, ope- 
 rating in the universe, and in physical life, each year de- 
 stroying his work, to renew it afresh with the change of 
 seasons ; and these successive operations of destruction 
 and renewal, in consequence of the pantheistic conception 
 of his essence, he was regarded as producing, not in a 
 world created by him, but in his own proper person, by a 
 reaction on himself." (ii. 220.) 
 
154 Religious Influence. . 
 
 musing on the ceaseless marvel of birth and life 
 and death, and deeply influenced, we may well 
 believe, by the Cushite empire of Chaldsea, 1 near 
 which their earliest settlements had been, 
 thought that they saw at work beneath the phe- 
 nomena of nature two great' principles, one 'the 
 creative, the other the receptive. To these cor- 
 responded the phenomena of the earliest and 
 deepest mystery of human life, summed up in 
 the words, " So God created man ; male and 
 female created He them." So each of these 
 principles was embodied in a personal concep- 
 tion ; the life-giving force of nature was wor- 
 shipped under the name of Baal, "the Lord;" 2 
 Chemosh, " the governor;" Hadad, "the only 
 one ;" Moloch, " the king ;" or sometimes simply 
 El, "the God." The purely receptive faculty 
 was adored as Ashtoreth, as Baalith, or as Atar- 
 gath. But these conceptions did not remain as 
 purely ideal. Movers has well defined the 
 Phoenician religion as " an apotheosis of the 
 forces and laws of nature ; an adoration of the 
 objects in which those forces were seen, and where 
 
 i Especially with regard to the astral character of their 
 religion. Cp. Movers, i., p. 80, and see below. 
 
 2 Perhaps more properly "owner," cp. Movers, i., p. 171. 
 See Lenormant, ii., p. 219. 
 
Various Conceptions of the Deity. 155 
 
 they appeared most active? Hence it came about 
 that Baal was not only the vivifying principle, 
 but also the lord of its concrete embodiment, 
 the life-giving sun : he was the god of fire, " sic 
 enim se res habet," as Cicero (de Nat. Deor. II. 
 $ 23) puts it, " ut omnia quae aluntur atque cres- 
 cunt, contineant in se vim caloris, sine qua neque 
 ali possent nee crescere." But as the sun calls 
 into being things evil as well as good, and out of 
 death brings forth corruption, so he was Baal- 
 zebub, " the god of flies," who was able to bring 
 this plague upon those who neglected his wor- 
 ship. Further, as being the highest of all the 
 heavenly ones, he was identified with the planet 
 Saturn, according to the ancient conceptions 1 
 the most distant and exalted of the Cabirim, 
 " the powerful ones." But under all these mani- 
 festations, he was (originally at least) one and 
 the same god, 2 viewed in different aspects, but 
 always regarded for the time as the supreme, 
 and hence identified by the Greeks with Zeus. 
 Side by side with this tendency to distinguish 
 the several functions of Baal, by the creation of 
 individual hypostases each setting forth some 
 
 1 See Tac. Hist., v., 4, quoted below. 
 
 2 Movers, i., p. 172^ 
 
156 Religious Influence. 
 
 leading characteristic, there was a force at work 
 also multiplying the names of the supreme 
 deity, and hence, in the long run, multiplying 
 deities. Mention has been made above of the 
 political disorganization of the Phoenician 
 people. Except when held in forcible subjection 
 by the suzerainty of Sidon, and afterwards 
 Tyre, they appear in history as isolated cities, 
 kept from any firm and lasting union by mutual 
 jealousies. An immediate result of this was 
 that every state gave a local name of its own to 
 the common deity. We find Baal-Tsur, Baal- 
 Sidon, Baal-Tars, Baal-Peor, Baal-Hermon, and 
 Baal-Pisgah. 1 The first of these, " the lord of 
 Tyre," was generally known as Melkarth 2 (i.e., 
 Melek Kiryath) " King of the city," and so his 
 identity with Baal was further concealed. " In 
 this way," says the Count de Vogue, 3 " Baal could 
 receive a particular name, thus completing the 
 disguise of his primitive character in the popular 
 
 1 Movers, i., p. 175. 
 
 2 Cp. Karthada — the Latin Carthago. The Tyrian Baal 
 is commonly identified with Herakles (Herod, ii., 44), but 
 this may have arisen only from misunderstanding his 
 
 epithet 73*1(1? harachal, " he who goes about ; " cp. 
 
 T T T 
 
 Colenso, " Pentateuch," part v., p. 280, note. 
 
 3 Quoted by Lenormant, ii., p. 219. 
 
Ashtoreth. 157 
 
 mind, but still not entirely excluding a confused 
 idea of the original unity of the deity." 
 
 Now side by side with all these varying con- 
 ceptions of Baal were parallel " manifestations " 
 (to use the technical term of the Phoenician in- 
 scriptions) of his consort Ashtoreth. Where he 
 is the sun-god, she is the goddess of the moon ; x 
 where he is Priapus, she is Venus ; where he is 
 the supreme god, Zeus, she is his royal partner 
 Hera. 2 And what is most remarkable is that 
 each came to be considered as containing all 
 that was needful to reproduction, " all that in 
 terrestrial generation constitute both the active 
 and the passive principles, the male and the 
 
 1 This may have arisen from the conception of Ash- 
 toreth as the receptive faculty ; cp. Verg., Georg. L, 396, 
 "nee (videtur) fratris radiis obnoxia surgere Luna/' with 
 Heyne's Excursus, and De Nat. Deor., ii., c. 40. But by 
 comparing De Div., ii., 46, § 97 : " ex quo intellegitur plus 
 terrarum situs quam lunae tactus ad nascendum valere," 
 we find perhaps a trace of a belief of the direct influence 
 of the moon upon generation. See too Servius on Verg., 
 JEn., hi., 141 : " sterilitatem liberorum tarn Saturno quam 
 Lunae tribuunt ; hanc enim sicut Saturnum orbandi 
 potestatem habere." The name Ashtoreth seems to denote 
 ' productiveness.' The plural form is found in Deut. vii. 13, 
 where the A.V. has flocks of thy sheep, but Gesenius ren- 
 ders ' femellae gregem propagantes.' Cp. the Speaker's 
 Commentary in /. c. De Wette has 'das Lammen.' 
 
 2 See quotations in Kenrick, p. 301. 
 
158 Religions Influence. 
 
 female." x Hence we get the strange androgy- 
 nus Venus of Amathus, 2 and the hermaphrodite 
 Adonis, 3 each considered as taking up into itself 
 all that was needed for complete and independent 
 being and reproduction, without however losing 
 its individual character. 
 
 From these multiform representations of the 
 two chief deities, they come to be spoken of 
 often in the plural, and instead of Baal and 
 Ashtoreth, we have Baalim and Ashtaroth. 
 Gesenius held indeed that the plural here was 
 used to denote statues of Baal and Ashtoreth ; 
 but Movers 4 has brought abundant reasons for 
 accepting the view just stated. It is confirmed 
 
 1 Lenormant. ii., p. 222. We may compare the curious 
 rationalizing explanation of the myth of the mutilation of 
 Uranus, given by Cicero de Nat. Deor., ii., § 64): "phy- 
 sica ratio non inelegans inclusa est in impias fabulas : 
 caelestem enim altissimam aetheriamque naturam, id est 
 igneam, quae per se omnia gigneret, vacare voluerunt ea 
 parte corporis, quae coniunctione alterius egeret ad procre- 
 andum." 
 
 2 " Philochorus Venerem affirmat esse Lunam et ei 
 sacrificium facere viros cum veste muliebri, mulieres cum 
 virili, quod eadem et mas existimatur et femina." — Macro- 
 bius, quoted by Kenrick, p. 305, note 3. Hence the pro- 
 hibition in Deut. xxii. 5. 
 
 3 Cp. Movers, i., pp. 149, 233 
 
 4 L, pp. 175, 602. 
 
Baal under differe7it Forms. 159 
 
 by the fact that the singular is not found in the 
 Sacred Narrative, until the time of Solomon, 
 when it is used to denote the particular goddess. 
 Ashtoreth of the Sidonians, to whom he built a 
 temple. 
 
