The early history of the Hebrews

CHAPTER I THE HEBREW PATRIARCHS

Who were the Hebrews?—Origin of the Name—Ur and its Kings—Amraphel or Khammu-rabi—Canaanites in Babylonia—Harran—The Amorites—Abram in Canaan and Egypt—The Campaign of Chedor-laomer—Melchizedek—Sodom and Gomorrha—Circumcision—Name of Abraham—Hebrew and Aramaic—Moab and Ammon—Amorite Kingdoms—Dedan—Sacrifice of the firstborn—Mount Moriah—Purchase of the Field of Machpelah—The Hittites—Babylonian Law—Isaac as a Bedâwi Shêkh—Esau and the Edomites—Jacob—Settles at Shechem—His Sons—The Israelitish Tribes—Joseph—The Hyksos in Egypt—Egyptian Character of Joseph’s History—Goshen—Deaths of Jacob and Joseph.

The historian of the Hebrews is met at the very outset by a strange difficulty. Who were the Hebrews whose history he proposes to write? We speak of a Hebrew people, of a Hebrew literature, and of a Hebrew language; and by the one we mean the people who called themselves Israelites or Jews, by the other the literary records of this Israelitish nation, and by the third a language which the Israelites shared with the older population of Canaan. It is from the Old Testament that we derive the term ‘Hebrew,’ and the use of the term is by no means clear.

Abram is called ‘the Hebrew’ before he became Abraham the father of Isaac and the Israelites. The confederate of the Amorite chieftains of Mamre, the conqueror of the Babylonian invaders of Canaan, is a ‘Hebrew’; when he comes before us as a simple Bedâwi shêkh he is a Hebrew no longer. When Joseph is sold into Egypt it is as a ‘Hebrew’ slave; and he tells the Pharaoh that he had been ‘stolen’ out of ‘the land of the Hebrews.’ The oppressed people in the age of the Exodus are known as ‘Hebrews’ to their Egyptian taskmasters. Moses was one of ‘the Hebrews’ children’; and he declares to the Egyptian monarch that Yahveh of Israel was ‘the God of 2the Hebrews.’ It would seem, therefore, as if it were the name by which the people of Canaan, and more especially the Israelites, were known to the Egyptians.

And yet there is no certain trace of it on the Egyptian monuments. In the Egyptian texts the south of Palestine is called Khar, perhaps the land of the ‘Horites’; the coast-land is termed Zahi, ‘the dry’; and the whole country is indifferently known as that of the Upper Lotan or Syrians, and of the Fenkhu or Phœnicians. When we come down to the age of the nineteenth dynasty we find the name of Canaan already established in Egyptian literature. Seti I. destroyed the Shasu or Bedâwin from the frontiers of Egypt to ‘the land of Canaan’; and in a papyrus of the same age we hear of Kan’amu or ‘Canaanite slaves’ from the land of Khar. Of any name that resembles that of the Hebrews there is not a trace.

It is equally impossible to discover it in the cuneiform records of Babylonia and Assyria. The Babylonians, from time immemorial, called Palestine ‘the land of the Amorites,’ doubtless because the Amorites were the dominant people there in those early ages when Babylonian armies first made their way to the distant West. The Assyrians called it ‘the land of the Hittites’ for the same reason, while in the letters from the Asiatic correspondents of the Pharaoh found at Tel el-Amarna, and dating from the century before the Exodus, it is termed Kinakhna or Canaan. How then comes Joseph to describe it as ‘the land of the Hebrews,’ and himself as a ‘Hebrew’ slave?

More than one attempt has been made to identify the mysterious name with names met with in hieroglyphic and cuneiform texts. The Egyptian monuments refer to a class of foreigners called ’Apuriu, who were employed in the time of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties to convey the blocks of stone needed for the great buildings of Egypt from the quarries of the eastern desert. We are told how they dragged the great altar of the Sun-god to Memphis for Ramses II.; and how, at a much later date, Ramses IV. was still employing eight 3hundred men of the same race to transport his stone from the quarries of Hammamât. Chabas and some other Egyptologists have seen in these ’Apuriu the Hebrews of Scripture, and have further identified them with the ’Aperu mentioned on the back of a papyrus, where it is said that one of them acted as a sort of aide-de-camp to the great conqueror of the eighteenth dynasty, Thothmes III.

But there are serious objections to these identifications.^[1] There are reasons for believing that the ’Aperu and the ’Apuriu do not represent the same name; and no satisfactory explanation has hitherto been forthcoming as to why we should meet with Hebrews of the Israelitish race still serving as public slaves in Egypt so long after the Exodus as the reigns of Ramses III. and Ramses IV. Moreover, in one text it is stated that the ’Apuriu belonged ‘to the ’Anuti barbarians,’ who inhabited the desert between Egypt and the Red Sea. It is true that some of the Semitic kinsfolk of the Israelites led a nomad life here in the old times, as they still do to-day; nevertheless, ‘the ’Anuti barbarians’ were for the most part of African origin, and the eastern desert of Egypt is not quite the place where we should expect to find the nearest kindred of a Canaanitish people. At present, at all events, the identification of Hebrews and ’Apuriu must be held to be non-proven.

Since the discovery of the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna another attempt has been made to find the name of the Hebrews outside the pages of the Old Testament. Ebed-Tob, the vassal-king of Jerusalem, in his letters to Khu-n-Aten, the ‘heretic’ Pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty, speaks of certain enemies whom he terms Khabiri. They were threatening the authority of the Egyptian monarch, and had already captured several of the cities under Ebed-Tob’s jurisdiction. The Egyptian governors in the south of Palestine had been slain, and the territory of Jerusalem was no longer able to 4defend itself. If the Pharaoh could send no troops at once, all would be lost. The Khabiri, under their leader Elimelech, were already established in the country, and in concert with the Sutê or Bedâwin were wresting it out of the hands of Egypt.^[2]

Some scholars, with more haste than discretion, have pronounced the Khabiri of the cuneiform tablets to be the Hebrews of the Old Testament. If that were the case, Hebrew and Israelite could no longer be considered to be synonymous terms. In the age of the Khabiri the Israelites of Scripture were still in Egypt, where the cities of Ramses and Pithom were not as yet built, and their leader to the conquest of Canaan was Joshua, and not Elimelech. When in subsequent centuries Ramses II. and Ramses III. invaded and occupied Palestine, they found no traces there of the children of Israel. They have left us lists of the places they captured; we look in vain among them for the name of Israel or of an Israelitish tribe. We look equally in vain in the Book of Judges for any allusion to Egyptian conquests.

The Khabiri, then, are not the Hebrews of Scripture, nor does the word throw any light on the term ‘Hebrew’ itself. Khabiri is really a descriptive title, meaning ‘Confederates’; it was a word borrowed by Babylonian from the language of Canaan, but is met with in old Babylonian and Assyrian hymns.^[3] It may be that Hebron, the city of ‘the Confederacy,’ derived its name from these ‘Confederated’ bands; at all events, the name of Hebron is nowhere mentioned by Ebed-Tob or his brother governors, and it first appears in the Egyptian records in the time of Ramses III. under the form of Khibur.^[4]

5The Tel el-Amarna tablets, accordingly, give us no help in regard to the name of the Hebrews, nor do any other cuneiform inscriptions with which we are acquainted. Babylonian records do indeed speak of a people called the Khabirâ, but they inhabited the mountains of Elam, on the eastern side of Babylonia, and between them and the Hebrews of Scripture no connection is possible.^[5] In an old Babylonian list of foreign countries we read of a country of Khubur, which was situated in northern Mesopotamia in the neighbourhood of Harran; but Khubur is more probably related to the river Khabur than to the kinsfolk of Terah and Laban.^[6] Moreover, a part of the mountains of the Amanus, overlooking the Gulf of Antioch, from whence logs of pine were brought to the cities of Chaldæa, was also known as Khabur.^[7]

Archæological discovery, therefore, has as yet given us no help. We must still depend upon the Old Testament alone for an answer to our question, Who were the Hebrews? And, unfortunately, the evidence of the Old Testament is by no means clear. We have seen that on one side by the Hebrews are meant the Israelites, and that from time to time the Israelitish descendants of Abraham are characterised by that name. But on the other side there are passages in which a distinction seems to be made between them. Though Joseph is a Hebrew slave, it is because he has been stolen out of ‘the land of the Hebrews.’ Canaan, accordingly, even before its 6conquest by the Israelites, was inhabited by a Hebrew people. So, too, in the early days of the reign of Saul, the Israelites and the Hebrews appear to be still separate. While ‘the men of Israel’ hide themselves in caves and thickets, ‘the Hebrews’ cross over the Jordan to the lands of Gad and Gilead (1 Sam. xiii. 6, 7). Similarly we are told that in Saul’s first battle with the Philistines ‘the Hebrews’ that were with the enemy deserted to ‘the Israelites’ that were with Saul (1 Sam. xiv. 21).

Perhaps, however, all that is intended in these passages is to emphasise the fact that among the Philistines, as among the Egyptians, the children of Israel were known as ‘Hebrews.’ The difficulty is that such a name is not found in the monumental records of Egypt. When Shishak describes his campaign against Judah and Israel, it is not the Hebrews, but the Fenkhu and the ’Amu whom he tells us he has conquered.

In fact, the Egyptian equivalent of Hebrew is ’Amu. What Joseph calls ‘the land of the Hebrews’ would have been termed ‘the land of the ’Amu’ by an Egyptian scribe. Joseph himself would have been an ’Amu slave. ’Amu signified an Asiatic in a restricted sense. It denoted the Asiatics of Syria and of the desert between Palestine and Egypt. It included also the nomad tribes of Edom and the Sinaitic Peninsula. It was thus larger in its meaning than the Biblical ‘Hebrew’; but, at the same time, it conveyed just the same ideas, and was used in much the same way. The Hyksos conquerors of Egypt were termed ’Amu, and a famous Syrian oculist in the days of the eighteenth dynasty is described as an ’Amu of Gebal. The name is probably derived from the Canaanitish and Hebrew word which signifies ‘a people.’

The name ‘Hebrew’ comes from a root which means ‘to pass’ or ‘cross over.’ It has been variously explained as ‘a pilgrim,’ ‘a dweller on the other side,’ ‘a crosser of the river.’ But the second explanation is that which best harmonises with philological probabilities. We find other derivatives from the 7same root. Among them is Abarim, the name of that mountain-range of Moab on ‘the other side’ of the Jordan, from whence Moses beheld the Promised Land (Numb. xxvii. 12), as well as Ebronah, near the Gulf of Aqaba, one of the resting-places of the children of Israel (Numb. xxxiii. 34). Hebrew genealogists indeed seem to have connected the name with that of the patriarch Eber. But this is in accordance with that spirit of Semitic idiom which throws geography and ethnology into a genealogical form. It is probable that the name of the patriarch is merely the Babylonian ebar, ‘a priest,’ which is met with in Babylonian contracts of the age of Abraham.

Professor Hommel, however, supplementing a suggestion of Dr. Glaser, has recently drawn attention to certain facts which throw light on the early use of the name ‘Hebrew,’ even if they do not remove all the difficulties connected with it.^[8] A Minæan inscription from the south of Arabia, in which the name of ’Ammi-zadoq occurs, couples together the countries of Misr or Egypt, of Aashur, the Ashshurim of Gen. xxv. 3, and of ’Ibr Naharân, ‘the land beyond the river.’ In another Minæan inscription of the same age, the name of ’Ibr Naharân is replaced by that of Gaza. It is clear, therefore, that in ’Ibr Naharân we must see the south of Palestine. But the Minæan texts are not alone in their use of the term. A broken Assyrian tablet from the library of Nineveh^[9] also refers to Ebir-nâri, ‘the land beyond the river,’ in Canaan, and associates it with Beth-el, Tyre, and Jeshimon. Professor Hommel is probably right in assigning the inscription to the reign of Assur-bel-Kala, the son of Tiglath-pileser I. (B.C. 1080). At all events, the name seems to be of Babylonian origin, like most of the geographical expressions adopted by the Assyrians, and it is consequently very possible that Ebir-nâri primarily signified the country on the western bank of the 8Euphrates, where Ur was situated, and that it was subsequently extended to the country west of the Jordan when Syria became a province of the Babylonian empire.^[10]

However this may be, the question with which we started remains unanswered. We are still unable to define with exactness who the Hebrews were. The origin and first use of the name are still a matter of doubt. We must be content with the fact that it came to be applied—if not exclusively, at all events predominantly—to the people of Israel in their dealings with their foreign neighbours. It may be that this special application of it was first fixed by the Philistines. In any case it was a name which was accepted by the Israelites themselves, and gradually became synonymous with all that was specifically Israelitish. Even the old ‘language of Canaan,’ as it is still called by Isaiah (xix. 18), became ‘the Hebrew language’ of modern lexicographers. For us of to-day the history of the Hebrew people means the history of the descendants of Israel. It is with ‘Abram the Hebrew’ that the history begins. Future ages looked back upon him as the ancestor of the Hebrew race, ‘the rock’ from whence it was ‘hewn.’ He had come from the far East, from ‘Ur of the Casdim’ or Babylonians. His younger brother Haran had died ‘in the land of his nativity’; with his elder brother Nahor and himself, his father Terah had migrated westward, to Harran in Mesopotamia. There Terah had died, and there Abram had received the call which led him to journey still further onwards into the land of Canaan.

He was already married. Already in Babylonia he had made Sarai his wife, who is also said to have been his step-sister; 9while the wife, Milcah, whom his brother Nahor had taken to himself, was his niece. A time came when both Abram and Sarai took new names in token of the covenant they had made with God. Abram became Abraham, and Sarai became Sarah.

