J3. UoaA£^ \m^csr" THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GIFT OF Mrs. E. F. Ducommun ; 4 1 "te < (0 UJ A SMALLER SCRIPTURE HISTORY. IN THREE PARTS: OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY; CONNECTION OF OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS; NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY TO A. D. 70. EDITED By WILLIAM SMITH, D.C.L., LL.D. illustrated uj 35tifltabfnfls on SSJoott. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1890. THE STUDENT'S SEKIES. 12mo, Ci.oth, uniform in style. LODGE'S HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE. $1 50. WESTCOTT . 7 \ of Judaea / iw 7-27. Roman Procurators 241 „ „ a t n (Herod Antipas, te-) l«%oi trar <* of Galilee V 241 A - D - da ( and Peraea j PAGB 4to (Herod Philip II., te-) » ;,%?1 trarch of Itura3a,V 241 A.i). dd j TrachontiS) etc . i a.d. (Preaching of John the\ 041 26. \ Baptist j" ^ 20-7. Baptism of Jesus 242 26-7. Temptation in the Wilder- ness 242 26-7. Testimony of John 242 26-7. Christ's first disciples 243 20-7. First miracle at Cana 243 26-7. Residence at Capernaum . . 243 CHAPTER XXII. First Year of Christ's Public Ministry.— From uis First to his Second Passover.— A.D. 27-2S. A.n. 27. Jesus appears in the temple. . 245 27. Retires from Jerusalem 245 27. Imprisonment of John '_'4r> 27. Jesus in Samaria 246 27. Returns to Galilee 246 27. Second Miracle at Cana 247 27. Preaches first in Galilee 247 A.D. 27. Rejected at Nazareth 248 27. Resides at Capernaum 248 27. The Lake of Galilee 249 27. Call of Peter and Andrew, James and John 249 27-28. First Circuit of Galilee.... 251 Various kinds of Miracles 251 CHAPTER XXIII. Second Year of Christ's Ministry.— From the Second to the Third Passover.— A.D. 28-29. 28. " The Feast of the Jews ". . . . 253 28. Miracle at Beth-esda 254 28. Jesus and the Sabbath 254 28. Return to Galilee 255 28. The twelve apostles 256 28. Sermon on the Mount 257 28. Jesus and the Baptist..* 258 28. The Christ anointed 259 2S. Second Circuit of Galilee 260 28-29. Third Circuit of Galilee. . . 261 29. Death of John the Baptist. . . 263 29. Christ withdraws from Herod 264 29. The Loaves and Fishes 264 Note: On Christ's Parables. 264 CHAPTER XXIV. The Third Year of Christ's Ministry.- and Last Passover. -From the Third to the Fourth -A.D. 29-30. 29. Offer of the kingdom 207 29. Walking on the waves 207 29. Jesus in Phoenicia and De- capolis 26S 29. Sign of the prophet Jonah . . . 20S 29. Jesus at Caesarea Philippi 209 29. Confession of Peter 269 29. The Transfiguration 270 29. Departure from Galilee 271 29. Last visit to Samaria 272 29. The seventy disciples 272 29. The Feast of Tabernacles 272 29. Events and discourses 273 29. Feast of the Dedication 274 29. Jesus retires to Bethabara. . . 274 29. Raising of Lazarus 275 29-30. Jesus in Persea 276 30. Various parables and miracles 277 30. The blind men at Jericho 277 30. Arrival at Bethany 277 30. Jesus anointed for his burial. 27T CONTENTS. xv CHAPTER XXV. The Passion of otra Lord.— A.D. 30. A. P. PAfiE S. Apr. 1. Entry into Jerusalem 279 M. Apr. 2. Cleansing the tem- ple 2S0 The barren fig-tree . 2S0 Tu. Apr. 3. Last day of " public teaching 2S0 Great prophecy of the destruction of Jeru- salem and the end of the world 2S3 Treason of Judas ... 2«4 W. Apr. 4. Day of retirement.. . 2S5 Th. Apr. 5. The Passover 285 The Lord's Supper.. 2S6 Agony in the garden 2S7 A.D. PAGB Betrayal of Christ.. . 287 Denials of Peter 2S3 Good-Friday,) Trial by the San- April 6. f hedi'im 2S8 Trial and condemna- tion by Pilate 289 Fate of Judas 292 Events and sayings at. the Crucifixion . 292 Certainty of Christ's death 29T The entombment . . . 298 S. Apr. 7. The Sabbath— Easter Eve 298 CHAPTER XXVI. The Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. — A.D. 30. «?. Apr. 17. Easter -da ii. —First Lord's Dan 299 The Resurrection... 300 Various appearances of Christ 301 Th. May IS. His ascension 390 CHAPTER XXVII. Tnu CutiRCii in Palestine. — To the Martyrdom or A.D. 30-37. St. Stephen. — SO. The Church at Jerusalem Election of Matthias S. May 27. Pentecost.— Whitsun- day Gift of Tongues State of theChurch Lame man healed Peter and John before the San- hedrim Barnabas, Ananias and Sap- phira 307 30S 30s 308 309 309 309 310 Imprisonment of the apostles 310 Advice of Gamaliel 310 Hebrews and Hellenists 311 Institution of deacons 311 Martyrdom of Stephen 312 Saul's persecution 312 Dispersion of the disciples. . . 312 Samaria— Simon Magus 313 Conversion of the Eunuch . . . 313 Political changes 313 Chronology of Paul's Life 314 CHAPTER XXVIII. The Gentiles received into the Church. — A.D. 37-50. Saul of Tarsus 315 B7. His conversion and first preaching 318 Escape from Damascus 319 89. First visit to Jerusalem 319 Rest of the Jewish churches. 320 40. Conversion of Cornelius 3'_'0 Christians at Antioch 321 41. Herod Agrippa I 321 44. Martyrdom of James 322 Escape of Peter 322 Death of Herod 323 Famine in Judaea 323 Barnabas and Saul at Jerusa- lem 323 4S^19 ? First missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas ". 324 Troubles from Jndaizers 826 50. Council at Jerusalem 32(5 Paul and the other apostles. . 32(5 Paul withstands Peter 32«» XVI CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXIX. St. Paul's Second Missionary Journey, and the Entrance op thb Gospei into Europe. — A.D. 51 to 54. A.D. 61. PAGE Quarrel of Paul and Barnabas 328 John Mark, Silas, and Luke. . 328 ! Ordination of Timothy 329 Paul in Galatia and Mysia . . . 329 Epistle to the Galatians 329 Call to Europe 330 Events at Philippi 331 Thessalonica and Beroea 332 Discourse at Athena 332 A.I>. PAGB 52. Residence at Corinth (IS months) 333 Aquila and Priscilla 333 Epistles to the Tliessalonians. . 335 Tumult at Corinth 335 53. Impartiality of Gallio 335 53 or 54. Voyage to Ephesus 335 Visit to Jerusalem 336 Felix procurator 336 51. Accession of Nero 336 CHAPTER XXX. St. Paul's Third Missionary Journey. — His Two Imprisonments at Rome, and his Martyrdom. — With Sequel. — A.D. 54-70, etc. 54. Third circuit from Autiocb . . 337 Troubles in Galatia 33T Apollos at Ephesus 337 Paul at Ephesus (3 years) ... 33S Epistles to the Corinthians.. . . 338 57. Tumult at Ephesus 339 Journey through Macedonia, etc 339 57-58. Stay at Corinth (3 months) 339 Pass, to (Incidentsof the voyage) om Pent. \ to Jerusalem ) **" Arrest in the temple, etc 342 Defense to the people 342 Paul before the Sanhedrim... 343 Sent to Csesarea 343 Trial before Felix 343 5S-60. Imprisonment at Csesarea. 344 60. Festus succeeds Felix 344 Paul appeals to Caesar 344 Paul before Agrippa II 345 His voyage and shipwreck.. . . 346 61. Arrival at Rome ... 348 Conferences with the Jews.. . 348 They reject the Gospel 349 61-63. First imprisonment at Rome 349 63. Paul acquitted by Nero 349 Epistlesto theEphesians, Pliile- ■tiion, the Colossians, the Phi- lippians, and the Hebrews.. 350 62. Martyrdom of James the Just 350 Sequel of Paul's life 350 His Pastoral Epistles 350 60-08 ? His martyrdom 350 Notice of St. Peter 351 Notice of St. John 351 70. The " Coming of the Lord "in the destruction of Jerusa- lem a tvpe of the end of the world 352 Tables of Weights, Money, and Measures 353 Index 358 LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS. Jerusalem PEON r tsPiEOE. Coin of Apamea, in Phrygia, representing the Deluge Titi k-Page. A Shekel of the Maccabees Page vii. Tomb of Absalom " xviii. PAGE Mount Ararat 19 Temple of Birs-nimrnd 29 The town and valley of Nablus from the south-western flank of Mount Ebal 41 Egyptian sarcophagus 56 Egyptian archers 57 Bronze figure of Apis 6T Mount Hor 76 The serpent " Cnepli Agathoda> mon" 89 The golden candlestick 90 Plan of the courtof the tabernacle 93 Supposed form of the Altar of Incense 95 Sacred Egyptian boat or ark 111 Jericho 112 Goodly Babylonish garments 121 Sacred, symbolic tree of the Assyr- ians 122 Assyrian fish-god 139 Assyrian king in his robes 140 Rabbah, the chief city of the Am- monites 156 Tomb of Darius near Persepolis. 167 Ssbustiyeh, the ancient Samaria. 174 PAGE Statue of Shalmaneser 1 1S2 Israelites bringing tribute to Shalmaneser 1S3 Jehu doing homage to Shalma- neser 192 The City of Lachish repelling the attack of Sennacherib 201 The Kasr, or remains of the an- cient palace at Babylon 209 Tomb of Cyrus at Murg-Aub 214 View of the Lake of Antioch 222 Remains of arch of the bridge of the temple 230 Bethlehem 236 Nazareth 244 Map of Galilee 250 Sea of Galilee 253 Bethany 266 Gethsemane 278 Mount of Olives 299 Jerusalem 307 Tarsus 315 Thessalonica 327 Ruins of theatre at Ephesus 837 Coin with image of Diana 339 Ancient ship 347 B Tomb of Abialom. SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Mount Ararat. PART I. HISTORY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. FROM THE CREATION TO THE COMPLETION OP THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON.— B.C. 4004 to 400. CHAPTER I. FROM THE CREATION TO THE DELUGE. B.C. 4004-2348. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Thus, at the very commencement of the Bible, we are taught that the world has not always been in existence, but that it was made out of nothing by an Almighty God. The heaven which God cre- ated is that which we see, or which can be seen ; the earth is the globe on which we live. Whatever wonders science may reveal in heaven or earth, the simple truth remains that God created them nlL 20 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. I The sacred writer next describes the order in which the various portions of the universe were made. The earth, after its creation, was for a long time in a formless and empty state — "without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The steps by which the heavens and the earth, one after the other, rose out of this chaos, are arranged in periods called days. The follow- ing are the works assigned to each day when the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters : On the First Day was created Light (Gen. i. 1-5). On the Second Day— the Firmament or Sky (6-8). On the Third Day — Dry Land, Herbs and Trees, and separation of the earth from the sea (9-13). On the Fourth Day— Sun, Moon, and Stars (14-19). On the Fifth Day— Fishes and Birds (20-23). On the Sixth Day— Animals and Man (24-31). On the Seventh Day God rested from His work, and blessed and sanctified it as a Sabbatli or day of rest (ii. 2-3). After the earth had been prepared and adorned for his dwelling- place, after sky and earth and ocean had been peopled with living creatures for his use, man was formed of the dust of the ground, and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Man be- came a living soul (Gen. ii. 7). He differed from all other crea- tures in that lie was made in the image and after the likeness of God — in other words, in that he possessed an intellectual and spirit- ual nature. God gave him dominion over all created things, and to him, and to the animals, the plants were assigned for food. The name Adam, bestowed upon the first man by the Almighty, had reference apparently to the ground (Adamah) out of which he was formed ; and in the meaning of the word there is contained the idea of redness of color. The Lord God placed the man whom he had made in a garden, in the region of Eden. This spot was probably somewhere among the highlands of the modern Armenia, south of the Caucasus. It was watered by four rivers — Pison, Gihon, Hiddekcl, and the Eu- phrates. The first two are unknown ; the third was no doubt the Tigris. The only task given to Adam was to dress and keep this garden. Of the fruit of every tree therein he might freely eat, with the exception of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Of that God said, " Thou shalt not eat of it ; for in the day that thou eat- est thereof thou shalt surely die." Surrounded as he was by liv- ing creatures, man was yet alone. God brought them all before him that he might name them, which shows that he was endowed at his creation with the power of language ; but for Adam no help* B.C. 4004-2348. CREATION AND TALL OF MAN. 21 meet for him was found. Then the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon him ; and while he slept, he took one cf his ribs, of which he formed a woman, and brought her unto liim. And when Adam awoke and saw her, he said, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh : she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man " (Gen. ii. 23). This was long after- wards used by our Lord as a reason for the law of marriage, which is plainly implied in the fact that one woman was created for one man. "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh" (Matt. xix. 5). • It is important to notice that the two ordinances of the Sabbath and of Marriage were instituted by God "in the time of man's in- nocence." Eden was not merely the blissful abode of our first parents, it was also the scene of their temptation and of their fall. When Adam was first placed there, and commanded not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a restraint was laid upon his appetite and upon his self-will. While he was shown by this prohibition that he was to live under a law, he was at the same time left free either to obey or to break it. Adam and Eve had not long been in Eden before a serpent — a creature well known as the type of the chief of the fallen angels — came to the woman, and inquired wheth- er God had really told them not to eat of every tree of the garden. And when the woman replied that it was so, he invited her to eat of the forbidden fruit, assuring her that they would not really die; that God had forbidden them to touch the tree of knowledge be- cause he knew that, as soon as they did so, they would be "as gods, knowing good and evil." Whereupon the woman, seeing that " the tree was good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise," believed his words, and " took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat." Thus they fell into the threefold sin of sensuality, pleasure, and ambition—" the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" (1 John ii. 16). The same threefold appeal of the tempter to the infirmities of our nature may be traced also in the temptation of Christ, the second Adam, who was "in all points likewise tempted, but without sin" (lleb iv. 15). Immediately the eyes of them both were opened; they perceived that they were naked, and made themselves aprons of fig- leaves. Soon afterwards they heard the voice of the Lord God, and hid themselves from his presence among the trees of the garden. But the Lord culled Adam, and said, Where art thou? Adam re- plied, "I heard thy voice, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." How couldst thou kiiow, said the Lord, that thou wast niked unless thou hadst eaten of the tree of which I 22 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. I. commanded thee not to eat? Then the man cast the blame upon the woman, and the woman upon the serpent, and God proceeded to award a righteous sentence to each. i. A curse was pronounced upon the serpent. " Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou cat all the days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel " (Gen. iii. 14, 15). ii. A curse was pronounced upon the woman. In sorrow and in multiplied suffering she was to give birth to ber children. And as the cause of his fall, henceforward she was to be subject to her hus- band. At first she was his equal (Gen. iii. 16). iii. A curse was pronounced upon the man, and upon the ground also on his account. He was doomed to a life of toil: the earth was to bring forth thorns and thistles, and in the sweat of his face was he to eat bread till he returned to the ground (Gen. iii. 18, 10). They had also incurred by their disobedience another penalty, which was to be paid at a later period. "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." They were, however, sent forth at once from the Garden of Eden, lest they should eat of the tree of life and live forever. Cherubim, armed with a flaming sword, were sta- tioned at the entrance to prevent them from returning to taste its fruit. It is most probable that the " coats of skins," with which the Lord God clothed our first parents, were the skins of animals slain in sacrifice. Thus early was man taught by the use of sacri- fice that " without shedding of blood there is no remission" of sin (Heb. ix. 22). The curse upon tiie serpent, and the promise to the woman tlia' her seed should bruise his head, pointed clearly to a Redeemer, who should be born of a woman, and who, after suffering from the ma- lignity of the Serpent — after his heel had been bruised — should destroy the works and the power of the Devil. Here we have the first projihecy of the Messiah. Henceforth the woman lived in the expectation of the promised seed, which should make her the moth- er of a truly living race ; and, to signify this hope, Adam gave her the name of Eve (Chavah, that is, living"). Thus already life began to spring from death (Gen. iii. 20). After their banishment from Eden, Eve bore her first-born son, and named him Cain (that is, gotten or acquired), saying, "I have gotten a man from the Lord." Her second son was named Abel (that is, breath, transitoriness). 'Abel was a keeper (or feeder) of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground." In course of time it came to pass that they offered sacrifices unto the Lord : Cain brought of the fruit of the ground ; Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. But the two offerings were no/ B.C. 4004-2348. ABEL MURDERED BY CAIN. 23 presented in the same spirit, and so "the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering," but Cain's was rejected on account of the state of mind in which it was brought. At this Cain was very wroth and unhappy. "Why art thou wroth?" said the Lord to him. "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well," sin lurketh as a wild beast at the door, seeking the mastery over you, but thou art to resist and subdue it (Gen. iv. 7). Cain, however, could not pardon his brother Abel for being bet- ter than himself, and when they were in the field together, he fell npon him and slew him. Awful is it to remember, that the first overt act of sin after the fall was a brother's murder; but he who knew what was in man has testified that " Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause" (Matt. v. 22) has already broken the spirit of the Sixth Commandment, and that "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer" (1 John iii. 15). This first crime was quickly punished. " Cain," said the Lord, "where is Abel, thy brother?" To this he replied, "I know not; am I my brother's keeper?" But God said, "What hast thou done? thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground." And, in punishment of his crime, the ground was cursed for him again, and henceforth was not to yield her strength under his tillage : "a fugitive and a wanderer was he to be upon the earth." But even in this renewal of the curse we still see the mercy which turns the curse into a blessing, as it no doubt caused the family of Cain to turn their attention to those mechanical arts which they afterwards practiced (Gen. iv. 1-12). Cain received his doom in a hardened spirit of impenitence, and exclaimed, "My punishment is greater than I can bear." His great fear was that, when driven out from the abodes of men, and from the face of God, every one who found him should slay him. That shall not be so, said the Lord. And he set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him, and he pronounced a sevenfold punishment on any one who should do so. Cain, having gone out from the presence of the Lord, directed his steps to the east of Eden, and settled in the land of Nod, that is, lanishvient. There he built a city, and called it Enoch, after his first-born son. The names of his descendants to the sixth gen- eration were Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methusael, and Lamech. From the few facts recorded about them we learn that Lamech set the example of polygamy; his address to his two wives (Gen. iv. 23, 24) is the earliest example of poetry, and it also shows that he committed the second murder. Of his three sons, Jabal was the first wandering herdsman ; Jubal, the inventor of musical instru- ments, both stringed and wind; and Tubal-Cain, the first smith. Dismissing the family of Cain, the sacred writer now relates the 2 4 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Cn^r. 1 history of the chosen race. God gave to Eve another son instead of Abel, whom Cain slew (Gen. iv. 25), who was hence named Seth (properly, appointed). His birth was followed by that of other children. Seth, too, had a numerous posterity. The names of Seth's descendants were Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, and Jared, of none of whom are any particulars recorded. But the next among the descendants of Seth, " Enoch, the seventh from Adam," stands jonspicuous as one who walked with God — a phrase which is of:cn used to describe a life of close communion with God. When he was three hundred and sixty-five years old his faith was rewarded by a special favor. "He was not ; for God took him" (Gen. v. 24) Of the meaning of this phrase the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews leaves no doubt : " By faith Enoch was translated, that he should not see death ; and was not found, because God had trans- lated him" (Heb. xi. 5). In his case, as in Elijah's, the miracle was a testimony to the divine mission of the prophet. Methuselah, the son of Enoch, is noted for having reached the greatest age of any man on record. He lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years : his son Lamech, the father of Noah, died five years before the Deluge. The traditions of primeval history may very easily have been handed down by a few generations of teachers. Adam, no doubt, handed down to Seth and his posterity the promises of mercy that had been given to him by God, and thus they were easily trans- mitted to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, and from Abraham to Moses. The descendants of Seth were called sons of God, in oppo- sition to the descendants of Cain, who were called sons of men. The former were a people of simple habits and religious spirit— the latter were a violent and godless race. The genealogies of the two races of Cain and Seth, when placed side by side, are as follows : At) AM. Cain. Seth. I „. I Enoch (Chanoch). Enos. I I Irad. Cainan. Mehujael. Mahalaleel. Methiisael. .Tared. Adah=Lamech=Zillah. Enoch (Chanoch^ jabaL Jubal. Tubal-Cahi. Naamah. Methuselah. I Lamech. i Noah. B.C. 4004-2348. NOAH— THE FLOOD. 25 The name of Noah is significant. It means rest or comfort, and Ida father gave it, saying, "This shall comfort us concerning oui work and toil of onr hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed " (_Gen. v. 29). These words seem to express a deeper weariness than that arising from the primal curse, from which, in- deed, the age of Noah brought no deliverance. But it did bring the comfort of rest from the wickedness which had now reached ite greatest height. The race of Seth had become infected with the vices of the Cainites. This seems to be the only reasonable sense of the intercourse between "the sons of God" and "the daughters of men" (Gen. vi. 2). The family of Seth, who preserved their faith in God, and the family of Cain, who lived only for this world, had hitherto kept distinct ; but now a mingling of the two races took place, which resulted in the thorough corruption of the former, who, falling away, plunged into the deepest abyss of wickedness. We are also told that this union produced a stock conspicuous for physical strength and courage (Gen. vi. 4). God, beholding the perverse imaginations of the human race, re- pented that he had made man, and said, "I will destroy man and beast, birds and reptiles, from the face of the earth." Noah, how- ever, found grace in the eyes of the Lord. He was the tenth from Adam, and is described as a just man and perfect in his genera- tions. Like Enoch, he testified against the prevailing wickedness, for he is called " a preacher of righteousness " (2 Pet. ii. 5). Hav- ing looked upon the earth and seen that it was corrupt, God said to him, " Make thee an ark of gopher (i. e., cypress) wood for the sav- ing of thyself and thy house." God then gave him instructions as to the building of an ark capable of receiving himself and his fami- ly, with two of every species of living creatures, and according to all that God commanded him so did he. 1 For one hundred and twen- ty years, while the ark was preparing, the long-suffering of God waited, but in vain, as if hoping for some improvement in the pre- vailing wickedness (I Pet. iii. 20). Doubtless Noah continued his " preaching of righteousness " throughout that period, but his work preached louder still. Mankind went on, however, "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark " (Matt. xxiv. 38). At length the flood began. Noah was six hundred years old when the Lord said to him, "Come thou and all thy house into the ark, for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every clean beast take seven couples, and of beasts that are not clean take two couples, and of birds take seven couples, to keep up their race. For in seven days' time I will cause it to rain upon » See Note oil " Noah's Ark " at the end of this chapter. 