 It is by no means necessary for our present 
 purpose to plunge into all the difficulties of the 
 Phoenician cosmogony, as preserved to us by 
 Sanchoniathon, 1 or even into the abstruser parts 
 of their mythology. To estimate the influence of 
 their religion upon the Jews, it will be sufficient 
 to notice such broad features of it as were likely 
 to have come under their notice. And this we 
 may do the more safely, because the influence 
 seems to have been wholly of a popular kind. 
 Movers has collected evidence of the high esteem 
 in which the wisdom of the Phoenicians was held 
 by the ancients: TroWcigtcai Qoivikzq oSovq /uaKciphJv 
 i§ail<rav? But it was their ritual, and not their 
 theosophy, the attractions of their sensual wor- 
 ship, and not the charms of their mystic specula- 
 tions, that drew the people of Jahveh into the 
 service of Baalim and Ashtaroth. 
 
 1 The value of his authority is very well discussed by 
 Movers, i.,pp. 116— 147; by Kenrick, pp. 281 — 291; and 
 Renan in the " Memoires de lTnstitut" for i860. 
 
 2 i.» PP- 5—7- 
 
160 Religious Influence.. 
 
 We have then the great Nature-power, the 
 sun-god, viewed in three ways. I, as Baal- 
 Samim, or Adonis, the fresh young sun of spring, 
 full of creative force, calling all vegetable life 
 into luxuriant fertility, and kindling in the 
 animal world the fire of youthful passion ; x 
 2, as the fierce sun of summer, like Tantalus 2 
 burning up the fruits and flowers that owed their 
 life to him, — Baal-Mars, or Moloch, the terrible 
 god of fire ; and, 3, as the principle of order, 
 unity, and steadfastness in the universe, the 
 power which held the world together when the 
 beautiful Adonis had been slain by the fury of 
 Moloch, which albeit in gloom and darkness, 
 
 1 Compare the well-known lines of "Locksley Hall" — 
 
 In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast : 
 
 In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest ; 
 
 In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove ; 
 
 In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love ; 
 
 and the lovely verses of Lucretius, to which they are 
 possibly due : 
 
 Nam simul ac species patefactast verna diei 
 Et reserata viget genitabilis aura favoni, 
 Aeriae primum volucres te, diva, tuumque 
 Significant initum perculsae corda tua vi . . . 
 Omnibus incutiens blandum per pectora amorem 
 Efficis ut cupide generatim saecla propagent. 
 
 So Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, ad init. But quotations 
 might be multiplied without number. 
 
 2 Cox, Aryan Mythology, i., p. 363, etc. 
 
Symbolism. 1 6 1 
 
 husbanded and gathered the exhausted powers 
 of nature for new creative exertions, when the 
 world should be gladdened again by the birth of 
 the life-giving Sun of Spring ; this was Baal- 
 Chewan, identified with Saturn. 1 
 
 As the life-giving deities, Baal and Ashtoreth 
 were adored under symbols which appear to us 
 revolting, but to which at first no ideas of in- 
 decency were probably attached. Among the 
 Canaanites, as well as in the Greek and Indian 
 branches of the Aryan race, 2 Linga-worship, 
 " nicht aus der moralischen Verdorbenheit der 
 Volker . . . sondern aus ihrer noch kindlich 
 naiven Denkweise erklart werden muss, wo man 
 unbekummert um die Decenz des Ausdrucks 
 oder des Bildes stets dasjenige wahlte, welches 
 eine Idee am passendsten bezeichnete. Welches 
 Glied kannte aber bezeichnender an den Schop- 
 fer mahnen als eben das schaffende Or^an." 8 
 This was undoubtedly the meaning of the 
 Asherah, a word translated in the authorized 
 
 1 Cp. Movers, pp. 184 — 189, and his subsequent expo- 
 sitions in greater detail, cc. 7 — 10. 
 
 2 I limit the expression, because I cannot accept the 
 evidence which satisfies Mr. Cox that such a cultus was 
 universal, (ii., p. 128.) 
 
 3 Nork, quoted by Cox, "Aryan Mythology," ii., p. 113. 
 
 II 
 
1 62 Religions Influence. 
 
 version "grove," but denoting properly a sym- 
 bolical pole or stem of a tree. Movers indeed 
 maintains that Asherah is a goddess distinct from 
 Ashtoreth, but it seems from the usage of the 
 word far more probable that the word denotes 
 merely the upright wooden symbol, employed 
 in the worship of Ashtoreth, sometimes of com- 
 paratively small size and movable, as in the case 
 of the Asherah which Josiah found standing on 
 the altar of Baal-Peor, in the temple of the Lord, 
 and brought out to be destroyed, when he 
 banished the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth 
 from Jerusalem, 1 sometimes fixed in numbers 
 round the altars of Baal, as in the " grove " which 
 Gideon cut down in the night at Ophrah. 2 It is 
 needless to say a word about the character of 
 the worship that would be offered, or the nature 
 of the sacrifices that would be deemed most 
 acceptable. We may be willing to believe that 
 the worship was instituted at first in purity, and 
 
 i 2 Kings xxiii. 6. Cp. xxiii. 7, and xxi. 7. 
 
 2 Judges vi. (a.v.) But even here the true translation 
 is rather " on the altar." De Wette has " die Astarte auf 
 demselben haue urn." The symbol was large enough in 
 this case to be used as wood for burning an ox in sacrifice. 
 In Deut. xvi. 21, the correct version is, " Thou shalt not 
 plant thee any tree as an Asherah near unto the altar of 
 Jahveh thy God." 
 
The AsheraJi. 163 
 
 even that it owed its degradation in part to the 
 influence of the Babylonian cult of Mylitta, 1 
 though it is impossible to suppose that, with the 
 development of consciousness among the people, 
 it should not have become consciously corrupt. 
 But we can only marvel at Mr. Kenrick's start- 
 ling assertion that this worship is reprobated in 
 Scripture " rather for its cruelty than its licen- 
 tiousness." Ashtoreth is hardly ever mentioned 
 in Scripture, except as " the abomination of the 
 Sidonians," and the strongest language is used 
 of the corruptions that attended her worship. 2 
 
 If the worship of the life-giving sun-god 
 became through its symbolism grossly immoral, 
 the worship of the life-destroying sun was in its 
 essential nature cruel. 
 
 Movers has shown 3 that the character ascribed 
 to this god probably arose from an amalgama- 
 tion of the features of Baal with those of the 
 deity worshipped as the fire-god in the earliest 
 
 1 Kenrick, p. 307. 
 
 2 If further proof of the horribly debasing character of 
 this worship were needed, it would be supplied abundantly 
 by the fact that those who were called kadesh, and in the 
 fern, kadeshah, were devoted (fr. kadash, ' holy,' cp. sacer) 
 to her service. See Henderson on Hosea iv. 14. 
 
 3 i-, P- Vbff- 
 
1 64' Religious Influence. 
 
 times. Among the Moabites he was known as 
 Chemosh 1 or Ariel, and his figure, holding in his 
 hand fiery torches, is still preserved to us on 
 coins of Rabbat Moab. 2 It is probable that the 
 worship of Moloch presented itself under two 
 different forms to the children of Israel : the one 
 a milder form of fire-worship, not accompanied 
 with human sacrifices, and possibly regarded 
 only as a personification of Jahveh, "the de- 
 vouring fire ;" the latter the terrible cultus in 
 which children were " passed through the fire" 
 to Moloch, i.e. probably actually burnt in sacri- 
 fice to him. It was the former which Solomon 
 set up on a mountain near Jerusalem ; 3 to the 
 latter Ahaz subsequently dedicated the Valley 
 of Tophet or Hinnom. This is the view sup- 
 ported by Movers and Ewald ; the main objec- 
 tion to it lies in the fact that it requires us to 
 suppose that the verse 1 Kings xi. 7 is by a 
 different hand from the fifth verse of the same 
 chapter. This of course presents no difficulty to 
 
 1 Fiirst derives this name from \£}J2i2i " t0 burn," or 
 " glow." 
 
 2 In the recently-discovered Moabite inscription we 
 find the name Ashtar- Chemosh, where the first element 
 is the masculine form of Ashtoreth. 
 
 3 1 Kings xi. 5 ; 2 Kings xxiii. 13. 
 