Upon these beginnings of Hebrew history light has been thrown by the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions. The site of ‘Ur of the Chaldees’ has been found. Geographers are no longer dependent on Arab legends or vague coincidencies with classical names. Ur was one of the most ancient and prosperous of Babylonian cities. The very name meant ‘the city’; it was, in fact, the capital of a district, and its kings at one time had claimed sway over the rest of Chaldæa. Alone among the great cities of Babylonia, it stood on the western bank of the Euphrates in close contact with the nomad tribes of Semitic Arabia. More than any other of the Babylonian towns it was thus able to influence and be influenced by the Semites of the west; it was an outpost of Babylonian culture, and its position made it a centre of trade.

Its mounds of ruin are now known as Muqayyar or Mugheir. Highest among them towers the mound which covers the remains of the great temple of the moon-god. For it was to Sin, the moon-god, that the city had been dedicated from time immemorial, and in whose honour its temple had been built. There was only one other temple of Sin that was equally famous, and this was the temple which stood at Harran in Mesopotamia, and which, like that at Ur, had been erected and endowed by Babylonian kings.

It was not only with the Semites of Northern Arabia that Ur carried on its trade. It lay not very far from the mouth of the Euphrates, which in early days flowed into the Persian Gulf nearly a hundred miles to the north of the present coast. We hear in the cuneiform tablets of ‘the ships of Ur,’ and these ships must have been used in the trade that was carried on by water. The products of Southern Arabia could thus 10be brought to the Chaldean city; perhaps also there was intercourse even with Egypt.

The kings of Ur grew in power, and a dynasty arose at last which gained ascendency over the other states of Babylonia. We are beginning to learn something about these kings and the society over which they ruled. During the last few years excavations have been carried on by the Americans, by the French, and even by the Turkish Government, which have brought to light thousands of early cuneiform records, some of which are dated in their reigns. A large proportion of these records are contracts which throw an unexpected light on the commerce and law, the manners and customs and social life of the inhabitants of Babylonia at the time.

Among the last kings of the dynasty of Ur were Inê-Sin and Pûr-Sin, whose names, it will be observed, are compounded with that of the patron-god of the state. Inê-Sin not only invaded Elam, but the distant west as well. His daughters married the High-Priests both of Ansan in Elam and of Markhasi, now Mer’ash, in Syria.^[11] But it was not the first time that Babylonian armies had marched to the west. Centuries before (about B.C. 3800) another Babylonian king, Sargon of Accad, had made campaign after campaign against the land of the Amorites, as Syria and Palestine were called, had set up images of himself on the shores of the Mediterranean, and had united all Western Asia into a single empire, while his son and successor had marched southward into the Sinaitic Peninsula.^[12] A predecessor of Inê-Sin himself, Gimil-Sin by name, had overrun the land of Zabsali, which Professor 11Hommel is probably right in identifying with Subsalla, from whence an earlier Babylonian prince obtained stone for his buildings, and which, we are told, was in the mountains of the Amorites. The stone, in fact, was the limestone of the Lebanon.^[13]

Inê-Sin married his daughter to the High-Priest of Zabsali, but his successor Pûr-Sin II. appears to have been one of the last of the dynasty. Babylonia fell under Elamite domination, and a line of kings arose at Babylon whose names show that they came from Southern Arabia. The first of them was Khammu-rabi, whose reign lasted for fifty-five years. He proved himself one of the most able and vigorous of Babylonian monarchs. Before he died he had driven the Elamites out of the country, and united it into a single monarchy, with Babylon for its capital.

When Khammu-rabi first mounted the throne, he was a vassal of the king of Elam. In Southern Babylonia, not far from Ur, though on the opposite side of the river, was a rival kingdom, that of Larsa, whose king, Eri-Aku or Arioch, was the son of an Elamite prince. His father Kudur-Mabug is called ‘the Father of the land of the Amorites,’ implying not only that Canaan was subject at the time to Elamite rule, but also that Kudur-Mabug held some official position there. In one of his inscriptions Eri-Aku entitles himself ‘the shepherd of Ur,’ and tells us that he had captured ‘the ancient city of Erech.’

In Eri-Aku or Arioch, Assyriologists have long since seen the Arioch of the book of Genesis, the contemporary of Abram; and their belief has been raised to certainty by the recent discovery by Mr. Pinches of certain fragmentary cuneiform tablets in which allusion is made not only to Khammu-rabi, but also to the kings who were his contemporaries. These are Arioch, Kudur-Laghghamar or Chedor-laomer, and 12Tudghula or Tid’al. Khammu-rabi, accordingly, must be identified with Amraphel, who is stated in the Old Testament to have been king of Shinar or Babylonia, and we can approximately fix the period when the family of Terah migrated from Ur of the Chaldees. It was about 2300 B.C. if the chronology of the native Babylonian historians is correct.^[14]

There was at this time constant intercourse between Babylonia and the West. The father of Eri-Aku, as we have seen, bore the title of ‘Father of the land of the Amorites,’ and Khammu-rabi himself claimed sovereignty over the same part of the world. So, too, did his great-grandson Ammi-satana (or Ammi-dhitana), who in one of his inscriptions adds the title of ‘king of the land of the Amorites’ to that of ‘king of Babylon.’ Indeed, the kings of the dynasty to which Khammu-rabi belonged bear names which are almost as much 13Canaanitish or Hebrew as they are South Arabic in form. The Babylonians had some difficulty in spelling them, and in the contract-tablets, consequently, the same name is written in different ways. Thus we learn from a philological tablet in which the names are translated into Semitic Babylonian that Khammu and Ammi are but variant attempts to represent the same word—that of a god whose name appears in those of South Arabian princes as well as Israelites of the Old Testament, and from whom the Beni-Ammi or Ammonites derived their name.^[15]

The founder of the dynasty had been Sumu-abi (or Samu-abi), ‘Shem is my father,’ and his son had been Sumu-la-il, ‘Is not Shem a god?’ The monarchs who ruled at Babylon, therefore, when Abram was born claimed the same ancestor as did Abram’s family, and worshipped him as a god. The father of Ammi-satana was Abesukh, the Abishua’ of the Bible; and his son was Ammi-zaduq, where zaduq, ‘righteous,’ is a word well known to the languages of Southern Arabia and Canaan, but not to that of Babylonia. The kings who succeeded to the inheritance of the old Babylonian monarchs of Ur were thus allied in language and race to the Hebrew patriarch.

But this is not all. We find in the contracts which were drawn up in the reigns of the kings of Ur and the successors of Sumu-abi not only names like Sabâ, ‘the Sabæan,’ which carry us to the spice-bearing lands of Southern Arabia,^[16] but names also which are specifically Canaanitish, or as we should usually term it, Hebrew, in form. Thus Mr. Pinches has discovered in them Ya’qub-il and Yasup-il, of which the Biblical Jacob and Joseph are abbreviations, and elsewhere we meet with Abdiel and Lama-il, the Lemuel of the Old Testament. Even the name of Abram (Abi-ramu) himself 14occurs among the witnesses to a deed which is dated in the reign of Khammu-rabi’s grandfather, and its Canaanitish character is put beyond question by the fact that he is called the father of ‘the Amorite.’^[17]

From other documents we learn that there were Amoritish or Canaanite settlements in Babylonia where the foreigner was allowed to acquire land and carry on trade with the natives. One of these was just outside the walls of Sippara in Northern Babylonia, and a good many references to it have already been detected. Thus in the reign of Ammi-zaduq a case of disputed title was brought before four of the royal judges which related to certain feddans or ‘acres’ of land ‘in the district of the Amorites,’ ‘at the entrance to the city of Sippara’;^[18] and a contract dated in the reign of Khammu-rabi’s father further describes the district as just outside the principal gate of the city. It included arable and garden land, pasturage and woods, as well as houses, and was thus like the land of Goshen, which was similarly handed over to the Israelites to settle in. An Egyptian inscription of the time of the eighteenth dynasty also speaks of a similar district close to Memphis, which had been given to the Hittites by the Pharaohs.^[19] The strangers had their own judges. We learn, for instance, from a lawsuit which was decided in the time of Khammu-rabi that a Canaanite, Nahid-Amurri 15(‘the exalted of the Amorite god’), who was defendant in a case of disputed property, was first taken, along with the plaintiff, before the judges of Nin-Marki, ‘the lady of the Amorite land,’ and then before another set of judges and the assembled people of the city. It is clear from this that the judges who were deputed to look after the interests of the settlers from the West also acted when one of the parties was a native of Babylonia.^[20]

The migration of Terah and his family thus ceases to be an isolated and unexplained fact. In the age to which it belonged Canaan and Babylonia were in close connection one with the other. Babylonian kings claimed rule over Canaan, and Canaanitish merchants were established in Babylonia. The language of Canaan was heard in the Babylonian cities, and even the rulers of the land were of foreign blood. Between Babylonia and Canaan there was a highway which had been trodden for generations, and along which soldiers and civil officials, merchants and messengers, passed frequently to and fro.

Midway, on a tributary of the river Belikh, was the city of Harran, so called from a Sumerian word which signified ‘a high-road.’ Its name pointed to a Babylonian foundation, as did also its temple dedicated to the Babylonian moon-god. The temple, in fact, counted among its founders and restorers a long line of Babylonian and Assyrian kings, and almost the last act of the Babylonian Empire was the restoration of the ancient shrine. Merodach, the god of Babylon, came in a dream to the last of the Babylonian monarchs, and bade him raise once more from its ruins the sanctuary of his brother-god. 16And Nabonidos tells us how he performed the task laid upon him, how he disinterred the memorial-stones of the older Assyrian kings, and how ‘by the art of the god Laban, the lord of foundations and brickwork, with silver and gold and precious stones, with spices and cedarwood,’ he built again Ê-Khulkhul, ‘the temple of rejoicing.’ The moon-god, Sin, who was adored within it, was known throughout the Aramaic lands of Northern Syria as Baal-Kharran, ‘the Lord of Harran.’

But there was another city of the moon-god besides Harran. This was Ur in Babylonia. In Babylonian literature it is commonly known as the city of Sin. Between Ur and Harran there must have been some close connection, and it may be that Harran owed its foundation to the kings of Ur. At all events, there was good reason why an emigrant from Ur should establish his abode in Harran. Both cities were under the same divine patron, and that meant, in the ancient world, that both lived the same religious and civil life. Harran obeyed the rule of the Babylonian kings; its very name showed that it was of Babylonian origin, and its culture was that of Babylonia. Law and religion, manners and customs, all were alike in Harran and Ur. The migration from the one city to the other did not differ from a change of dwelling from London to Edinburgh.

The country in which Harran was built formed part of the vast tract between the Tigris and Euphrates, which was known to the Babylonians in early days as Suru or Suri, a name which perhaps survived in that of the city Suru, the Suriyeh of modern geography. In Semitic times it was called Subari or Suwari by the Assyrians, sometimes also Subartu. Suru thus corresponded with our Mesopotamia, though it seems to have included a part of Northern Syria as well. But to the district in which Harran stood the Babylonians gave a more special name. It was Padan or Padin, ‘the cultivated plain,’ of which it is said in a cuneiform tablet that it lies ‘in front of the mountains of the Aramæans,’^[21] while an early Babylonian 17sovereign entitles himself king of Padan as well as of Northern Babylonia.^[22] The name bore witness to the fertility of the country to which it was applied. The Babylonian lexicographers make padan a synonym of words signifying ‘field’ and ‘garden’; it was, in fact, originally the piece of ground which a yoke of oxen could plough in a given period of time. Hence it came to mean an ‘acre,’ a sense which still survives in the Arabic feddân. The Babylonian leases and sales of land which were drawn up in the Abrahamic age repeatedly describe the ‘feddans’ or ‘acres’ of which the property consists. The fertile plain of Mesopotamia, accordingly, was not a plain merely; it was also ‘the field’ or ‘acre’ of Aram where the Semites of the Aramæan stock ploughed and harvested their corn.^[23]

In Egyptian its name was Naharina. The name had been borrowed from the Aramæans, who called their country the land of Naharain, ‘the two rivers.’ In Canaan, as we know from the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna, it bore the Canaanitish form of Naharaim, Nahrima, the final nasal of the Aramaic dialects becoming m. Aram-Naharaim was thus the Egyptian and Canaanitish title of the country which the Babylonian spoke of as Padan Arman, ‘Padan of the Aramæans.’ Both names go back to the age before the Israelitish Exodus out of Egypt; the one belongs to Egypt and Palestine, the other to Babylonia.

Before the age of the Exodus, however, the Aramæan population of Mesopotamia became the subjects of a people who seem to have come from the north. Mitanni, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, not far from the modern Birejik, became the capital of a kingdom which extended over Naharaim on the one side, and to the neighbourhood of the Orontes on the other. The race which founded the kingdom 18spoke a language unlike any other with which we are acquainted; it was, however, agglutinative, and exhibits certain general resemblances to some of the languages of the Caucasus. From the sixteenth century B.C. onwards, Mitanni and Naharaim are synonymous terms, even though, at times, the Egyptian scribes still observed the old distinction between them; even though also, it may be, Naharaim had a larger meaning than Mitanni. But the kings of Mitanni were vigorous and powerful. In the age of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence we find them intriguing with the Hittites and Babylonians in the Egyptian province of Canaan, and Ramses III. of the twentieth Egyptian dynasty still counts the people of Mitanni among his enemies. At an earlier date the royal families of Egypt and Mitanni had intermarried with one another, and the marriages had introduced new ideas and a revolutionary policy into the ancient monarchy of the Nile. When the kingdom of Mitanni had been founded we do not know. There is no trace of it in the earlier records of Babylonia, and we may safely say that it arose long after the era of Khammu-rabi and Abram.^[24]

Terah, we are told, died in Harran, and there Nahor, his second son, remained to dwell. Terah and Nahor are names which we look for in vain elsewhere in the Old Testament or in the inscriptions of Babylonia. And yet light has been thrown upon them by the cuneiform texts. Tablets have been found in Cappadocia, written in archaic cuneiform characters and in a dialect of Assyrian, which are at least as old as the the of the Tel el-Amarna letters; according to some scholars, they are coeval with the dynasty of Khammu-rabi. In one of these tablets we find the word, or name, Nakhur; what its signification may be, we cannot, unfortunately, tell; 19all we can be sure of is that it was known to the Semitic inhabitants of eastern Cappadocia, not far from the Aramæan border.^[25] The name of Terah points in the same direction, Tarkhu was a god whose name enters into the composition of Cappadocian and North-Syrian princes; he was worshipped by the Hittites, and so belongs to the same region as that in which we have found the name of Nahor.