2G SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. I. the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will destroy all the creatures that I have made from off the face of the earth." Noah obeyed, and entered into the ark with his wife, and with his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives, and the Lord shut him in. Seven days afterwards, "the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened." For forty days and forty nights the rain fell upon the earth, and rose to such a height that all the high hills and the mountains were fifteen cubits (about twenty-four feet) under water. "And all flesh died that moved upon the earth." Noah and those that were witli him in the ark alone remained alive. The vast expanse of water was unbroken save by that floating ark for one hundred and fifty days, or five months (Gen. vii. 1-24). Meanwhile God had not forgotten Noah and those that were with him in the ark. He made a wind to pass over the earth, the fount- ains of the deep and the rain from heaven were restrained, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month of the six hundredth year of Noah's life, the subsiding waters left the ark aground upon one of the mountains of Ararat, that is, of Armenia; for Ararat, in bib- lical geography, is the name, not of a mountain, but of a district. More than two months later, on the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains appeared. Forty days afterwards Noah sent out a raven, which did not return to the ark. Then he sent forth a dove, whicli found no resting-place, and came back again. In another seven days she was sent out again, and returned with an olive-leaf in her bill, a sign that even the low trees were uncovered, and a type for after ages of peace and rest. After seven days more, the dove was sent out again, and proved by not returning that the waters had finally subsided (Gen. viii. 1-12). In the waters of this flood, the whole human race, except eight persons, perished. In the New Testament our Lord declares that the state of the world at his second coming shall be such as it was in the days of Noah (Matt. xxiv. 37). St. Peter sees in the waters of the flood, by which the ark was borne up, a type of the waters of baptism, whereby the Church is separated from the world (1 Pet. iii. 21). The ark itself is a type of the Church of Christ, in which alone there is the promise of salvation. On the first day of the six hundred and first year of Noah's age, he removed the covering of the ark, and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. On the twenty-seventh day of the second month, after having been in the ark one year and ten days, he went out of it by the command of God, with every living thing that was with him. His first act on leaving the ark was to take a couple of every clean bird and beast, and to offer them as a burnt-offering. This B.C. 4004-2348. COVENANT WITH NOAH. 27 sacrifice was acceptable to the Lord, and He promised that He would not any more curse the earth or destroy the creatures that dwelt upon it as lie had done, but that the existing course of nature— seed-time and harvest, summer and winter — should not cease as long as the earth remained (Gen. viii. 13-22). To Noah and his sons God then repeated the blessing pronounced on Adam and Eve, and said, " Be fruitful and multiply and re- plenish the earth." To this lie added that the inferior creatures were to be subject to them, and that, in addition to the green herb, they might have the animals for food ; but the eating their blood was forbidden, because the blood is the life. He enacted, also, a new law against murder. The first murderer had been driven out as a vagabond and a fugitive; but his life was sacred. Now, howev- er, the penalty was changed. God said, " Whoso sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed." This law amounts to giving the civil magistrate " the power of the sword" (Rom. xiii. ■!). Hence we may consider that, in addition to the laws of the Sabbath and of marriage, which were revealed to Adam, three new precepts were given to Noah — namely, the abstinence from blood, the prohibition of murder, and the recognition of the civil authority (Gen. ix. 1-7). In addition to these promises and precepts, God made with Noah a Covenant, which may be called the covenant of God 's forbearance, under which man is to live to the end of time. As a token of the permanence of this covenant, he gave the beautiful sign of the rain- bow in the cloud, and repeated His promise that the world should not be again destroyed by a flood (Gen. ix. 8-17). The sons of Noah that went forth of the ark with him were Shcm, Ham, and Japheth, and from them the whole human race is descended. Noah began his new life as a husbandman in the land of Armenia. Having planted a vineyard, as he was one day drink- ing of the wine, he made himself drunk in his tent — probably from ignorance of its properties — and lay exposed in the presence of his sons. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw and told his father's shame to Shem and Japheth, who hastened to conceal it even from their own sight, turning away their eyes as they covered him with a mantle. On coining to himself, and learning the conduct of Ham, he pronounced upon his race a curse, and upon the other two sons a blessing. " Cursed be Canaan ; 2 a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." And he said, "Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Ja- pheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem ; and Canaan shall be his servant" (Gen. ix. 18-27). The subsequent history of Ca- 2 Ham's youngest sou. 28 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. I. tiaan shows in the clearest possible manner the fulfillment of the curse. The blessing upon Sbem was fulfilled in that history of the chosen race, his descendants, which forms the especial subject of the Old Testament. The blessing upon Japheth, the ancestor of the great European nations, is illustrated in their subjugation of Asia and Africa, and especially by the wide-spread diffusion of theii religion. The very name of Japheth means enlargement. Noah lived for three hundred and fifty years after the Flood, anc. ."vas nine hundred and fifty years old when he died (b.c. 1998). NOTE ON NOAH'S ARK. The ark was to be made of gopher (i. e., cypress) wood, a kind of tim- ber which, both for its lightness and its durability, was employed by the Phoenicians for building their vessels. The planks of the ark, after being put together, were to be protected by a coating of pitch, or rather bitumen, which was to be laid on both inside and outside, as the most effectual means of making it water-tight. The aik was to consist of a number of "rooms" or "nests," i. c, compart- ments, with a view, no doubt, to the convenient distribution of the differ- ent animals and their food. These were to be arranged in three tiers, one above another; "with lower, second, and third (stories) shalt thou make it." Means were also to be pro- vided for letting light into the ark. The words — "a window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above "—seem to imply >i sky-light, or series of sky-lights, a dibit wide, running the whole length of the ark, with a single compart- ment which could be opened at will. There was to be a door placed in the side of the ark. Of the shape of the ark nothing is said ; but its dimen- sions are given. It was to be 300 cu- bits in length, 50 in breadth, and 30 in height. Taking 21 inches for the cubit, the ark would be 525 feet in length, ST feet G inches iu breadth, and 52 feet 6 inches in height. This i < very considerably larger than the largest British man-of-war. It should be remembered that this huge struc- ture was only intended to float on the water, and was not, in the proper sense of the word, a ship. It had neither mast, sail, nor rudder ; it was, in fact, nothing but an enormous floating house, or obloug box rather. Two objects ouly were aimed at in its construction : the one that it shcald have ample stowage, and the other that it should be able to keep stead? upon the water (Gen, vi. 14-9-2/, Temple of Birs-Ntmrutl CHAPTER II. FROM THE DELUGE TO THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM. B.C. 2348-1822. The history of the next four hundred years, from the Deluge to the Call of Abraham, has two principal features of interest : the general peopling of the earth by the descendants of Shem, Hani, and Japheth, and the special notices that are given us of the descent of the chosen race from Shem down to Abraham. In the outline of the population of the world given in Gen. x., two facts are prominent: that the highlands of Armenia, where Noah came forth out of the ark, formed the primitive seat of man- kind, and that the nations we./e divided into three races, the off-, spring of the three sons of Noah. The dispersion of these nations from this region to their subsequent abodes only began a consider- 30 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. II able time after the Deluge. It was in the days of Releg, the fifth from Noah, that the earth was divided (Gen. x. 25). Under the pressure of necessity, the great body of Noah's offspring left the rugged highlands of Armenia in search of a better soil and climate. "The whole earth was as yet of one language and of one speech," when, "as they journeyed eastward, they found a plain in the land of Shinar (Babylonia), and dwelt there." Soon the idea sprung up in their minds of founding a universal empire, with a mighty city for its capital. " Come, said they, let us build us a city and a citadel with its top (reaching) to heaven." But God saw the dan- ger of their scheme, and defeated their design by confounding their language, so that they could not understand one another's speech. " So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth ; and they left off to build the city " (Gen. xi. 1-8). This event probably took place about the end of the third century after the flood. The different peoples thus scattered were the three races by whom the world was afterwards overspread, and who quick- ly lost the remembrance of their common origin. 1 From the confusion of tongues the city was called Babel (confu- sion) (Gen.xi. !)), and at a later period became famous under the Greek name of Babylon. The ruins which form the Bi7-s-Nimrnd, or " Mound of Nimrod " (at the ancient Borsippa, near Babylon), bear an inscription of Nebuchadnezzar, telling how he restored an older building on the same site, the sun-dried clay of which had been dispersed by the earthquake and the thunder "since the re- mote time" when " people had abandoned it, without order exjness- inq their words." Nimrod, the son of Ctish, who founded the first great military despotism, made Babel his capital; he built also three other cities in the plain of Shinar — namely, Erech, Accad, and Calneh. Thence he extended his empire northward along the course of the Tigris over Assyria, and founded Nineveh, with three other cities (Gen. x. 8-1 1). The names of the descendants of Shem to the tenth generation were Arphaxad, Salah, Eber, Peleg, Rcu, Serug, Nahor, and Terah, who was the father of Abraham, Nahor, and Haran (Gen. xi. 26). The world soon relapsed into idolatryand profanencss after the Deluge. Accordingly, God selected out of the race of Shem a Family from which the promised seed of the woman was in the fullness of time to spring, and which should meanwhile preserve the knowledge and worship of Himself. The patriarch whom God made the head of this chosen family was born only two years after the death of Noah (b.c. 1996). His name— Ab-kam (father of ele- 1 See Note " On the Dispersion of the Nations," at the end of this chapter. B.C.284S-1822. CALL OF ABRAHAM. 31 ration) — was prophetic of his calling to be the ancestor of a race chosen for an exalted destiny. Terah, his father, was the ninth of the patriarchs from Shem and the nineteenth from Adam, and it ap. pears from Josh. xxiv. 2 that he was an idolater. His genealogy, which the subsecuient history requires to be most clearly understood,. is as follows : GENEALOGY OF THE FAMILY OF TERAH, FATHER OF ABRAHAM Tep.au. Haran. Milcah=Nahor. (By Hagar.)— ABRAM=Sarai (aft. Sarah). | | | (aft. Abraham). | Lot Milcah, Sarai Bethuel. Ishmael. ISAAC=Rebekah. iy his two m. her orlscah, J j Jaughters). uncle m. her j" | I J Nahor. uucle Laban. Rebekah, Esau or Edom. JACOB. | | Abram. | married I Amnion. Moab. Leah Isaac. Twelve and Rachel, sons and the wives one of Jacob. daughter. The first call of God came to Abram while he was still living in the house of his father, in the land called Ur of the Chaldees, "when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran" (Gen. xi. 28 ; Nehem. ix. 7; Acts vii. 2). He was upward of seventy years of age when Terah removed from the land of his nativity to go into the land of Canaan (Gen. xi. 31). He went forth accompanied by his son Abram, Sarai, Abram's wife, and Lot his grandson, and took up his residence in Haran, more properly called in the New Testament Charran (Acts vii. 4), east of the Euphrates. Here Terah died, after a residence of some years (Gen. xii. 5), aged two hundred and five years. All we know of their original abode is that it was be- yond the Euphrates, in some part of Mesopotamia. Nahor, Tcrah's eldest son, settled in Haran, attracted probably by the fertility of the country ; but Abram, immediately on his father's death (n.c. 1921), proceeded on his journey towards the land of Canaan, with his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot. He went out from his country and from his kindred into a land that God promised to show him (Gen. xii. 1), " not knowing whither he went " (Heb. xi. 8). This was the first great proof he gave of that un- wavering faith in God which gained him the title of the Father of the Faithful (Rom. iv. 1 1). He was now seventy-five years old, and this is the period usually assigned to the Call of Abraham. God then promised him, " I will make of thee a great nation, and I will 32 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. II. bless thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." The last words contain a promise of the Messiah. Abram had now to leave Mesopotamia, and to cross the " Great River," the Euphrates. Hence the Canaanites gave him the name of the "Hebrew" — the man who had crossed the river. Passing through the Great Syrian desert, and tarrying probably for a little while at Damascus, at length he crossed the Jordan, and entered 'die beautiful valley of Moreh, which lies between the mountains of Ebal and Gerizim, where the city of Shechem was not long after founded. Here he made his first encampment in the land of Ca- naan. God appeared to him again, and said, "Unto thy seed will I give this land." Here he built the first of tho~>e altars to the Lord, which the patriarchs erected wherever they pitched their tents. Thus Sichem became his first halting-place in the Holy Land. His second was still farther south, near a mountain on the east of a place then called Luz, afterwards named by Jacob Bethel. The pressure of famine at length drove him out of the Promised Land into Egypt, and for a while his faith failed. Fearing that the Egyptians might kill him to obtain possession of his wife, who was " a fair woman to look upon," he caused Sarai to pass for his sister. He had not been long there before the king took her into his house, and, for her sake, heaped extraordinary favors upon her pretended brother. Warned of his mistake by plagues sent upon him and his household, the king restored Sarai to Abram, and, after a rebuke for his deceit, he sent him out of Egypt, with all that he had (Gen. xii. 10-20). Abram then returned with Sarai and Lot to his old encampment near Bethel, where he again "called on the name of the Lord" (Gen. xiii. 4). Both Abram and Lot were very rich in flocks and herds, and as the land they lived in was insufficient to furnish pasture for the cattle of both, contentions began to arise between their herdmen. Abram therefore said unto Lot, "Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen ; for wc be brethren." He then gave him his choice of the whole country that lay before him. Lot chose the fertile plain of Sodom and Gomorrah, watered by the river Jordan, and journeyed east, leaving his uncle on the barren hills of Bethel. After his separa- tion from Lot, Abram received his reward in a third blessing and promise from God, who said to him, "Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward : for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever. And I will make thy **ed as the dust of the earth " (Gen. xiii. 14-16). Lot pitched his tent near Sodom, not caring for the fact that B.C. 2348-1822. BLESSING OF MELCHIZEDEK. 33 the men of Sodom were " sinners before the Lord exceedingly." Abram now removed to the oa/rs of Mamre near Hebron, and there built an altar unto the Lord. This became his usual abode. Tho plain of the Lower Jordan was then occupied by five cities — Sodom, Gomorrah, Admali, Zeboiim, and Bela, which were tributary to Chedorlaomer, king of Elam. In the thirteenth year of their sub- ejection, they revolted against Chedorlaomer, who marched against 'them with three allied kings, and in the battle that ensued the five kings were defeated. The conquerors then proceeded to ravage 'the cities of the plain, and Lot and his family were among the number of the captives. When the news was brought to Abram, he took " his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen," sallied forth from Mamre, and overtook the victors at Dan (Laish). Dividing his band, he fell upon Chedorlaomer and his allies by night, pursued their routed forces to Hobah, north of Damascus, and rescued Lot and his family, with all the spoil (Gen.xiv. 1-16). On the return of Abram from this expedition, he was met by Melchizedek, king of Salem, and priest of the most high God, who " brought forth bread and wine and blessed him," and said, "Bless- ed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth " (Gen. xiv. 18, 19). And Abram gave him tithes of all the spoil. Who this Canaanite was, crossing for a moment the path of Abram and then disappearing as suddenly as he came, is a question in- volved in great mystery. He appears to have been a person of higher spiritual rank than the Father of the Faithful, and in the Epistle to the Hebrews he is regarded in his priestly office as a type of Christ (Heb. vii. 17.) Abram then returned to his tent at Mamre, and Lot went back to Sodom. About this time, apparently, Abram's faith began again to waver. His heart grew faint with the thought of promises long unfulfilled, and hopes unrealized. He said, "Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless?" (Gen. xv. 2.) To all appearance, his house-born servant, Eliezcr of Damascus, would be his heir. He, said the Lord, shall not be thine heir, but a son of thine own, "Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them : and He said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness" (Gen. xv. 5, 6). Though Abram was now eighty-five years old, and Sarah turned of seventy-four, yet he was told that he should have a son in his old age ; and "he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was fully persuaded that what He had prom- ised He was able also to perform " (Rom. iv. 20, 21). This protr - we, that his own son should be his heir, God vouchsafed to confirm C 34 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. II. and to ratify by a sign and by a covenant. On the same day, Abram was directed to offer a special sacrifice, and he remained near the altar to drive away the fowls from the victims. When the sun be- gan to go down, "a deep sleep, and lo! horror and great darkness fell upon him." Then it was that God revealed His intentions to him more plainly than He had yet done. " Know," He says, " of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall be afflicted four hundred years. That nation whom they shall serve will I judge, and afterward shall they come out with great substance. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace ; thou shalt be buried in a good old age." After this vision, Abram saw a smoking furnace and a burning lamp pass between the severed parts of the victims sacrificed to ratify the new covenant between God and him. The Lord then added, " Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates" (Gen. xv. 18). At a later period, when this covenant was renewed, the sign of circumcision was added thereto. Sarai, being considered barren, gave Abram her handmaid Ha- gar, an Egyptian, for his concubine, and she bore him a son. But, before the child was born, the insolence of Hagar provoked the jealousy of Sarai, who treated her handmaid so hardly that she fled away into the desert which lies between the land of Canaan and Egypt. Here the angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water, and, while bidding her to return and submit to her mistress, he encouraged her by the promise of a numerous offspring. "Be- hold," he says, "thou shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael " (that is, God shall hear) ; and lie foretold his character and destiny in words which to this day describe the Bedouin Arabs who are descended from him : " He will be a wild man ; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him, and he shall dwell in the face of all his brethren," that is, to the east of the kindred tribes sprung from Abraham. The birth of Ishmael took place when Abram was eighty-six years old (b.c. 1910) ; but he had to wait fourteen years longer be- fore the true child of promise was born. In Abram's ninety-ninth ^ear, the Lord appeared to him by the name of " the Almighty God," and renewed His former covenant with him, changing his name from Ab-ram (exulted father) to Ab-raham (father of a mul- titude), and appointing the rite of circumcision as a sign of the covenant between Himself and Abraham and his posterity. " I will be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee " (Gen. xvii. 1- 7). Abraham was then commanded to circumcise all the males of his family, and in future the rite was to be performed on chil- dren eight days after their birth, and on slaves when they were B.C. 2348-1822. BIRTH OF ISAAC FORETOLD. 36 purchased. And God said unto Abraham, "As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai (my princess), but, Sarah (prin- cess) shall her name be." God then told him that she should bcai him a son, who should be named Isaac (laughter), because Abra- ham had laughed for joy and Sarai from incredulity, when the an- nouncement was made to him. On the same day Abraham, with his son Ishmael, and all the males in his house, were circumcised. Shortly after this, Abraham was honored with a still more re- markable visitation. As he was one day sitting at his tent door under the oak of Mamre, he beheld afar off three men, and when he saw them he ran to meet them. Bowing himself towards the ground, he said, " My Lord, if now I have found favor in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant. Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves un- der the tree. And I will fetch a morsel to comfort your hearts ; after that ye shall pass on. And they said, So do, as thou hast said " (Gen. xviii. 3-5). While the three heavenly guests were eat- ing, he stood by them under the tree, and they said unto him, Where is Sarah thy wife ? In my tent, he replied. One of them then informed the patriarch that within a year Sarah should have a son. Sarah, who was sitting just inside the tent, heard what passed, and laughed to herself incredulously. After rebuking Sa- rah for her want of faith, and repeating the promise, two of the angels went on in advance towards Sodom, and 'Abraham was left standing alone with the Lord." This last was, no doubt, the "An- gel Jehovah," the "Word of God" through whom God spake to the fathers ; the other two were perhaps attendant angels. As Abraham brought them on their way, the Lord told him that be- cause "the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah was great, and their sin very grievous," he was about to destroy them for their wickedness. Then follows that wondrous pleading in which he who was "but dust and ashes" took upon himself to speak with God, and obtained a promise that the guilty cities should be pardoned, if but fifty; then if forty-five ; and so on down to, if only ten righteous men were found in them. "The Lord then went on his way, and Abra- ham returned to his place " (Gen. xviii. G-33). Towards evening, the two angels came to Sodom. Lot was then Bitting at the gate of the city, and he rose up to meet them, and invited them to tarry with him all night. At first they declined his invitation, but at length yielded, and entered with him into his house, where " he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they did eat." But before they lay down the house was be- sieged by the men of the city for wicked purposes. The angels having smitten the men at the door of the house with blindness, said 3G SCRIPTURE HISTORT. Chap. II. to Lot, "Whatsoever tlion hast in the city, bring them out of this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the Lord, and the Lord hath sent us to destroy it." Lot told his sons- in-law of the impending destruction of the place, but they despised his warning. He himself, with his wife and two daughters, was re- luctantly dragged from the devoted city ; and in answer to his en- treaties that one of the five cities might be preserved as his abode, because it was but a little one, he was allowed to take refuge in Bela, thence called Zoar, that is, little. His wife, looking back from behind him, became a pillar of salt. When Abraham arose early in the morning, and looked towards Sodom and Gomorrah, "lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace." God, however, when he destroyed the cities of the plain, remember- ed Abraham, and on his account Lot was saved. The plain in which these cities stood, hitherto fruitful "as the Garden of Jeho- vah," became henceforth a scene of perfect desolation (Gen. xix.). After a long residence at Mamre, Abraham once more set forth upon his wanderings, and, "turning toward the south country, he sojourned in Gerar" (Gen. xx. 1), a place in the land of the Phi- listines. Here the deceit which he had formerly put upon Pha- raoh, by calling Sarah his sister, was acted again, and with the like result. Sarah was carried off by Abimelech, king of Gerar, who thought that she was unmarried and the patriarch's sister. Dis- covering his mistake, having been warned thereof by God in a dream, he restored her to her husband, and gave him valuable presents. A dispute subsequently arose between Abraham and Abimelech respecting a well in the neighborhood. This led to a treaty between them, whence the well was called " Beer-sheba," or the u-ell of the oath, "because there they swore both of them" (Gen. xxi. 31). At this place Abraham and his descendants dwelt for a long time. It was situated on the borders of the Desert, and continued till the latest times to be the southern boundary of the Holy Land. It was during his abode at Beer-sheba that Sarah "bare Abra- ham a son in his old age," when he himself was a hundred years aid (Gen. xxi. 5). The child was named Isaac. At the great feast made in celebration of the weaning, Sarah saw Ishmael, the son of Hagar the Egyptian, mocking. "Cast out this bondwoman and her son," she said to Abraham, " for the son of this bondwom- an shall not be heir with my son Isaac." Her request was very grievous to the patriarch ; but, comforted by God's renewed prom- ise that of Ishmael he would make a nation, he gave Hagar some bread and a bottle of water, and sent her away with the child ; and they departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. B.C. 2348-1822. ISAAC TO BE SACRIFICED. 