Moloch Worship. 165 
 
 the German critics, who resolve not only the 
 books but even the chapters of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures into what they assume to be their 
 original component parts, with such confident 
 dogmatism ; x but it causes some hesitation to 
 English scholars. At any rate there is abundant 
 evidence to show that at a very early period 
 Moloch the flame-god, a modification or hypos- 
 tasis of Baal the sun-god, was worshipped with 
 rites of terrible cruelty. " They sacrificed their 
 sons and their daughters unto devils, and shed 
 innocent blood, the blood of their sons and 
 their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the 
 idols of Canaan." 2 It was this form of Baal- 
 worship that was common in Tyre, where 
 ''the Lord Melkarth, Baal of Tyre," 3 was sym- 
 bolized by an ever-burning fire. We know how 
 commonly the Carthaginians in any time of 
 national distress had recourse to human sacri- 
 fices, and indeed they appear to have made them 
 
 1 Ewald ; s Isaiah seems to me a striking instance of 
 this ; and Mr. Cheyne's interesting version goes a long 
 way in the same direction. 
 
 2 Psalm cvi. 37, 38; cp. Jer. xix. 4, 5. 
 
 3 From an inscription found in Malta. Cicero (de Nat. 
 Deor., ii., 16) makes the Tyrian Hercules a son of Jupiter 
 and Asteria, i.e., Baal and Ashtoreth. Cp. Movers, i., pp. 
 400—409. 
 
1 66 Religious Influence. 
 
 part of their regular worship. Although we 
 find that Moloch is spoken of as especially " the 
 abomination of the children of Amnion," still it 
 is possible that the introduction of his worship 
 was partly at least due to Tyrian influence, 
 and that it was maintained at Jerusalem by the 
 body of Tyrian settlers to whom we have re- 
 ferred before. This would help to explain the 
 fact that, unless Moloch is to be included among 
 the Baalim of the Book of Judges (which seems 
 very doubtful), the first introduction of his wor- 
 ship was not till after the full development of 
 the Tyrian hegemony in Phoenicia. 
 
 The cultus of Baal-Saturn is much less easy 
 to trace, but this arises probably from the great 
 modification which it underwent among the chil- 
 dren of Israel. To a nation in the first enthu- 
 siasm of a great national deliverance the purely 
 sensual worship of Baal-Adonis would have fur- 
 nished but slight and temporary attractions. 
 " Certain lewd fellows of the baser sort" might 
 be carried away for the time by the temptations 
 of the devotees of Baal-Peor, but the bulk of the 
 nation would know that such a worship could 
 find no place with those who were under the 
 care of the Holy One of Israel, their Deliverer. 
 
Worship of Baal- Sat urn. 167 
 
 If, as is very possible, some knowledge of the 
 cultus, and even some tendency to share in it, 
 had accompanied them into Egypt, after their 
 sojourn in the midst of the Canaanites, the 
 hardships of their captivity there would have 
 driven from their minds all inclination to a reli- 
 gion based upon a sense of the rich exuberance 
 of nature. And, on the other hand, we may well 
 believe that the craven fear of the destructive 
 Chthonian powers that furnished the baser 
 motives, and the sense of sin and the need of 
 purification which gave a nobler impulse, to the 
 worship of Moloch, would have been expelled 
 or satisfied by their trust in Jahveh and their 
 obedience to the sacrificial law of Moses. The 
 worship of Baal- Saturn was of a very much 
 nobler type. Movers has collected much evi- 
 dence to show that he was identical with El, the 
 original deity of the Semitic nations. 1 He is 
 regarded as the father of all the Elohim, the 
 creator of the world, its continual upholder and 
 ruler. 2 Seated above all the planets, and lord 
 of the heavenly host, he maintains the unity 
 and order of the Cosmos ; he binds it in the. 
 
 1 See also Ewald, i., p. 361. 
 
 2 Cp. Movers, L, c. viii., and especially p. 286. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 liTY 
 
1 68 Religious Influence. 
 
 eternal bands of law. The king of Assyria 
 reaches the summit of his audacity, when he 
 says, "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt 
 my throne above the stars of El, I will make 
 myself like to El-Eliun." An all but universal 
 opinion among the ancient pagans, originating 
 probably in Egypt, was that Saturn was the God 
 of the Jews; 1 and if this be rightly understood, 
 there may be some truth in it. For all the 
 Semitic nations, we believe, held at first a pure 
 and simple Monotheism, which held its ground 
 finally only among the Jews. 2 
 
 From this, in the Phoenician or Canaanite 
 tribes, sprang up like noxious parasites other 
 cults, which overgrew and at last hid away from 
 sight entirely the primitive faith. 3 But it still 
 
 1 Movers, 1., 297. Cp. Tac. Hist., v. 4. "Alii honorem 
 eum (of the Sabbath), Saturno haberi seu . . . seu quod 
 de septem sideribus, quis mortales res reguntur, altissimo 
 orbe et pr&cipua potentia Stella Saturni feratur." 
 
 2 The Arabs, whatever M. Renan says, were certainly 
 idolaters at the time of Mahomet's reformation. 
 
 3 The remarks of Movers (i., p. 315) are worth tran- 
 scribing here : — 
 
 " On these grounds [traces of customs among the He- 
 brews similar to those characteristic of the worship of 
 El] I do not hesitate to bring Mosaism into connection 
 with the circle of religious ideas common to the nations 
 allied to the Jews by speech and race, and to regard it as 
 
Baa I- Sat u rn. 169 
 
 remained, though much disfigured, all but for- 
 gotten, and crumbling fast into ruin ; and the 
 worship of Baal-Saturn seems to have been its 
 representative. If this be so, we can begin to 
 understand what is meant by the words already 
 quoted from Amos : " Ye have borne the taber- 
 nacles of your king, even Chiun [or Remphan], 
 your images, the star of your god." It admits of 
 little doubt that Saturn is here referred to ; but 
 it seems more natural to suppose that we have 
 here an instance of the violation of the second 
 commandment rather than the first ; an attempt 
 
 a higher manifestation of the Saturn cultus of Hither 
 Asia ; and here it is perhaps hardly needful to remark 
 that neither from the point of view of religious history 
 nor from that of theology can I consider the Mosaic 
 religion as a development from heathendom, but that I 
 hold it, with the Holy Scriptures, to be a restitution of the 
 purer worship of an earlier time, which at various periods 
 among the Israelites and their forefathers was perhaps 
 more or less depressed, first, according to the Biblical ac- 
 count, among Abraham's ancestors in Chaldasa, probably 
 by the prevalent worship of Moloch, or fire, then to a 
 much more important extent during the sojourn of the 
 Hebrews in Egypt, in the midst of the Canaanite Hyksos, 
 who worshipped Moloch and Chiun, similarly during the 
 time of the Judges, and again at times under the rule of 
 the Kings, especially between Manasseh and Josiah, but 
 never to such an extent that by means of Divine Providence 
 a restoration of the old idea of God was not possible." 
 
1 70 Religious Influence. 
 
 to have some visible representation of their 
 own god, rather than a lapse into Sabaean star- 
 worship. Hence the force of the appellation used 
 by the prophet : " Therefore I will cause you 
 to go into captivity beyond Damascus, saith 
 Jahveh, whose name is The God of the Hosts of 
 Heaven," 1 the stars. But the Israelitish worship 
 was being constantly elevated and purified during 
 the life in the desert by the lofty inspiration of 
 Moses, while the simpler creed of their fathers 
 was being corrupted among the Canaanites, and 
 continually debased. The primary conception 
 of a holy and just God, in whose eyes every sin 
 would call for expiation, easily passed into that 
 of a jealous king, taking pleasure in human 
 suffering. And so we find that Saturn came to 
 be honoured with the same cruel sacrifices as 
 Moloch. 2 " The Phoenician history of Sancho- 
 niatho," says Porphyry, " is full of instances in 
 which that people, when suffering under great 
 calamity from war, or drought, or pestilence, 
 chose by public vote one of those most dear to 
 
 1 This is not, however, Mr. Grove's view. See Diet. 
 Bible, in voc. Sabaoth. 
 
 2 For this "Verschmelzung" of Saturn and Moloch, cp. 
 Movers, i., p. 317. 
 
Astral Worship. 171 
 
 them, and sacrificed him to Saturn." And Movers 1 
 has shown that the same custom was widely 
 extended among the Phoenician colonies. The 
 practice continued even as late as the time of 
 Tiberius, who put a stop to it by hanging the 
 priests on the trees of their own sacred groves. 
 