But neither Tarkhu nor Nakhur is Aramaic in the usual sense of the term. Both seem to belong to that mixed dialect which has been revealed to us by German excavation at Sinjerli, north of the Gulf of Antioch, and about which scholars have disputed whether to call it Hebraised Aramaic or Aramaised Hebrew. At any rate, it is a dialect which, though Aramaic in origin, has been profoundly influenced by ‘the language of Canaan.’ It bears witness to the existence of a Hebrew-speaking population in that part of the world. It would be rash to affirm that this population already existed there in patriarchal days, though words which seem to be of Hebrew origin are met with in the Cappadocian tablets. But we now know that Northern Syria was once the meeting-place of the northern Semitic languages; that here they mingled with one another and with other languages which were not Semitic in type, and that here alone, outside the pages of the Old Testament, are the names of Terah and Nahor to be found.^[26]

Nahor remained in Harran, but Abram moved on still further to the West. The road was well known to his contemporaries, and probably followed the later line of march which led past Carchemish, now Jerablûs, Aleppo, and 20Hamath. From Hamath southward the land was in the possession of the Amorites. Their chief seat was immediately to the north of the Palestine of later days, but they had already occupied large portions of the territory to the south of them as far as the Dead Sea and the limits of the cultivated land. They had been for many centuries the dominant people of the West. Already in the time of Sargon of Akkad they had given their name among the Babylonians to Central Syria and Canaan. The name, indeed, goes back to the pre-Semitic days of Babylonian history. What the Semites called the land of the Amurrâ or Amorites, the Sumerians had termed Martu. And the two names, Amurrâ and Martu, continued to designate Syria and Palestine almost to the latest epoch of Babylonian political life.

The monuments of Egypt have shown us what these Amorites were like. They belonged to the blond race, like the Libyans of Northern Africa. At Abu-Simbel their skins are painted yellow—the Egyptian equivalent of white—their eyes blue, and the beard and eyebrows red. At Medînet Habu the skin, as Professor Flinders Petrie expresses it, is ‘rather pinker than flesh-colour,’ while in a tomb of the eighteenth dynasty at Thebes it is painted white, the eyes and hair being a light red-brown. At Karnak the names of the places captured by Thothmes III. in Palestine are surmounted by the figures of Amorites whose skin is alternately red and yellow, the red denoting sunburn, the yellow what we term white. In features the Amorites belonged to the Indo-European type. The nose was straight and regular, the forehead high, the lips thin, and the cheek-bones somewhat prominent, while they wore whiskers and a pointed beard. So far as we can judge from the representations of the Egyptian artists, they belonged to a dolichocephalic or long-headed race.^[27]

That they were tall in stature we know from the Old 21Testament. By the side of them the Hebrew spies described themselves as grasshoppers. The cities they built were strong and ‘walled up to heaven’; the thick walls of one of them have been disinterred on the site of Lachish by Professor Petrie and Mr. Bliss. But though the Babylonians continued to include Canaan in the general term, ‘land of the Amorites,’ and spoke of the Canaanite himself as an ‘Amorite,’ they nevertheless came to know that there was a distinction between them. The Babylonian king, Burna-buryas, whose letters to the Egyptian Pharaoh have been found at Tel el-Amarna, distinguishes Kinakhkhi or Canaan from the land of the Amorites, which had come to be confined to the country immediately to the north of Palestine. From the seventeenth century B.C. downwards, Amorite and Canaanite cease to be synonymous terms. It is only in certain parts of the Pentateuch that the old Babylonian use of the name ‘Amorite’ still survives.

It was a use that never prevailed among the Assyrians. When Assyria became a kingdom, and its rulers first led their armies to the West, the Amorites were no longer the dominant power. Their place had been taken by the Hittites. And it is the Khattâ or Hittites, therefore, who in the Assyrian inscriptions, as distinguished from those of Babylonia, are the representatives of Western Syria. On the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser II., now in the British Museum, even Ahab of Israel and Ba’asha of Ammon are included among the ‘kings of the country of the Hittites.’ But of this Assyrian use of the term Hittite there are slight, if any, traces in the Old Testament.^[28]

Abram, the Hebrew, first pitched his tent near the future Shechem, under ‘the terebinth of Moreh.’ Moreh is the Sumerian Martu, ‘the Amorite,’ in Hebrew letters; and the fact gives point to the statement which follows immediately, 22that ‘the Canaanite’—and not the Amorite—‘was then in the land’ (Gen. xii. 6). ‘The mountain of Shechem’ is mentioned in an Egyptian papyrus which describes the travels of an Egyptian officer in Palestine, in the fourteenth century B.C.,^[29] but the book of Genesis represents the city as founded only in the lifetime of Jacob (Gen. xxxiv. 6). Hence we are told that it was to ‘the place’ or ‘site’ of Shechem that Abram made his way, not to the town itself. And after the foundation of the town its Canaanite inhabitants are still called Amorites, in accordance with ancient Babylonian custom (Gen. xlviii. 22).

We next find the Hebrew patriarch in Egypt. There was famine in Canaan, and Egypt was already the granary of the eastern world. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets we hear of Egyptian corn being sent to the starving population of Syria; and Meneptah, the son of the Pharaoh of the Exodus, tells us that he had loaded ships with wheat for the Hittites when they were suffering from a famine. The want of rain which destroyed the crops of Canaan did not affect Egypt, where the fertility of the soil depends upon the irrigating waters of the Nile.

Egypt at the time must have been under the sway of the Hyksos kings. They were Asiatic invaders who had overrun the country from north to south, and established themselves on the throne of the Pharaohs. In three successive dynasties did they govern the land, and the descendants of the native monarchs sank into hiqu or vassal ‘princes’ of Thebes. At first, it is said, they laid Egypt waste, destroying the temples and massacring the people. But the influence of Egyptian culture soon led them captive. The Hyksos court became Egyptianised; the Hyksos king assumed the titles and state of the ancient sovereigns; Sutekh, the Hyksos god, was identified with Ra, the Sun-god of On, and the official language itself remained Egyptian. A treatise on mathematics, one of the few scientific 23works that have survived the shipwreck of Egyptian literature, was written under the patronage of the Hyksos king, Apophis I.^[30]

Nevertheless, with all this outward varnish of Egyptian culture, the Hyksos rule continued to be foreign. Even the names of the kings were not Egyptian, and up to the last the supreme object of their worship was a foreign deity. According to the Sallier Papyrus, the war of independence was occasioned by the demand of Apophis II. that Sutekh, and not Amon, should be acknowledged as the god of Thebes, and a scarab found at Kom Ombos in 1896 bears upon it, in confirmation of the story, the name of Sutekh-Apopi.^[31] Moreover, the Hyksos capital was not in any of the old centres of Egyptian government. Zoan, it is true, now Sân, in the north-eastern part of the Delta, was nominally their official residence; but they preferred to dwell in the fortress of Avaris, on the extreme eastern edge of Egypt, and within hail of their Asiatic kinsmen. It was from Avaris that Apophis had sent his insolent message to the terrified Prince of Thebes.

The Hebrew visitor to Egypt, therefore, was among friends and not strangers. Moreover, he had only to cross the frontier to find himself in the presence of the Pharaoh’s court. Whether at Zoan or at Avaris, it was alike close at hand to the traveller from Asia.

After leaving Egypt, Abram established himself at Hebron. It would seem that the name of Hebron, ‘the Confederacy,’ was not yet in existence, as it was to the ‘terebinth’ of Mamre, and not of Hebron, that Abram ‘removed his tent.’ Indeed, it is more than doubtful whether Mamre and Hebron occupied precisely the same site. It may be that Mamre was the older fortress of the Amorites, whose place was taken in after times by the town which gathered round the adjoining sanctuary of Hebron.

24In any case, its population was Amorite, though probably we should understand ‘Amorite’ here in its Babylonian sense. ‘Abram the Hebrew,’ it is declared, ‘dwelt under the terebinth of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and brother of Aner; and these were confederate with Abram.’ In other words, the Hebrew settler in Canaan had formed an alliance with the native chiefs.

Then came an event upon which the cuneiform records of Babylonia are beginning to cast light. Chedor-laomer, king of Elam, and the vassal kings Amraphel of Shinar, Arioch of Ellasar, and Tid’al of ‘nations,’ marched against the five Canaanitish princes of the Vale of Siddim at the northern end of the Dead Sea, bent upon obtaining possession of the naphtha springs that abounded there, and the produce of which had already made its way to Babylonia. No resistance was made to the invader; it is clear, in fact, that the invasion was no new thing, and that the rest of Canaan was already subject to the lords of the East. For ‘twelve years’ the five Canaanitish kings ‘served Chedor-laomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled.’ Once more, therefore, the forces of Elam and Babylonia moved westward. The revolt, it would appear, had spread to other parts of the ‘land of the Amorites,’ and the invading army marched southward along the eastern side of the Jordan. First, the Rephaim were overthrown at Ashteroth-Karnaim, in ‘the field of Bashan,’ as it was termed in the days of the Tel el-Amarna tablets; then followed the turn of the Zuzim in the future land of Ammon, and of the Emim in what was to be the land of Moab; and after smiting the Horites of Mount Seir, the invaders penetrated into the wilderness of Paran, fell upon the desert sanctuary of Kadesh, now called ’Ain el-Qadîs, and returned northward along the western shore of the Dead Sea. They had thus partially followed in the footsteps of an earlier Chaldæan king, Naram-Sin, who centuries before had made his way to the Sinaitic Peninsula, and there gained possession of the coveted copper-mines.

25The native princes in the Vale of Siddim were no match for the foe. A battle was fought which ended disastrously for the Canaanitish troops. The kings of Sodom and Gomorrah were slain, their men were driven into the naphtha-pits of which the plain was full, or else fled to the mountains. Their cities fell into the hands of the conquerors, who carried away both captives and spoil.

But Abram heard that among the captives was his ‘brother’ Lot. Thereupon he started in pursuit of the Chaldæan army, with his three hundred and eighteen armed followers and the forces of his Amorite allies. The victorious army was overtaken near Damascus, and its rear surprised in a night attack. The captives and spoil were recovered, and brought back in triumph to the south of Canaan. Here at the ‘King’s Dale,’ just outside the walls of Jerusalem, the new king of Sodom went to welcome him; and Melchizedek, the priest-king of Jerusalem, blessed the conqueror in the name of ‘the Most High God.’

The history of the campaign of Chedor-laomer reads like an extract from the Babylonian chronicles. It is dated in the reign of the king of Shinar or Babylon, as it would have been had it been written by a Babylonian scribe, although the Babylonian king was but the vassal and tributary of the sovereign of Elam. Even the spelling of the names indicates that they are taken from a cuneiform document. ‘Ham’ for Ammon, and ‘Zuzim’ for Zamzummim, can be explained only by the peculiarities of the cuneiform system of writing.^[32]

The whole story, however, has been thrown into a Canaanitish form. The king of Northern Babylonia, whose capital was Babylon, has become a king of Shinar, that being the name given in the West to the northern half of Chaldæa.^[33] Larsa, the capital of Eri-Aku or Arioch, has been transformed into Ellasar, 26perhaps through the influence of the Babylonian al, city.’ Lastly, Tid’al, the Tudghula of the cuneiform texts, is entitled the ‘king of nations.’

The fragmentary tablets discovered by Mr. Pinches, in which we hear of Khammu-rabi, king of Babylon, of Eri-Aku or Arioch, and his son Bad-makh-dingirene, and of Kudur-Laghghamar, the Chedor-laomer of Genesis, refer to Tudghula or Tid’al as ‘the son of Gazza[ni].’ Unfortunately, the words which follow, and which gave a description of the prince, have been lost through a fracture of the clay tablet. But there is another tablet from which we may supply the deficiency. On the one hand we are told that Tudghula burned the sanctuaries of Babylonia and allowed the waters of the Euphrates to roll over the ruins of the great temples of Babylon; on the other hand we read: ‘Who is this Kudur-Laghghamar who has wrought evil? He has assembled the Umman Manda, has devastated the land of Bel, and [has marched] at their side.’ Elsewhere Kudur-Laghghamar is called the king of Elam.^[34]

The Umman Manda were the barbarous tribes in the mountains which adjoined the northern part of Elam and formed the eastern boundary of Babylonia. The term means the ‘Nomad,’ or ‘Barbarous Peoples,’ and is thus the Babylonian equivalent of the Hebrew Goyyim, ‘Nations.’^[35] What the ‘Gentiles,’ or Goyyim, were to the Hebrews, or the ‘Barbarians’ to the Greeks, the Umman Manda were to the civilised population of Chaldæa. The fact that the king of Elam summons them to his help when he invades Babylonia 27implies that they acknowledged his suzerainty. It would seem, therefore, that the ‘Nations’ over which Tid’al is said to have ruled were the Kurdish tribes to the east of the Babylonian frontier.