37 Here her supply of water was quickly spent, and as it seemed that her boy must soon die of thirst, she laid him down under the shade of one of the desert shrubs, and went and sat down a good way off from him, and wept aloud. "Let me not see the death of the child," she said. The cries of the lad and of his mother were heard in heaven, and the angel of God, calling to her " What aileth thee, llagar ? fear not," renewed the promise already thrice given, "I will make him a great nation;" and God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. And God was with the lad ; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness of Paran, and became an archer ; and when he was of a suitable age, his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt (Gen. xxi. 9-21). Henceforward the history of Abraham is intertwined with that of Isaac, of whom it was said, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called" (Gen. xxi. 12). God had yet a crowning trial to make of the pa- triarch's faith and obedience. When Isaac, the son of his old age, was about twenty-five years old, God said to Abraham, "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah ; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of." According- ly Abraham "rose up early in the morning, and saddling his ass, took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and wood for the burnt-offering, and went unto the place of which God had told him." On the third day of his journey, lie saw afar off the spot appointed for this awful sacrifice. "Abide ye here with the ass," he said to his young men, " while I and the lad go yonder and worship." Then laving the wood for the burnt-offering upon Isaac his son, and taking with him fire and a knife, they went for- ward together. "My father," said Isaac, "behold the fire and the wood : but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering ?" " My son," said Abraham, " God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt-offer- ing." At length they reached the place which God had told him of; and then, no dotibt, the patriarch explained to his son that he was himself the destined victim. The altar was built and the wood laid in order upon it ; Abraham then bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood, and stretching forth his hand, he took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham, lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him, for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me." Abraham, on lifting up his eyes, be- held "a ram caught in a thicket by his horns, and he took the ram and offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead of his son." \s a reward for his obe.lienet, God once more renewed his cove- 38 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. II. nant with his posterity, and for the first time confirmed it with an oath. "By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand upon the sea-shore. And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed ; because thou hast obeyed my voice." Abraham then returned with Isaac unto his young men, and went back to his dwelling-place at Beer- sheba (Gen. xxii. 1-10). After this twelve years passed away, during which Abraham must have removed from Beer-sheba to his old home at Hebron. There Sarah died, at the age of one hundred and twenty-seven. After mourning for her, the patriarch bought for four hundred shek- els of silver, of Ephron, one of the sons of Heth, the cave of Mach- pelah (or the Double Cure) as a burying-place, close to the oak of Mamre, with the field in which it stood" (Gen. xxiii. 16-20). Here lie buried Sarah ; here he Mas himself buried by his sons Isaac and Ishmael; here they buried Isaac and Rebecca his wife, Jacob and his wife Leah, and it formed, perhaps, the final resting- place of the bones of Joseph. The sepulchre still exists under the mosque of Hebron, and was first permitted to be seen by Europe- ans, since the Crusades, when it was visited by the Prince of Wales in 18G2. After the burial of Sarah, Abraham returned to Beer-sheba. His last care was for the marriage of his son Isaac to a wife of his own kindred, and not to one of the daughters of the Canaanites. Calling to him "the oldest servant of his house," he made him "swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth," not to take a wife for his son of the daughters of the Canaanites among whom he dwelt, but to go unto his own country and kindred, and take a wife unto his son Isaac. The servant set forth on his journey to Haran, in Mesopotamia, where Abraham sixty-five years before had dwelt with his father Terah, and where his brother Nahor had settled. It was towards evening when he reached the place of his destina- tion. "O Lord God of my master Abraham," he prayed, "send me good speed this day, and show kindness unto my master." And he asked the Lord to point out by a certain sign the person he sought. He was yet speaking when Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel, son of Nahor, Abraham's brother, came out to draw water from the well. She had filled her pitcher and was returning, when Abraham's servant met her, and said, "Let me, I pray thee, drink a little water of thy pitcher." "Drink, my lord," she said. She afterwards gave his camels water. The servant then gave her a golden ear-ring and two bracelets of gold, asking her at the same time whose daughter she was. When he found that she was the B.C. 2348-1822. DEATH OF ABRAHAM. 3'J very person that lie had come to seek, the man bowed down his head and worshipped the Lord. "Blessed be the Lord God of my master Abraham," he said, " who hath led me to the house of my master's brethren." Rebekah had a brother named Laban, who went out to the well to meet the man, and asked him to his house. There the servant quickly told his errand. As there were evident traces of God's guidance in the matter, Bethuel soon consented to let his daughter go, and the next morning they sent away Rebekah mil her nurse mounted on camels, with Abraham's servant and his men, blessing her and saving to her, "Be thou the mother of thou- sands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them." It was even-tide when they drew near to the tent of Isaac, who dwelt by the well of Lahai-roi, in the extreme south of Palestine. He had gone forth into the field to meditate; on lift- ing up his eyes he saw the camels coming, and went at once to meet them. When Rebekah saw Isaac, she dismounted from her camel and covered herself with a veil. On learning from the serv- ant all the tilings that he had done, Isaac " took her to his mother's tent, and she became his wife. And he loved her, and was com- forted after his mother's death " (Gen. xxiv. 1-67) Soon after Isaac's marriage, Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah. By her he had six sons, who became the founders of Arabian tribes. During his lifetime, however, he en- riched them all with presents, and sent them away, like Ishmael, to dwell eastward of Beer-sheba, lest any of them should settle in the land of Canaan and dispute the destined inheritance of his son Isaac. To him Abraham gave all his great wealth, and died, ap- parently at Beer-sheba, "in a good old age, an old man and full of years," his age being one hundred and seventy-five. His sons Isaac and Ishmael met at his funeral, and buried him in the cave of Machpelah, by the side of Sarah his wife (Gen. xxv. 1-10). The events in Abraham's life which rendered this patriarch most remarkable were, (1) his obedience to the command of God in leav- ing his native country ; (2) his believing that he should possess the land of Canaan, and be the father of a great nation; and (3) his offering up his son Isaac. Abraham was the father of the faith" ful: his character was fully displayed in his faith. The Almighty ieigned to be called the God of Abraham ; and in this designation our Lord found one of his proofs of the resurrection of the dead. 40 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. II. NOTE ON THE DISPERSION OF THE NATIONS. (Genesis x.) The three rates descended from the three sous of Noah were distributed in the following maimer : 1. The territories of Japuetu lie chiefly on the coasts of the Mediter- ranean, in Europe and Asia Minor, " the isles of the Gentiles ;" but they also reach across Armenia and along the north-eastern edge of the Tigris and Euphrates valley, over Media and Persia. The race spread westward and northward over Europe, and at the other end as far as India, embrac- ing the great Indo-European family of languages. This wide diffusion was prophetically indicated by the very name, Japheth (enlarged), and by the blessing of his father Noah (Gen. ix. 27). Among his children, Javan is, in its old Hebrew form, the same word as the Greek Inn; and of his progeny, Tarshish is probably identified with the people of southern Spain, Madai probably represents the Medes, and Oomer the Cimmerians. 2. The race of Sitbm occupied the Bonth-westem corner of Asia, includ- ing the peninsula of Arabia. Of his five sons. Arphaxad is the progenitor both of the Hebrews and of the Arabs and other kindred tribes, whose ori- gin is recorded in the book of Gene- sis. North of them were the children of Aram (which signifies hitjh), in the highlands of Syria and Mesopotamia. Asshur evidently represents Assyria , and the eastern and western extremi- ties were occupied by the well-known nations of the Elyrnoeans (children of Elam), on the south-eastern margin of the valley of the Tigris, and the Lydians (children of Lud), in Asia Minor. 3. The race of Ham (the swarthy, according to the most probable ety- mology) had their chief seat in Afri- ca, but they are also found mingled with the Semitic races on the shores of Arabia, and on the Tigris and Eu- phrates ; while on the north they extended into Palestine (the laud of the Philistines), Asia Minor, and the larger islands, as Crete and Cyprus. In Africa, Mizraim is most certainly identified with Egypt; Cush with Ethiopia, above Egypt ; and Phut probably with the inland peoples to the west. Amoug the sons of Mizra- im, the Lubim correspond to Libya; and those of Cush represent tribes which crossed the Red Sea and spread along the southern and eastern shorea of Arabia, up the Persian Gulf and the valley of the Tigris and Euphratss. The town and valley of Nablut, the ancient Shechem. The mountain on the right is Ehal ; that on the left is Gerizim. CHAPTER III. FROM THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM TO THE DEATH OF JOSEPH.— is. c. 1822-1635. For nearly twenty years Rebekah continued barren. At length through the prayers of Isaac, slie became a mother, and brought forth twin sons, Esau (hairy'), and Jacob (the supplanter). When the boys grew np, the former became " a cunning hunter, a man of the field," and a favorite of his father ; while the latter, who was " a plain and quiet man dwelling in tents," was his mother's favor- ite. One day Esau, returning from hunting in a famished state, saw Jacob preparing red pottage of lentils, and quickly asked for sonr\ Jacob seized the occasion to obtain Esau's birthri rbt as the 42 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. Ill, price of the meal. " Never surely was there any meat, except the forbidden fruit, bought so dearly." Esau consented so readily, that it is regarded in the sacred narrative as a proof that "he de- spised his birthright " (Gen. xxv. 34). For this the Apostle (Heb. xii. 1G) calls him " a profane person, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright." The justice of this judgment will appear if \vc consider that Esau was by right of birth not only the head of his own family, its prophet, priest, and king, but also the head of the chosen family, thus inheriting the blessing of Abraham, that "in li is seed all families of the earth should be blessed." In de- spising his birthright lie thus put himself out of the sacred family, and so became a profane person. Soon after this, Isaac was driven from Lahai-roi by a famine, and went down to "Abimelech, king of the Philistines, into Gerar." There the Lord appeared unto him, and said, " Go not down into Egypt: sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee and bless thee." At the same time all the promises were renewed to him that had been made to Abraham. While he was at Gerar, he practised the same deceit of which his father had been guilty, by giving out that his wife was his sister. The king, having acci- dentally discovered that Rebekah was his wife, sent for him, and, after pointing out the consequences that might have ensued, he "charged all his people, saying, He that toucheth this man or his wife shall surely be put to death." This is the first instance on record of a king holding the power of life and death (Gen. xxvi. 1-11). The tranquil course of Isaac's life, which presents a marked con- trast to the varied incidents of Abraham's career, was vexed by the disobedience of his son Esau, who at the age of forty married two Hittite wives, thus introducing heathen alliances into the chosen family (Gen. xxvi. 34). When Isaac grew old, and his eyes, dim with age, warned him of the near approach of death, he was anx- ious to perform the solemn act by which he was to hand down the blessing of Abraham to another generation. Calling to him Esau, his eldest son, he said, "Take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some A'enison ; and make me savory meat, and bring it to me, that I may eat ; that my soul may bless thee before I die." While Esau was gone out to the field to hunt for venison, Rebekah spake unto Jacob her son, and said, " Go now to the flock, and fetch me from thence two good kids of the goats; and I will make them savory meat for thy father, such as he loveth : and thou shalt bring it to him, that he may bless thee before his death." Jacob replied, "Esau my broth- er is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man : my father will per B.C. 1S22-1G35. JACOB'S DREAM. 43 haps feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver, and shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing." His mother answered, '•' Upon me be thy curse, my son : only obey my voice, and go and fetch them." In this way Rebekah came to the aid of her favorite son, and devised the stratagem by which Jacob supplanted Esau, and having previously taken away his birthright, he now took away Esau's blessing also (Gen. xxvii. 1-29). Esau, we are told, hated Jacob " because of the blessing whcre- v'.:h his father blessed him," and said in his heart, "The days of mourning for my father are at hand ; then will I slay my brother Jacob." When these words of her elder son were reported to Rebekah, she was greatly alarmed. Having sent for Jacob, she told him to go and stay for a little while with Laban, her brother, in Haran, until Esau's fury was over. Concealing her principal reason for sending him away, she said to Isaac that it would be a trouble to her if Jacob were to marry one of the daughters of Heth, as Esau had done. Isaac then called Jacob, and said unto him, "Thou shall not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Padan-aram, to the house of Bcthuel, thy mother's father; and take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban, thy mother's brother. And God Almighty bless thee, and multiply thee, and give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee and to thy seed after thee ; that thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger, which God gave unto Abraham." And so the heir of the promises went on his long journey to Mesopotamia, as a solitary wanderer, with nothing but the staff lie carried, along the self-same road by which Abraham had first entered Canaan after the death of his father Terah. Proceeding northward on his way to Haran, he lighted upon a place near Luz, the site, doubtless, of Abram's second halting-place in the Holy Land, where he found some stones, one of which he made his pillow, and then lay down to sleep. Thus forlorn, he was visited by God ; and in a dream he saw a ladder, one end of which rested upon the earth, and the other reached to heaven, "and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it." And the Lord himself appeared to him, and stood above it, and his voice added to the renewal of the covenant made with Abraham and with Isaac, a special promise of protection to Jacob: "Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land." When Jacob awoke out of his sleep, he exclaimed, "How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, this is the gate of heaven." And he called the name of the place Beth-el (the house of God). He then dedicated himself to God and the. tenth Of all that God should give him (Gen. xxviii. 1-22). This, the 44 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. III. turning-point in Jacob's religious life, took place in his seventy, seventn year. Jacob then went on his journey, and at length arrived at Haran. There he witnessed a repetition of the pastoral scene which Abra- ham's servant had seen at the same place about a century before. Rachel, the daughter of his uncle Laban, comes with her father's sheep to the well, just as her aunt Rebekali had clone, and brinq; him to the house. There Jacob told Laban what his object was in coming to him, and at the end of a month it was agreed between them that Jacob should serve him seven years in tending his flocks, and as a recompense Laban agreed to give him his younger daugh- ter Rachel for wife. "And Jacob served seven years for Rachel ; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her." At the end of this time he claimed his bride. Laban then, by a trick rendered easy by the forms of an Eastern wedding, where the bride is closely veiled, gave him Leah in place of Rachel, and afterwards excused his deceit by saying, "In our country, we must not give the younger before the elder," but he gave Jacob Rachel also, on condition of his serving with him seven more years (Gen. xxix. 1-30). Jacob felt very differently towards his two wives: Rachel he loved deeply, but Leah he disliked (Gen. xxix. 31). She, how- ever, bore him four sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, while her sister Rachel was for a long time childless. In }:rief for her barrenness, she gave her handmaid Bilhah to Jacob — (as Sarah had given Hagar to Abraham) — by whom he had two sons, Dan and Naphtali. Leah also gave her maid Zilpah to Jacob, who bore him two sons, Gad and Asher. Leah afterwards had her fifth son, Issa- char, and then a sixth, whom she named Zebulun. Her last child was a daughter called Dinah (Gen. xxx. 21.) The prayers of Ra- chel being at length heard, she became the mother of a son, and said, "God hath taken away my reproach : and she called his name Joseph" {adding). During the fourteen years that Jacob served Laban he had by his two wives and their two handmaids eleven sons and one daughter. At the end of this time he wished to pro- Tide for his own house, and to return to his own country (Gen sxx. 25) ; and he requested his uncle to let him go. Laban, how ever, begged him to remain with him, for he said, "I have learned by experience that the Lord hath blessed me for thy sake." Jacob agreed to do so, on the condition that all the dark sheep, and all the spotted cattle and goats, hereafter born in the flocks under his care, should belong to him in payment of his services. Jacob's artifice to make the most of his bargain (Gen. xxx. 37-42) succeed- ed so well, that his flocks throve greatly, while Laban's dwindled B.C. 1822-1G35. JACOB'S ESCAPE FROM LABAN. 45 away. His prosperity began to excite the envy ofLaban and of his sons, when " the Lord said nnto Jacob, Return unto the land of thy fathers, and of thy kindred; and I will be with thee" (Gen. xxxi. 3). After sending for his wives into the field, and laying the mntter before them, he resolved to leave Laban. Setting his sons and his wives upon camels, and carrying away all that he had gotten in Padan-aram, he hastily set out for the land of Canaan, after twenty years spent in Laban's service — fourteen fur his wives and •six for his cattle. Having passed the Euphrates, he struck across the desert by the great fountain of Palmyra, then traversed the eastern part of the plain of Damascus, and entered Gilead — the range of mountains east of the Jordan, forming the frontier between Palestine and the Syrian desert. Jacob must have fled swiftly to have accomplished in ten days this journey of two hundred and fifty miles from Haran. But when Laban heard of his flight, he must have pursued him with even greater haste. Calling his kindred together, he set out after him, and overtook him in seven days (Gen. xxxi. 23), in Mount Gilead ; his anger for the loss of his daughters, carried away " like captives taken with the sword," being increased by the loss of his household gods (teraphim), which Rachel had secretly stolen. Ja- cob, ignorant of Rachel's theft, desired Laban to make a strict search for them, which he did in the different tents, but unsuccess- fully, as they were craftily concealed by Rachel. Laban, having been forewarned by God not to injure Jacob, then made a covenant with his son-in-law. Jacob took a tall stone and set it up for a pillar, and the rest collected large stones and made a heap, and " they did eat there upon the heap," which was called Galeed (the heap of witness). The heap of stones erected by the two tribes of Jacob and Laban as a boundary between them, "marked that the natural limit of the range of Gilead should be their actual limit also." Early in the morning Laban rose up, and, after kissing his sons and daughters and blessing them, he departed. Jacob also went on his way, and, to encourage him, his eyes were opened to see a troop of angels, " the host of God," sent for his protection. In the land to which Jacob was returning his first danger would be from the revenge of Esau, who had now become powerful in Mount Seir, the land of Edom. Jacob sent messengers, therefore, before him, to acquaint his brother of his approach, and of the pros^ perity that had attended him during his sojourn in Mesopotamia. His messengers returned, and told him, "Thy brother Esau cometh to meet thee with four hundred men." Well might Jacob distrust his purpose ; for, though such a retinue might be meant to do him honor, it might also be designe'd to insure revenge. "Then Jacob 4G SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. III. was greatly afraid and distressed." Having divided his people and his herds into two bands, that if the first were smitten the second might escape, he turned to God in prayer. This is the first prayer on record ; nor could there be a finer model for a special prayer. To prayer he adds prudence, and sends forward present after pres- ent to win his brother's heart — "Two hundred she-goats, twenty he-goats, two hundred ewes, twenty rams, thirty milch-camels with their colts, forty cows, ten bulls, twenty she-asses, and ten foals." This done, he rested for a while ; but in the night he arose and sent forward his two wives, his two women-servants, and his eleven sons, across the Jabbok, -while he himself remained alone at Mahanaim ttf prepare his mind for the coming trial. It was then that "a man" appeared and wrestled with him till break of day. This "man' was the "angel Jehovah." For a while He prevailed not against him, but at last the angel touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh and put it out of joint, when the sinew instantly shrank. "Let me go, he said, for the day breaketh. I will not let thee go, Jacob re- plied, except thou bless me." "Thy name shall no more be call- ed Jacob, he said, but Israel {a prince of God), as a sign that thou hast power with God and with men." Well knowing with whom he had to do, Jacob called the name of the place Peniel {the face of God), " for, he said, I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved " (Gen. xxxii. 1-32). Jacob now proceeded on his way, and overtook his family. Soon Esau and his men came in sight. Advancing before all his com- pany, Jacob then went to meet him, bowing himself to the ground seven times until he came near to his brother. "And Esau ran to meet him, and fell on his neck and kissed him : and they wept." Jacob then pressed Esau to accept the presents lie had sent for- ward for him, which he reluctantly consented to do. After a cor- dial interview they separated ; Esau went back to Mount Seir, and Jacob pursued his journey westward, and halted at Succoth. Soon afterwards he crossed the Jordan and arrived at Shechem, a city so called after Shechem, the son of Hamor, prince of the Amcrites. From them he bought for one hundred lambs the field where he had pitched his tent ; and he erected there an altar to God, as the giver of his new name — " God the God of Israel" (El-clohe-Israil) This piece of ground, with the exception of the cave of Machpelah, was the first possession of the chosen family in the land of Canaan (Gen. xxxiii. 1-20). The memory of Jacob's abode there is still preserved by "Jacob's well," on the margin of which his divine Son taught the woman of Sychar (Shechem) a better worship than that of sacred places. At Shechem Jacob lived about seven years, when he became in- B.C. 1822-1635. DEATH OF ISAAC. 47 volved in a conflict with the Shechemites. His daughter Dinah having been carried off by Shechem the son of Hamor, his sons Simeon and Levi treacherously revenged the wrong done to their sister by putting to death Hamor and Shechem and their people, and ravaging the city. To avoid the revenge of the Canaanites, Jacob deemed it prudent to withdraw from Shechem, and by the command of God he returned to Beth-el. There he fulfilled the vows which he had made many years before, when he had fled from home to escape the enmity of his brother Esau (Gen. xxviii. 16-22). There he built an altar to the Lord, and God appeared to him again (Gen. xxxv. 9), and renewed with him the Covenant made with Abraham. There Deborah, his mother Rebekah's nurse, died and was buried beneath the "oak of weeping" (Allon-baehuth). Jacob did not stay long at Beth-el, but journeyed southward on his way to visit, his father at Mamre, near Hebron. Not far from Eph. rath, the ancient name of Bethlehem, Rachel died in giving birth to Jacob's youngest son. The dying mother called him Besom (son of my sorrow), but the fond father changed his name to Ben-Jamin (son of the right hand) (Gen. xxxv. 16-18). Soon quitting this melancholy place, he went forward, and at length reached the en- campment of his father Isaac at the old station beside Hebron, " where Abraham and Isaac sojourned." It does not appear that Jacob had seen him from the time that he went to Padan-aram, some thirty years before, until now. They spent the next thirteen years together, when Isaac died at the age of one hundred and eighty. His sons Esau and Jacob buried him in the cave of Mach- pelah, with Abraham and Sarah (Gen. xxxv. 28, 29). Esau then returned to Mount Seir, and became the founder of the Edomites or Idumsean nation, and Jacob remained at Mamre (Gen. xxxvi. 