 It is not by any means easy to determine the 
 exact form which the worship of the heavenly 
 bodies took in the various nations of Western 
 Asia. Movers has investigated the question with 
 his usual learning and laborious patience, and the 
 conclusions to which he comes are the following. 
 The purest form of star-worship was that of the 
 Assyrio-Persian Magism ; it admitted of no 
 images of the Deity, and in its adoration of the 
 heavenly bodies it drew its deepest inspiration 
 from the thought of their perfect beauty. This 
 was the cultus to which Job felt himself tempted 
 when he " beheld the sun when it shined, or the 
 moon walking in brightness" (cp. Deut. iv. 19). 
 A second mode of regarding the stars was that 
 of the Phoenicians, by whom they were looked 
 upon as the originators of the growth and decay 
 of nature, the embodiment of the creative and 
 generative principle; and from this view theie 
 
 1 i-, PP- 299—305- 
 
172 Religious Influence. . 
 
 was readily developed a further symbolism, 
 which led ere long to the grossest idolatry. The 
 third great system of astral worship was that 
 whose leading tendency was to dwell rather on 
 the contemplation of the eternal unchangeable- 
 ness of the heavenly bodies, as contrasted with 
 the chances and changes of this transitory life. 
 This was the form most common among the 
 Chaldseans, and naturally produced the astro- 
 logy for which they were famous. 1 It is not 
 possible always to determine which form of the 
 worship of " the hosts of heaven ' was that 
 which presented itself as a temptation to the 
 children of Israel; on the whole we may assume 
 it to have been the second, not only from the 
 connection in which it is mentioned, but also 
 from the circumstances of the case. But this 
 applies only to the earlier periods. At the time 
 w r hen the Jews were brought into connection 
 with Babylon, the purer character of the Chal- 
 daean faith had been corrupted, possibly by the 
 grosser tendencies of the Cushite population ; 
 and the rites of the Babylonian worship were at 
 least as degrading as those of the Phoenician ; 
 and Bilit or Mylitta, at all events in that lower 
 1 Movers, i., pp. 157 — 168. 
 
Idolatry of Israel. 173 
 
 aspect of her character which corresponded to 
 Aphrodite Pandemos, suffered a degeneracy as 
 oreat as we find in Ashtoreth. 
 
 Such were the broad features of the Phoenician 
 and Canaanite religion that presented them- 
 selves to the Israelites when they entered the 
 Promised Land. No long time elapsed before 
 they felt the full force of the temptations that 
 were thus presented to them. In answer to the 
 appeal of Joshua, they had vowed to put away 
 from them the gods of the Amorites, in whose 
 land they dwelt; 1 " and the people served the 
 Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days 
 of the elders that prolonged their days after 
 Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the 
 Lord that He did for Israel." 2 But when another 
 generation arose, " they did evil in the sight of 
 the Lord, and they forsook the Lord, and served 
 Baalim and Ashtaroth." The attractions of a 
 higher civilization and a richer luxury than any 
 that they had known before, the constant com- 
 mercial intercourse upon which we have dwelt, 
 and, above all, marriage alliances with the people 
 of the land, would draw them with an all but 
 
 1 Joshua, xxiv. 
 
 2 Judges ii. 7. 
 
174 Religious Influence. 
 
 irresistible force to the shrines of Baal. They 
 
 found 
 
 How hard to hurry by 
 Where, on the lonely woodland road, 
 
 Beneath the moonlight sky, 
 
 The festal warblings flowed ; 
 Where maidens to the queen of heaven 
 Wove the gay dance round oak or palm, 
 
 Or breathed their vows at even 
 
 In hymns as soft as balm. 
 
 But in addition to the potent sensual attrac- 
 tions of the worship of the generative powers, 
 a subtler cause was probably also at work, 
 originating in the identity of the Hebrew lan- 
 guage with that of their tempters. There seems 
 but little evidence to support those critics who 
 maintain that the whole Levitical system is of 
 late introduction. 1 But there is much more force 
 in the argument of Dean Milman (L, p. 160, note 
 last ed.) that it was rather " an ideal religious 
 republic, an Utopia, existing in the mind of the 
 wise legislator, but never realized upon earth. 
 Is it not another illustration of the perverseness 
 
 1 A popular account of the views of this school is 
 given by Sharpe, " History of the Hebrew Nation and 
 Literature," especially pp. ioo — 105, and 194^ But see 
 Milman's excellent discussion of the question, i., pp. 
 131— 136. 
 
Names of the Deify. 175 
 
 and unfitness of the Israelites for their wonderful 
 destination ?" It is certain that owing to the 
 great disorganization of the country during the 
 time of the Judges, the provisions of the Mosaic 
 law for the frequent worship of Jahveh in com- 
 mon could not have been carried out. May not 
 the Hebrews have been often led astray by the 
 thought that as the Canaanites round them 
 were worshipping El — God, or Baal — the Lord, 
 after their own fashion, they too might honour 
 the Supreme Deity by joining in this worship ? 
 We know the power that language has in con- 
 fusing thought ; as Bacon has it : " Words, as a 
 Tartar's bow, shoot back upon the understanding 
 of the wisest, and mightily entangle and pervert 
 the judgment." And the judgment is all the 
 more readily perverted if the road along which 
 it is to be drawn coincides with that by which 
 its passions would guide it. The Israelite may 
 have been all the more willing to believe that 
 his own God could be worshipped acceptably 
 under the name of Baal, if he was being per- 
 suaded at the same time by a Canaanitish wife 
 to accompany her to the revels in which she 
 delighted. 
 
 A curious confirmation of this suggestion is 
 
176 Religious Influence. 
 
 supplied from an unexpected quarter. Two of 
 the sons and one of the grandsons of Saul bear 
 namts ending in Bosheth ; but Bosheth, shame, 
 is the word which the Jews often used as a con- 
 temptuous substitute for Baal ; and hence we 
 find that in the Chronicles — which though of later 
 date than the Books of Kings seem to have pre- 
 served in this instance the earlier forms — Ish- 
 bosheth and Mephi-bosheth are represented by 
 Ish-baal and Merib-baal. We do not find any- 
 where reason to believe that Saul amid all his 
 sins fell into idolatry ; what other ground then 
 can he have had for calling his son Ish-baal 
 " the man of the Lord," if it were not that Baal 
 even at this time was recognized as a name 
 which might be applied to the true God P 1 The 
 dangers of such a bad use of the word was soon 
 made evident ; and Hosea at a later time, even 
 when using the touching figure (to which his 
 own life lends such additional pathos) of the 
 betrothal of the people of Israel to Jahveh, will 
 not allow them to use the common expression to 
 a husband, Baali, " my lord," but bids them sub- 
 
 1 Mr. Grove, in Diet. Bible (s. vv.), cannot explain the 
 occurrence of the word Baal in their names. The sug- 
 gestion in the text is due to Mr. Sharpe, op. a'/., p. 32. 
 
Neglect of the Mosaic Law. 177 
 
 stitute Ishi, " my man," "vir meus" (ii. 16, 17). It 
 is possible that this usage of the name was limited 
 to or at least most common in Northern Israel, 
 where the appellation Jahveh seems not at first 
 to have been so commonly used as in Judah. 1 At 
 any rate, while the instances of idolatrous worship 
 in the Book of Judges are almost exclusively re- 
 lated of the northern tribes, and Judah is placed 
 altogether in the background, perhaps because 
 it took but little share in the apostasies which 
 brought the Divine judgments on the nation, 
 the religious reformation under Samuel, result- 
 ing in the putting away of " the strange gods 
 and Ashtaroth," 2 and the restoration of the wor- 
 ship of Jahveh originated rather in the south. 
 It is worth while noticing another way in which 
 the disregard of the Mosaic law must have 
 paved the way for idolatry. The legislator had 
 not only attached the severest penalties to the 
 worship of other gods, but all customs which 
 might even remotely tend to assimilate the wor- 
 ship of Jahveh to that of Baal were proscribed. 
 The mountain-top, so natural a place of devo- 
 tion, was forbidden ground to the Jew, lest he 
 
 1 Sharpe, pp. 23 — 25. 
 
 2 1 Sam. vii. 4. 
 