Khammu-rabi eventually succeeded in overthrowing the king of Elam, in crushing his rival Eri-Aku and his Elamite allies, and in making himself master of an independent Babylonia, which was henceforth a united kingdom, with its centre and sovereign city at Babylon. Recent excavations have brought letters of his to light which were written to his faithful vassal Sin-idinnam, Sin-idinnam had been the king of Larsa whom Eri-Aku and his Elamite troops had driven from the city of his fathers, and he had found refuge and protection in the court of Khammu-rabi at Babylon. When the great war finally broke out, which ended in leaving Khammu-rabi sole monarch of Babylonia, Sin-idinnam rendered him active service, and after the conclusion of the struggle he was reinstated in his ancestral princedom. Khammu-rabi loaded him with other honours as well; and one of the letters which have been recovered refers to certain statues which were presented to him as a reward for his ‘valour on the day of Kudur-Laghghamar’s defeat.’ This was an Oriental anticipation of the statues which the Greek cities of a later age bestowed upon those they would honour.^[36]

28It has been suggested that the reverse sustained by Kudur-Laghghamar in Palestine at the hands of the ‘Amorites,’ under the leadership of ‘Abram the Hebrew,’ may have given the king of Babylon his opportunity for successfully revolting from his liege lord. If so, the Hebrew patriarch would have influenced the destinies of the country he had forsaken. What is more certain is that his victory gave him a commanding position in the country of his adoption. Syrian legend in after days made him a king in Damascus;^[37] and when he buys the rock-tomb of Machpelah, the owners of the land tell him that he is no ‘stranger and sojourner’ among them, but ‘a mighty prince,’ ‘a prince of Elohim.’ From henceforth the ‘Hebrew’ occupies a recognised place in ‘the land of the Amorites.’

The figure of Melchizedek, king of Salem, loomed large upon the imagination of later ages out of the mists that enveloped the history of Canaanitish Jerusalem. But the romance is now making way for sober history. The letters on clay tablets in the Babylonian language and writing, found at Tel el-Amarna in Upper Egypt, have come to our help. Several of them were sent to the Pharaoh from Ebed-Tob, king of Jerusalem, and they show that Jerusalem was already the dominant state of Southern Palestine. Its strong position made it a fortress of importance, and it was the capital of a territory which stretched away towards the desert of the South. Its name was already Jerusalem or Uru-Salim, ‘the city of Salim,’ the God of Peace, and the hieroglyphic texts of Egypt accordingly speak of it simply as Shalama or Salem, omitting the needless Uru, ‘city.’^[38]

29Ebed-Tob reiterates that he was not, like the other governors of Canaan, under Egyptian rule. They had been appointed to their offices by the Pharaoh, or had inherited them by descent from the older royal lines of the country whom the Egyptian Government had allowed to remain. He, on the contrary, was the friend and ally of the Egyptian king. His kingly dignity had not been derived from either father or mother, but from the ‘Mighty King,’ from the god, that is to say, whose temple stood on ‘the mountain of Jerusalem.’ He was, therefore, a priest-king, without father or mother, so far as his royal office was concerned.^[39]

That the king of Salem, the priest of the God of Peace, should have come forth from his city and its temple to welcome the conqueror when he returned in peace, was both natural and fitting. It was equally natural and fitting that he should bless the Hebrew in the name of the ‘Most High God’—the patron deity of Jerusalem, whom Ebed-Tob identifies with the Babylonian Ninip—and that Abram should in return have given him tithes of the spoil. From time immemorial, the esrâ or tithe had been exacted in Babylonia for the temples and their priests, and had been paid alike by prince and peasant. It passed to the 30West along with the other elements and institutions of Babylonian culture.^[40]

The destruction of the cities of the Vale of Siddim, which is represented as occurring not long after the retreat of the king of Elam, made a profound impression on the Western world. References are made to the catastrophe up to the latest days of Hebrew literature; and the mist caused by the evaporation of the salt on the surface of the Dead Sea was popularly supposed to be the smoke which hung eternally over the ruins of the doomed cities of the plain. The storm which burst from the heavens set fire to the naphtha springs that oozed through the soil, and houses and men alike were enveloped in a sheet of fire. Similar catastrophes have happened in our own time at Baku on the Caspian, where the petroleum, accidentally ignited, has blazed for days in columns of fire.

Ingenious Germans have connected with the destruction of Sodom and its sister cities a passage in the Latin writer Justin (xviii. 3. 2, 3), in which it is said that the Phœnicians were driven to the Canaanitish coast by an earthquake which took place in their original home near ‘the Assyrian lake.’ Instead of ‘Assyrian,’ some manuscripts read ‘Syrian,’ and the lake has accordingly been imagined to be the Dead Sea, and the earthquake to be the rain of fire which destroyed the cities of the plain.^[41] But there is no other instance in which the Dead Sea is called ‘the Syrian lake,’ supposing this to be the true reading, nor is there any trace of an earthquake in the catastrophe described in Genesis. Moreover, the unanimous voice of classical antiquity declared that the Phœnicians had come from the Persian Gulf, not from the valley of the Jordan, 31and their seafaring propensities were explained by the fact that they once lived in the islands of the Erythræan Sea. Whatever the ‘Assyrian lake’ may have been, it was not the ‘Salt Sea’ of the Old Testament.

The Israelites traced back to Abram the rite of circumcision which they practised. The rite, however, was not confined to Israel. So far as Western Asia is concerned, it seems to have been of African origin. It is to be found among most of the races and tribes of Africa, and in Egypt the institution was of immemorial antiquity. According to Herodotos (ii. 36), the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, and the Kolkhians alone observed it ‘from the beginning,’ the Phœnicians and Syrians of Palestine having learned it from the Egyptians, and the Cappadocians from the people of Kolkhis. But the knowledge of the world possessed by Herodotos was limited, and his anthropology is not profound. The practice is met with in various parts of the world; it owes its origin to considerations of chastity, its maintenance to sanitary reasons. It is true that Africa was peculiarly its home, and that it seems to have been common to the aboriginal tribes of that continent, but it is also true that it was known to aboriginal tribes in other parts of the globe among whom—so far as our evidence can tell us—the practice originated independently.^[42]

Whether it was originally a Semitic as well as an African rite, we do not at present know. We have as yet no certain evidence that it was practised among the Babylonians. Indeed, the fact that Abraham was not circumcised until after his arrival in Canaan would imply that it was not. Even in Canaan itself there were tribes, apart from the Philistine immigrants, to whom it was unknown, as we learn from the story of Hamor and Shechem (Gen. xxxiv. 14, sqq.). And though the inhabitants of Northern Arabia were circumcised 32in their thirteenth year, as we are told by Josephus, it is doubtful whether the same custom prevailed in the southern half of the peninsula. So far as Midian was concerned, we have express testimony (Exod. iv. 24-26, cf. ii. 19) that the rite was regarded as peculiar to the stranger from Egypt.

It seems probable, therefore, that Herodotos was right in declaring that circumcision had been introduced into Palestine by the Egyptians. Intercourse between Canaan and the Delta went back to the early days of Egyptian history, and it would not be surprising if Egyptian influences had found their way into Canaan at the same time. Canaanitish slaves were carried into the valley of the Nile, and doubtless Egyptian slaves were at times kidnapped into Canaan.

The circumcision of Abraham and his household may, consequently, have been in accordance with a custom which had already grown up among the Amoritish population around him. But whether this were the case or not, the rite received a new meaning and assumed a new form. It became the sign and seal of a religious covenant. Those who had been circumcised were thereby devoted to the God of Abraham and his descendants. Henceforth there was not only a division between the circumcised and the uncircumcised, there was also a division between those who had received the circumcision of Abraham and those who had not. It is noticeable that the narrative expressly includes among those who were thus outwardly dedicated to the God of Israel not only the ancestor of the Ishmaelite tribes of Northern Arabia, but also the foreign slaves who belonged to the household of the patriarch. They had left the home of their fathers, and his God accordingly had become theirs. The fact is paralleled by the law relating to another seal of the covenant between Israel and its God; the Sabbath had to be kept not only by the Israelite, but also by the ‘stranger’ within his gates.

A change of name accompanied the rite which the patriarch performed. The Babylonian Abram became the Palestinian Abraham. To the native of the old Oriental world the name 33was not merely the representation of a thing; it was, in a measure, the thing itself. Even Greek philosophy failed at first to distinguish between an object and its expression in speech. A thing was known only through its name, and in the name were to be found its qualities and its essence. A name which brought with it unlucky associations was itself the bringer of ill-luck, but the ill-luck would turn to good if once the name were changed. The belief has lingered on into our own times, and the change of the Cape of Storms into the Cape of Good Hope is an illustration of its influence. The name meant personality as well as a thing. The man himself was changed when his name was changed. Hence it was that the Canaanites or Karians, who settled in Egypt, and there became Egyptian citizens, at once assumed Egyptian names. They had left Canaan and Karia behind them, with the gods and the habits of their ancestors, and had adopted the religion and manners of another country. They had, as it were, stripped themselves of their old personality, and had clothed themselves with a new one. It was thus a new personality that was assumed by the Babylonian Abram when he became the Abraham of Western Asia. It cut him off, as it were, from the land of his birth, and gave him a new birth in the country of his adoption. The merchant-prince of Babylonia, who had overthrown the rearguard of the host of Chedor-laomer, and whose maid had borne to him the ancestor of the Ishmaelites, thus passed into the forefather and founder of the Israelitish race.

The etymology and meaning of the new name are unknown. It would seem that they had been forgotten even at the time when the book of Genesis was written. At all events, the explanation of the name given there (xvii. 5) is one of those plays upon words of which the Biblical writers, like Orientals generally, are so fond. ‘Ab-(ra)ham,’ it is said, is Ab-ham(ôn), ‘the father of a multitude,’ in total disregard of the second syllable of the name. It may be, however, that there was still a tradition that in raham we have a word which had a 34similar signification to that of hamôn, ‘a multitude,’ though the attempts that have been made to discover any word of the kind in the Semitic languages have hitherto been unsuccessful. We must be content with the fact that Ab-ram, ‘the exalted father,’ was transformed into the Israelitish Ab-raham.^[43]

The change of name was followed by the birth of Isaac and the expulsion of Ishmael from his father’s house. Closely allied in blood as the Ishmaelites of north-western Arabia were to the house of Israel, it was only in part that they shared in the covenant made with their common father. Circumcision indeed they also possessed, but to Israel alone was granted the Law. To Israel alone did God reveal Himself under His name of Yahveh.

The inscriptions of a later age, which have been found in the Ishmaelite territory, show that the language then spoken by the Ishmaelitish tribes was Aramaic rather than what we call Arabic.^[44] From the borders of Babylonia to the Sinaitic Peninsula, and as far north as the mountain-ranges of the Taurus, Aramaic dialects were used. How far the difference in language meant that the populations who spoke these Aramaic dialects differed also in blood from the other members of the Semitic family, we do not know, but it is probable that the difference in blood was not great. The Semitic family seems to have been as homogeneous in race as it was in 35speech, and the differences in speech were comparatively slight. In fact, the Semitic languages do not differ more from one another than the languages of modern Europe which claim descent from Latin, and it is probable that the speaker of an Aramaic dialect would not have had very great difficulty in making himself intelligible to the speakers of what we term Hebrew.

Hebrew was, as Isaiah tells us (xix. 18), ‘the language of Canaan.’ The fact became clear to European scholars as soon as the Phœnician inscriptions were deciphered. Between the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Phœnician of the older inhabitants of Canaan the differences are less than those between one English dialect and another. Chief among them is the absence in Phœnician of the Hebrew article and waw conversivum. But the idiom to which grammarians have given the latter name seems to have been an independent creation of Hebrew itself, and even in Hebrew it disappeared in the later stage of the language. The article is found in the so-called Lihyanian inscriptions of Northern Arabia,^[45] and we may regard it as one of the indications that the Israelites had been Bedâwin before they entered Palestine and made their way from the desert into the Promised Land.

The Tel el-Amarna tablets have carried the history of Canaanitish or Hebrew beyond the age of the Exodus. In some of the letters written from Palestine the writers have added the Canaanitish equivalents of certain Assyrian words and phrases. They show that from the pre-Mosaic epoch down to the period of the Exile the language changed but little; the words and phrases that have thus been preserved being substantially the same as those which we find in the pages of the Old Testament.^[46]

36The northern boundary between Canaanitish and Aramaic dialects was among the mountains of Gilead. This is made clear by the narrative of the covenant between Laban and Jacob. At Mizpah, the ‘Watch-tower,’ which guarded the approaches to the south, a cairn was raised, called Yegar-sahadutha in the language of Laban, Galeed in that of Jacob (Gen. xxxi. 47, 48). The two names alike signified the ‘heap of witnesses,’ but while the first was Aramaic, the second was Canaanitish. The fact that the names survived into later history shows that the line of demarcation between the two Semitic languages which they represent continued to remain in the same place.^[47]

Jacob, despite his long residence in Aram and his relationship to an Aramæan family, is nevertheless Canaanite in his language. It is a sign and proof how completely the ancestors of the Israelites had identified themselves with the country which their descendants were afterwards to possess. The Canaanitish history of Israel begins long before the days of Moses or Joshua; it already dates from the day when the Babylonian Abram became the Abraham of Canaan, and when the field of Machpelah was sold to him by the children of Heth.

It is true that Jacob—or it may be, Terah—is once called in the Old Testament (Deut. xxvi. 5) ‘a wandering Aramæan.’ But he was so only in a secondary sense. It was not as an Aramæan, but as a wanderer out of Aramaic lands, that the title is given him. Israel was closely connected with Aram and Harran, but it was a relationship only.