8,9).' The story of Joseph and his brethren, which the sacred writer now relates, may safely be called the most charming in all history. As the first-born son of his beloved Rachel, and the son of his old age, "Israel loved Joseph more than all his children." He gave him "a coat of many colors ;" but his partiality awoke the jealousy of his other sons, and they "hated Joseph, and could not speak 1 The following is the lisi, of Jacob's twelve sons by his two wives and their two handmaids, with the significance of their names : i. The sons of Leah : Reuben (see .' a son), Simeon {tearing), Levi (joined), Jndah (praise), Issachar (hire), Zebnlun (dwelling). u. The sons of Rachel : Joseph (adding), Benjamin (son of the right hand). iii. The sons oiBilhah, Rachel's handmaid : Dan (judging), Naphthali (my wrestling). iv. The sons of Zilpah, Leah's handmaid : Gad (a troop), Asher (happy). Besides Dinah (judgment), the daughter of Leah.— Gen. xxxv. 23-26. 48 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. IIL peaceably unto him." Their hatred was increased after Joseph had told them two dreams which he had dreamed. In the first, his brothers' sheaves of corn bowed down to his, which stood upright in their midst; and in the second, "behold the sun, and the moon, and the eleven stars made obeisance" to him. His father rebuked him for repeating these dreams, and said, " Shall I, and thy mother, and thv brethren, indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the 3arth ?" Jacob was at this time at Hebron, while his sons fed his flocks wherever they could find pasture ; Joseph being sometimes with them, and sometimes with his father. On one occasion he was sent from Hebron to Shechem, where the field lay which Jacob had purchased, and probably afterwards recovered, from the Amorites, to inquire after his brethren and the flocks. Finding that they had gone farther north to Dothan, he went after them ; but as soon *s they saw him coming they conspired to kill him. "They said one to another, Behold this dreamer cometh. Come now, let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say some evil beast hath devoured him. Then we shall see what will become of his dreams." His life was saved by Reuben, who said, " Let us not kill him," and he persuaded them to cast him into an empty pit, whence he intended to take him and restore him to his father. When Joseph came to them, they stripped him of his tunic " of many colors," and having cast, him into the pit, they coolly sat down to eat bread. Just then an Arab caravan — a company of Ishmael- ites — were seen on the road which leads from Gilead through Do- than to Egypt, carrying to that country on their camels the spices, and balm, and myrrh of the Syrian desert. As such traders were always ready to buy up slaves on their way, Judah suggested, dur- ing the absence of Reuben, that they might now get rid of their brother without the guilt of murder, and he proposed that he should be sold to the Ishmaelites. "And his brethren were content." When the Midianites came near they took Joseph out of the pit and sold him to them for twenty shekels of silver : the very sum which afterwards, under the Law, was set as the value of a male from five to twenty years old — a type of the sale of Him " whom the children of Israel did value" (Matt, xxvii. 9). Reuben returned to the pit ; but not finding his brother there, he was greatly grieved, and rent his clothes. To deceive their father, his brothers then took Joseph's tunic, and having dipped it in a kid's blood, they carried it back to Jacob. As soon as he saw it he knew it, and said, " It is my son's coat ; a wild beast hath, no doubt, torn him in pieces." With guilty consciences they pretended to com- fort their father, but he refused to be comforted, and said, " I will B.C. 1822-1G35. HISTORY OF JOSEPH. 49 go down into the grave unto my son mourning" (Gen. xxxvii. 1-35). Meanwhile the Ishmaelite merchants carried Joseph down into Egypt, and sold him as a slave toPoTiPHAR, "an officer of Pharaoh and captain of the guard." Here Joseph served his master with so much fidelity that he quickly gained his confidence, when Potiphar made him steward over his household, and over all that he had. "And the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake." Joseph being "a goodly person and well-favored," his youthful beauty exposed him to a great temptation from his master's wife, which, however, he was enabled to withstand. In revenge for this slight, she made a false charge against Joseph and procured his dis- grace, stirring up the wrath of her husband against him, who put him into the state prison. This imprisonment lasted probably eight or nine years ; and we gather from the words of the Psalmist (Psalm cv. 17, 18), that his treatment was at first severe; "Whose feet they hurt with fetters; the iron entered into his soul." But the game blessing that had raised him in the house of Potiphar followed him in the prison, the keeper of which gave him the entire charge of the other prisoners, " because the Lord was with him, and that which he did, the Lord made it to prosper " (Gen. xxxix. 1-23). It happened that the chief of the cup-bearers and the chief of the cooks 2 of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, gave some offense to their master, for which they were cast into prison, and committed to the charge of Joseph. One morning when he looked upon them he per- ceived that they were very sad, and, on inquiring the cause, they replied, "We have dreamed a dream, and there is no interpreter of it." After reminding them that the interpretation of dreams be- longed to God, he then interpreted their dreams, which forewarned them of their fate. Joseph told the chief cup-bearer that his dream signified that in three days Pharaoh would restore him to his office ; and to the chief of the cooks he predicted that within three days he would be hanged. His words came true ; but al- though he had asked the chief cup-hearer to think on him and in- tercede with Pharaoh for his release from prison, yet "did not he remember him, but forgat him " (Gen. xl. 1-23). After this two years passed away, when Pharaoh was disturbed by dreams which none of the wise men of Egypt were able to in- terpret. Then the chief cup-bearer told the king of Joseph's skill, and he was hastily sent for out of prison, and brought into the pres- ence of Pharaoh. After Joseph had told Pharaoh that the power of interpreting dreams was only in God who had sent them, the ' The terms chief butler and chief baker, in our version, are misleading as to their dignity. J) 50 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. III. king related his dreams, which Joseph proceeded to interpret. "In my dream," said Pharaoh, "behold I stood upon the bank of the river (Nile). And I saw seven fat and beautiful heifers come up out of the river, and feed on the marsh grass by its banks ; then seven of the leanest and most ill-looking heifers I had ever seen came up after them, and devoured the others." In his second dream, he saw seven full ears of corn devoured by seven that were thin and blasted. Joseph explained to the king that the dream had been twofold, to mark its certain and speedy fulfillment; that the seven heifers and the seven ears of corn had the same mean- ing ; and that God had taken this way of showing to the king what He was about to do. The seven fat heifers and the seven full ears denoted seven years of great abundance, which nevertheless should be forgotten by reason of the severity of the famine which should come in the next seven years after them, denoted by the lean and ill-looking heifers, and the blasted ears of corn. He then advised Pharaoh to appoint a wise and discreet minister over his whole kingdom, who should send officers into every part of the land to store up a fifth part of all the corn of the seven years of plenty against the seven years of famine. "And the thing was good in the eyes of Pharaoh and of all his servants." Can we find another man like this, said the king, in whom is the Spirit of God ? Feel- ing that no man could be more fit for the office than Joseph him- self, he said to him, "See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt." He then took off his own signet-ring and gave it to him. Clothing him with fine linen robes and putting a collar of gold round his neck, he seated him in the second royal chariot, before which the people were bidden to fall prostrate. Thus Joseph was made ruler over all the land of Egypt, with authority next to that of the king himself. Pharaoh changed his name to Zaphnatik Paanbah, which perhaps signified, in Egyptian, the preserver of life, and gave him for wife Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah, priest (or prince) of On, who bore him two sons during the seven years of plenty. The elder he named Manasseh (forgetting), and the younger Ephraim (double fruit fulness). Joseph was thirty years old when he was made governor over all Egypt (Gen. xli. 46). The first thing he did was to go through the country. During his progress, he gave instructions for granaries to be built in the principal cities, and appointed officers whom he charged with the duty of buying up one-fifth of the produce of tho land during the seven years of plenty, and storing it away for use during the years of famine. When the seven years of dearth began to come, the Egyptians quickly used up their private stores. Joseph then opened all the store-houses and sold corn to them ; and as the B.C. 1822-1G35. HISTORY OF JOSEPH. 51 famine was sore in all the neighboring countries, people from Ca- naan, and the nations round about, went down into Egypt to buy corn (Gen. xli. 47-57). These seven years of famine had the most important bearing on the chosen family of Israel. When all the corn in Canaan was gone, Jacob sent down ten of his sons into Egypt to buy corn there ; but Benjamin, Joseph's brother, he sent not with them, "lest mis- chief should befall him." Probably he was unwilling to trust Rachel's remaining child with his brethren. When Joseph saw them, he knew them, but they knew not him. He spake roughly to them, and charged them with being spies, come down to see the nakedness of the land. To test their truthfulness, he at first de- manded that one of them should be sent to fetch their youngest brother ; but, after keeping them three days in prison, he changed his mind, and said, " Let one of your number remain as a hostage, and let the rest return with the corn you have purchased for your houses, but bring your youngest brother back with you to verify your words." Then his brethren remembered the crime which they had committed in selling Joseph into slavery, and they said one to another, " We are verily guilty concerning our brother, therefore is this distress come upon us." Joseph then, having taken Simeon and bound him before their eyes, commanded his servants to fill their sacks with corn, to restore every man's money into his sack, and to give them provision for the way, and afterwards they departed. They returned unto their father in the land of Canaan, and told him all that had befallen them. When they emptied their sacks, they found every man's bundle of money in his sack, and were afraid. They asked their father to intrust Benjamin to their care ; but he replied, " Me have ye bereaved of my children ; Joseph is not, and Simeon 's not, and ye will take Benjamin away. All these things are against me." "My father," said Reuben, "slay in v two sons if I bring him not to thee ; deliver him into my hand, and I will bring him to thee again." "No," said Jacob, "my sun shall not go down with you ; for his brother is dead, and he is left alone: if mischief befall him by the way in the which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave " Gen. xlii. 1-38). The famine, however, was sore in the land of Canaan. When thay had eaten up the corn which they had brought out of Egypt, their father said to them, " Go again, buy us a little food." " If thou wilt send our brother with us," said Judah, " we will go down and buy thee food ; but if thou wilt not send him, we will not go down, for the man said unto us, Ye shall not see my face except your brother be witJ» you." " Why dealt ye so ill with me," Israel 52 SCKIPTUKE HISTORY. Chap. III. said, "as to tell the man whether ye had yet a brother?" At length their father consented. " If it must be so now," he said, " do this ; take of the best fruits in the land, and carry down the man a present, a little balm, and a little honey, spices and myrrh, nuts and almonds. Take double money in your hand, and the money that was brought back in the mouth of your sacks — perad- venture it was an oversight. Take also your brother, and go again unto the man. And may God Almighty give you grace before the man that lie may send away your other brother and Benjamin. If I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved." And the men returned to Egypt and stood before Joseph. As soon as he saw Benjamin with them, lie said to the ruler of his house, " Bring these men home and make ready, for these men shall dine with me at noon." At first they were afraid ; but their fears were soon dispelled, and Simeon was brought out to them. When Joseph came home, they made obeisance to him, and pro- duced the presents they had brought with them. He asked them of their welfare, and said, " Is your father well, the old man of whom ye spake? Is he yet alive?' He then saw his brother Benjamin, his mother's son, and said, "Is this your younger broth- er, of whom ye spake unto me ? God be gracious unto thee, my son." His yearning fondness for his brother moved him to tears, and he entered into his chamber and wept there. Then their din- ner was served to each at separata tables, at which they were ar- ranged strictly in accordance with their several ages. But Benja- min's mess was five times as much as any of theirs (Gen. xliii.). Desirous of putting them to one more trial, Joseph commanded the steward of his house to fill the men's sacks with food, to put every man's money in his sack's mouth, and to put his silver cup in the sack's month of the youngest. His orders were executed ; and in the morning, as soon as it was light, the men were sent away. They had not gone far from the city when Joseph said to his steward, " Up, follow after the men, and say, Why have ye re- warded evil for good ? The cup you have stolen is one in which my lord drinketh, and whereby he divineth. " " God forbid," they replied, " that thy servants should do this thing. With whomsoever it shall be found, let him die, and we also will become thy lord's bondmen." The cup Avas found in Benjamin's sack. At once they rent their clothes and returned to the city. Judah and his brethren made their way to Joseph's house and fell before him on the ground. "What shall we say unto my lord?" he said. " How shall we clear ourselves? Behold we arc all my lord's serv- ants." "God forbid that I should do so," said Joseph. " The man in whose hand the cup is found, he shall be my servant.' B.C. 1S22-1G35. JACOB SENT FOR BY JOSEPH. 53 Then Judah came near to him, and with most moving eloquence told his artless tale, offering to become a bondman instead of Benjamin, and pleading with unequalled earnestness and filial af- fection that the lad might be sent back to his father. "It shall come to pass," he said, " that, as his life is bound up in the lad's life, when he seeth that the lad is not with us, he will die ; and thy servants shall bring down the gray hairs of our father with sorrow to the grave " (Gen. xliv.). Joseph was unable to resist this touching appeal. He could not refrain himself, but wept aloud, and said unto his brethren, " I am Joseph. Doth my father yet live ?" They could not answer him, for they were troubled at his presence. But no word of upbraid- ing or of reproach fell from his lips. " Be not grieved or angry with yourselves," he said, " that ye sold me hither. It was not you that sent me hither, but God. Hasten back to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt : come down unto me, tarry not. And thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, and be near unto me." Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, and Benjamin wept upon his neck. Moreover, he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them. It was soon known in Pharaoh's house that Joseph's brethren were come ; and the king and his servants were glad. Joseph then sent wagons for his father and his household, with rich presents, and to all his brethren he gave changes of raiment. And they returned to the land of Canaan, and said to their father, " Joseph is yet alive, and he is governor over all the land of Egypt." But Jacob's heart fainted, for he believed them not at first, until he had seen the wagons sent for him, and then his spirit revived, and he said, " It is enough, Joseph my son is yet alive. I will go and see him before I die " (Gen. xlv.). Though at that time about one hundred and thirty years old, Jacob's eager desire to see the son for whom he had so long mourned induced him to go down at once, with all that he had, into Egypt. On his way, he rested at Beer-sheba, and offered sac- rifices unto the God of hu father Isaac. There God encouraged him by a vision, commanding him to go down, and promising to bring him up again in the person of his descendants, and assuring him that his eyes should be closed by Joseph (Gen. xlvi. 4). So he went down, witli his sons and their wives and children, and all their cattle. The number of his own descendants who went down with him into Egypt was sixty-six ; to these must be added Jacob himself, with Joseph and his two sons. Thus "all the souls of the house of Jacob which came with him into Egypt were three- score and ten " (Gen. xlvi. 27). 54 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. Ill Just before reaching the land of Goshen — a province on the ex- treme frontier of Egypt, towards Canaan — Jacob sent Judah on in advance, to acquaint Joseph with bis arrival. Joseph immediately went to meet his father ; and wbeu he saw him he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. "Now," said Israel, "let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive '" (Gen. xlvi. 30). Joseph then went and told Pharaoh that his fa- ther and his brethren had come out of the land of Canaan, and he presented five of them to him. The king, when he found that they were shepherds, a class held in abomination by the Egyptians, gave them for their separate abode the land of Goshen, which was the best pasture-ground in all Egypt. Joseph then brought his father into the presence of Pharaoh, and "Jacob blessed Pharaoh." "How old art thou?" said the king to him. "The days of my pilgrimage," he answered, "are one hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, nor have they attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage " (Gen. xlvii. 9). These words furnish a testimony to the gradual decline of human life, and are a mem- orable example of how the patriarchs confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth (Heb. xi. 13). The removal of the chosen family from Canaan, and their settle- ment in Egypt, formed a part of the great plan which God had un- folded to their forefather Abraham (Gen. xv. 13). Two hundred years had passed away since God had said, "Unto thy seed will I give this land," and as yet they had no possessions in the land of Canaan. In Egypt, under the discipline of affliction, the family was to be consolidated into a nation. Then God's words would meet with their fulfillment, and the Israelites would enter on the possession of their promised inheritance. After dwelling in the land of Goshen for seventeen vears in com- fort and prosperity, "the time drew nigh that Israel must die." As his end approached, he sent for Joseph, and made him swear that he would not bury him in Egypt, but would take him to the Promised Land, and " bury him in the burying-place of his fathers," in the cave of Machpelah. In thanksgiving to God for the mercies vouchsafed to him during a troubled life, and for the solemn assur- ance given to him by his son that he should be "gathered to his fathers," Israel bowed himself upon the bed's head (Gen. xlvii. 31) and worshipped (Heb. xi. 21). Not long afterwards Joseph heard that his father was sick, and went with his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, to visit him. When Jacob heard that he was come, his strength revived, and he eat up in his bed to receive him. The dying patriarch claimed B.C. 1822-1635. DEATH OF JACOB. 55 Ephraira and Manasseh for his own children, and henceforth they were numbered among the heads of the tribes of Israel. His thoughts then went back to the glorious promises God had once made to him at the crisis of his i - eligious life, when he lay down to rest a forlorn wanderer at Luz (Bethel). And then they turned to the death of his beloved Rachel on his return from Padan, and to her burial near Ephrath (Bethlehem). His eyes being dim from age, he did not at first see Joseph's two sons ; but when they were brought near to him, he kissed them and embraced them, fondly saying to Joseph, " I had not thought to see thy face ; and, lo, God hath showed me thy seed also" (Gen. xlviii. 11). Joseph, having received his father's blessing, then took his two sons, and, bowing himself with his face to the earth, placed Manasseh the elder at Ja- cob's right hand and Ephraim the younger at his left. Jacob, how- ever, crossing his arms, laid his right hand upon the younger, and his left upon the elder, and, disregarding Joseph's opposition, he gave the larger and nobler blessing to Ephraim the younger. "Tru- ly," said he, " the younger brother shall be greater than the elder, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations" (Gen, xlviii. 19). Thus was added another instance of God's sovereign choice to the examples of Abel, Shem, Abram, Isaac, who, like the patri- arch Jacob himself, were all younger sons. Having given his separate and special blessing to Joseph him- self and his two sons, and bestowed upon Joseph an extra portion above his brethren (Gen. xlviii. 22), thus marking him as his heir, he called together all his sons to hear the last words of Israel their father, that he might tell them what would befall them in the last days (Gen. xlix.). It is evident that the blessings and the prophecies of the dying patriarch were a formal appointment of his twelve sons to be the twelve heads of the chosen race, and that they had respect to the tribes as well as to their individual ancestors. At the end of his charge, he gave to all his sons, collectively, the same command that he had previously gi"en to Joseph individually, "I am to be gath- ered unto my people. Bury me with my fathers" in the cave of Machpelah (Gen. xlix. 29), and, "gathering up his feet into the bed, he yielded up the ghost," at the age of one hundred and forty- seven. Joseph then fell upon his father's face, and passionately wept over him and kissed him. He afterwards gave orders for his body to be embalmed, which occupied forty days, and there was a public mourning for him among the Egyptians, which lasted altogether seventy days. With Pharaoh's permission, he then went, with all his brethren, and the elders both of Israel and of Egypt, and a great 5G SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. III. company of chariots and of horsemen, to bury his father in the land of Canaan. To avoid, probably, the tribes of the frontier, they did not take the nearest road, but made a circuit to Atad, a little to the west of the Jordan, where they kept so great and sore a lamentation for seven days that the astonished Canaanites called the place Abel- Mizraim (t/ tians fled against it, but not one of them was left alive (Exod. xiv. 5-28). Thus the Lord saved Israel out of the hand of the Egyp. tians. "And the people feared the Lord, and believed his servant Moses." The passage of the Red Sea was the beginning of a new dispensation: they were all baptised lo Moses in the cloud and in th3 sea (1 Cor. x. 2). In this light the deliverance is looked back upon by the sacred writers in every age. led by the inspired song sung by Moses and the children of Israel, with the responsive cho- rus formed by "Miriam, the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, and all the women who went out after her with timbrels and dances," echoing the refrain : B.C. 1491-90. WILDERNESS OF SIN. 69 "Sing ye to Jehovah, for He hath triumphed gloriously: The horse aud his rider hath He thrown into the sea." 1 Their route now lay southward down the east side of the Gulf of Suez, and at first along the shore. They marched for three days through the wilderness of Shttr, where they found no water (Exod. xv. 22). At length they came to a spring called Makaii (bitter- ness), on account of its bitter waters. The people, tormented with thirst, murmured against Moses, who, at the command of God, cast a certain tree into the waters, which made them sweet. Going for- ward, they reached the oasis of Elim, where there were twelve wells and threescore and ten palm-trees, and there they encamped. Strik- ing inland, they now lost sight of the Red Sea and the shores of Egypt, and entered the Wili>lrness of Sin (Exod. xvi. 1), which leads up from the shore to the entrance to the mountains of Sinai. Here occurred their second great trial since leaving Egypt. Their unleavened bread was exhausted. "Would to God," they cried, " that we had died in Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots and did eat bread to the full," instead of being led out to perish witli hun- ger in the wilderness. But God was teaching them to look to Him for their "daily bread." The glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud, and the Lord spake unto Moses, and promised that that very evening they should have iicsh to cat, and in the morning they should he filled with bread. At the appointed time God sent a flight of quails which covered the camp; and the next morning there was a fall of dew around the camp, and when it was dried up there lay upon the ground a small round thing, as small as the par- ticles of hoar-frost, white like coriander-seed, and tasting like wafers made of honey. When the people saw it, they exclaimed Man-htj, which signifies, in Hebrew, "What is it?" (Exod. xvi. 15). From this question it was called Manna. Moses replied, "This is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat." The supply of this food was continued for forty years, till they reached Canaan (Exod. xvi. 35). God humbled them, and suffered them to hunger, and fed them with a food unknown to them, " that he might make them know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that pi oceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live " (Dent. viii. 3). This manna was a type of Christ, who came down from heav- esi as the Bread of Life (John vi. 31-35). The rules laid down for the gathering of the manna led to the revival of the Sabbath, the observance of which had, no doubt, been neglected in Egypt. Every morning they gathered a certain quan- tity for use during the day, bnt on the sixth day they gathered twice as much, because none would fall on the seventh, which was a Sab- bath or day of rest (Exod. xvi. 1G-2G). 