 12 
 
1 7 8 Religious Influence. 
 
 should be tempted to join in the rites of the 
 "high places of Baal." Numerous practices, 
 even such as a peculiar mode of cutting the hair, 
 were denounced, and in every way a broad line 
 of demarcation was drawn between the wor- 
 shippers of God and the worshippers of idols. 
 But while the very fact that all these prohibi- 
 tions were inserted in the Divine Law shows 
 the great importance attaching to them at the 
 time as preservatives, the indubitable neglect of 
 this law during the period of the Judges must 
 have produced a disregard of all such precau- 
 tions. One suggestive example may be noticed. 
 In providing that all the males of the nation 
 should assemble thrice in the year for the 
 solemn festivals, the legislator seems to have 
 intentionally guarded against the evils that 
 sprang up in such abundance among the Canaan- 
 ites from promiscuous assemblages of both 
 sexes. And when we find the sons of Eli cor- 
 rupting the women that " assembled by troops 
 at the door of the tabernacle of the congrega- 
 tion," we see the wisdom of the limitation. It 
 seems very probable that they were imitating 
 the conduct of the priests of Ashtoreth, or of 
 Baal-Peor, with whom such license was a part 
 
Neglect of the Mosaic Law. 179 
 
 of religious service, 1 the hpoSovXot being the 
 invariable attendants of the cult. 2 
 
 The reformation of Samuel seems to have 
 been real, deep, and lasting. " No doubt the loss 
 and the recovery of the ark would tend power- 
 fully to consolidate the disorganized realm. 
 The tidings of that awful calamity, the capture 
 of the ark, the seeming abandonment of His 
 people by their God, would sound like a knell in 
 the heart of every one born of Israel. From the 
 foot of Lebanon to the edge of the Desert, from 
 the remotest pastures of Gilead to the sea-coast 
 of Asher, the dormant religious feeling would 
 be stirred to its depths. Even those who had 
 furtively cast their grain of incense on the altar 
 of Baal, or mingled in the voluptuous dances of 
 Succoth Benoth, 3 would be roused by the ter- 
 
 1 Cp. Milman, i., p. 262, and Ewald's Alterthiimer, 
 p. 326^ 
 
 2 But we must not fail to notice that the way in which 
 their conduct was received is a proof that the morality of 
 the nation was not deeply corrupted. That which would 
 have been accepted as a matter of course in the worship 
 of Mylitta, shocked the moral sense of the Jews when 
 united with the worship of Jahveh. See Movers, i., pp. 
 359^and 677^ 
 
 3 This is apparently an oversight. The word Succoth 
 Benoth, whether it be pure Hebrew, denoting " the tents of 
 
1 80 Religions Influence. 
 
 rible shock, and prostrate themselves in peni- 
 tence, if not in despair. That universal religious 
 movement, from grief, from shame, from fear, 
 would be maddened to tumultuous excitement 
 at the tidings as rapidly, as widely spread, of 
 the restoration of the inappreciable treasure, 
 Jehovah's rescue of Himself from the ignomini- 
 ous bondage, His return in all His power and 
 majesty to the centre of the chosen people." 1 
 
 From this time we hear no more of the Avor- 
 ship of Baalim or Ashtaroth in Israel until the 
 days of Solomon. Then, partly no doubt from 
 policy (an aspect which Ewald especially brings 
 out), partly from a dangerous latitudinananism, 
 taking the form of a desire to recognize the 
 germ of good that might underlie the evil in 
 foreign religions, partly, as the Scripture nar- 
 rative distinctly asserts, from the fascination of 
 " strange women," "he went after Ashtoreth, the 
 goddess of the Sidonians." Then did Solomon 
 also build a high place for Chemosh, the abomi- 
 
 the maidens," i.e., the booths devoted to the unhallowed 
 worship of Mylitta, or the corrupted name of a Chaldean 
 goddess, as Sir H. Rawlins on thinks (Rawlinson's Herod., 
 i., p. 517), does not occur before the time of the Babylonish 
 settlement in Samaria (2 Kings xvii. 30). 
 1 Milman, i., pp. 267, 268. 
 
Solomon s Idolatry. 181 
 
 nation of Moab, and for Moloch, the abomina- 
 tion of the Ammonites, in the hill that is before 
 Jerusalem. Perhaps we may accept the opinion of 
 Ewald, 1 supported by many forcible arguments, 
 that Solomon did not himself fall into idolatry, 
 but only sanctioned the hereditary worship of 
 his Sidonian, Ammonite, and Moabite wives. 
 And Dean Milman 2 has well reminded us that 
 the extent of Solomon's empire enforced either 
 toleration or internecine persecution. "When 
 the king of the Jews became king of a great 
 eastern empire, he had no course but to tolerate 
 the religion of his non-Jewish subjects, or to ex- 
 terminate them." But to a nation at this time 
 in such intimate commercial relations with 
 Phoenicia, and predisposed by the growing 
 luxury to a more sensual worship than that of 
 Jahveh, even the royal tolerance must have 
 acted as a powerful impulse. With Tyrian 
 merchants settled in their midst, and furnishing 
 constant temptations to sin, the downward path 
 was already too easy for them ; and the worship 
 of Ashtoreth seems to have been never rooted 
 out of the land, until the days of Josiah. 
 
 The worship of the golden calf at Bethel, 
 1 iii., pp. ioo, ioi. 2 L, p. 327, note. 
 
1 82 Religious Influence, 
 
 whether intended as a relapse into the worship 
 of Elohim as distinguished from Jahveh, or 
 more probably merely a symbolic representa- 
 tion of the national God, seems to have owed 
 nothing to Phoenician influence, but rather to 
 have been drawn from Egypt, where Jeroboam 
 had for a time resided. But the name of the 
 city calls our attention to one of the most 
 ancient and obscure cults of Canaan. In 
 Phoenicia, and therefore probably in the sur- 
 rounding tribes, a common object of worship 
 was the baetyl or upright stone, such as that 
 described by Tacitus 1 as found in the temple of 
 the Paphian Venus : " simulacrum Deae non 
 effigie humana, continuus orbis latiore initio 
 tenuem in ambitum, metae modo, exsurgens." 
 Movers 2 has collected many references to such 
 pillar-like erections ; and it is hard to resist his 
 argument that these, like the wooden columns of 
 the Asherah, had originally a phallic character. 
 It is probable then that Bethel, as the seat of 
 this rude and primitive worship, 3 retained a kind 
 
 1 Hist, ii., 3. 
 
 2 i-> PP- 673—675, cp. 567—572, 593—597. 
 
 3 The older etymologers, e.g., Spencer, "de Legg. 
 Hebr.," 444, and Bochart, " Canaan," ii., 2, were inclined 
 to derive the word j3aiTu\ioj> from " Bethel," as being the 
 
Worship of the Golden C a roes. 183 
 
 of sacred reputation, which made it the object 
 of the choice of Jeroboam, as one of the reli- 
 gious centres of the northern kingdom. But the 
 prophets of the golden calves still called them- 
 selves the prophets of Jahveh, 1 and the national 
 apostasy only began really with the house of 
 Omri. There are several reasons for believing 
 that he it was, rather than his son Ahab, who 
 was the first of the kings of Israel to give his 
 support to the worship of Baal. He appears to 
 have been an active, energetic king, and to have 
 formed alliances with the neighbouring nations, 
 one result of which was the free admission of 
 their subjects into his new capital, for "he made 
 streets " for the Tyrians in Samaria. And he 
 seems to have been responsible for the marriage 
 of his son with the Tyrian Jezebel, which was 
 soon to be so fatal to the national religion. 
 Hence it is that Micah (vi. 16) mentions among 
 the sins of the children of Israel, that " the 
 statutes of Omri were strictly kept, and all the 
 work of the house of Ahab." The political cir- 
 
 name of the place where the most famous sacred stone 
 was found ; and Mr. Grove (" Diet. Bible," i., p. igSa) does 
 not reject the derivation. Cp. Mr. W. A. Wright's article 
 on " Idols " {id., p. 850*2). 
 1 See Ewald, hi., p. 155. 
 