Discoveries recently made in Northern Syria by the German explorer, Dr. von Luschan, have thrown some light on the matter. At Sinjerli, twenty-five miles north-east of the Gulf of Antioch, and nearly midway between Yarpuz and Aintab, he has excavated the ruins of the capital of the ancient kingdom of Samâla, and found monuments which make 37mention of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser.^[48] Most of them, in fact, were erected by a prince who acknowledged the supremacy of the Assyrian monarch, and whose father’s name is met with in the annals of the latter sovereign. The inscriptions on them are in an Aramaic dialect; but the dialect is so largely mixed with Hebrew words and idioms as to have made scholars doubt at first whether it was not an Aramaised form of Hebrew rather than an Hebraised form of Aramaic. In any case, it is plain that the dialect was in close contact with a population which spoke ‘the language of Canaan.’ Far away to the north, therefore, in the heart of an Aramaic country, there must have been speakers of Hebrew or Canaanite. Nor is this all. Two or three miles from the ruins of Samâla are the ruins of another ancient town, the modern name of which is Girshin. Here, too, the German excavators have found an inscription of the same age as those of Samâla, and we may gather from it that Girshin stands on the site of a city which was the capital of the land of ‘Ya’di.’ In the Tel el-Amarna tablets, written in the century before the Exodus, Yaudâ are mentioned as living in the same part of the world.^[49] Now Yaudâ is also the Assyrian mode of spelling the name of the Jews, and it would accordingly seem that a tribe which bore a name similar to that of Judah existed in Northern Syria as far back as the Patriarchal age.^[50]

38All this is in singular harmony with the Scriptural narrative which tells us that a part of Terah’s family lingered at Harran, and that the wives of both Isaac and Jacob came from their Aramæan kindred in the north. There were Hebrews in Northern Syria as well as in Canaan, and Scripture and archæology are alike in agreement in testifying to the fact.

Even in Babylonia it may be that Abraham had been educated in ‘the language of Canaan.’ There were colonies of Amorite (or, as we should say, Canaanitish) merchants in Chaldæa who had special districts and privileges assigned to them by the Babylonian kings. Reference is not unfrequently made to them in the contracts of the Abrahamic age. The proper names, which sometimes make their appearance in deeds of sale or lease, or in legal suits in which the foreign merchants were involved, are Canaanitish and not Babylonian. Thus we find names like Ishmael and Abdiel, Jacob-el (Ya’qub-il), and Joseph-el (Yasup-il), and we even read of ‘the Amorite the son of Abi-ramu’ or Abram, who appears as a witness to a deed dated in the reign of the grandfather of Amraphel.

Israel thus stood in close relation to almost all the chief linguistic divisions of the Semitic world. Its first forefather had been born in the land where Babylonian—or Assyrian, as we usually term it—was spoken, and its contact with Aramaic had been early and intimate. Its desert wanderings had led it into a region into which the Bedâwin tribes of Central Arabia could make their way, and the Hebrew article seems to be a relic of its intercourse with them and the Arabic they spoke. But with all this contact with other Semitic tongues, Israel nevertheless remained true to that of the land of its destiny: the language of the Old Testament is the language which was spoken in Canaan before the days of Moses, the language of the inscriptions of Phœnicia and Carthage, the language of Hannibal as well as of Joshua.

If Israel was connected by language with Canaan, it was connected by blood as well as by language with Moab, and 39Ammon, and Edom. In fact, Edom and Israel were brothers. While the relationship with Moab and Ammon was comparatively distant, the relationship with Edom was peculiarly close. The fact was never forgotten, and in the later days of Jewish history the unbrotherly conduct of Edom caused a bitterness of feeling towards it on the part of the Jews such as no other Gentiles were able to excite.

Moab and Ammon were the children of Lot, and had possessed themselves of the mountain and fertile plains on the east side of the Dead Sea and southern course of the Jordan long before Israel had entered into its inheritance, or even Edom had carved out a possession for itself with the sword. They were accused of being of incestuous origin, and it was related how the ancestors of each had been born in hiding and in the wild solitude of a cave. Moab was the eldest, Ben-Ammi, ‘the Ammonite,’ being the younger of the two.

The name of Moab (or Muab) is engraved among the conquests of the Egyptian Pharaoh, Ramses II., on the base of one of the statues which stand before the northern entrance of the temple of Luxor. Ammi, whose ‘son’ the ancestor of the Ammonites was called, was the supreme God of Ammon, standing to the Ammonites in the same relation that Chemosh stood to Moab, or Yahveh to Israel. Ammon, indeed, is but another form of Ammi. The god was widely worshipped, as we may learn from the proper names into which his own name enters. Thus the Old Testament knows of Ammiel, ‘Ammi is god’; of Ammi-shaddai, ‘Ammi is the Almighty’; and of Ammi-nadab, ‘Ammi is noble.’ Ammi-nadab was king of Ammon in the time of the Assyrian king Assur-bani-pal; the early Minæan inscriptions of Southern Arabia contain names like Ammi-zadoq and Ammi-zadiqa, ‘Ammi is righteous,’ as well as Ammi-karib and Ammi-anshi; while among the kings of the south Arabian dynasty which ruled over Babylonia in the age of Abraham we find Ammi-zadoq, or Ammu-zadoq and Ammi-dhitana; and the Kadmonite chieftain east of the Jordan, with whom the Egyptian fugitive Sinuhit found a home in the 40time of the twelfth dynasty, bore the name of Ammi-anshi.^[51] Balaam the seer, moreover, was summoned by the king of Moab from his city of Pethor, at the junction of the Euphrates and the Sajur, in ‘the land of the children of Ammo,’—for such is the correct translation of the Hebrew text. It may not be an accident that one who thus belonged to the ‘Beni-Ammo,’ or ‘Ammonites’ of the north, should have been called to the country which bordered on that of the Beni-Ammi, or Ammonites of the south.^[52]

A few miles to the north of Pethor was Carchemish, now Jerablûs, which was destined to become one of the most important strongholds of the Hittite tribes. The Semites explained the name as ‘the fortified wall of Chemosh’;^[53] and whether this etymology were true or not, at all events it indicates a belief that the worship of Chemosh extended 41as far northward into Aram as did the worship of Ammi. Chemosh was the national god of Moab. Like Yahveh of Israel and Assur in Assyria, he had neither wife nor children; and on the Moabite Stone even the Babylonian goddess Ashtar, whose cult had been carried to the West, is identified with him. She ceases to have any independent existence or sex of her own, and is absorbed into the one supreme deity of Moabite faith. It is probable that Ammi also was similarly conceived of as standing alone in jealous isolation, supreme over all other gods, and having no consort with whom to share his power.

Moab and Ammon were alike intruders in the lands which subsequently bore their names. The older inhabitants of Moab were known as the Emim, ‘a people great and many and tall, as the Anakim, which also were accounted giants.’ Ammon too had been ‘accounted a land of giants: giants dwelt therein in old time, and the Ammonites call them Zamzummim.’ The word rendered ‘giants’ in the Authorised Version is Rephaim; and it is very possible that a trace of it survives in the name On-Repha, ‘On of the giant,’ the Raphon or Raphana of classical geography, which is coupled by the Egyptian conqueror Thothmes III. with Astartu or Ashteroth-Karnaim.^[54] When Chedor-laomer made his campaign in Canaan the Rephaim were still living at Ashteroth-Karnaim, and the ‘Zuzim’ or Zamzummim in ‘Ham.’ The name of the latter seems to occur in the inscriptions of the kings of Ur, who reigned some centuries before the birth of Abraham; they mention hostile expeditions against the land of Zavzala or the Zuzim; and a Babylonian high-priest who owned allegiance to one of them brought blocks of limestone for his temples and palace from the same district, which he tells us was situated ‘in the mountains of the Amorites.’^[55]

42Whether or not the Emim and Zamzummim were Amorite tribes, we cannot tell. The physical characteristics ascribed to them in the Old Testament would, however, seem to indicate that such was the case. Moreover, the Amorites had at one time been the dominant population, not only in Palestine itself, but also in the country east of the Jordan as well as in the Syrian districts to the north. When the Babylonians first became acquainted with Western Asia in the fifth or fourth millennium before the Christian era, the inhabitants of Syria were mainly of the Amorite race. Syria, accordingly, and more especially that part of it which is known to us as Palestine, was called in the old agglutinative language of Chaldæa ‘the land of Martu’ or ‘the Amorite,’ a word which has survived in the book of Genesis under the form of Moreh.^[56] When the older language of Chaldæa made way for Semitic Babylonian, Martu became Amurru, and Hadad, the supreme Baal or sun-god of Canaan, became known as ‘Amurru,’ ‘the Amorite.’ By the Egyptians the Amorites were termed Amur; and, as has been already stated,^[57] the Egyptian artists have shown us that they were a fair-skinned people, with blue eyes and reddish hair; that they were also tall and handsome, and wore short and pointed beards. In fact, they resembled in features the Libyans of Northern Africa, whose modern descendants—the Kabyles of Algeria—offer such a striking likeness to the golden-haired Kelt. The Amorite type may still be seen in its purity among the Arabs of the El-Arîsh desert, who inhabit the district between the frontiers of Palestine and Egypt: many of the latter, as we see them to-day, might well have sat for the portraits of the Amorites depicted on the walls of the old Egyptian temples and tombs. It would seem that the Amorite race, fair and tall and energetic, once extended along the northern coast of Africa into Asia itself, where they occupied the larger part of Southern Syria. There they have left behind them cromlechs and dolmens which remind us of those of our own islands. Indeed, if the 43Amorite were the eastern branch of the Libyan race, it is probable that he could claim kindred with the so-called red Kelt of Britain. The physiological characteristics of the Libyan and fair-haired Kelt are similar; and many anthropologists assume the existence of a Libyo-Keltic or ‘Eurafrican’ family, which has spread northward through Spain and the western side of France into the British Isles.^[58]

The Emim and Zamzummim, accordingly, whom the descendants of Lot partly expelled, partly absorbed, may have been of Amorite origin, and connected in race with a portion of the population of our own country. At all events, when the Israelites entered Canaan, the Amorites were already settled on the eastern side of the Jordan. At that time the land was divided between the Amalekites or Bedâwin of the desert to the south, the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites ‘in the mountains,’ and the Canaanites on the coast of the Mediterranean and in the valley of the Jordan (Numb. xiii. 29). As might have been expected in the case of a fair-skinned people, the Amorites needed the bracing air of the mountains in order to hold their own against the other populations of the country; in the hot plains their vigour was in danger of being lost.

The Egyptian rule, which the Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties had maintained eastward of the Jordan, passed away with the fall of the Egyptian empire, and its place was taken by the Amorite kingdoms of Sihon and Og. Sihon had overthrown the Moabites in battle, and had wrested their territory from them as far south as the Arnon (Numb. xxi. 26). They had been driven out of their cities into the barren mountains which overlooked the Dead Sea. A fragment of the Amorite Song of Triumph which recorded the conquest has been preserved to us. ‘Come unto Heshbon,’ it said, ‘let the city of Sihon be built and fortified. 44For a fire has gone forth from Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon; it hath consumed Ar of Moab, and the Baalim of the high places of Arnon. Woe to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh: [Chemosh] hath given his sons that escaped [the battle], and his daughters, into captivity unto Sihon king of the Amorites’ (Numb. xxi. 27-29).

The southern half of Ammon also, as far north as the Jabbok, was in Amorite hands. Here, however, the Ammonites had strongly fortified their ‘border’ (Numb. xxi. 24), so that neither Sihon himself, nor his Israelitish conquerors, succeeded in passing it. But Rabbah, ‘the city of waters,’ the future capital of Ammon, must have been held by the Amorites, and the two intrusive populations of Ammon and Moab were separated from one another by the Amorite conquest.

If the older inhabitants of the country were Amorite by race, the kingdom of Sihon will have represented an Amorite reaction against the descendants of Lot. But we must remember that the Babylonians had given the name of ‘Amorite’ to all the populations of Palestine and the adjoining districts, whether they were Amorites in blood or not. The old Babylonian usage is followed in several passages of the Pentateuch, and points to their origin in those pre-Mosaic days when Babylonian influence was still dominant in Western Asia. Thus in Gen. xv. 16, God declares to Abraham that ‘the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full,’ and Jacob reminded his sons (Gen. xlviii. 22) that he had wrested Shechem ‘out of the hand of the Amorite’ with his sword and bow. Perhaps the emphatic statement that ‘the Canaanite was then in the land,’ which we read in Gen. xii. 6, is due to the previous mention of the terebinth of Moreh’ or Martu, Martu being the primitive Babylonian equivalent of the later ‘Amorite.’ The terebinth, indeed, was in the country of the Amorites, but the country was already inhabited by Canaanitish tribes.^[59]

45We cannot, then, be certain that the aboriginal peoples of Moab and Ammon were actually of the Amorite race. They were, it is true, included by the Babylonians under the common name of ‘Amorites,’ but this was because all the rest of the population of Southern Syria was known under the same title. The fact, however, that the Hebrew writers have described them as tall, like the Anakim, and that popular tradition should have spoken of them as Rephaim or giants, is in favour of their having been really of Amorite descent. In this case we may see in them the easternmost representatives of the blond race, and the builders of the cromlechs with which the hillsides of Moab are covered.

Southward of Moab came other tribes which, like the Ishmaelites, were said to have sprung directly from Abraham himself. These were the Midianites and the merchant tribes of Sheba and Dedan, who possessed stations on the great desert road that led from the spice-bearing regions of Southern Arabia to the borders of Canaan. They claimed to be the descendants of Keturah, or ‘Incence,’ the second wife of the Hebrew patriarch, after Sarah’s death. Another genealogy (Gen. x. 7) placed Sheba and Dedan in the extreme south of the Arabian peninsula, among the children of Cush. Both genealogies, however, are correct. Sheba was the kingdom of the Sabæans, whose centre was in Southern Arabia, but whose power and commerce extended far to the north. Their trading settlements and garrisons were to be found in the immediate neighbourhood of Midian, at Tema, the modern Teimah, and elsewhere.^[60] If Professor Hommel is right in identifying Dedan with Tidanum, one of the names by which Palestine was known in early days to the natives of Babylonia, 46it would seem that the Dedanites also had become a leading people on the frontiers of Canaan. At all events, it is clear that Abraham was claimed as an ancestor by the tribes of Western Arabia from its northern to its southern extremity, by the descendants of Keturah on the western coast and caravan-road, as well as by the Ishmaelites further to the east. They represented the trading and more cultured population of the peninsula as opposed to the wild Amalekites or Bedâwin hordes, who had their home among the mountains of Seir and the desert south of Palestine. The connection between Midian and Israel, which found expression in a common ancestry, was reasserted in later days when the great legislator of Israel fled to Midian and married the daughter of its high-priest.