1 Exodus xv. 70 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. V. From i ho wilderness of Sin other valleys lead up, by a series of steep iiscents into the recesses of the mountain region of Sinai. Their next resting-place was at Rkphidim. Here there was no wa- ter for the people to drink, and they burst forth into an angry rebel- lion against Moses. "Why," said they, " hast thou brought us up out of Egypt to kill ns, our children, and our cattle, with thirst?" In answer to the cry of Moses, the Lord vouchsafed a miracle for n permanent supply during their abode in the wilderness of Sinai Moses was commanded to go on before the people with the elders of Israel, and to smite the rock in Horeb with the rod wherewith he smote the river. He did so in their presence, and water flowed forth i ut of it. The place was called Massah {temptation), and Mebibah {chiding or strife) because they tempted the Lord, and doubted whether He was among them or not (Exod. xvii. 1-7). The spring thus opened seems to have formed a brook, which the Israelites used during their whole sojourn near Sinai (Deut. ix. 21 ; comp. Psa. lxxviii. 15, 16 ; cv. 41). Hence the rock is said to have " followed them" by St. Paul, who makes it a type of Christ, the source of the spiritual water of life (1 Cor. x. 4). It was in Rephidim that the new-formed nation fought their first great battle. The peninsula of Sinai and the adjoining deserts were at that time in the occupation of the Amalekites — a tribe de- scended from Eliphaz, the son of Esau (Gen. xxxvi. If!). Whether they regardetl the Israelites as intruders, or whether they attacked them for the sake of plunder, is uncertain. Moses directed Joshua, whose name is now first mentioned, to choose out a body of men, and fight against the enemy, while he himself stood on the top of the hill with the rod of God outstretched in his hand. According- ly, the next morning, attended by his brother Aaron, and by Hur, the husband of Miriam, Moses went up to the top of a hill, with tho rod of God in his hand, and while he held up his hand Israel pre- vailed, and when he let down his hand Amalek prevailed. When he grew weary, a stone was brought for him to sit upon, and his hands were held up by Aaron and Hur, one on each side, till sun- set, when Amalek was discomfited. The attitude of Moses seems to have been a sign of God's presence with His hosts, like a stand- ard over the battle-field. This meaning is taught by the name given to the altar of thanksgiving then set up — Jkhovah-Nissi, the Lord is my banner (Exod. xvii. 8-13). For this act of hostility the tribe of Amalek was doomed to utter destruction. "I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek," said the Lord, "from under heaven." Moses was commanded by God to write the whole transaction in a book; and here we have one of the passages in which we learn from the sacred writers' B.C. 1491-90. WILDERNESS OF SINAI. 71 themselves their authorship of the books that bear their namea (Exod. xvii. 14). During the encampment at Rcphidim, Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, brought his wife Zipporah and his two sons to visit him. Moses received him with high honor, and recounted to him all that the Lord had done for the deliverance of his people. " Now I know," said Jethro, "that the Lord is greater than all gods," arid he offered sacrifices to God. On the morrow, seeing Moses over- burdened with judging the people, he advised him to appoint a num- ber of able men, to be rulers over thousands, over hundreds, over fifties, and over tens, who would share the burden with him, and to reserve himself for the harder causes, to lay them before God as mediator for the people. And Moses did so (Exod. xviii.). On the first day of the third month after leaving Egypt, the Is- raelites came to the Wilderness of Sinai, and here they encamp- ed before the mount. Never in the history of the world was such a scene beheld as that plain now presented ! A whole nation was assembled alone with God. His hand had been seen, and His voice heard at every step of their history for four hundred and thirty years up to this great crisis. He had divided the very sea to let them pass into this secret shrine of nature, whose awful grandeur pre- pared their minds for the coming revelation. The events that took place during their stay at Sinai, till the setting up of the tabernacle, will now be related. There was a season of preparation before the law was given. First Moses went up unto God ; and the Lord called to him out of the mountain, telling him to remind the people of what he had al- ready done for them against the Egyptians, and promising that, if they would obey his voice and keep his covenant, " then shall ye be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people (for all the earth is mine), and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy na- tion." They were to be kings and priests for others' good, a holy nation for a pattern to all the rest. Moses acquainted the elders of the people with all the words that the Lord had commanded hini, and they answered. "All that the Lord hath spoken we will do." Moses was next warned that the Lord was coming to him in (v thick cloud, and would speak to him before all the people, that ihey might believe him forever. He was commanded to purify the people against the third day, and to set a boundary round the mount, that neither man nor beast might touch it under penalty of death. On the third day, in the morning, the mountain was enveloped in a thick cloud, and surrounded with such terrors that Moses and all the people in the camp feared and trembled. From amidst the darkness, and above the trumpet's sound, God's voice was heard 72 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chak V. calling Moses up into the mount, bidding him charge the people lest they should break the bounds to gaze on God, and prepare the eld- ers to come up with him and Aaron, when God should call them (Exod. xix. 5-24). Then followed the greatest event of the Old Covenant. From the midst of the fire and of the smoke, t he voice of God himself was heard giving forth Ten Commandments, by which his people were to live. These were the only parts of the law given by the roice of God to the assembled people : they alone were afterwards written on the two tallies of stone (Deut. v. 22). As soon as God had done speaking, the people, overcome with terror, prayed Moses that he would speak to them in the place of God, lest they should die. They then removed afar off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. In the course of the six following days, he received a series of precepts which form a practical inter- pretation of the Ten Commandments (Exod. xx. -xxiii.). These words of the Lord Moses wrote in a book, which he named the Book of the Covenant, and he read it in the audience of the people. Having built an altar at the foot of Mount Sinai, and offered sac- rifices, and the people having promised to obey the voice of the Lord, Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on them, and said, "Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you" (Exod. xxiv. 7, 8). These precepts were followed by promises relating to the people's future course. The land of Canaan was clearly marked out as their destination (Exod. xxiii. 23), and its gradual conquest assured to them. A special warning was given them against idolatry. Above all, the Axgel Jehovah, who had already led them out of Egypt, was still to be their guide, to keep them in the way, and to bring them to the place appointed for them. But, if provoked and dis- obeyed, He would be a terror to them, for "my name is in Him'" (Exod. xxiii. 21 ). In this angel, God himself -was present as the Sheplterd of His flock; and in tempting and provoking him in the wilderness, they vexed God's Holy Spirit. The clouds of Sinai did not exhibit, but concealed, the true glory of Jehovah ; and He now vouchsafed a vision of that glory to Moses, with Aaron and his si>ns Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the eld- ers of Israel. The chosen party went up and saw God, enthroned in His glory, and yet they lived. Moses was then called up alone into the mount to receive the tables of stone and the law which God had written, while Aaron and Hur were left to govern the people. He then went up alone into the mount, which a clond covered for six days, crowned with the glory of God as a burning fire. On the seventh day Moses was called into the cloud, and B.C. 1491-90. GIVING OF THE LAW. 73 there he abode without food forty days and forty nights (Exod. xxiv. 1-18). During this period, lie received instructions from God us to the pattern of the tabernacle, the form of the ark, the various kinds of sacrifices, and other ordinances of divine worship. When He had made an end of communing with him, God gave unto Moses "two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God" (Exod. xxxi. 18). As the weeks passed by without his return from the mount, the Israelites began to think that they had lost their leader, and they said to Aaron, " Up, make us gods which shall go before us." Aaron weakly yielded to their demand, and asked the people for their golden ear-rings, from which he made a "molten calf," the symbol of the Egyptian deity Apis. This he set before the people as the image of the God who had brought them out of Egypt, and he built an altar before the idol, and on the morrow the people offered sacrifices to it, and kept a feast, with songs and dances. This was on the last of the forty days; God then sent Moses down from the mount, telling him of the people's sin, and threatening to destroy them, and promising to make of him a new nation. Moses, however, pleaded for them by the honor of God in the eyes of the Egyptians, and by his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. "And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people" (Exod. xxxii. 1-14). Moses, attended by his servant Joshua, now turned and went down from the mount, carrying in his hands the two tables of the testimony. He soon heard the shouts of revelry, which were mis- taken by Joshua for the noise of battle. As he drew nigh to lho camp, he saw them dancing before the golden calf, and in righteous indignation he cast the tables out of his hands, and broke them in pieces at the foot of the mount. He next destroyed the calf by fire and pounding, and strewed its dust upon the stream from which the people drank. After sharply upbraiding Aaron, who laid the blame on the people, for the part he had taken in the matter, Moses then made a terrible example. Standing in the gate of the camp, he cried, "Whoever is on the Lord's side come unto me ; ' and all his brethren of the tribe of Levi rallied round him. He command- ed them to go, sword in hand, throughout the camp, and to slay all whom they still found at the idolatrous feast, without regard to kindred or acquaintance. And about three thousand of the peo- ple, still in the midst of their mirth, were put to death. This was the act which consecrated the tribe of Levi to the service and priesthood of Jehovah (Exod. xxxii. 15-28). On the morrow, Moses reproved the people for their sin, but prom- we<) to intercede for them with the Lord. God replied that the sin- 74 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. V. ner himself should be blotted out of His book, and He sent plagues upon the people on account of their idolatry. He promised, how- ever, to send His angel before them, to be their leader. At this the people murmured, thinking that they were to lose God's own presence. Moses then took the sacred tent, called the Tabernacle bf the congregation, and pitched it outside of the camp which had been profaned, and all who sought the Lord went out to it. When Moses went out to the tabernacle, every man stood at his tent-dooi hatching him ; and when he entered it, the pillar of cloud descend- ed and stood at the door, and "the Lord spake unto Moses, face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." As a special encourage- ment to Moses himself, God said, " My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest." Moses then prayed that God would show him His glory. "Thou canst not see my face and live," said the Lord. But God promised to place him in a cleft of the rock, and to hide him while His glory passed by, so that he could see the train behind Him, but not His face (Exod. xxxii. 30-xxxiii. 23). By the command of God, Moses went up again into the mount alone, carrying with him two tables of stone, to replace those which he had broken. Then the Lord descended in a cloud, and pro- claimed His name as the ; 'Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth." Moses interceded once more for his people, and God renewed His covenant, promising to work wonders for them, such as had not been done in all the earth, and to bring them into the Promised Land, and adding a new warning against their falling into the idolatry of Canaan. This time, also, Moses remained in the mount alone with the Lord forty days and forty nights, fasting; there he received anew the precepts of the law, as well as the two tables he had taken up, with the Ten Commamlments written thereupon by God himself. When Moses came down from the mount, the light of God's glory shone so brightly from his face, that the people were afraid to come nigh him, and he covered it with a veil while he recited to them the commandments that God had given him (Exod. xxxiv. 1-35). Moses now gathered together all the congregation of the children of Israel, and, after repeating the law of the Sabbath, he asked their free gifts for the tabernacle and its furniture. And every one whose heart was willing brought offerings to the Lord, jewels, and gold and silver, and brass, skins and woven fabrics of blue, of purple, of scarlet and of fine linen, spices, oils, and incense. Two men were called, and gifted by God's Spirit with skill for the work — • Bezaleel, the son of Uri, of the tribe of Judah, and Aholiab. the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan ; and they wrought with ''every tvise-hearted man in whom the Lord put wisdom and un- B.C. U'Jl -'JO. THE TABERNACLE SET UP. 75 derstanding to work for the service of the sanctuary." The people soon brought more than enough for the work, and they made the tabernacle, with its furniture and vessels, the cloths of service, and the garments of the priests, after the pattern shown to Moses in the mount, and Moses blessed them (Exod. xxxv.-xxxix.). All things being thus prepared, Moses was commanded, on the first day of the first month of the second year, to set up the taber- nacle, and to place therein the ark of the covenant, and all the sacred vessels and furniture, and to anoint Aaron and his sons to' the priesthood. When he had finished the work, God vouchsafed a visible token of His presence and approval. The glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle, so that Moses was unable to enter it. A whole month was afterwards spent in arranging the service of the sanctuary, as it is set forth fully in the Book of Leviticus, be° fore the people prepared to resume their journey (Exod. xl.). Mount Hor. CHAPTER VI. THE WANDERING IN THE WILDERNESS. — B. C. 1490-1452. Ox the first day of the second month of the second year (Jyar = May, B.C. 1490) from the epoch of the Exodus, the Lord com- manded Moses to number the people able to bear arms, from twenty years old and upward. The Levites, being exempted from military service, were numbered separately. At this census, the total of the military array was found to be in round numbers about 600,000. The whole host was divided into four camps, which surrounded the tabernacle during a halt, and went before and after it on the march. The Levites were taken for the service of Jehovah in place of the first-born ; it was their duty to minister to the high-priest, and to attend to the tabernacle of the congregation. At length the word of Jehovah came to them, saying that they had dwelt long enough in Horeb, and commanding them to turn and journey onward (Deut. i. 6, 7). The aim of their journey was to take possession of the land which God had promised to their fathers. The cloud of Jehovah's presence, which had been resting over the tabernacle, was then lifted up as the sign of departure. B.C. 1490-1452. ROUTE OF THE WANDERING. 77 and the tabernacle itself was taken down. At the al.nm blown by the two silver trumpets (Numb. x. 1-10) each of the four camps set forward in its appointed order, and the host followed the cloud into the wilderness ofParan. During their march, the cloud, dark by day and luminous by night, indicated every halting-place ; when it was taken up from the tabernacle, then they journeyed ; in the place where it abode, there they pitched their tents. When the ark set forward, Moses said, "Rise up, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered, and let them that hate thee flee before thee." And when it rested, he said, " Return, OLord, unto the many thousands of Israel " (Numb. x. 35, 36). In following the route of the Israelites, we must remember that its general direction is northward from Sinai " to the mount of the Ainorites," the highlands of southern Palestine. The two extreme points are the camp before Sinai on the south, and Kadksh on the north. The distance between these points was eleven days' jour- ney, or about 1G5 miles. Their present journey must be carefully distinguished from their final march into Palestine, at the end of the thirty-eight years' wandering in the wilderness. More than once during their march, the people murmured against Jehovah. The mixed multitude that came with them out of Egypt were among the first to complain ; with the children of Israel, they remembered the abundance of Egypt, and, growing tired of the manna, they said, " Who shall give us flesh to eat?" (Numb. xi. 4). Upon this rebellion, Moses complained to the Lord that the burden of the people was too great for him to bear alone. He was directed to choose seventy of the elders of Israel, and to bring them to the door of the tabernacle. And the Lord came down in a cloud, and took of the Spirit that was on Moses, and gave it unto them, and they prophesied. Two of them, who had not come out to the tabernacle, Eldad and Medad, prophesied in the cam]). Joshua asked Moses to forbid them ; but he replied, "Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets." The people were then punished for their murmurings. God sent quails among them ; but in the very act of eating them the Lord smote the people with a very great plague, and a great number perished This place was called Kusroth-Hattaavah, that is, "the graves of lust "(Numb. xi. 25-34). Their next halting-place was at Hazekoth. Here a rebellion arose against Moses in iiis own family. Aaron and Miriam spake against him because of the Cushite woman whom he had married — probably his Midianite wife Zipporah — and disputed his authority. "Hath the Lord spoken only by Moses, they said ; hath He not spoken also bv us?"' The Lord heard it, and called forth nil tin 78 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. VI to the tabernacle. There he' told Aaron and Miriam that with other prophets He would converse in visions and in dreams, but with His servant Moses openly, mouth to mouth. The Lord show- ed His anger against them by smiting Miriam with leprosy : though she was healed at the prayer of Moses, yet was she shut out of the camp seven days as a punishment. After this the people removed from Hazeroth and pitched in the wilderness of Parar. (Numb. xii. 1-1 G). We find them next at Kadesh, or Kadesii-Barnea. Here Moses, by the command of the Lord, sent forth twelve spies, the heads of their respective tribes, to explore the land. Of these only two are memorable names — Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, of the tribe of Judah, and Oshea, the son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, whom Moses had called Joshua, i. e., Suviour (Numb. xiii. 1G). They searched the land for forty days, and then returned to Kadesh, bringing back to Moses a glowing description of the fertility of the country. It is a good land, they said, that the Lord our God doth give us: "surely it floweth with milk and honey." In proof of its fertility, they brought back from the rich vine-clad valley of Eshcol a cluster of grapes so large that it was borne by two men upon a staff, together witli pomegranates and figs. All, however, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, exaggerated the strength and the size of the people of the land, and said that they were too powerful to be conquered by the Israelites. Whereupon the peo- ple spent the night in weeping. They murmured against Moses and Aaron, and said, " Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt or in the wilderness. Wherefore hath the Lord brought us into this land to fall by the sword ? Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt." Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly, while Caleb and Joshua rent their clothes, and contradicted the reports of the other spies. "The land which we passed through," they said, "is an exceeding good land. If the Lord delight in us, then He will give it us." But the people would not listen to them, and ordered them to be stoned. Then the glory of the Lord appealed in the tabernacle, and a second time He threatened to destroy the people, and tc give to Moses a greater and mightier nation. " How long will this people provoke me? How long will it be ere they believe me?" said the Lord. . . . "Pardon, I beseech thee," cried Moses, once more, as before Sinai, " the iniquity of this people ac- cording unto the greatness of Thy mercy." His prayer was heard. The Lord promised to pardon the nation, but at the same time He Bwore by Himself, "As truly as I live, saith the Lord, all the iarth shall be filled with My glory, by seeing the example that 1 B.C. H90-1452. IN THE WILDERNESS. 70 will make of those men who have rebelled against me, not one of whom, save Caleb, shall see the Promised Land." The execution of the sentence was to begin at once. They were to turn back into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea ; there they were to wander for forty years, till all the men of twenty years old and upward had left their carcasses in the wilderness. Then at length their children, having shared their wanderings, should enter on the inheritance which their fathers had despised. As an earnest of the judgment, the ten faithless spies were slain by a plague. "When it was too late, the people changed their minds. In the morning they marched up the mountain-pass, against the commandment of the Lord, and in spite of the warning of Moses ; and the Amalek- ites and Canaanites, coming down upon them, defeated them with great slaughter, and chased them as far as Hormah, and even to Mount Seir (Numb. xiv.). The entrance to the Promised Land on this side was now hopelessly barred. The thirty-eight years occupied in the execution of God's judg- ment on the generation that grieved Him in the wilderness, and to whom He swore in his wrath, They shall not enter into my rest, form almost a blank in the sacred history. The mystery which hangs over this period seems like an awful silence into which the rebels sink away. Most probably their head-quarters during this period were at Kadesh, and they continued to lead a wandering life, chiefly among the pastures of the Arabah, or the " Wilderness of Zin" — the broad desert valley which runs from the Dead Sea to the eastern head of the Red Sea, between Mount Seir on the east and the Mount of the Amorites on the west. There are five chap- ters in the Book of Numbers which refer to this interval, and in which the following events are recorded : (i.) The death, by stoning, of a man who was found gathering sticks on the Sabbath-day. His offense was doing servile work. "And the Lord said to Moses, The man shall surely be put to death, And all the congregation stoned him with stones " (Numb. xv. 32-36). (ii.) The rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram was the next trouble. These three rose up against Moses and against Aaron, and disputed their supremacy. "All the congregation arc holy," they said, " every one of them, and the Lord is among them: wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the Lord?" Korah, a Levite, with 250 princes famous in the congre- gation, claimed equality with the priests, and he was joined by Da- than and Abiram and others of the tribe of Reuben. At God's command they presented themselves, with MjSCS and Aaron, at the door of the tabernacle, each with his censer 'Chen the Lord spake 80 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. VI. unto Moses and Aaron, commanding them to separate themselves from the congregation that he might destroy them. For the third time the intercessor obtained the people's pardon ; hut the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the three rebels, with their families and all that belonged to them, while fire burst out from tho tabernacle, and consumed the 2o0 men that offered incense (Numb. xvi. 1-35). The Apostle Jude uses those who "perished in the gainsaying of Korah " as a type of the "filthy dreamers" who, in the last days, shall "despise dominion and speak evil of dignities" [Jude 11). (iii.) The people now murmured at the fate of the men whose rebellion they had favored ; but at the very moment when they gathered against Moses and Aaron before the tabernacle, the glory of the Lord appeared, and sent a pestilence among them. Then followed one of the most striking examples of the intercession of Moses and the mediation of the high-priest. Seeing that " wrath was gone out from the Lord," Moses bade Aaron fill his censer with coals from the altar, and with incense as an atonement for the people, and stand between the living and the dead, and thus the plague was stayed (Numb. xvi. 41-48). (iv.) After these things a new sign was given of the Lord's spe- cial favor to the house of Aaron. Twelve rods were chosen for the several tribes and laid up in the tabernacle before the ark, the name of Aaron being inscribed on the rod of Levi. On the mor- row Aaron's rod was found covered with bud°, and blossoms and full grown almonds. The rest were still dry sticks. By the com- mand of God it was laid up in the ark, and kept for a perpetual memurial against like rebellions (Numb. xvii. 7-10). At the beginning of the fortieth year of the wanderings, we find the Israelites again in the wilderness of Zin, at Kadesh, and draw- ing near to Canaan. The doom under which most of the old gen- eration had by this time perished now reached the house of Am- ram. Miriam, the eldest sister of Moses and Aaron, died and was buried here (Numb. xx. 1). Here, too, Moses and Aaron commit- ted the sin which brought them also under the sentence of death be- fore entering the Promised Land. The people murmured for wa- ter ; God commanded Moses and Aaron to stand before the rock in the sight of the people, and Moses, holding the rod in his hand, wa3 only to speak to the rock. But this time the trial was too great for his faith and patience. Upbraiding the people as rebels, he asked, " Must ire fetch you water out of this rock?" and, from a feeling of distrust, he smote the rock twice with his rod. An abundant stream gushed out, which was called the water of Meribah (strife). But at the same time the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, "Because 8 C. 1490-1452. DEATH OF AARON. 