184 Religious In/licence. 
 
 cumstances of the time, which made a Tyrian 
 alliance attractive, have been already referred 
 to. 1 
 
 But it was mainly to Jezebel that the formal 
 introduction of the worship of Baal was due. 
 The many causes that combined to help this 
 on had hitherto been at least partially counter- 
 acted by the zeal and energy of the prophetic 
 order, who were devoted to the worship of 
 Jahveh. But now these were fiercely perse- 
 cuted ; and the boundless influence of the queen 
 over her weak but sometimes well-meaning hus- 
 band, swept away all open resistance. Only 
 those prophets who were hidden away from her 
 fury escaped ; and her national religion was 
 established in the land of Jahveh. A temple of 
 great magnificence was built in honour of Baal, 
 where four hundred priests served his shrine ; 
 and an oracular grove was erected to Ashtoreth, 2 
 where besides the four hundred and fifty pro- 
 phets of the grove that fed at Jezebel's table, 
 there were undoubtedly many of the kede- 
 shoth, of whom we read in the later prophets. 3 
 
 1 See p. 67. 
 
 2 Ewald, iii., p. 172. 
 
 8 Hosea iv. 14; cp. Gen. xxxviii. 21, 22, and Deut. 
 xxiii. 17. 
 
Jezebel. 185 
 
 The extent to which this worship was adopted 
 by the nation is shown by the fact that there 
 were only seven thousand in Israel, knees which 
 had not bowed to Baal, and lips which had not 
 kissed him. 
 
 The display of Divine power on Carmel, con- 
 trasted with the wild but futile efforts of the 
 priests of the Tyrian deities to call forth a 
 response from the objects of their worship, 
 aroused for the time an enthusiasm for the God 
 of Israel. But it seems to have exhausted itself 
 in the vengeance taken on the foreign priests, 
 and Elijah felt that there was no strong national 
 feeling upon which he could rely to protect him 
 against the revenge of the furious queen. He 
 fled into the desert, there to lay him down and 
 die. But his work, like all true work for God, 
 was not destined to perish unavailingly, though 
 he might not see the fruit of it. We cannot 
 but believe that the memory of the grand old 
 prophet, of his words of bitter scorn and bold 
 defiance, served as a powerful assistance to Jehu 
 in his work of reformation. He would hardly 
 have ventured, even by an act of treachery, to 
 deal such terrible retribution upon the worship- 
 pers of Baal, had he not felt assured of the 
 
1 86 Religious Influence, 
 
 support, or at least the indifference, of a great 
 body of the nation. At the same time the very 
 fact that at the critical point of his usurpation 
 he was not afraid to give himself out as a 
 worshipper of Baal, even with his hostile object, 
 shows that the indignation against the foreign 
 deities cannot have been really strong. Dean 
 Stanley is merely speaking somewhat loosely, 
 when he says that " a sweeping massacre re- 
 moved at one blow the whole heathen popu- 
 lation of Israel." x We cannot suppose that 
 anything like all those who worshipped Baal, 
 or even all who were fanatically devoted to his 
 worship, were to be found at one time within his 
 courts, even on a solemn occasion. It is much 
 more probable that from this time there was 
 a constant internal conflict in the kingdom of 
 Israel between the two religions. Perhaps we 
 ought rather to say the three religions ; for while 
 we find a constant succession of prophets uphold- 
 ing the purity of the worship of Jahveh, and learn 
 from the writings of such as have remained to 
 us that many of the people were still devoted to 
 Baal, the court appears to have held to what 
 may be called the State religion, the worship of 
 1 Diet. Bible, i., p. 961^. 
 
Jeh it s Reformation . 187 
 
 the Golden Calf. All three forms are brought 
 before us in a passage from our great authority 
 on this period, the prophet Hosea : x " When 
 Ephraim spake there was trembling ; he exalted 
 himself in Israel ; but he offended in Baal, and 
 died : and now they go on to sin, and make 
 for themselves molten images, idols of silver, 
 according to their skill ; all of them the work 
 of artificers ; the men that sacrifice say of them, 
 let them kiss the calves ; . . . yet I, Jahveh, 
 have been thy God from the land of Egypt, thou 
 knewest no God beside me ; nor was there any 
 Saviour beside me." 
 
 On the whole, the language of the prophets 
 compels us to believe in a constantly increasing 
 degradation of the nation. It would be impos- 
 sible to find words to express more forcibly the 
 utter corruption of the northern tribes, and, 
 saddest sign of all, the shameless impurity of 
 the women, than the words that are used by 
 Amos and Hosea. We need not dwell upon 
 them ; it is enough to notice that in every case 
 the evil is traced directly to the debasing wor- 
 ship of the idols, which intercourse with Phoe- 
 nicia had brought among them. " They left the 
 
 1 xiii. 1, 2, 4. 
 
1 88 Religious Influence. 
 
 commandments of the Lord their God, and 
 made them molten images, even two calves, and 
 made a grove, and worshipped all the host of 
 heaven and served Baal, . . . and they followed 
 vanity and became vain, and went after the 
 heathen that were round about them, concern- 
 ing whom the Lord had charged them that they 
 
 should not do like them Therefore the 
 
 Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed 
 them out of His sight : there was none left but 
 the tribe of Judah only." 
 
 And Judah was drawn along the same fatal 
 path, by the same evil influences. We have 
 seen how Tyrian traders and Tyrian settlers 
 paved the way for the adoption of their national 
 religion. After the influence of one of their 
 own princesses had procured the erection of a 
 "grove;" or rather an idolatrous symbol for 
 Ashtoreth, it was probably the Tyrian colony in 
 Jerusalem that supplied the most constant wor- 
 shippers there, and Tyrian women that led the 
 Jews into a participation in its unholy rites. At 
 the very commencement of the kingdom of 
 Judah, the great internal struggle begins which 
 forms the principal element of interest through- 
 out its subsequent history. On the one side 
 
Tyrian Influence in Judah. 1 89 
 
 was the Temple with its unrivalled splendour and 
 glorious associations. Round it gathered the 
 Aaronic priesthood, who assume fresh import- 
 ance with the concentration of the national life 
 in the southern kingdom. At a later date 
 their spiritual pride and formalism made them 
 the bitterest foes of the truly inspired prophets. 
 But at this time the priests and the prophets 
 were contending side by side for the honour of 
 Jahveh. Opposed to them was the party of the 
 court, led by one of those commanding and 
 resolute women that play so prominent a part 
 in Jewish history. Maachah, the granddaughter 
 of Absalom, seems to have been gifted with all 
 the fascinating beauty of David's favourite son, 
 and to have exercised an irresistible influence 
 over her husband Rehoboam and her son Abijah, 
 at whose court she retained the position of 
 queen-mother. And mainly by her influence 
 " Judah did evil in the sight of the Lord ; for 
 they built them high places and images and 
 groves on every high hill and under every 
 green tree ; and they did according to all the 
 abominations of the nations which the Lord cast 
 out before the children of Israel." We have 
 here all the usual phrases to denote a revival of 
 
190 Religions Influence. 
 
 the worship of Asht'oreth ; and we are expressly 
 told 1 that the darkest features of that worship 
 were not wanting ; that the unhallowed conse- 
 cration of men and women to the service of the 
 goddess was practised. The corruption was 
 checked for the time by the vigour of Asa, who 
 destroyed the private sanctuary of Maachah, 
 burnt the obscene image to which her worship 
 was offered, and " her he removed from being 
 queen." The victory was for the time with 
 the priests and the prophets of the Lord. But 
 the alliance with the northern kingdom, which 
 brought prosperity to Jehoshaphat, was des- 
 tined to have the most fatal effects upon his 
 country. The good that he had done by carry- 
 ing on the religious reaction of Asa, and adding 
 to it a zeal for promoting among his people a 
 knowledge of " the Book of the Law," was more 
 than counterbalanced by the marriage of his 
 son Jehoram with Athaliah, the daughter of 
 Ahab and Jezebel. Even in her husband's reign 
 she had succeeded in restonng the worship of 
 
 1 1 Kings xiv. 24. 
 
 2 The word employed in 1 Kings xv. 13, and 2 Chron. 
 xv. 16, means properly " fright," "horror," and was un- 
 doubtedly an Asherah. Cp. Diet. Bible, i., p. 849^7, and 
 Movers, i., p. 571. 
 