How nearly that connection had been lost through the death of the forefather of the Israelitish people was recorded in the story of the sacrifice of Isaac. A voice came to Abraham, which he believed to be divine, bidding him offer ‘for a burnt-offering’ the son of his old age, the heir of the covenant which had been made with him. It was a form of sacrifice only too well known in Canaan. In time of pestilence or trouble the parent was called upon to sacrifice to Baal that which was dearest and nearest to him, his firstborn or his only son. The gods themselves had set the example. Once when a plague had fallen upon the land, El had clothed Yeud, his only son, in royal purple, and on one of the high-places of Palestine had offered him up to the offended deities.^[61] The 47doctrine of vicarious sacrifice was deeply enrooted in the minds of the Canaanitish people. But it needed to be a sacrifice which cost the offerer almost as much as his own life. The fruit of his own body could alone wipe away the sin of his soul. And the sacrifice had to be by fire. Only through that purifying element could the stains of sin and impurity be obliterated, and the offering made acceptable to heaven.

The practice, horrible as it seems to us, was nevertheless founded on a truth. The victim, if he were to be accepted, must be the most precious that the offerer could present. The gods did not require that which cost him nothing. It needed to be the most costly that could be given; it needed to be also, in the words of the prophet, the fruit of the sinner’s own body. Nothing else would suffice: the gods demanded the firstborn son, still more the only son. In no other way could Baal be satisfied that the sinner had repented of his guilt or had made to him an offering which was of equal value to his own life.

The firstborn of all animals, of beasts as well as of men, was owed to the gods. The belief was not confined to the Canaanites. We find traces of it in Babylonian literature, and all the denunciations of the prophets before the Exile failed to eradicate it from the mind of the Jew. Up to the closing days of the Jewish monarchy, the valley of the sons of Hinnom was defiled with the smoke of the sacrifices wherein, as it is euphemistically said, the kings and people of Jerusalem made their children to pass through the fire. The belief, indeed, was consecrated by the Mosaic law itself. Human sacrifice, it is true, was forbidden, but the firstborn, nevertheless, had to be redeemed (Exod. xxxiv. 20). Like the firstfruits and the firstborn of beasts, Yahveh had declared that the firstborn of the sons of Israel also belonged to Him (Exod. xxii. 29). He could claim them, and it was of His own freewill that He waived the claim. And along with this assertion of His claim to the firstborn went the doctrine of vicarious punishment. 48It was not the firstborn only in whose case a substitution was allowed: once a year the sins of the whole people were laid upon the head of the scapegoat, which was then driven like an evil spirit into the wilderness. The idea of vicarious punishment, which lies at the foundation of historical Christianity, had already found expression in the Mosaic law.

The sacrifice of the firstborn was thus part of a larger conception behind which there lay a profound truth. The sins of the father were visited upon the child in more senses than one; the child, in fact, could become an expiation for them, and divert to himself the anger of the gods. Experience had shown how often the son must suffer for the deeds of the parent, and the inference was drawn that if that suffering were voluntarily offered to heaven by the parent, he would receive all the benefits that flowed from it. Moreover, the gods had a right to the firstborn, if they chose to exercise it; and in offering the firstborn, accordingly, man was only giving back to them what was strictly their own.

The heathenism of the Mosaic age went no further. Israel was the first to learn that the law of the substitution of the firstborn for the sins of the father was subordinate to a higher and more general law—that of vicarious punishment. As the firstborn of men could be substituted for the parent, so, too, could a lower animal, or the price of a lower animal, be substituted for the firstborn of men. It was not the sacrifice which the God of Israel demanded, but the spirit of sacrifice; not the blood of bulls and goats, or even men, but obedience and readiness to give up all that was dearest and best at the command of God.

The story of the sacrifice of Isaac was a practical illustration of the lesson. Abraham was called upon to slay with his own hand his only child, the son through whom he had believed that he would become the ancestor of a mighty nation. He was summoned to lead him to one of those high-places of Canaan where the deity seemed nearer to the 49worshipper than in the plain below, and there, like the Phœnician god El, to offer him up to his God. We are told how he set forth from Beer-sheba, on the borders of the desert, and on the third day reached the sacred mountain on whose summit the Canaanitish rite was to be celebrated. It was in ‘the land of Moriah,’ according to the reading of the Hebrew text, a name which the chronicler (2 Chron. iii. 1) transfers to the temple-mount at Jerusalem. But the Septuagint changes the name in the books of Chronicles into that of ‘the mountain of Amoria’ or the Amorites; while in Genesis the Greek translators must have read Moreh, since the Hebrew word is rendered by ‘Highlands.’ Moreh is the Babylonian Martu, the land of the Amorites, so that we need not be surprised at finding the Syriac version boldly substituting ‘Amorites’ for the Masoretic ‘Moriah.’

In any case, the belief that the scene of Abraham’s sacrifice was the spot whereon the Jewish temple afterwards stood went back to an early date. When the book of Genesis assumed its present form it had already become fixed in the Jewish mind. This is clear from the proverb quoted to explain the name of Yahveh-yireh. ‘To this day,’ we are told, it was said: ‘In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.’ For the Jew there was but one ‘mount of the Lord,’ that mountain whereon Yahveh revealed Himself above the cherubim of the ark. It was ‘the hill of God,’ wherein He desired to dwell (Ps. lxviii. 15), the seat of the sanctuary of Yahveh the God of Israel. When the Samaritans set up on Gerizim their rival temple to that of Jerusalem, it was necessary that the scene of the sacrifice of the Hebrew patriarch should be transferred to the new site. It was a proof how firm was the conviction that the temple-mount had been consecrated to the sacrifice of the firstborn by the great ancestor of the Israelitish family. The spot whereon the victims of the Jewish ritual were offered up was the very spot to which Abraham had been led by God that he might offer there the terrible sacrifice of his only son. Its name had been given to it by Abraham, and this name 50found its explanation in a saying that was current at Jerusalem about the temple-mount.

The actual meaning of the name is not certain, nor indeed is the original signification of the proverb itself. Already in the time of the Septuagint translation the meaning of the latter was doubtful, and the Greek translators have made the divine name the subject of the verb, reading, ‘In the mountain the Lord was seen.’ But the fact that the Chronicler calls the temple-mount Moriah shows that such a rendering was not accepted in Jerusalem.

It may be that the name ‘mount of the Lord’ goes back, at all events in substance, to patriarchal times. Among the places in Southern Palestine conquered by the Egyptian Pharaoh, Thothmes III., of the eighteenth dynasty, and recorded on the temple walls of Karnak, is Har-el, ‘the mountain of God.’^[62] The names found in immediate connection with Har-el indicate that its site is to be sought in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem; and as the name of Jerusalem itself does not occur in the Pharaoh’s list of his conquests, it is probable that we are to see in it the future capital of Judah. As we now know from the Tel el-Amarna tablets, Jerusalem was an important city of Canaan long before the Mosaic age; it was, moreover, the centre of a district which had been conquered by the Egyptians, and its ruler was a vassal of the Egyptian monarch. It is therefore difficult to account for the omission of any reference to it in the catalogue of the conquests of the Pharaoh except upon the supposition that it is really mentioned among them, though under another name.

The distance that separates Jerusalem from Beer-sheba would correspond with the three days’ journey of Abraham to the destined place of sacrifice. It was on the third day that Abraham lifted up his eyes ‘and saw the place afar off.’ The main, in fact, the only, argument of any weight that has been urged against the identification is the fact that the place of sacrifice seems to have been a desert spot. No spectators 51are mentioned as present, and close to it was a thicket in which a ram was caught by the horns. How can such solitude, it is asked, be reconciled with the existence of a city in the same spot? How can the deserted high-place whereon the patriarch raised the altar of sacrifice for his son be identical with the fortress-city of which Melchizedek was king?

At first sight the difficulty seems overwhelming. But we must remember that nothing is said in the narrative about the place being desert and remote from men, nor even that it was not within the walls of a city. And we must further remember that the temple of Solomon itself was built on what had been the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite. Before the age of Solomon, therefore, the place must have been open and free from buildings; it must, too, have been a level platform of rock on the summit of the hill where the winds could freely play and scatter the chaff when the grain was threshed. Such open spaces are not infrequent in Oriental cities, and the visitor sometimes finds himself suddenly emerging out of close and crowded lanes into a growth of rank brushwood and weeds.

It is true that in the books of Samuel, where we are told how the threshing-floor of the Jebusite came to be chosen as the site of the temple, no allusion is made to Abraham’s sacrifice. Another reason is assigned for the choice of the spot. But Oriental modes of writing history are not the same as ours, and the so-called argument from silence is worthless when applied to them. Archæological discovery has shown, time after time, that facts and references are passed over in silence by the writers of ancient Oriental history, not because the writers did not know them, but because their conception of history was different from ours.

Mount Moriah, then, may well have been the scene of that temptation of Abraham when, in accordance with the fierce ritual of Syria, he believed himself called upon to offer up in sacrifice his only son. At all events, the belief that it was so 52can be traced back to an early date among the Jews. The very fact that the Samaritans transported the place of sacrifice to Mount Gerizim proves that it had already been associated with the site of the temple, and the transference of the site was necessary in support of the claim that the true centre of Hebrew worship was at Samaria and not in Jerusalem.

Light has been cast on the substitution of a ram for the human victim by an acute observation of M. Clermont-Ganneau.^[63] We know that human sacrifice occupied a prominent place in the ritual of Phœnicia and Carthage; and yet in the so-called sacrificial tariffs which have been discovered at Carthage and Marseilles, and in which the price is stated of each of the offerings demanded by the gods, there is absolute silence in regard to it. The place of the human victim is taken by the ayîl, the ‘ram’ of the book of Genesis.^[64] The tariffs of Carthage and Marseilles belong to that later period of Phœnician religion, when contact with the Greeks had introduced Western ideas of the value of human life, and a truer conception of what the gods required. The merchants of Carthage had learned that Baal would be satisfied with a victim less costly than man, and would accept instead of him the blood of rams.

The lesson which the Carthaginians learned from contact with the Greeks had been taught the ancestors of the Hebrews by the Lord. The Law and the Prophets alike protested against the old belief, hard as it was to eradicate it from the Semitic mind. The sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter stands alone, even in the troublous period of the Judges; the sacrifice of his eldest son by the king of Moab (2 Kings iii. 27), though it stayed the Israelitish attack, was the act of one who did not acknowledge Yahveh of Israel as his God; and the Jewish children who were burnt in the fire to Moloch were offered by renegades from the national faith. Israelitish law and history bear upon them the traces of the 53old Semitic custom, but they are traces only. The story of Abraham’s sacrifice is an antitype of the future history of the religion of Israel. The firstborn, indeed, belonged to Yahveh, if He chose to claim them; but, unlike the gods of the heathen, He did not claim them when they were the firstborn of man.

Once again we have a picture of Abraham; but this time it is not as the shêkh who conforms to the beliefs and practices of Canaan, but as a foreign prince who acquires land in the country of his adoption. Sarah is dead, and Abraham accordingly buys a field at Machpelah in the close neighbourhood of Hebron. The field included a portion of the limestone cliff which overlooked the city, and was pierced then, as now, by numerous cavities, partly natural, partly excavated by the hand of man. They were the burying-places of the inhabitants of the town, the chambered tombs in which the dead were laid to rest. That Abraham should choose Hebron as the future home and resting-place of his family was perhaps natural. It was here that he had lived when he first came, as an immigrant, into ‘the land of the Amorites’; it was here that he had been confederate with its Amorite chieftains, and had led his forces against the invading host of the king of Elam. Moreover, Hebron was one of the old centres of Canaan. It had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt (Numb. xiii. 22), perhaps in the age when the Hyksos kings first conquered Egypt and rebuilt Zoan, making it the capital of their new kingdom. The sanctuary of Hebron rivalled that of Jerusalem in sanctity and fame, at all events in the years immediately succeeding the Israelitish conquest, and it was at Hebron that David first established his power and his son Absalom matured his rebellion.

In the age of Abraham the city had not yet received its later name of Hebron, the ‘Confederacy.’ It was still known as Kirjath-Arba, and the district in which it stood was that of Mamre. Amorites and Hittites dwelt there side by side. Arba, we are told, was ‘a great man among the Amorite Anakim’ 54(Josh. xiv. 15), but it was from ‘the sons of Heth’ that the field of Machpelah was bought.

Critics have raised the question who these Hittites of Southern Palestine may have been. It has been asserted that they are the invention of a later Hebrew writer, and that the Hittites of Northern Syria were never settled in the south of Canaan. On the other hand, the veracity of the Hebrew record has been admitted, but the identity of ‘the sons of Heth’ with the great Hittite tribes of the north has been denied.

The critics, however, have no grounds for their scepticism. The book of Genesis does not stand alone in testifying to the existence of Hittites in Southern Palestine. The prophet Ezekiel does the same. He too tells us that the origin of Jerusalem was partly Amorite, partly Hittite. Indeed, throughout the Pentateuch it is assumed that Hittites and Amorites were mingled together in the mountainous parts of the country. ‘The Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites,’ it is said in the book of Numbers (xiii. 29), ‘dwell in the mountains,’ and the same combination of names in the same order is found in the geographical table of Genesis (x. 15, 16). Between these Hittites and the Hittites of the north no distinction is made in the Old Testament. ‘The land of the Hittites,’ mentioned in Judg. i. 26, into which the Canaanite betrayer of Beth-el made his way, was in the north, like the Hittite kingdoms whose princes are referred to in 2 Kings vii. 6.