81 ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them" (Numb. xx. 7-12). Tins prediction was soon afterwards accomplished with respect to Aaron. " Take Aaron and Eleazar his son," said the Lord, "and bring them up unto Mount Hor. And strip Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son. And Aaron shall die there." Moses obeyed ; and Aaron died in the top of the mount (Numb. xx. 25-29). This event involved the demise of the first high-priest and the investiture of his successor. Aaron was buried either on the mountain or at its foot, and the people mourned for him thirty days. Afterwards they set out on their final march. Leaving Mount Hor, they proceeded down the valley called Ara- bah. It was probably during their encampment at this place that, they were attacked by a tribe of the Amalekites under King Arad, who carried off some of the Israelites as captives. As the people pursued their way down this sandy and arid region they grew much discouraged. God punished their murmurs by sending among them serpents whose fiery bite was fatal. On their repentance, "the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a serpent of brass, and set it up upon a pole;" and whoever was bitten by a serpent had but to look up at it and live. A very deep interest belongs to this inci- dent of the pilgrimage of Israel, which is thus explained by Christ himself, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up ; that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John iii. 14, 15). The people now went on patiently the remainder of their way Turning out of the valley of the Arabah and going eastward, they entered the wilderness of Moab, and skirted the eastern side of Mount Seir. Many, however, of their stations during their pil- grimage can not now be identified (Numb. xxi. 10-19). At length, when they reached the valley and brook of Zered, the desert wan derings of the Israelites may be considered to have come to an end Between this stream on the south and the River Anion on the north lay the territory of Moab. The region between the Arnon and the Jabbok formed the kingdom of Sihon, king of the Amo- rites, whose capital was Heshbon. North of the Jabbok, extend- ing to Mount Hermon, lay the great upland territory of Bashan, the kingdom of the giant Og, who is also called an Amorite. These regions east of the Jordan formed no part of the land marked out for the first settlement of the Israelites, but events drew them on to their conquest. The Moabites offering no opposition to the passage of the Israel- ites through their territory, the people passed over the upper courses F 82 SCRIPTUKE HISTORY. Chap. VI of the Zered and the Arnon, and reached "the mountains of Aba- rim, before Nebo," on the top of Pisgali, facing the Jeshi.mon, ot wilderness, and there they encamped. From this place they sent messengers to Sihon, asking for a passage through his country to the fords of Jordan, opposite to Jericho, where they purposed to enter the Promised Land. The Amorite king not only refused the request, but marched out with all his forces against Israel into the wilderness. A decisive battle at Jahaz gave the Israelites posses- sion of his whole territory. Sihon himself was slain, and Israel dwelt in the cities of the Amorites, from Aroer, on the Arnon, to the Jabbok (Numb. xxi. 23-SOj. Crossing the Jabbok, they enter- ed into the district of Bashan, and here they encountered the giant king Og. He was defeated at Edrei, and slain with his sons and his people, and they took possession of his land. These first great victories of the new generation of Israel gave them the whole re- gion lying between the Jordan and the desert, from the Arnon on the south to Mount Hermon on the north, the region soon after- wards allotted to the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh. The Israelites now made their last encampment on the east side of the Jordan, in "the desert plains" of Moab. Their tents were pitched about six miles from the river, among the long groves of acacias which, " on the eastern as well as on the western side, mark with a line of verdure the upper terraces of the valley," from Abel Siuttim {the meadow of acacias) on the north to Beth Jeshimotii {the house of the icastes) on the south.' They were able to see on the western bank the green meadows of Jericho, their first-intended conquest. High above, and close behind them, rose the hills of Abarim, which were soon occupied by a Avatchful and wily enemy. The conquest of the Amorites had roused the Moabites from their doubtful neutrality. Their king, Balak, the son of Zippor, apprehensive that his territory would in turn be invaded by the Israelites, resolved to attack them. Aware, however, that he could not hope to overcome his foe with his own resources alone, ha sought to strengthenhimself by making a confederacy with such of the wandering tribes of Midian as were then pasturing their flocks h'ithia his territories. The united forces encamped on the heights of Abavim, while Balak sought further help from another quarter. From the sheikhs of Midian he had no doubt heard of a famous prophet or diviner named Balaam, who dwelt at Pethor, beyond the Euphrates. This man was one of those who still retained the knowledge of the true God ; but he seems to have practised the arts of divination, and to have used his Supernatural knowledge for gain. His fame was spread far and wide among the tribes of the B.C. 1490-1452. BALAAM AND BALAK. 83 desert. "I wot that he whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed," is the belief on which Bulak ground- ed his invitation to Balaam to come and curse Israel, after which he hoped he might be able to prevail against them and drive them out of the land. The message was carried by the ciders of Moab and of Midian, with rewards for his divinations in their hand, say- ing, " Come, curse me this people, for they are too mighty for me.' The temptation was too great for the prophet's integrity. He must have known that Israel were the people of his God, and that he had nothing to do with the messengers of Balak. But, instead of dis-' missing them at once, he invited them to remain for the night, while he consulted God. lie received the plain answer: "Thou shalt not go with them; thou shalt not curse the people, for they are blessed ;" and in the morning be sent them back to their own land. Again, however, across the Assyrian desert, Balak sent more numerous and more honorable messengers, with a more press- ing message. "Let nothing, I pray thee, hinder thee," he said, "from coming to me, for I will promote thee unto very great hon- or." To this Balaam replied — not that he could not entertain Ba- lak's proposal for a moment, but — that be could not go beyond the word of the Lord his God to do less or more. To Him, therefore, he again referred the case. This time God visited him with the severest punishment which He reserves for willful sinners : He "gave him his own desire." Balaam was commanded to go with the men, but to utter only the words which God should put in his mouth. One last warning he received, in a prodigy that befell him on the road. As he was on his journey with the princes of Moab, the ass that bore him swerved twice from the way, and twice saved him from the uplifted sword of the Angel of the Lord, who had come out to withstand him. A third time, seeing the Angel of the Lord in a narrow pass in the vineyards, where she could not escape, she fell down beneath her master, and on his smiting her again, " the dumb ass speaking with man's voice forbade the madness of the prophet" (2 Bet. ii. 16). His eyes were now opened; he beheld the Angel of the Lord standing in the way, and at once fell flat on his face, and said, "I have sinned." If it displease thee, he says, I will turn back again. The angel, however, replied, "Go with the men, but only the word that I shall speak unto thee, that thou shalt speak." Balak went out to meet Balaam at a city of Moab, on the Anion, perhaps Aroer. On the morrow they began their unhallowed sac- rifices. Climbing upward, from height to height, they reached the 'high places" dedicated to Baal, whence Balaam could sec only 84 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. VI. the outermost, part of the people. Here he bade Balak prepare seven altars, on each of which he offered a bullock and a ram, and then retired to another hill to see whether God would come to meet him. And the Lord put a word in his mouth, and he returned to confound Balak and his princes by asking, " How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed ? or how shall I defy whom the Lord hath not defied? From the top of the rocks I see him, from the hills I behold him : the people shall dwell alone, they shall not be reckoned among the nations. Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel ? Let me die the death of the righteous. Let my last end be like his!" Balak was deeply mortified at this result. He then took the prophet to a different eminence, from which a view might be ob- tained of another portion of the Israelite camp. On the field of Zophim (the watchmen), on the top of Pisgah, seven new altars were built, and on every altar a bullock and a ram were offered. Balaam withdrew a little way, and the Lord met him again, and put another word in his mouth. Thus he was to say to Balak ; " I have received commandment to bless, and I can not reverse it. God hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, nor perverseness in Israel. The Lord their God is among them ; to Him they shout as their King. No enchantment or divination can prevail against them. The people shall rise up like a lion, and shall not lie down till they drink the blood of the slain." Balak then vented his disappoint- ment in the cry, " Neither curse them at all, nor bless them at all." Again, a third time, he took Balaam up to another place, to the peak — Ncbo, the head of Pisgah — where stood the sanctuary of the heathen god, Peor. From this eminence the Assyrian seer, with the King of Moab by his side, looked over the wide prospect. It was the spot from which Moses soon after viewed the Promised Land. Here the same sacrifices were repeated ; but Balaam now laid aside his arts of divination, for he saw that it pleased the Lord to bless Israel. His view ranged over the promised possessions of Israel in the hills of Judah, Ephraim, and Gilead ; and, as he saw Israel abiding in their tents according to their tribes, the spirit of God came upon him, and, with his eyes at length opened, he took up his parable and prophesied. In the goodly array of their tents he saw an omen of their conquest over the surrounding nations. Headless of the rage of Balak, and of his cruel sarcasm — " /thought to promote thee to great honor ; but lo, the Lord hath kept thee back from honor" — Balaam, before returning to his home, to which he was dismissed by the king, completed his prophecy of what the Israelites would do to the Gentile nations in the latter days. For the fourth time lie opened his mouth ; and, in the more distant fu- B.C. 1490-1452. BALAAM'S PROPHECIES. 85 ture, beheld a " Star " coming out of Jacob, and a " Sceptre " ris- ing out of Israel, who should smite Moab — a prophecy in part ful- filled by the victories of David, but pointing forward to the kingdom of Messiah over the outcast branches of the chosen family. Then, as his eye ranged over the distant mountains of Seir, the home of the Edomites— over the table-land of the desert, across which the Amalekites wandered — over the home of the Kenites, among the rocks of Engedi, on the farther shores of the Dead Sea, hepredieted the destruction of these nations. As he gazed, the vision became wider' and wider still ; it carried him back to the banks of his na- tive Euphrates, and he saw the conquests of Asshur overturned by 6hips coming from the coasts of Chittim — the unknown land beyond the Western Sea, and he exclaimed, "Alas, who shall live when God doeth this !" Then lie rose up and returned to the place as- signed for his abode (Numb, xxii.-xxiv.). Can we read the sublime prophecies of Balaam without wishing that his desire for his latter end might have been fulfilled ? Doubt- less it might have been, had he renounced the vain desire after gain and honor ; but he remained among the Moabites and Midianites, clinging, no doubt, to the chance of reward. By his advice the people were tempted to share in the lascivious rites of Peor, and to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab. The wrath of the Lord was shown in a plague which broke out in the camp and de- stroyed 24,000 persons. Moses doomed all the offenders to death. Phinehas, the son of Elcazar the high-priest, set an example of zeal by transfixing with a javelin a man of Israel and a Midianit- ish woman whom he had brought into his tent in the face of the congregation as they wept before the Lord. So the plague was staved, and the house of Eleazar was assured of a perpetual priest- hood (Numb. xxv. 1-8). For these plots against Israel, as well as for their former inhos- pitality, the Moabites were excluded from the congregation to the tenth generation, and the Midianites were doomed to destruction (Numb. xxv. 16, 17). The execution of this sentence was the last act of the government of Moses. All the men of Midian were slain, with the princes who had been allied with Balak ; and Balaam died in the general slaughter. Before this war another census had been taken, by which the number of the people was found to be nearly the same as before Sinai, 38i years earlier. But among those who were numbered, only two— Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh — were alive at the first census. Joshua was at this time consecrated by the high-priest Elcazar to be the successor of Moses (Numb, xxvii. 18-23). After the slaughter of the Midianites, the tribes of Reuben and 80 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. VI. Gad came to Moses and Eleazar and the elders, with the request that they might have the conquered land on the east of Jordan, the upland pastures of which made it desirable for their numerous cat- tle to settle there, and not go over Jordan. " Shall your brethren go to war," said Moses, "and shall ye sit here ?" On their promise that they would leave only their families and their cattle in their new abodes, while they themselves would march armed in the van of their brethren till the whole land should lie subdued, he yielded io their request, and allowed them to have this region for their in- heritance. The tribe of Reuben was settled in the south of the region on the east side of Jordan, from the Anion to the southern slopes of Mount Gilead. That mountain was given to Gad, whose northern border just touched the Lake of Gennesareth. The north- east part of the mountain range of Gilead, and the land of Bashan as far as Mount Hermon, were at the same time allotted to half the tribe of Manasseh. The work of Moses was now finished. The forty years' pilgrim- age was drawing to its close : the men of the old generation had passed away, and a new generation had sprung up, who had not be- held the wonders of Sinai. Before his departure, Moses, by the command of God, assembled all the people, rehearsed to them the dealings of Jehovah and their own conduct since they had departed from Egypt, repeated the law, with certain modifications and addi- tions, and enforced it with the most solemn exhortations, warnings, and prophecies of their future history. This series of addresses is contained in the Book of Deuteronomy {the repetition of the law"). It was delivered in the plains of Moab, in the eleventh month of the fortieth year from the epoch of the Exodus (Adar = February, 1451 B.C.). It consists of Three Discourses, followed by the Somj of Moses, the Wessin'j of Moses, and the story of his (hath. (i.) In the First Discourse, Moses strives very earnestly to warn the people against the sins for which their fathers failed to enter the Promised Land, and to impress upon them the one simple lesson of obedience. With this special object he recapitulates the chief events of the last forty years in the wilderness, and especially those which had the most immediate bearing on the entry of the people into the Promised Land (Deut. i.-iv.). This discourse may t& viewed as an introduction to the whole address. (ii.) The Second Discourse enters more fully into the actual pre. cepts of the law, and contains a recapitulation, with some modifi- cations and additions, of the law already given on Mount Sinai. Every word shows the heart of the lawgiver full at once of zeal for God and of the most fervent desire for the welfare of his nation (Deut. v.-xxvi.). B.C. 1490-1452. CLOSE OF MOSES' CAREER. 8? (iii.) The T/nrd Discourse relates almost entirely to the solemn sanctions of the law : the blessing and the curse. Moses now speaks in conjunction with the elders of the people and with the priests, whose office it would be to carry out the ceremony that was to be performed as soon as they had crossed the Jordan (Deut. xxvii.1-9). The place selected was that sacred spot in the centre of the land where Abraham and Jacob had first pitched their tents under the oaks of Moreh. Here the green valley of Shcchem is bounded on the north and south by two long rocky hills ; the former Mount Eijal, the latter Mount Gerizim. As soon as they should have crossed over Jordan, the people were commanded to set up, on the summit of Ebal, an altar of great stones, covered witli plaster and inscribed with the law of God. Then the Twelve Tribes were to bo divided between the two hills. On Gerizim, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin were to stand to bless the people ; on Ebal, Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali, to curse them (Deut. xxvii. 12, 13). Moses then proceeds to amplify the blessing and the curse ; but chiefly the latter, as the warning was more needed. He foretells, with terrible explicitness, the course actually followed by the Israelites — death and famine, failure in every work, subjection to their own servants, invasion by a mighty nation, ending in the forlorn lot of the captive in a foreign land, oppressed by his tyrants and uncertain of his very life; 4i In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning." " I call heaven and earth to record against you this day," he says, "that I have set be- fore you life and death, blessing and cursing : therefore choose life that both thou and thy seed may live, and that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers to give them " (Deut. xxx. 19). Moses then wrote " this law," and delivered it to the Levites to be kept in the ark of the covenant as a perpetual witness against the people ; and he commanded them to read it to all Israel when assembled at the Feast of Tabernacles every Sabbatic year (Deut. xxxi. 9, 10). The Lord then said to Moses, " Behold, thy days ap- proach that thou must die : call Joshua, and present yourselves in the tabernacle of the congregation, that I may give him a charge." When they presented themselves at the door of the tabernacle, the Lord commanded Moses to add to the book of the law a Song, which the children of Israel were enjoined to learn as a witness for God against them. This " Song of Moses " recounts the blessings of God, the Rock : His perfect work, His righteous ways, and the corrupt requital of His foolish people (Deut. xxxii.). (iv.) When Moses had made an end of speaking all these words 88 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. VI to the people, he then uttered, no longer as the lawgiver of his na- tion but as the prophet, his blessing on the Twelve Tribes. This Blessing of Moses closely resembles, in its structure and its contents, the dying blessing of Jacob on his sons. Besides the new and fer- vent description of Levi's priesthood, it speaks of the favors that God would shower on the tribes, and describes most richly the hap- piness of the whole people (Dent, xxxiii.). (v.) And now, the time of his departure being come, Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Nebo, the top of Pisgah, over against Jericho. And the Lord showed him northward all the land of Gilead till it ended far beyond his sight in Dan. Westward were the distant hills of " all Naphtali." Coming nearer was " the land of Ephraim and Manasseh." Immediately opposite was " all the land of Judah," stretching far away unto the "utmost sea," and the desert of the south. At his feet was the plain of Jericho, the city of palm-trees ; and far away on his left, though hardly visible, the last inhabited spot before the great desert — "Zoar." Such was the scene which lay open before Moses when he was alone with God upon the sacred mountain of the Moabites. And the Lord said unto him, "This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed : I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither." There he died, nigh to that desert where the labor of his life had been. And the Lord buried him in a valley in front of Bethpeor — somewhere, doubtless, in the gorges of Pisgah — but no man knoweth of his sepulchre (Dent, xxxiv. 1-6). The children of Israel mourned for Moses thirty days in the plains of Moab, and they rendered obedience to Joshua the son of Nun, on whom Moses had laid his hands, and who was full of the spirit of wisdom. But no prophet arose afterwards in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face (Deut. xxxiv. 8-10). Moses must be considered, like all the saints and heroes of the Bible, as a man of marvellous gifts, raised up by Divine Providence for a special purpose, and led into a closer communion with the un- seen world than any other in the Old Testament. There are two main characters in which he appears — as a leader and as a prophet (i.) Of his natural gifts as a leader we have but few means of judging. The two main difficulties which he encountered were the reluctance of the people to submit to his guidance, and the im- practicable nature of the country which they had to pass through We have seen how patiently lie bore their murmurs — at the Red Sea, at the worship of the golden calf, at the rebellion of Korab, at the complaints of Aaron and Miriam. On approaching Canaan, the office of the leader becomes blended with that of the general oi B.C. 1490-1452. MOSES' DEATH AND CHARACTER. 89 the conqueror ; and, in the last stage of his life, he conies before us very much in this character. (ii.) His character as a prophet is more distinctly brought out. He is the first, as he is the greatest, example of a prophet in the Old Testament. In a certain sense he was the centre of a prophetic circle. His brother and sister were both endowed with prophetic gifts, but they were more or less inferior to Moses. To him the divine revelations were made not in dreams and figures, but " mouth to mouth," even apparently, and not in dark speeches (Numb.xii. 8). He was, in a sense peculiar to himself, the founder and representa- tive of his people. His personal character was what we should now represent by the word "disinterested." All that is told of him in- dicates a withdrawal of himself, a preference of the cause of his na- tion to his own interests. In the New Testament, Moses is spoken of as a likeness of Christ. There were three main points of resemblance — (a.) Christ was, like Moses, the great prophet of the people— the last, as Moses was the first. In greatness of position none came between them. (6.) Christ, like Moses, is a lawgiver: "Him shall ye hear." (c.) Christ, like Moses, was a prophet out of the midst of the nation — " from their brethren." As Moses was the entire representative of his people, so, with reverence be it said, was Christ. The Serpent " Cceph Agathodamion," tbe Egyptisn Symbol of Immortality, The Golikn Candlestick. CHAPTER VII. THE LEGISLATION OF MOSES. SECTION I. THE PRINCIPLES OF THE MOSAIC LAW. A large portion of the books of Exodus and Numbers, and near- ly the whole of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, are occupied with the Laws which Moses was the instrument of giving to the Jewish peo- ple. Ho ever keeps before our eyes the fact that the law which he delivered came from God. Its outline was given from Mount Si- nai by the voice of God himself. The section which relates to the ordinances of divine worship was communicated to Moses by a spe- cial revelation, while he was alone with God in the Mount (Exod. xxiv. 18). It is this character which distinguishes his legislation from that of all other great lawgivers. Before attempting to point out the principal divisions of the Mo- saic code, it is necessary to discover first its leading principles. The commonwealth of Israel was a theocracy, that is, a govern- ment under the direct guidance and control of God himself. He was ever present with the people, abiding in His tabernacle in their midst, manifested by the symbol of His presence, and speaking to Chap. VII THE MOSAIC LAW. 91 them continually through Moses and the high-priest. The whole law was the direct expression of His will, and the government was carried on with constant reference to His decisions. Thus His un- seen presence was to Israel what a visible king was to other na- tions. Hence their desire to have another king is spoken of as treason to Him (1 Sam. viii. 7). Moreover, the people were Ilia possession ; for He had redeemed them from their slavery in Egypt, and was leading them into a new land of His own choice. His right over their persons was asserted by His claim to the first-born both of man and of beast (Exod. xiii. 2), and by requiring the Jew- ish slave to be set free in the seventh year of his service (Deut. xv. 12-15). His absolute right over their land was the fundamental condition upon which all property was held by the Jews. Its hold- ers were deemed His tenants. The payment of tithes as a kind of rent was a constant acknowledgment of this right ; and in requiring all sold land to be restored, in the year of jubilee, to the families whose allotment it originally was, there was the strongest reasser- tion of His sole proprietorship (Lev. xxv. 25-28). The people, on their part, were required to believe in the intimate relations thus established between Jehovah and themselves. They accepted this relationship first of all at the foot of Mount Sinai, and into this covenant every Israelite was initiated by circumcision, the common seal of God's covenant with Abraham and with themselves. They were to observe it in practice by the worship of Jehovah as the only God, by abstaining from idolatry, and by obedience to the law as the expression of His will. From this relation of Jehovah to the people each separate por- tion of the law may be deduced. The basis of the whole law is laid in the Ten Commandments, as we call them, though they are nowhere so entitled by Moses him- self, but the "Ten Words" (Exod. xxxiv. 