AtJialiah. 191 
 
 Baal ; 1 — we can hardly suppose that it was then 
 introduced for the first time, though we have 
 not previously any explicit mention of it ; for it 
 seems an inseparable concomitant of the worship 
 of Ashtoreth. But her evil energies were roused 
 to the utmost by the slaughter of her son 
 Ahaziah by Jehu, and the subsequent massacre 
 of the worshippers of Baal at Samaria. Suc- 
 cessive calamities had almost exhausted the 
 family of David, and now "when Athaliah 
 saw that Ahaziah was dead, she arose and de- 
 stroyed all the seed-royal." One alone escaped, 
 and he but an infant. Then " the worship of 
 Baal, uprooted by Jehu in Samaria, sprang up 
 with renewed vigour in Jerusalem. The adhe- 
 rents of Baal, exiled from the northern kingdom, 
 no doubt took refuge in the south. The temple 
 became a quarry for the rival sanctuary. The 
 stones and sacred vessels were employed to 
 build or to adorn the temple of Baal, which 
 rose, as it would seem, even within the temple 
 precincts." 2 But the queen does not appear to 
 have felt herself strong enough to crush the 
 
 1 See 2 Chron. xxi. 11, 13. 
 
 2 Stanley, ii., p. 394 ; 2 Kings xi.' 18 ; 2 Chron. xxiii. 
 17, 18. 
 
1 92 Religious Influence. 
 
 worship of Jahveh, which went on side by side 
 with the rites of the pagan sanctuary. 
 
 No scene in the sacred history is more 
 dramatic, and few more familiar, than that in 
 which the chief priest Jehoiada overthrew the 
 usurping idolatress, and restored at once the 
 rightful heir and the true religion. The writer 
 of the Book of Chronicles (probably himself a 
 priest) 1 takes great delight in recording the zeal 
 and eladness with which the house of God was 
 restored, which "the sons of Athaliah, that 
 wicked woman, had broken up," and the dedi- 
 cated things of the house of the Lord replaced, 
 which they had bestowed upon Baalim. 2 But 
 soon the brightness was clouded over again. 
 On the death of the aged Jehoiada, the king 
 " hearkened unto the princes of Judah/' who 
 always appear as the leaders of the idolatrous 
 party opposed to the priests and the prophets. 
 
 i See Milman's note (L, p. 328). The majority of com- 
 mentators accept the constant tradition of the J ews, that 
 the work was compiled by Ezra. 
 
 2 2 Chron. xxiv. 7. 
 
 3 2 Chron. xxiv. 17. Some part of the evil may have 
 been due to the influence of the king's mother, Zibiah of 
 Beersheba, a place noted at this time for its idolatry 
 (Amos viii. 14). 
 
The Princes of Judali. 193 
 
 It is natural that those who were brought most 
 into contact with the Tyrian merchants, and 
 who had been most deeply tainted by the cor- 
 ruptions of what was practically a Tyrian court 
 under Athaliah, should be most zealous in the 
 service of the Tyrian deities. "And they left 
 the house of Jahveh, God of their fathers, and 
 served Asherah and idols. Yet sent he prophets 
 to them to bring them again unto Jahveh, and 
 they testified against them ; but they would not 
 give ear." 
 
 With the death of Athaliah the direct influ- 
 ence of Tyre on Judah had ceased. But we 
 cannot doubt that very much indirect influence 
 still continued to be exerted, through the 
 agencies to which we have often referred. An 
 incidental expression in Isaiah (ii. 16) shows us 
 that the commerce of Uzziah still loaded the 
 ships of Tarshish with articles of costly and 
 beautiful merchandize. 1 But his own name ("the 
 help of Jahveh," or in the form Azariah, " the 
 strength of Jahveh/') shows that he had not for- 
 saken the national God. And the reference in 
 the prophet of the time — Amos 2 — to the kid- 
 napping incursions of the Tynans, shows that 
 Stanley, ii., p. 435. 2 i. ; 9. 
 
 13 
 
i g4 Religious Influence, 
 
 there can have been no close alliance or friend- 
 ship between the two nations. This is further 
 confirmed by the fact that his reign appears 
 to be a period of the great predominance of the 
 priesthood, and the increased magnificence of 
 the temple service. We may notice also that 
 Amos, though belonging to the southern king- 
 dom, went into the land of Israel to deliver his 
 prophecies, and seems to have felt that there 
 was much less need for his indignant invectives 
 in the kingdom of Judah. 
 
 But the priests soon fell before the temptation 
 that everywhere besets the professors of a domi- 
 nant creed ; and a religion which had become 
 little better than a formal sham was unable to 
 hold its own against the seductions of a sensual 
 idolatry which appealed with so much force to 
 the vicious and luxurious nobles. The accession 
 of Ahaz marks the commencement of a new 
 period of declension. His father Jotham had done 
 that which was right in the sight of Jahveh, 
 though under his reign the people yet did cor- 
 ruptly, and offered incense in the high places 
 or consecrated mounds, 1 which might be some- 
 times even in valleys (Jer. xvii. 21) or in 
 
 1 Cp. Movers, i., p. 675. 
 
Ahaz. 195 
 
 the streets of Jerusalem (2 Kings xvii. 9, 
 Ezek. xvi. 31), and on which an irregular 
 worship was offered, sometimes to Jahveh, at 
 other times to heathen deities. But Ahaz 
 " made molten images for Baalim, and burnt 
 his children in the fire, after the abominations of 
 the heathen whom Jahveh had cast out before 
 the children of Israel. He sacrificed also and 
 burnt incense in the high places, and on the 
 hills, and under every green tree." 1 What is 
 implied in the latter is shown but too plainly by 
 the words of Hosea (iv. 13). These and similar 
 phrases point to the influence of the old Canaan- 
 itish and therefore Phoenician idolatry ; but 
 Ahaz personally seems to have been rather 
 devoted to foreign religious practices, to the 
 ritual of the gods of Damascus, and the wizard- 
 ries of the remoter East. 2 His reign is one of 
 the darkest passages. in the history of Judah ; it 
 is succeeded by a brightness as of the Indian 
 summer before the gloom of winter settles on 
 the land, or the glory of the setting sun, that 
 
 1 2 Chron. xxviii. 2 — 4. 
 
 2 Movers (i., pp. 65, 66) maintains that Ahaz adopted 
 the purer Magian star-worship, as contrasted with the 
 corrupt Phoenician cult. See above, p. 171. 
 
196 Religions Influence. 
 
 after a day of clouds and storm illumines the 
 world for a transient while before it sinks into 
 the shades of night. At the stern rebuke of the 
 prophet Micah, 1 the king Hezekiah and the 
 nation were awakened to a sense of their sinful 
 apostasy. A vast sacrifice was offered in expia- 
 tion of the national guilt. " And Hezekiah spake 
 unto the heart 2 of all the Levites that taught 
 the good knowledge of the Lord, and they 
 did eat throughout the feast seven days, 
 offering peace offerings and making confes- 
 sion unto Jahveh, God of their fathers. . . . 
 So there was great joy in Jerusalem ; for since 
 the time of Solomon the son of David, king of 
 Israel, there was not the like in Jerusalem." 
 The " high places," that had formed so easy a 
 transition to pagan worship, and the brazen 
 serpent, that appeared to link the worship of 
 Jahveh on to one of the most widely extended 
 of heathen superstitions, 3 were alike destroyed ; 
 " the uprooting of those delightful shades, the 
 levelling of those consecrated altars, the destruc- 
 
 1 The scene is graphically described in Stanley's Lec- 
 tures, ii., pp. 463 — 465. 
 
 2 So the Hebrew in 2 Chron. xxx. 22, 26. 
 
 3 Cp. Cox, "Aryan Mythology," ii., p. 116. 
 
Hezekialis Reforms. 197 
 
 tion of that mysterious figure, which Moses had 
 made in the wilderness, must have been a 
 severe shock to the religious feelings of the 
 nation." 1 But they were one and all fatal lures 
 to lead them into the unhallowed worship of 
 Phoenicia, 2 and therefore the king destroyed 
 them. The terrible reaction under his youthful 
 son Manasseh is to be ascribed directly to the 
 influence of the "party of the princes," and we 
 cannot trace Phoenician influence in it, except so 
 far as, according to a remark made above, the 
 nobles were those peculiarly liable to be affected 
 by the opinions and practices of wealthy foreign 
 merchants. It is more just to say that the evil 
 leaven, once introduced by the example of the 
 Canaanites within the borders, and their power- 
 ful maritime kinsfolk, had never ceased to work 
 among those classes, where it found its most 
 congenial matter. 
 