Thanks to archæological discovery, we now know a good deal about these Hittites of Northern Syria. Their name is found on the monuments of Egypt, of Assyria, and of Armenia, and they are mentioned in Babylonian tablets which go back to the age of Abraham. Cappadocia was their earliest home; from hence they descended on the possessions of the Aramæans and established their power as far south as the Lake of Homs. The cuneiform inscriptions of Armenia in the ninth century B.C. describe them as on the Upper Euphrates in the neighbourhood of Malatiyeh, and the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser 55I. (B.C. 1100) tells us that Carchemish was one of their capitals. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets we hear of their growing power on the northern frontier of the Egyptian empire, of their intrigues with the Amorites and the people of Canaan, and of their steady advance to the south. Ramses II., the Pharaoh of the Oppression, after twenty years of warfare, was glad to conclude peace on equal terms with ‘the great king of the Hittites.’ The Hittite capital was already so near the northern border of Palestine as Kadesh on the Orontes ‘in the land of the Amorites.’ Here the Hittite monarch gathered together his vassals and allies from Syria and Asia Minor; even the distant Lycians and Dardanians came at his call.

The Egyptian artists have left us portraits of the Hittite race. Their features and dress were alike peculiar, and both reappear without change on certain monuments which have been found in Asia Minor and Syria, thus fixing the character of the latter beyond dispute. The monuments are covered with a still undeciphered system of hieroglyphic writing, and among the hieroglyphs are numerous human heads with the strange profile of the Hittite face. The nose and upper jaw protrude, the forehead is high and receding, the cheeks smooth, while we learn from the paintings of Egypt that the skin was yellow and the hair and the eyes were black. The hair was gathered together in a kind of ‘pig-tail,’ and the feet were shod with the shoes of mountaineers, the toes of which rose upwards into a point.^[65]

Why should not a body of Hittites have settled in Southern Palestine, and there have been, as it were, interlocked with the older Amorite inhabitants, as they were according to the testimony of the Egyptian inscriptions at Kadesh on the Lake of Homs? Indeed, there is indirect evidence that such was really the case.

Thothmes III., who conquered Syria for the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, tells us that he received tribute from the king of ‘the greater Hittite land.’ There was then a lesser 56Hittite land; and as the ‘greater Hittite land’ was in the north, it is reasonable to look for the lesser land in the south. Half a century later, at a time when the Tel el-Amarna correspondence was being carried on, the Hittites were actively interfering in the internal politics of Canaan; and in one of the bas-reliefs of Ramses II. at Karnak the vanquished population of Ashkelon—in the near neighbourhood of Hebron—is represented with the peculiar Hittite type of face.^[66] At a still earlier date, when the Assyrians first became acquainted with Western Asia, the dominant people there were the Hittites. In the Assyrian inscriptions, accordingly, the whole of Syria, including Palestine, came to be known as ‘the land of the Hittites.’ Shalmaneser II. even speaks of Ahab of Israel and Baasha of Ammon as ‘Hittite’ kings.^[67] ‘The land of the Hittites’ in the Assyrian texts thus corresponds with the ‘land of the Amorites’ in the texts of Babylonia. Just as Canaan was ‘the land of the Amorites’ to the Babylonian of the age of Abraham, so too it was ‘the land of the Hittites’ to the Assyrian of the age of Moses. Before Assyria had become acquainted with the shores of the Mediterranean, the Hittites had taken the place of the Amorites and become the leading power in the West.

There is, therefore, nothing antecedently improbable in the existence in Southern Palestine of Hittites of the genuine northern stock. But the name may also be due to the Assyrian use of it at the time when the narrative in the book of Genesis was written. The use of the term ‘Amorite’ in several passages of the Pentateuch is certainly of Babylonian origin, and takes us back to the age when all the natives of Palestine were alike included in it; it may be that the ‘Hittites’ of Hebron and Jerusalem owe their title to a similar adoption of a foreign term. If so, the Amorites and 57Hittites were equally one people; but whereas the name of ‘Amorite’ comes from Babylonia and indicates an earlier date for the sources of the narrative in which it occurs, the name of ‘Hittite’ points to Assyria and the Assyrian epoch of Asiatic history.

Against this is the Babylonian colouring of the story of Abraham’s dealings with the children of Heth. During the last few years thousands of contract-tablets have been discovered in Babylonia which belong to the age of Abraham or to a still earlier period. And these tablets show that in the account of the purchase of the field of Machpelah we have a faithful picture of such transactions as they were conducted at the time in the cities of Babylonia. It reads, in fact, like one of the cuneiform documents which have been unearthed from Babylonian soil. It is conformed to the law and procedure of Babylonia as they were in the patriarchal age. At a later date the law and procedure were altered, and a narrative in which they are embodied must therefore go back to a pre-Mosaic antiquity. It must belong to the Babylonian and not to the Assyrian epoch.

That the law and custom of Babylonia should have prevailed in Canaan is no longer surprising. The same contract-tablets which have revealed to us the commercial and social life of primitive Chaldæa have also shown us that colonies of ‘Amorite’ or Canaanitish merchants were settled in Babylonia, where they enjoyed numerous rights and privileges, and could acquire land and other property. There were special districts called ‘Amorite’ allotted to them, one of which was just outside the walls of the city of Sippara. They had judges of their own, and where disputes arose between themselves and the native Babylonians the case was tried before both the ‘Amorite’ and the native courts. These foreign settlers could act as witnesses in trials that concerned only Babylonians, and could even rise to high offices of state. It must be remembered, however, that the Babylonian kings claimed to be kings also of ‘the land of the Amorites,’ and that consequently the 58natives of Canaan were as much subjects of the rulers of Chaldæa as the Babylonians themselves.

Through the Canaanitish colonies in Babylonia a knowledge of Babylonian law was necessarily communicated to the commercial world of the West. Moreover, Babylonian rule brought with it Babylonian culture and law as well. The ‘Amorites’ when the Babylonians first met with them were doubtless in a semi-barbarous condition, and their subsequent culture, as we now know, was wholly Babylonian. A very important part of this culture, at all events in the eyes of the trading world, was the law of Babylonia, more especially in its relation to contracts. That the purchase of the field of Machpelah should have been conducted with all the formalities to which Abraham had been accustomed in his Chaldæan home, is consequently what archæological discovery has informed us ought to have been the case.

A simple form of contract for the sale and purchase of landed property in Babylonia is to be found in one that was drawn up in the reign of Eri-Aku or Arioch. It is written in Sumerian, the old legal language of Chaldæa, as Latin was the legal language of Europe in the Middle Ages, and runs as follows:—‘One and five-sixths sar^[68] of a terrace with a house upon it, bounded on three sides by the house of Abil-Sin, and on the fourth side by the street, has been purchased by Sin-uzilli the son of Tsili-Istar from Sin-illatsu the son of Nannar-arabit: 2-½ shekels of silver he has weighed as its full price. In days to come Sin-illatsu shall never make any claim in regard to the house or dispute the title. The (contracting parties) have sworn by the names of Sin, Samas, and king Eri-Aku. Witnessed by Abu-ilisu the son of Tsili-Istar, Abil-Sin the son of Uruki-bansum, Nur-Amurri the son of Abi-idinnam, Ibku-Urra, 59son of Nabi-ilisu, and Sin-semê his brother. The seals of the witnesses (are attached).’^[69]

Still more insight into the character and procedure of Babylonian commercial law is given by the record of a case of disputed property which came before the judges in the reign of Khammu-rabi or Amraphel. The following is a translation of it:—‘Concerning the garden of Sin-magir which Naid-Amurri bought for silver, but to which Ilu-bani laid claim on the ground that he had bred horses there. They went before the judges, and the judges took them to the gate of the goddess Nin-Martu (the mistress of the land of the Amorites), and to the judges of the gate of Nin-Martu Ilu-bani thus declared in the gate of Nin-Martu: I am indeed the son of Sin-magir; he adopted me as his son; the sealed documents (recording the fact) he never destroyed. Thus he declared, and under (king) Eri-Aku they adjudged the garden and house to Ilu-bani. Then came Sin-mubalidh and claimed the garden of Ilu-bani; so they went before the judges, and the judges (said): To us and the elders they have been taken, and must stand in the gate of the gods Merodach, Sussa, Sin, Khusa, and Nin-Martu the daughter of Merodach ... and the elders who have already appeared in the case of Naid-Amurri have heard Ilu-bani declare in the gate of Nin-Martu that “I am indeed the son (of Sin-magir)”; accordingly, they adjudged the garden and house to Ilu-bani. Sin-mubalidh cannot come again and make a claim. Oaths have been sworn by the names of Sin, Samas, Merodach, and king Khammu-rabi. Witnessed by Sin-imguranni the noble, Elilka-Sin, Abil-irzitim, Ubarrum, Zanbil-arad-Sin, Akhiya, Bel-dugul (?), Samas-bani the son of Abid-rakhas, Zanik-pisu, Izkur-Ea the major-domo, and Bau-ila. The seals of the witnesses (are attached). The 4th day of the month Tammuz, 60the year when Khammu-rabi the king offered prayers to Tasmit.’^[70]

It is needless to quote other documents of a similar nature, unless it be to add that when a field or garden is sold, the palms and other trees planted in it are carefully specified. So they were also in the case of the field of Machpelah. Here, too, the transaction took place before the ‘elders’ of the city, at ‘the gate’ through which the people entered, and it was duly witnessed by ‘the children of Heth.’^[71] The fact that ‘a stranger and a sojourner’ could thus acquire landed property and hand it down to his descendants was in strict accordance with Babylonian law. As the Canaanite in Babylonia could buy land and leave it to his children, so too the Babylonian in Canaan could do the same. Even the technical words used in recording the deed of sale are of Babylonian origin. The shekel is the Babylonian siqlu, and the Babylonian was the first who spoke of ‘weighing silver’ in the sense of ‘paying money.’^[72] The statement that the shekels were ‘current with the merchant’ takes us back to those Babylonian ‘merchants’ who played so great a part in the early Babylonian world. It was for them that Dungi, king of Ur, long before the birth of Abraham, had fixed the monetary standard which remained in use down to the later days of the Chaldæan monarchy. He had determined by law the weight and value of the maneh, of which the sixtieth part was a shekel, and only those manehs and shekels which conformed to it could be accepted by the Babylonian trader. The words of Genesis are a curious indication of the period of society to which they must belong.^[73]

61There was evolution in Babylonian law as in the law of all other countries; and though the early contracts remained a model for those of a later epoch, their style and form underwent change. The Assyrian and later Babylonian contracts resemble them, it is true, in their main outlines; but they have become more complicated, and the older phraseology is altered in many respects. The ‘elders’ no longer appear as witnesses; it is no longer needful to try cases of disputed title at the various gates of the city; and it is questionable whether foreigners could claim the same rights in regard to possessions in land that they did in the days of Amraphel and Arioch. The sale of the field of Machpelah belongs essentially to the early Babylonian and not to the Assyrian period.

It is only fragments of the life of Abraham that are brought before us in the pages of Genesis. They are like a series of pictures which have been saved from the shipwreck of the past. And the pictures are not always painted in the same colours. At one time the patriarch appears as ‘a mighty prince,’ as a rich and cultured Chaldæan immigrant, with armed bands of warriors under him with whom he can venture to attack even the army of the king of Elam. He is the confederate of the Amorite chieftains, the prince whom the Hittites of Hebron hear with respect. But at another time the colours on the canvas seem quite different. When the angels warn the patriarch of the approaching overthrow of the cities of the plain, they find him in the tent of a Bedâwi, leading the simple life of an uncultured nomad, and preparing the food of his guests with his own hands. Between this Bedâwi shêkh and the companion of the king of Gerar or the Pharaoh of Egypt the contrast is indeed great.

To the Western mind, however, the contrast is greater than it would be to the Oriental. The traveller in the East is well acquainted with wealthy Bedâwin shêkhs who live in the desert in barbaric simplicity, but, nevertheless, have their houses at Cairo or Damascus, where they indulge in all the luxury and splendour of Oriental life. Moreover, the narratives 62which have been combined in the book of Genesis do not all come from the same source. Some of them have been taken from written historical documents which breathe the atmosphere of the cultured city, of the educated scribe, and the luxurious court. Others, derived it may be from oral tradition, are filled with the spirit of the wanderer in the desert, and set before us the simple life and rude fare of the dweller in tents. The history of the patriarchs is, in fact, like Joseph’s coat of many colours. It is a series of pictures rather than a homogeneous whole. The materials of which it is composed differ widely in both character and origin. Some of them can be shown to have been contemporaneous with the events they record; some again to have been like the tales of their old heroes recounted by the nomad Arabs in the days before Islam as they sat at night round their camp-fires. The details and spirit of the story have necessarily caught the colour of the medium through which they have passed. The life of Abraham, doubtless, presented the contrasts still presented by that of a rich Bedâwi shêkh; at one time spent in the wild freedom and privations of the desert; at another amid the luxuries and culture of the town; but the contrasts have been heightened by the difference in the sources through which they have been handed down. Naturally, while the scribe would record only those phases of Abraham’s history which brought him into contact with the great world of kings and princes, of war and trade, the nomad reciter of ancient stories would dwell rather on such parts of it as he and his hearers could understand. For them Abraham would become a desert-wanderer like themselves.

This difference in the sources of the narrative explains why it is that the figure of Abraham so largely overshadows that of his son Isaac. Isaac seems almost swallowed up in that darkness of antiquity through which the figure of his father looms so largely. Apart from his dispute with Abimelech of Gerar, which reads like a repetition of the dispute between Abimelech and Abraham, there is little told of the life of 63Isaac which is not connected with his more famous father or son. Between Abraham and Jacob, the great ancestors of Israel, Isaac seems to intervene as merely a connecting link.

But the life of Isaac was that of a Bedâwi shêkh. The other side of his father’s life and character was lost. The forefather of Israel had ceased to be a Chaldæan, and had become simply a dweller in the desert, like the fugitive slaves from Egypt in after days. Even Hebron was left, and the life of Isaac was mainly passed on the northern edge of that desert in which his descendants were in later times to receive the Law. If he approached Canaan, it was only to Beer-sheba and Gerar on the southern skirts of Canaanitish territory, where the Bedâwin and their flocks still claimed to be masters. But his chief residence was further south, in the very heart of the wilderness.