28), the Covenant, or very often the Testimony. Their division into Tiro Tables is ex- pressly mentioned, and it answered, no doubt, to that summary of the law which was made both by Moses and by our Lord, so that the First Table contained Duties to God, and the Second, Duties to »ur Neit/hbor. The First Table contains Four Commandments. The First Commandment, begins with the declaration, "I am th3 Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage" (Exod. xx. 2). This clause involves as its consequences : (1.) The belief in Jehovah as Cod, the acceptance of His covenant, and the observance of His ordinances. (2.) The Holiness of the People as Jehovah's peculiar possession, with their families, servants, and all that belonged to them. The remainder of the commandment forbids them to " have any other gods before 92 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. VIL Jehovah," that is, in the presence of Jehovah. For false worship began, not with the positive rejection of the true God, but by asso- ciating with His worship that of other gods and their images. The Second Commandment, which is the necessary consequence of the first, prohibits the making and worshipping of any likeness of any object in the heaven, the earth, and the water. The command- ment does not forbid sculpture, which God enjoined in the case of the cherubim (Exod. xxv. 18), but it forbids the making of images for the purposes of worship. The Third Commandment enforces the reverence of the lips towards Jehovah and His holy name ; it implies the sacredness of oaths ana vows, and also embraces common speech. The Fourth Commandment is based on the principle that our na- ture needs seasons for remembering our God and Maker. Under it may be grouped all the ordinances for the observance of times and festivals. We now proceed to the special laws based upon these command- ments of the first table, and have first to speak of God's presence among the people; the Tabernacle, with its furniture, and its ministers. SECTION II. THE TABERNACLE. To give the Israelites a visible manifestation of God's continual piesence with them, on the very night in which they began their march, the visible symbol of that presence went before them, in The Shekinah, or pillar of fire by night and of a cloud by day, giving by its advance or halt the signal for their march or rest. Sacrifice was contemplated as the very object of their journey, and it was soon declared that God would fix a place for His abode where alone sacrifices might be offered. After the Ten Commandments were proclaimed from Mount Sinai, the first ordinances given to Moses related to the ordering of the Taisernacle, its furniture, and its service. While he was alone with God in Sinai, an exact pattern of the whole was shown to him, and all was made according to it (Exod. xxv. 9). It was the tent of Jehovah, standing in the midst of the tents of the people. It was a portable building, designed to contain the sacred ark, the special symbol of God's presence, and was set up within an inclosed space called the Court of the Tabernacle. This inclosnre was of an oblong form, 100 cubits by 50 (/. c, 150 feet by 75 feet), standing east and west, with an entrance on the eastern side. It was surrounded by Chap. VII THE TABERNACLE. 93 20 30 •10 i 50 Cubits. 20 ;jo jo So go t> 7$ Feet. Plan of the Court oi* the Tabernacle. hangings of fine-twined linen (canvas), suspended from pillars of brass 5 cubits (7A- feet) apart, to which the curtains were attached by hooks and fillets of silver. The tabernacle itself was placed in the western half of the inclosure ; in the outer or eastern half, not 94 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. VII far from the entrance, stood the altar of burnt-offering, betweer which and the tabernacle was the laver of brass at which the priestv washed their bands and feet every time they ministered (Exod. xxx. 18-20). The tabernacle was an oblong rectangular structure, 45 feet by 1 ">, and 15 in height ; and the interior was divided into two portions, the first or outer being two-thirds, and the inner one-third, of the whole. The former was called the First Tabernacle, or Holy Place, and contained the golden candlestick on one side, the table of shew-bread opposite, and in the centre between them the altar of incense. The inner portion was the Most Holy Place, or the Holy of Holies ; it contained the ark, in which were deposited the two tables of stone, covered by the mercy seat, and surmounted by figure of gold called cherubim. The walls of this structure were made of boards of shittiin (acacia) wood, overlaid with gold. On the eastern side there were no boards, but the entrance was closed by a curtain of fine linen embroidered in blue, purple, and scarlet, attached by golden books to five pillars of shittim-wood, overlaid with gold, which were let into brass sockets. A more sumptuous curtain of the same kind, embroidered with figures of cherubim, and hung on four such pillars with silver sockets, divided the Holy from the Most Holy Place (Exod. xxvi. 31, 33). It was called the Vail, as it bid from the eyes of all but the high-priest the inmost sanctuary where Jehovah dwelt on His mercy-seat between the cherubim above the ark. It was passed only by the high-priest once a year, on the Day of Atonement. The Holy Place was entered daily by the priests alone, to offer incense at the time of morning and evening prayer, and to renew the lights on the golden candlestick ; and on the Sabbath to remove the old shew-bread and to place the new upon the table. (i.) In the Onter Court. 1. The altar of Burnt-offaing stood in the midst of this court, and formed the central point of the sen ices in which the people had a part. On it all sacrifices and oblations were presented, except the sin-offerings, which were burnt without the camp. It was a large hollow case, about lh feet square, and standing about 44 feet bigh, made of shittim-wood overlaid within and without with plates of brass, and with a movable grating of brass suspended in the mid- dle on iron rings, on which the wood for the sacrifices was placed (Exod. xxxviii. 1-7). The priest went up to it not by steps, but by a sloping bank of earth. 2. The Brazen Laver, a vessel on a foot, held the water with which the priests washed their hands and feet before commencing their sacred ministrations. It stood between the altar of burnt- offering and the entrance to the huly place. Chap. VII. FURNITURE OF THE TABERNACLE. 95 (ii.) In the Holy Place, or Sanctuary. The furniture of the outer court was connected with sacrifice-, but that of the sanctuary with the deeper mysteries of mediation and access to God. The holy place contained three objects: the al- tar of incense in the centre, the table of shew-breacl on its right 01 north side, and the golden candlestick on the left or south side. 1. The Altar of Incense was made of shittim (acacia) wood, over, laid with gold (Exod. xxx. 1-10). It was about 18 inches square by 36 inches high. It had an ornamental rim of gold around its top, with projections at the corners, called horns. Upon these, once a year, the blood of the sin-offering of the atonement was sprinkled, but no other offering might be laid thereon. Incense was offered upon this altar daily, morning and evening, at the time the lamps were trimmed. The priest took some of the sacred fire in a golden bowl, or censer, off the altar of burnt-offering ; then, entering the holy place, he threw the incense upon it and placed it upon the golden altar. He then prayed and performed the oth- er duties of his office, while the people prayed outside ; and thus was typified the intercession of Christ in heaven making His peo- ple's prayers on earth acceptable. 2. The Table of Shew-bread was an oblong table, with legs, about 3 feet long, 18 inches broad, and 27 inches high. It was of shittim- wood, covered with gold, and its top was finished with a rim of gold. Upon this table were placed twelve cakes of fine flour, in two rows Supposed form of the Altar of Incer.se. 96 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. VIL of six each, with frankincense upon each row. This Shew-brea.d, as it was called, from being exposed before Jehovah, was placed fresh upon the table every Sabbath by the priests, who ate the old loaves in the holy place (Lev. xxiv. 5-9). Besides the shew-bread there was a drink-offering of wine placed in the covered bowls upon the table. Some of it was used for libations, and what remained at the ;nd of the week was poured out before Jehovah. 3. The Golden Candlestick, or rather Candelabrum {lamp-stand), was placed on the left or south side of the altar of incense. It was made of pure beaten gold, and weighed, with its instruments, a talent; the value of the pure metal, exclusive of the workmanship, has been estimated at £5070. It had an upright stem, from which branched out, at equal distances apart, three arms curving upward to the right and to the left, each pair forming a semicircle, and their tops coming to the same level as the top of the stem, so as to form with it supports for seven lamps. There were oil vessels and snuffers for trimming the seven lamps, and dishes for carrying away the snuff, an office performed by the priest when he went into the sanctuary every morning to offer incense. All the lamps were lighted at the time of the evening oblation, and were kept burning dining the night. As there were no windows to the tabernacle, the central lamp was alight in the day-time also. This candlestick symbolized the spiritual light of life, which God gives to his serv- ants with the u-ords by which they live (Exod. xxv. 31-40). (iii.) In the Holy of Holies. In the Holy of Holies, within the vail, and shrouded in darkness, there was but one object, the most sacred of all. There stood the Ark of the Covenant, or the Testimony — a sort of chest nearly four feet long, and a little over two feet in width and height. It was of shittim-wood, overlaid with gold within and without. It was enriched with a rim of gold round the top. The cover of the ark was a plate of pure gold. Standing erect upon it, at opposite ends, with their faces bent down and their wings meeting, were the cher- ubim, winged figures made of beaten gold. This covering was the very throne of God, and was called the mercy-seat. Hence God is said to have dwelt between the cherubim. Inclosed within the ark were the two tables of stone, inscribed with the Ten Command- ments, and, in the fact that God's throne of mercy covered and hid the tables of the law, we may see a foreshadowing of the coming dispensation of the Gospel (Exod. xxv. 10-22). Probably there never was so small a structure made at such an immense cost. As the quantities of the precious metals used in its tionstii-21). 3. The high-priest had peculiar functions. He alone was per- mitted to enter the Holy of Holies, which lie did once a year, on the great day of atonement, when he sprinkled the blood of the sin-of- fering on the mercy-seat, and burnt incense within the vail. He was also forbidden to follow a funeral, or rend his clothes for the dead. The Epistle to the Hebrews sets forth the mystic meaning of his office, as a type of Christ, our great High-Priest, who has passed into the heaven of heavens with his own blood, to appear in the presence of God for us (Heb. iv. 14). II. The Priests. — All the sons of Aaron were priests. They Stood between the high-priest, on the one hand, and the Levites on the other. In all their acts of ministration they were to be bare- footed. Before they entered the tabernacle they were to wash their hands and their feet, and during the time of their service they were to drink no wine or strong drink. Their chief duties were to watch over the fire on the altar of burnt-offerings, and to keep it constant- ly burning both by day and night ; to feed the lamps in the golden candlestick outside the vail with oil ; to offer the morning and even- ing sacrifices, each accompanied with a meat-effering and a drink- Chap. VII. SACRIFICES AND OBLATIONS. 99 offering at the door of the tabernacle. They were also to teich the children of Israel the statutes of the Lord (Lev. x. 11). III. The Levites were the assistants of the priests, and included all the males of the tribe of Levi who were not of the family of Aaron, between thirty and fifty years of age. They had to carry the tabernacle and its vessels, to keep watch about the sanctuary, to prepare the supplies of corn, wine, oil, and so forth, and to take charge of the sacred treasures and revenues. On the settlement of the Israelites in the Promised Land, no territorial possessions were given to the Levites. In place of them they received from the other tribes the tithe of the produce of the land, from which they, in their turn, offered a tithe to the priests. Forty-eight cities were assigned to the whole tribe, that is, on an average, four in the territory of cacti tribe ; thirteen being given to the priests, and the rest to the Levites. SECTION IV. SACRIFICES AND OBLATIONS. These were to be offered as a perpetual memorial of Jehovah's covenant with the people, as an acknowledgment of His mercies, and as an atonement for sin. The distinction between sacrifices and oblations consisted in this— that in the former the thing offered was wholly or partially destroyed, as being Jehovah's only ; in the latter, it was acknowledged to be His gift, and then enjoyed by the offerer. The sacrifices arc divided into burnt-offerings, with the accom- panying meat-offerings (meat=food in general, especially corn and flour) ; peace-offerings, sin-offerings, for sins committed ignorantly; and trespass-offerings, for sins committed knowingly. I. The burnt-offkking, or perfect sacrifice, was so called because the victim was wholly consumed by fire upon the altar of burnt- offering, and so, as it were, sent up to God on the wings of fire. It was a memorial of God's covenant, and signified that the offeror belonged wholly to God, and that he dedicated himself soul r.nd. body to Him, and placed his life at His disposal. Burnt-offerings were either made on behalf of the whole people, or by one or more individuals, who must bring them of their own free will (Lev. i. ; vi. 8-13). Only three kinds of animals might be offered, and they must be free from disease or blemish ; either (1) a young bullock of not less than one, nor more than three years ; (2) a Iamb or kid. a male of the first year ; (3) turtle-doves or young pigeons. Burnt-offerings were made on the following occasions- 100 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. VII. 1. The Daily Sacrifice of a yearling lamb or kid was offered at the times of morning and evening prayer, before the priest went into the tabernacle to burn incense. 2. The Sabbath. jBurnl-offeriny was the daily sacrifice doubled (Numb, xxviii. 9, 10). 3. The burnt-offerings at the Festicals of the New Moon, the three great feasts, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Trumpets, were generally two bullocks, a ram, and seven lambs (Numb, xxviii. 1 1 ; xxix. 39). 4. Private burnt-offerings prescribed by the law at the consecration of priests, the purification of women, the removal of leprosy, or other ceremonial uncleanness, the performance or the accidental breach of the vow of a Nazarite. II. The meat-OFFERIXG and the drink-offering always accom- panied the burnt-offering, for which, indeed, the meat-offering might be substituted by the poor. As the burnt-offering signified the con- secration of life to God, so in the meat-offering the produce of the land was presented before Him as being His gift, in both cases with the devout acknowledgment, "Of Thine own have we given Thee" (1 Chron. xxix. 14). III. The peace-offering was not an atoning sacrifice to make peace with God, but a joyful celebration of peace made through the covenant. In this part of the ritual we see Jehovah, as it were, present in His house, and inviting the worshipper to feast with Him. Peace-offerings were presented either as a thanksgiving, or in fulfill- ment of a vow, or as a free-will offering of love and joy. Onlv a part was burnt upon the altar, and was thus offered to Jehovah ; the breast and the shoulder were the portion of the priests; the rest might be eaten by the worshipper. IV. The sin-offering was an expiatory sacrifice for sins of igno- rance, committed cither by a priest or by any of the people ; and also as a purification from possible sin and uncleanness in general. For each of these cases special victims were to he offered with special ceremonies (Lev. vi. 21-30). V. Trespass-offerings were for sins committed knowingly, as well as for acts of ceremonial uncleanness. They are not very clearly distinguished from sin-offerings. VI. Oblations are not clearly distinguished from those sacrifices which were in the nature of gifts; the following may be mentioned separately : 1. The shew-bread and incense, which were perpetually offered in the holy place. 2. Free oblations, the fruits of vows and promises. 3. Prescribed oblations — namely, (i.) The first-fruits of corn, of- Chap. VII. THE HOLINESS OF THE PEOPLE. 101 fered on the day of Pentecost, and of wine, oil, and wool ; (ii.) The first-horn of man and beast; (iii.) Tithes of the produce of the land- SECTION V. Till; HOLINESS OF THE TliOrLE. The holiness of the people was a principle as sacred as the con. sccration of the priests. It was enforced upon the Jews by ceremo- nies and restrictions reaching to every detail of their daily lives. It is the central subject of the book of Leviticus, which, after setting forth in its earlier portion the laws of sacrifice, next proceeds to es- tablish the holiness and purity of the people in person, act, speech, and property. The following institutions were founded upon this principle: 1. Circumcision (Lev. xii. 3). — As this rite had been enjoined at a very early period, its repetition in the later books was unneces- sary (Gen. xvii. 10—14). 2. The Dedication of the First-born of men and beasts, and the offering of the first-fruits of all produce (Exod. xiii. 2 ; Deut. xxvi. 10). 3. The Preservation of personal Purity (Lev. xviii.-xx.). — The law of Moses, like that of Christ, takes cognizance of sins against a mans own self from that principle of holiness to God which is sc emphatically laid down by the Apostle Paul (Rom. vi. 12, 13). It enacted various provisions fur purification, which were to be ob- served both by priests and people in divine worship, and also in cases of personal uncleanness and of leprosy (Lev. xi.-xiii.). 4. The distinction between clean and unclean animals for food as well as sacrifice. Though these laws may have had some reference to the preservation of health, yet their first signification was a re- ligious one. 5. The Laws against personal Disfigurement, by shaving the head and cutting the flesh, especially as an act of mourning (Lev. xix, 27, 28). (5. The Provisions for the Poor, regarded as brethren in the common bond of the covenant of God. Gleanings in the field and vineyard were their legal right (Lev. xix. 1), 10) ; slight trespass was allowed, such as plucking corn while passing through a field (Deut. xxiii. 25) ; wages were to be paid day by day ; loans might not be refused, nor usury taken from an Israelite; no partiality was to be shown between rich and poor in dispensing justice (Lev. xix. 15) ; and besides nil this, there are the most urgent injunctions to kindness 102 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. VII. to the poor, the widow, and the orphan, and the strongest denuncia- tion of all oppression (Deut. xv. 7-11). 7. And great care was taken to enforce humanity in general. If a slave died under chastisement, his master was punishable ; if he were maimed, he was at once to have his liberty (Exod. xxi. 20, 2G, 27). Runaway slaves from foreign nations were not to be given up (Deut. xxiii. 15), and stealing and selling a man was punished with death (Exod. xxi. 16). The law "even cared for oxen," de- claring, "thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn' r (Deut. xxv. 4). It went farther, and provided against wanton cruelty, by adding such precepts as those which forbade the parent bird to be captured with its young, or the kid to be boiled in its mother's milk (Deut. xxii. G, 7 ; Exod. xxxiv. 26). SECTION VI. THE SACKED SEASONS. The religious times ordained in the law fall under three heads; i. Those connected with the institution of the Sabbath — namely, 1. The weekly Sabbath itself. 2. The Feast of the New Moon. 3. The Sabbatical Month and the Feast of Trumpets. 4. The Sabbatical Year. 5. The Year of Jubilee. ii. The three great historical festivals — namely, 1. The Passover. 2. The Feast of Pentecost. 3. The Feast of Tabernacles. iii. The Day of Atonement. To these must be added the festivals established after the captiv. ity — namely, (1) the Feast of Purim or Lots, (2) the Feast of Dedication. i. FESTIVALS CONNECTED WITH THE SABBATH 1 The Sabbath is so named from a Hebrew word signifying rest The consecration of the Sabbath goes hack to the creation: "And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it" (Gen. ii. 3). The intervals between Noah's sending forth the birds out of the ark lead us to infer its observance from the earliest period. That this was one of the institutions adopted by Moses from the ancient patriarchal usage is implied in the very words of the law, " Remember the Sab- Chap. VII. THE HOLINESS OF THE PEOPLE. 103 bath day to keep it holy." It was to bo a sacred pause in the or- dinary labor by which man earns his bread — a season of joyful rest and recreation in communion with God, who himself " rested and was refreshed " (Exod. xxxi. 17). The commandment was not in- tended to impose idleness, but to prohibit work for worldly gain. The Sabbath is named as a day of special worship in the sanctuary (Lev. xix. 30). It was proclaimed as a holy convocation, a feast of the Lord (Lev. xxiii. 3). The public religious services consisted in the doubling of the morning and evening sacrifice, and the renewal of the shew-bread in the holy place. On this day the people were accustomed to consult their prophets (2 Kinys iv. 23). It was " the Sabbath of Jehovah," not only in the sanctuary but "in all their dwellings." 2. The Feast of the New Moon marked the completion of the lunai month. On the first sight of her new crescent the announce- ment was made to Israel by the sounding of two sacred silver trumpets (Numb. x. 10). The day was not kept as a Sabbath, but observed as a festival. Besides the daily sacrifice, a burnt-offering was made of two bullocks, a ram, and seven lambs, with a meat and drink offering, and a goat for a sin-offering. This is one of the feasts left by the apostle to Christian liberty (Col. ii. 1G). 3. The Sabbatical Month and the Feast of Trumpets. The month of Tisri, the first of the civil but the seventh of the sacred year, had a kind of Sabbatic character (Lev. xxiii. 24). The calen- dar was so arranged that the first day of this month fell on a Sabbath. This, the civil New-Year's day, was ushered in by the blowing of trumpets, and hence was called the Feast of Trumpets. It was a holy convocation, and it had its special sacrifices in addition to those of other new moons. On the tenth of this month, ihe great Day of Atonement was kept ; and from the fifteenth to the twenty-second of the month, thj Feast of Tabernacles, the greatest of the whole year, was celebrated. All the great festivals were observed within a Sabbatic cycle of seven months. 4. The Sabbatical Year. As each seventh day and each sev- enth month were holy, so was each seventh year. As the land belonged to Jehovah, so also was it to keep its Sabbath to Him. It was to be a season of rest for all, and of especial kindness to the poor. The land was not to be sown, nor the vineyards and olive- yards dressed ; no fruit or produce of any kind was to be gathered from the soil, but all was to be left for the poor, the slave, the stranger, and the cattle (Exod. xxiii. 10, 11). The Sabbatical year is also called the "year of release," because in it creditors were bound to release poor debtors from their obligations (Dent. xv. 1, 2). The release of a Hebrew slave took place likewise in this year, as 104 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. VII. well as in the seventh year of his captivity (Deut. xv. 12-18). Th«? observance of the Sabbatical year was neglected from the very first, and it was one of the national sins which were punished by the Babylonian captivity. . 