 Once again the abominable rites of Astarte 
 were practised even within the sacred precincts; 3 
 the houses of her devotees were hard by the 
 house of the Lord, and in them the women wove 
 
 1 Stanley, ii., p. 467. 
 
 2 Cp. Movers, i., pp. 560 — 577. 
 8 2 Kings xxi. 5 — 7. 
 
198 Religious Influence. 
 
 decorated hangings for the emblem under which 
 she was worshipped. Now for the first time in 
 Judah a terrible persecution was directed against 
 the worshippers of Jahveh, and the voices of the 
 prophets were silenced. The suicidal attempt 
 was but too successful ; the after-reformation of 
 Josiah, though carried out with an earnestness, 
 a thoroughness, we may almost add a bitterness, 
 to which we find no earlier parallel, came too 
 late to root out the growing corruption of the 
 nation. " Large as is the space occupied by it 
 in the historical books, by the contemporary 
 prophets it is never mentioned at all." 1 The 
 national worship of Jahveh had been crushed 
 out of the land, or had withered in the presence 
 of more alluring idolatries ; but with its extinc- 
 tion the national life had been paralyzed at the 
 heart ; the Jews had lost their raison d'etre for 
 independent national existence ; and the opera- 
 tion of the natural laws of history, which are 
 indeed but the execution on earth of the judg- 
 ments of God, rendered their captivity in- 
 evitable. 
 
 We have thus traced, rapidly and incom- 
 pletely, but with details perhaps sufficient for 
 
 1 Stanley, ii., p. 503. 
 
The Captivity. 199 
 
 our present purpose, the history of the lapse 
 into idolatry on the part of the children of 
 Israel. So far as it needs any other explana- 
 tion than that which is furnished by the attrac- 
 tion of a sensuous faith and a licentious practice 
 upon the mass of mankind, this is supplied, we 
 believe, by the action of Phoenician influence 
 from without, strongly supported by the ex- 
 ample of the incorporated Canaanites, and 
 sometimes roused into greater activity by special 
 political circumstances. 
 
 But here again the question presents itself to 
 us, Is there not another and a brighter side to 
 the picture ? Can we believe that the Shepherd 
 and Guide of His chosen people placed them in 
 a position where they would be exposed to the 
 strongest temptations, from which nothing but 
 evil could result ? — that no rich blessing was 
 intended to the world by all these centuries of 
 trial and discipline ? I think that several con- 
 siderations may be found, to help us in seeing 
 this matter aright. In the first place, the nature 
 of the Phoenician religion was in itself a safe- 
 guard. Much more might have been said, per- 
 haps in some places ought to have been said, 
 that has intentionally been passed over, about 
 
2 CO Religious Influence. 
 
 the corrupting and degrading character of the 
 worship and its votaries. But while these cha- 
 racteristics only enhanced its attractions among 
 the masses, especially of the wealthy and luxu- 
 rious, there must have been in every generation 
 many pure and noble spirits to whom they 
 caused invincible repugnance. We may say 
 with reverence that it was of vital importance to 
 the Divine scheme of the education of the race 
 that a firm and hereditary belief in the One 
 Living and True God should be maintained, at 
 least in one selected people. We see from the 
 religious history of Greece and Rome how im- 
 possible it was for any such belief to gain firm 
 hold of the mind of a nation when supported 
 only by the speculations of philosophers. Plato's 
 Idea of the Beautiful, or the Stoic's pantheistic 
 conception of the all-pervading world-spirit, was 
 an utterly inadequate substitute for "the Lord 
 God of our fathers" of the Israelite. But let us 
 conceive, if we can, of Athens standing to the 
 kingdom of Israel in the relation that Tyre 
 actually occupied. Let us fancy the brutal 
 worship of Baal-Moloch, the wild orgies of 
 Ashtoreth, replaced by hymns to Apollo, the 
 glorious god of light, such as that chanted as 
 
General Results. 201 
 
 his morning paean by Ion ; x by the praises that 
 Cleanthes taught his countrymen to offer to 
 Zeus, " the almighty one from everlasting, of 
 whom we are the offspring;" and by the Homeric 
 stories of Athena, the ever-maiden goddess of 
 wisdom, helper of heroes in fair and noble deeds 
 of daring. Can we not readily believe that under 
 the charms of a mythology such as this, not 
 only the lowest, but even the highest spirits of 
 the nation, might have been led astray from the 
 faith of their fathers? And when the process 
 of decay, of misconception, of fouler aftergrowth 
 of legend had begun, where would then have 
 been the spring of living water which, choked 
 for a while, and all but hidden among the 
 Jews, had never been entirely dried, but which 
 when the appointed time had come, and its 
 fountains were unsealed and purified by the 
 Incarnate Lord, broke forth once more for the 
 healing of the nations ? 
 
 Again, we must remember that the part which 
 a nation plays in the development of the great 
 world's life, depends far more upon the height 
 to which its most exalted spirits rise, than upon 
 the depths to which the mass of its members 
 1 Cp. Eur. Ion, 82 — 153. 
 
202 Religious Influence. 
 
 sometimes sink. It matters very little to us 
 n6w, except as a warning (and ' such are sadly 
 plentiful), that the princes of Judah in the days 
 of Manasseh gave themselves up to work all 
 manner of evil ; but the Church throughout all 
 time has been and will be unspeakably the 
 richer for the visions that in the darkness, and 
 surely also through the darkness, were given to 
 the aged prophet. Phoenicia and Canaan, Baal 
 and Ashtoreth, had done their worst, and with 
 terrible success, to blind the eyes of the bulk of 
 the nation to truth and goodness, when the 
 Spirit of the Lord spoke in the words of Isaiah 
 the promises that have been the stay of His 
 people ever since. 
 
 The Aryan nations, as M. Pictet well ex- 
 presses it, 1 in presence, not of error, but only 
 of nature, held their primitive monotheism but 
 loosely, and under the influence of a language of 
 boundless fertility, that lent itself readily to the 
 development of myths, this soon was changed 
 in every instance into a constantly degenerating 
 polytheism. But the storms of fierce tempta- 
 tion that assailed the Hebrews on every side 
 acted on their faith, as the national discipline 
 1 Les Origines Indo-Europdennes, ii., p. 710. 
 
Conclusion. 203 
 
 acted on the children of Sparta : the feeble and 
 sickly perished, but those who endured to tfre 
 end were made into models of healthful and 
 vigorous manhood. Monotheism among the 
 Jews attained to a strength of grasp upon the 
 national conscience, a depth of sure conviction 
 that is only given to truth that has wrestled in 
 a long stern struggle with error. " A fugitive 
 and cloistered virtue, unexercised and un- 
 breathed, that never sallies out and sees her 
 adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that 
 immortal garland is to be run for, not without 
 dust and heat," will never work any great de- 
 liverance, be it in man or in nation. " That 
 virtue which is but a youngling in the contem- 
 plation of evil, and knows not the utmost that 
 vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is 
 but a blank virtue, not a pure ; her whiteness is 
 but an excremental whiteness." x The faith of 
 the later Hebrews in the Unity of the Godhead 
 was no mere product of " a religious instinct," 
 no fragile fancy of prophet or poet : — 
 
 But iron dug from central gloom, 
 And heated hot with burning fears, 
 And dipt in baths of hissing tears, 
 
 1 Milton, " Areopagitica." 
 
204 Conclusion, 
 
 And battered with the shocks of doom, 
 To shape and use. 
 
 And if, as Mr. Gladstone has nobly said, " the 
 history of the race of Adam before the Advent 
 is the history of a long and varied but incessant 
 preparation for the Advent," we cannot fail to 
 recognize in the powerful influence of Phoenicia 
 on the eastern as well as the western world 
 one great element in that preparation. Here 
 too the eye of faith will recognize one of the 
 " diverse parts and diverse manners " in which 
 a wisdom, sometimes far beyond our ken, but 
 always in its own good way, was laying deep 
 and sure the foundations of the Everlasting 
 City of God. 
 
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