5. The Year of Jubilee occurred every fiftieth year, coming, therefore, after a series of seven Sabbatic years. It completed each half-century. Its beginning was on the tenth of the seventh month (Tisri), the great Day of Atonement. After the sacrifices of that solemn day were ended, the trumpet of jubilee pealed forth its joy- ful notes, proclaiming "liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison doors to those that were bound." The land was left uncul- tivated, as in the Sabbatic year. The possessions which poverty nsd compelled their owners to alienate returned in this year to the families to whom they had been allotted in the first division of the Holy Land. The whole institution was based on the principle that the laud was God's, who granted to each family its own portion. All Hebrew slaves, whether to their brethren or to resident for- eigners, were set free in the Year of Jubilee. Thus the same prin- ciple was asserted as in the restitution of the land — that the people, like the soil, belonged to God ; they were Kis servants, redeemed from Egypt, and incapable of becoming bondsmen to any one but Him. The Jubilee completed the great Sabbatic cycle of years, afc the close of which, in a certain sense, "all things were made new." ii. THE THREE GREAT HISTORICAL FESTIVALS. In these the whole people were united to seek the face of God, and to celebrate His mercies. Thrice in the year, at these three feasts, all males were required to appear before Jehovah at the tabernacle, or afterwards at the temple — not empty-handed, but to make an offering with a joyful heart (Exod. xxiii. 14-17). No age is prescribed : Jesus went up with his parents to the Passover at the age of twelve (Luke ii. 42) ; Samuel still younger (1 Sam. i. 24). These festivals not only commemorated great events in the history of Israel, but each of them had its own special significance. The Passover marked the beginning of the harvest, the Pentecost its completion, and the Feast of Tabernacles the vintage and the in- gathering of all the fruits of the year. They were connected with one another so as to form one great cycle. The Passover is in the first month of the sacred year; seven weeks afterwards came the Pentecost ; and the Feast of Tabernacles in the seventh month. At the Passover the Israelites commemorated the beginning of their history as a nation ; and at the Feast of Tabernacles they marked the joyful contrast between their settlement in a fruitful laud and theiv wanderings in the wilderness. Chap. VII. THE PASSOVER. 105 1. The Passover — which was the most solemn of the :'. ee festi- vals, as the memorial of the nation's birth, and the type of Christ's death — was kept for seven days, from the evening which closed the fourteenth to the end of the twenty-first of the first month of the sacred year— Abib or Nisan (April). We have already noticed its first institution in Egypt (page G5) ; but, in the general order of its observance in later times, some particulars were added which do not appear in its original institution, thus making a slight distinction between "the Egyptian Passover " and " the Perpetual Passover.'' The latter was thus observed : On the fourteenth day of Nisan every trace of leaven was put away out of t he houses, and on the sarc-e day every male Israelite not laboring under any bodily infirmity or cere- monial impurity was commanded to appear before the Lord at the national sanctuary with an offering of money in proportion to his means (Dent, xvi. 16, 17). As the sun was setting, the lambs were slain and the fat and the blood given to the priests. The lamb was then roasted whole, and eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs ; no portion of it was to be left until the morning. The same night, after the fifteenth of Nisan had commenced, the fat was burned by the priest, and the blood sprinkled on the altar. On the fifteenth there was a holy convocation ; during that day no work might be done, except the preparation of necessary food. On the sixteenth of the month — the morrow after the Sabbath—the first sheaf of the harvest was presented and waved by the priest before the LorJ, and a male lamb was offered as a burnt-sacrifice, with a meat and drink offering. Special offerings, in addition to the daily sacrifice, were made throughout the whole period. On the seventh day, the twenty- first of Nisan, there was a holy convocation, and the day appears to have been one of peculiar solemnity. As at all the festivals, cheer- fulness was to prevail during the whole week, and all care was to be laid aside. In later times the Paschal Lamb was eaten without haste, and with the accompaniment of the Ilallel, or singing of Psalms cxiii.-exviii. (Matt. xxvi. 30). The Passover has the profoundest but clearest significance of any typical rite. In its primary sense, it was at once a sacrifice, in which the most innocent of creatures was offered as an expiation for the guilty, a feast of joy for their deliverance, but also their last feast in Egypt, eaten with bitter herbs, instead of the savory vege- tables they were so fond of, and in the attitude and haste of pil- grims. Its perpetual significance is summed up in the words " Christ ouk Passover is sacrificed for us ;"' who was, in fact, put to death at the very season of the Passover, as "a lamb without blemish and without spot." 2 The unleavened bread indicates the ' I Cor. v. 7. 2 1 Pet. i. 19 ; comp. I^a. liii. 7 ; John i. 29 ; Arts viii 32 106 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. VII. sanctification, meekness, and guileless simplicity of the true be- liever; 8 the haste and attitude of a traveller are emblems of the Christian pilgrim ; 4 and the offering of the Omer was the type of Him who died and rose again, the first-fruits of them that slept. 5 2. The Pentecost, or Harvest-fkast, or Feast of Weeks, may be regarded as a supplement to the Passover. It lasted for only one iay. The people, having at the Passover presented before God the first sheaf of the harvest, departed to their homes to gather it in, and then returned to keep the harvest-feast before Jehovah. It was kept fifty days after the sixteenth of Nisan, and fell about the end of May. The intervening period included the whole of the grain- harvest, of which the wheat was the latest crop. The Pentecost was the Jewish harvest-home, and the people were especially ex- horted to rejoice before Jehovah, with their families, their servants, the Levite within their gates, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, in the place chosen by God for His name, as they brought a free-will offering to the Lord their God (Dent. xvi. 9-12). The great feature of the celebration was the presentation of two loaves, made from the first-fruits of the wheat harvest, and leavened — that is, in the state fit for ordinary food. Till the Pentecostal loaves were offered, the produce of the harvest might not be eaten, nor could any other first-fruits be offered. The whole ceremony was the completion of that dedication of the harvest to God, as its Giver, and to whom both the land and the people were holy, which was begun by the offering of the wave-sheaf at the Passover. The Pentecost is the only one of the three great feasts which does not commemorate any well-known event in the history of the Jews ; but its significance has been found in the fact that the Law was given from Sinai on the fiftieth day" after the deliverance from Egypt. In the Christian Church the typical significance of the Pentecost is made clear from the events of the day recorded in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts ii.). Just as the appearance of God on Sinai was the birthday of the Jewish nation, so was the Pentecost the birthday of the Christian Church. It has been observed that the Pentecost was the last Jewish feast that Paul was anxious to keep (1 Cor. xvi. 8), and that Whitsuntide, its successor, was the first annual festival adopted in the Christian Church. 3. The Feast of Tabernacles, or Feast of Ingathering, com- pleted the round of the annual festivals, and was celebrated witli 3 1 Cor. v. 8. 4 Luke xii. 35 ; 1 Pet. i. 13 ; ii. 11 ; Eph. v. 15 ; Heb. xi. 13. 6 1 Cor. xv. 20 ; comp. Rom. viii. 23 ; xi. 16 ; James i. 18; Bev. xiv. 4: our Lord rose ou the same Jewish day on which the Omer was presented in the temple. '' Hence its Greek name Pentecost Chap. VII. THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. 107 great rejoicings. It was at once a thanksgiving for the harvest and a commemoration of the time when the Israelites dwelt in tents during their passage through the wilderness. It fell in the autumn, when the whole of the chief fruits of the ground — the corn, the wine, and the oil — were gathered in. Its duration was strictly only seven days (Deut. xvi. 13), but it was followed by a day of holy convoca- tion. It lasted from the fifteenth till the twenty-second of the month Tisri. During the seven days the Israelites were commanded to dwell in booths or huts (tabernacles) formed of the boughs of trees, etc. iii. THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. The Day of Atonement is the one single fast, or day of humilia- tion, prescribed by the Mosaic law ; whence it is called the Fast (Acts xxvii. 9). It was observed five days before the Feast of Tabernacles, and was kept as a most solemn Sabbath, when all must abstain from work, and "afflict their souls," on pain of being cut off from among the people. Its ceremonies signified the pub- lic humiliation of the people for all the sins of the past year, and the remission of those sins by the atonement which the high-priest made within the vail, whither he entered on this day only. All the sacrifices of the day were performed by the high-priest himself (Lev. xxiii. 26-32). The victims consisted of (i.) a young bullock for a sin-offering and a ram for a burnt-offering, for the high-priest himself and his family ; and (ii.) a ram for a burnt-offering, and two young goats for a sin-offering, for the people. Presenting the two goats before Jehovah, at the door of the tabernacle, the high-priest cast lots upon them; the one lot being inscribed "for Jehovah," the other "for Azazel." The latter was called the Scape-goat. The high- priest first offered the young bullock as the sin-offering for himself and his family. Having slain it at the altar, he took some of its blood, with a censer filled with live coals from the altar, and a handful of incense, and, entering into the most holy place, he threw the incense on the coals, thus enveloping the ark in a fragrant cloud, and partially shrouding it from his own eyes lest he should die for a profanely curious gaze, and then sprinkled the blood seven times before the mercy-seat. The goat "of Jehovah" was then slain as a sin-offering for the people, and the high-priest again went into the most holy place and performed the same ceremonies with its blood. As he return- ed through the holy place, in which no one else was present, he purified it by sprinkling some of the blood of boUi victims on the altar of incense. This completed the purification of the sanctuary, the second-stage of the atonement. 108 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. VII. Then followed the remission of the people's sins by the striking ceremony of devoting the Scape-goat, the one on which the lot had fallen i for Azazel." The high-priest having laid his hands upon its head, and confessed over it the sins of the people, the victim, loaded, as it were, with those sins, was led out, by a man chosen for the purpose, to the wilderness, into "a land not inhabited," and there let loose. The significance of this type of the true atone- ment, not by the blood of bulls and goats, but by the precious blood of Christ himself, is set forth in the Epistle to the Hebrews (chap, ix., x.). iv. FESTIVALS AFTER THE CAPTIVITY. 1, The Feast of Purim, or of Lots, was an annual festival instituted to commemorate the preservation of the Jews in Persia from the massacre with which they were threatened through the machinations of Hainan (Esther ix. 24). 2. The Fkast of Dedication was the festival instituted to com- memorate the purging of the temple and the rebuilding of the altar after Judas Maccabaeus had driven out the Syrians, B.C. 164. It is named only once in the Canonical Scriptures (John x. 22). SECTION VII. LAWS, POLITICAL, CIVIL, AND CRIMINAL. The political condition of the Jewish commonwealth, as we have seen, is founded entirely upon a religious basis. In its form it is, so to say, a monarchy, with Jehovah for its unseen king, all magis- trates and judges being His ministers; but in its substance and spirit it is a commonwealth in the strict sense, the whole people enjoying equal rights, as being all the children of God, and united together by the bond of holiness. In the first stage of their history, when they left Egypt, they could not be called a nation in the political sense, but a body of tribes, the main bond of union between them being the "promise given to the fathers." Each of these tribes bad its own patriarchal government by the "princes" of the tribe, and the "heads" of the respective families, but no central government was as yet pro- vided. God kept that in his own hands, and committed its ad- ministration to Moses as His servant. The people were all collect- ed in one encampment around the tabernacle of Jehovah, their ever-present king. They were commanded by His voice; their movements were guided by His visible signs. Chap. VII. POLITICAL LAWS. 109 In the second stage of their history — their first settlement in Canaan — the constitution was essentially the same. Jehovah was still their king, present in His tabernacle to exercise the supreme government, and to give oracles for all doubtful cases, and commit- ting the executive power to Joshua, who is distinctly recognized as the successor of Moses, only he was a military leader instead of a lawgiver. 'She judges were temporary and special deliverers, sent by God to meet special emergencies, not supreme magistrates suc- ceeding to the authority of Moses and Joshua. During the admin istration of Samuel as judge and prophet, the people at length de- manded a king, after the pattern of the surrounding nations. The demand was treated as an act of treason to Jehovah, who punished it by granting such a king as they desired. The govern- ment of Saul was an experiment, in which the self-will of the king was forever asserting itself against Jehovah's supreme authority. When the monarchy of the people's own choice was cast down by the death of Saul, God found "David, the son of Jesse, a man after God's own heart." His elevation to the throne marks the establish- ment of the true Hebrew monarchy, in which the king acknowledged himself the servant of Jehovah and guardian of His law, and sub- mitted to guidance and rebuke by the prophets. This government was instituted in condescension to the wants of the people, and was designed to reconcile the visible rule of a man with the supreme authority of the unseen God. The kingdom of Israel afterwards broke out into open rebellion against Jehovah, checked, however, by the prophets, and especially by Elijah and Elisha ; but the kingdom of Judah preserved the profession of godliness, and its true spirit was from time to time revived by such kings as Hezekiah and Josiah. The positive law of the kingdom was summed up in the one great duty of governing according to the law of God, of which the king was to write out a copy in a book, and read therein all the days of his life. From the first, the king assumed judicial power, and his authority extended even to the deposition of the high-priest (I Kings ii. 27). In religious matters he might guide the nation, as in building and dedicating the temple and sacrificing burnt-offer- ings ; but he was not permitted to enter the sanctuary. The Princes of the Congregation, or heads of tribes, seem to have always retained a certain power in the state. In the old patriarch" a! times justice was administered, as among the Arabs to the pres- ent day, by the heads of houses or patriarchal seniors. Their au- thority was superseded by the mission of .Moses, for justice was re- garded as proceeding from Cod himself. The supreme judicial au- thority was afterwards vested in the high-priest, and under the monarchy in the king. 110 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. VII The principles of the Civil Law of Moses are based on the relig- ious position of the people, as the holy children of God and breth- ren to one another. Its chief provisions may be classified as fol- lows : i. The Law of Persons. The power of a father over his children was to be held sacred — cursing or smiting a parent, or stubborn dis- obedience, were considered capital crimes (Exod. xxi. 15-17). The first-born son was to have a double portion of his father's inher- itance (Dent. xxi. 17). In default of sons, a man's possessions might pass to his daughters, provided that they married in their own tribe (Numb, xxvii. 6-8 ; comp. chap, xxxvi.). Unmarried daughters were to be entirely dependent upon their father. The power of the husband over the wife was so great that she could never be independent. Marriage within certain degrees was forbidden (Lev. xviii.). The relations between masters and slaves were so far limited that if a slave died under actual chastisement the master was punishable (Exod. xxi. 20); and if maimed, the slave was to be set at liberty. A Hebrew slave was to be freed at the Sabbatical year, unless by his own formal act he consented to be a perpetual slave (Exod. xxi. 1-6). In any case he was to be freed at the Jubilee, with his children (Lev. xxv. 10). Foreign slaves were to be held and inherited as property forever (Lev. xxv. 45, 46). ii. The Law of Things. All land was regarded as the property of God alone, and its holders were deemed His tenants. All sold land was therefore to return to its original owners at the Jubilee, and the price of the sale was to be calculated accordingly. A house sold was to be redeemable within a year, and if not so redeemed to pass away altogether (Lev. xxv. 29, 30). But the houses of the Levites were redeemable at all times in the same way as land. All debts to an Israelite were to be released at the seventh year v and usury was not to be taken, nor pledges ruinously exacted (Deut. xxiii. 19," 20). Tithes of all produce were to be given for the maintenance of the Levites (Numb, xviii. 20-24). First-fruits of corn, wine, and oil were to be offered every year at Jerusalem, with a solemn dec^ laration of dependence on God the King of Israel. As to the Criminal Law, offenses against God are prohibited in the first four Commandments. The first forbids the acknowledge ment of false gods, and generally of all idolatry ; the second com. prebends witchcraft and false prophecy; the third, blasphemy; the fourth, Sabbath-breaking (Numb. xv. 32-36). Offenses against man are summed up in the following Command, ments r Under the fifth are included disobedience to parents and Ciiai>. VII. CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LAWS. Ill to the priests ; under the sixth, murder, whether intentional or otherwise; under the seventh, adultery, as well as unlawful inter- course of all kinds ; under the eighth, theft, trespass, perversion of justice, and kidnapping ; under the ninth, false witness ; and under ;he tenth, the sin of coveting. & SocTed Egyptian boat or ark, with two figures, perhaps resembling chi/ubisa. Jericho. Chapter viii. THE CONQUKST AND DIVISION OF THE HOLT LAND. — B.C. 1451-1426. Moses the lawgiver was succeeded by Joshua, the military chief, who was to lead the people into their inheritance, and to give them "rest." He was the son of Nun, of the tribe ofEphraim. His name at first was Oshea {help, or Saviour), which, by prefixing the name of Jehovah, Moses changed to Joshua, that is, God is the Saviour. He was probably at this time about eighty years old. He had grown up to mature age in the state of Egyptian bondage: he had shared the experience and the trials of the wilderness as the chosen servant of Moses ; had proved his military capacity in the conquest of the land east of Jordan, and his steadfast obedience at B.C. 1451-1426. JOSHUA. 113 Kadesh, when he stood alone with Caleb : and he lived for about twenty-five years more to finish his allotted work. These three periods of his life thus embrace the whole history of the moulding of the nation. His character was in accordance with his career : a devout warrior, blameless and fearless, who combines strength with gentleness, ever looking up for and obeying the Divine impulse with the simplicity of a child ; he is one of the very few worthies of the Old Testament on whose character there is no stain. At the death of Moses, t he Israelites were encamped in the plains of Moab, with the river Jordan before them ; and there they re- mained till the mourning for their great prophet was over. Then the Lord spake unto Joshua and commanded him to lead the peo- ple over Jordan, giving him a promise of his continued presence, "As I was with Moses so I will be with thee." Joshua prepared the host against the third day, and summoned the two tribes and a half to perform their promise of marching in the van (Numb, xxxii.). Jericho was to be the first object of attack ; and he at once sent two men to spy out the country. This great city stood in a spacious plain about six miles west of Jordan, and opposite to the camp of Israel, in the midst of a grove of noble palm-trees, whence it was called " Jericho, the city of palms." It was strongly fortified and well guarded, the gates being shut at night. The mention of houses on the walls indicates the solidity of the walls themselves (Josh. ii. 15). The two spies were received into one of these houses by a harlot named Rahab, who, having heard all that the Lord had done for the Israelites, had come to believe in Him as the God of heaven and earth, and in His purpose to give them the land. In this faith she hid the spies, and misdirected their pursuers ; and then let them down from a window of her house over the city wall, after they had sworn to save her family in the destruction of the city. It was agreed between them that she should hang a scarlet thread out of her window as a sign by which the house was to be known. The spies fled to the mountain for three days till the pursuit was over, and then recrossed the Jordan and returned to Joshua with the re- port that the Lord had delivered all the land into their hands, for all the inhabitants were fainting with fear because of them (Josh, ii. 12-24). The next morning Joshua broke up the camp at Shittim, and moved down to the edge of the Jordan, which at this season (April) was swollen, and overflowed its banks in consequence of the melting of the snow about its sources in the Anti-Libanus. On the third day after, the officers went through the host and instructed the peo- ple in the order of their march. The priests bearing the ark began 114 SCRIPTURE HISTORY. Chap. VIII. the procession, and as soon as their feet were dipped in the watei the river was divided, the waters that came down from above being heaped up as a wall, and the rest flowing down towards the Dead Sea, leaving the channel bare. The priests advanced into the midst of the river's bed with the ark, and there stood firm till all the peo- ple had passed over. Meanwhile, twelve chosen men, one from each tribe, took twelve stones from the spot where the priests stood firm, and brought them out of the river. At the same time, they took twelve other stones, and formed a heap with them in the mid- dle of the river as a sign to the children of Israel. When all this was done, Joshua commanded the priests to come out of Jordan, and the moment that their feet rested upon the dry land, the waters of the river returned and flowed over the banks as before (Josh. iv. 18). The host encamped that night at Gilgal, in the plains of Jericho, and there Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been brought out of the river's bed, for a perpetual memorial of the passage of the Jordan, just as the Red Sea had been divided to let them pass out of Egypt. The passage of the Jordan was completed on the tenth day of the first month (Nisan = April, b.c. 1451). This was the day ap- pointed for the selection of the Paschal Lamb; and on the evening of the fourteenth the people kept the Passover for the first time on the sacred soil of their inheritance, exactly forty years after their fathers had first kept it when they were leaving Egypt. But first God commanded Joshua to circumcise the people, for the circum- cised generation who had left Egypt had died in the wilderness. The name of the place where this was done was called GilgaJ, that is, rolling, because of the rolling away of their reproach (Josh. v. 9). Here, on the morrow after the Passover, the new generation tasted bread for the first time. They ate unleavened bread and parched corn of the old crop of the land, and at the same time the manna ceased. From that clay forward they began to eat the fruits of the year. As Joshua was meditating how to attack Jericho, a vision was vouchsafed to him to teach him that the work was God's. Looking up towards the city, "behold there stood a man over against him with a drawn sword in his hand." "Art thou for us," said Joshua, "or for our adversaries?" "Nay," he replied, "but as captain of the Lord's host am I now come" (Josh. v. 14). This title, so often afterwards applied to the Son of God, revealed him to Joshua, who fell down on his face to the earth to worship. " What saith my Lord to his servant?" " Loose thy shoe from off thy foot," he replied, " for the place whereon thou standest is holy." He then foretold the miraculous conquest of Jericho, and gave Joshua direc- B.C. 1451-1426. CAPTURE OF JERICHO. 115 tions as to the manner of its capture. The host were to compass the city for seven days; the circuit was to he repeated once a day for the first six days, and on the seventh day seven times. The chosen warriors were to march in front of the ark, immediately be- fore which seven priests, bearing seven trumpets of rams' horns, were to pass on round the city, blowing with their trumpets a con- tinued defiance. So they did six days. On the seventh day at dawn they began to compass the city seven times ; at the seventh, the trumpets pealed forth one loud blast, the people raised a great shout, the wall of the city fell down flat, and each man rushed in straight from the place where he had stood, as Joshua had com- manded. Before its capture, the city, with all its inhabitants, was "accursed" or "devoted" as the first-fruits of the spoil of Canaan. Only Bahab and her household, because she hid the spies, were ex- cepted from the curse. Then the men and women, young and old, oxen and sheep and asses, were utterly destroyed ; the city was burnt with fire ; but the silver and gold and vessels of brass and iron were placed in the sacred treasury; and Joshua adjured a sol- emn curse upon the man who should rebuild Jericho (Josh. vi.). The blessing which followed Rahab for her conduct is recorded as the greatest example of f