Isaac was thus essentially a Bedâwi, a fit type of the phase of life through which the Israelites were destined to pass before their conquest of the Promised Land. With the politics and trade of the civilised world, accordingly, he never came into contact. There was nothing in his existence for the historian to chronicle; nothing which could bring his name into the written history of the time. If his memory were to be preserved at all, it could be only through the unwritten traditions of the desert, through the tales told of him among the desert tribes.

Once indeed, it is said, he had relations with a king. The king was one of those Canaanitish princelets with whose names the Tel el-Amarna tablets are filled. The dominions of Abimelech of Gerar were of small extent, and must have been barren in the extreme. The site of Gerar lies two hours south of Gaza,^[74] and the territory of its king extended eastward as far as Beer-sheba. It was essentially a desert territory: 64during the greater part of the year the whole country is bare and sterile; only after rain does the wilderness break forth suddenly into green herbage.

In the story of Isaac’s dispute with Abimelech the writer of Genesis calls him ‘king of the Philistines,’ and speaks of his subjects as ‘Philistines.’ This, however, is an accommodation to the geography of a later day. In the age of the patriarchs the south-eastern corner of Palestine has not as yet been occupied by the Philistine immigrants. We have learned from the Egyptian monuments that they were pirates from the islands and coasts of the Greek Seas who did not seize upon the frontier cities of Southern Canaan until the time of the Pharaoh Meneptah, the son of Ramses II. Up to then, for more than three centuries, the frontier cities had been garrisoned by Egyptian troops, and included in the Egyptian empire. It was not till the period of the Exodus that the district passed into Philistine hands, and the old road into Egypt by the sea-coast became known as ‘the way of the Philistines.’

In speaking of the ‘Philistines,’ therefore, the writer of the book of Genesis is speaking proleptically. And in reading the narrative of Isaac’s dealings with Abimelech by the side of that of Abraham’s dealings with the same king, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that we have before us two versions of the same event. Doubtless, history repeats itself; disputes about the possession of wells in a desert-land can frequently recur, and it is possible that two kings of the same name may have followed one another on the throne of Gerar. But what does not seem very possible is that each of these kings should have had a ‘chief captain of his host’ called by the strange non-Semitic name of Phichol (Gen. xxi. 22; xxvi. 26); that each of them should have taken the wife of the patriarch, believing her to be his sister; or that Beer-sheba should twice have received the same name from the oaths sworn over it.

When we compare the two versions together, it is not difficult to see which of them is the more original. It is in the second that Abimelech is called ‘king of the Philistines’; 65in the first he is correctly entitled ‘king of Gerar.’ Abraham was justified in calling Sarah his sister; there was no ground and no reason for Isaac doing the same in the case of his own wife. Moreover, Beer-sheba had already received its name from Abraham, who had planted there an êshel or tamarisk, and ‘called on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.’

The wife of Isaac was brought from Harran, from the members of Abraham’s race who had settled in Northern Syria, and there become an Aramæan family. She was the daughter of Bethuel, ‘the house of God,’ a proper name which is found in the Tel el-Amarna letters, where it also belongs to a native of Northern Syria.^[75] Bethuel is the older form of Bethel, that anointed stone which, according to Semitic belief, was the special residence of divinity. There was something peculiarly appropriate in such a name at Harran, where the great temple of the Moon-god, the ‘Baal of Harran,’ was itself a Beth-el on a large scale.

That Isaac should have lived all his life long in the southern desert, and that his name should have been associated with none of the ancient sanctuaries of Canaan, Beer-sheba alone excepted, is perhaps curious when we bear in mind a passage in the prophecies of Amos (vii. 9), where it is with Northern Israel and not with Judah that the name of the patriarch is connected. Isaac, however, was as much the forefather of the Israelites of Samaria as he was of those of Jerusalem; and the use of his name by the prophet shows only that he was no mere Jewish hero, but was regarded as an ancestor of the whole Israelitish nation. For the whole of Israel, Isaac was no less historical than Abraham or Jacob.

That Isaac’s dwelling-place should have been in the desert of the south agrees well with the fact that he was the father of Edom as well as of Israel. He thus lived on the borderland 66of the two peoples who afterwards boasted of their descent from him.

Esau, from whom the Edomites traced their origin, was the elder of his two twin sons. The name has been connected with that of the Phœnician deity Usous, but Usous is really the eponymous god of the city of Usu, in the neighbourhood of Tyre. Esau took possession of the mountains of Seir. Here he partly absorbed, partly destroyed the older races, the Amalekites or Bedâwin whose descendants still prowl among the wadis of Edom, and the Horites whom a somewhat doubtful etymology would turn into Troglodytes or dwellers in caves. Edom itself, the ‘Red’ land, took its name from the red hue of its cliffs. It was a name which went back to a remote antiquity, for among the Egyptians also the desert-country which stretched away eastward into Edom was known as Desher, ‘the Red.’ The punning etymology in Genesis (xxv. 30) preserves a recollection of the true origin of the name.

The territories of Esau extended southward to the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. Here were the towns of Elath and Eziongeber, through which the merchandise of the Indian Ocean was conveyed northward, enriching the merchants and princes of Edom in its passage through their land. To the north Edom was in touch with the peoples of Canaan. The wives of Esau, we are told, were ‘of the daughters of Canaan’ (Gen. xxxvi. 2); one of them at least was Hittite, and another, according to one account (Gen. xxvi. 34), bore the name of the ‘Jewess.’ But other wives were taken from the tribes of Arabia. Bashemath was the daughter of Ishmael and sister of a Nabathean chief, while Aholibamah was the daughter of a Horite who belonged to the primeval race of Seir.

Like the Ishmaelites, like the Israelites themselves, it was long before the Edomites submitted to the rule of a king. At first they were divided into tribes, each of them under a shêkh. In Israel the shêkhs were entitled ‘judges,’ a title borrowed from the Canaanite population; in Edom they bore 67the name of alûphim, which the Authorised Version renders by ‘dukes.’^[76] The old name still survived down to the time of the Exodus, as we may gather from its use in the Song of Moses (Exod. xv. 15). But when the wanderings in the wilderness were almost over, and Israel was preparing to invade Palestine, the ‘dukes’ of Edom had already been superseded by kings. It was a ‘king of Edom’ to whom Moses sent messengers from Kadesh praying for a ‘passage through his border,’ and it was a king of Edom who refused the request. But the ancient spirit of independence still lingered; and, as we may gather from the extract from the Edomite chronicles preserved in Gen. xxxvi., the monarchy was elective. The son never succeeded the father on the throne, the royal dignity passed from one division of the kingdom to the other, and each city in turn became the capital.^[77]

Though Esau was the elder, the birthright passed to the younger brother. Israelitish tradition knew of more than one occurrence which accounted for this. It was told how Esau had sold his birthright for a mess of pottage; it was also told how it had been stolen from him by the craft of his brother Jacob. Naturally, the first tradition was more favoured in Israel, the second in Edom, and the union of the two in the book of Genesis is a proof of the diligence with which the writer of it has gathered together all that was known of the past of his people as well as the impartiality with which he has used his materials. Perhaps both stories owed their preservation to the play upon words which was connected with them. The ‘red’ pottage served to explain the name of Edom, the craft of the younger son the name of Jacob.^[78]

68Upon the real origin of the latter name, however, recent discovery has thrown light. It is the third person singular of a verb, and is formed like numerous names of the same class in Arabic and Assyrian. But the third person singular of a verb implies a nominative, and the nominative was originally a divine name or title. In familiar use the nominative came to be dropped, and the shortened form of the name to be alone employed. The older form of the name Jacob has now been recovered from the monuments of Babylonia and Egypt. Among the Canaanites who appear as witnesses to Babylonian contracts of the age of Khammu-rabi, Mr. Pinches has found a Jacob-el and a Joseph-el, ‘God will recompense,’ ‘God will add.’^[79] The same names, though written a little differently,^[80] are met with in contracts earlier than the time of Moses, which have been discovered near Kaisariyeh, in Cappadocia, and are inscribed on clay tablets in cuneiform characters and in a Babylonian dialect. We can thus trace them from the primitive home of Abraham to the neighbourhood of that Aramæan district of Northern Mesopotamia in which his father settled.

But this is not all. Among the places in Palestine conquered by Thothmes III. of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, and recorded on the walls of his temple at Karnak, we find a Jacob-el and a Joseph-el. In Canaan, therefore, the names were already current; it may even be that in the town of Jacob-el we have a reminiscence of the patriarch, in Joseph-el a connection with the ancestor of the ‘House of Joseph.’ At all events, the name of Joseph-el follows 69immediately after that of the ‘Har’ or ‘Mountain’ of Ephraim, while that of Jacob-el is placed in the neighbourhood of Hebron.^[81]

The name of Jacob-el can be carried still further back than the age of Thothmes III., further back probably than the age of the patriarch himself. There are Egyptian scarabs which bear the name of a Pharaoh called Jacob-el. The first part of the name is written just as it would be in Hebrew, and the Pharaoh is given all the titles of a legitimate Egyptian king. On one he is ‘the good God,’ on another ‘the son of the Sun,’ and ‘the giver of life.’ The scarabs belong to the period of the Hyksos, and in the Pharaoh Jacob-el we must accordingly see one of those Hyksos conquerors from Asia who ruled over Egypt for so many centuries. There was thus a Jacob in Egypt before the patriarch migrated there, and he belonged to that Hyksos race under whom Joseph rose to the highest honours of the state.^[82]

The shortened form of the name is also found in the Babylonian texts; and it is probable that Egibi, the founder of the great banking and trading firm which carried on business in Babylonia down to the time of the Persian kings, had a name which is identical with it. At any rate the older forms of both ‘Jacob’ and ‘Joseph’ show that ‘Isaac’ too must be an abbreviation from an earlier ‘Isaac-el’ (Yitskhaq-êl). ‘God smileth’ would have been the primitive signification of the word.

The craft of Jacob was the cause of his flight to his mother’s family in Padan-Aram. He thus became that ‘wandering Aramæan’ of whom we read in Deuteronomy (xxvi. 5). On his way he rested at the great Beth-el of Central Palestine, and there in a vision beheld the angels of God ascending and descending the steps of limestone that were piled one upon 70the other to the gates of heaven.^[83] There, too, he poured oil upon the sacred stone and consecrated it to the deity, and future generations revered it as a veritable Beth-el or ‘House of God.’

The name, in fact, we are told, was given to it by Jacob himself. ‘If I come again to my father’s house in peace,’ he said, ‘then shall Yahveh be my God: and this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that Thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto Thee.’ The vow was in accordance with a Canaanitish custom which had originally come from Babylonia. From time immemorial the Babylonian temples had been supported by the tenth or tithe, which was levied on both king and people: it was not thought that the gods were asking too much when they demanded the tenth of the income which had been given to man by themselves. Among the Babylonian contract-tablets there are several which relate to the payment of the tithe as well as to the gifts that were made to a Bit-ili or Beth-el.^[84]

Jacob’s vow was performed, at least in part, when once more he returned to Canaan. Then again ‘God appeared to him’ and changed the patriarch’s name. Then again, too, ‘he set up a pillar of stone; and he poured a drink-offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon. And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him Beth-el.’ This second account of the naming of the place doubtless comes from a different source from that which recorded Jacob’s dream, and is the account which was known to Hosea, the prophet of the northern kingdom. Modern critics have alleged that it is inconsistent with the first, and that consequently neither the one nor the other is historical. The compiler of the book of Genesis, however, thought otherwise; he has 71made no attempt to smooth over what the European scholar declares to be inconsistencies, and which therefore cannot have seemed inconsistencies to him. The Oriental mode of writing history, it must once more be remarked, is not the same as ours; and as it is with the ancient East that we are now concerned, it would be wiser to follow the judgment of the writer of Genesis than that of his European critics.

At Harran Jacob served his cousin Laban ‘for a wife, and for a wife he kept sheep.’ Such contracts of voluntary service are to be found in the Babylonian tablets of the age of Khammu-rabi and his predecessors. It was not at all unusual for a slave to be hired out to another master for a definite period of time; it sometimes happened that the master himself hired out his own services in a similar way.^[85] In Babylonia the work was partly pastoral, partly agricultural; the semi-Bedâwi Jacob was a herdsman only. His cousin Laban bore a name which was also that of an Assyrian deity; and it may not be a mere coincidence that when Nabonidos, the last king of Babylonia, restored the great temple of the moon-god at Harran, he tells us that he began the task ‘by the art of the god Laban, the god of foundations and brickwork.’^[86]

The two daughters of Laban bore names which had a familiar sound to the ear of a herdsman. Rachel means ‘ewe’; Leah is the Assyrian li’tu, ‘a cow.’ It is needless to recount the well-known story of the wooing of the younger daughter, and of the efforts made by Laban to retain Jacob in his service and marry both the sisters to him. Craft was met by craft; but in the end the ancestor of Israel proved more than a match for the wily Syrian. His cattle and riches multiplied like the children who were born to him, and a time came when the sons of Laban began to view with envy the poor relative who was robbing them of their patrimony. So 72Jacob fled, before harm had come to him, carrying with him his wives and children and all the wealth he had accumulated. Laban pursued and succeeded in overtaking the heavily-weighted caravan at the very spot where the frontiers of Aram and Canaan met together. There the cairn of stones was raised in which later generations saw a memorial of the pact that had been sworn between Jacob and his father-in-law. Henceforth the tie with Aram was broken: the wives of Jacob forgot the home of their father and looked to Canaan instead of Aram as the native land of their race. Over the cairn of Gilead the forefathers of Israel forswore for ever their Aramæan ties.

But Rachel had carried with her her father’s teraphim, those household gods on whose cult the welfare of the family seemed to depend. What they were like we may gather from the teraphim of David, which Michal placed on the couch of her husband, and so deceived the messengers of Saul (1 Sam. xix. 13-16). They must have had the shape of a man, and, at all events in the case of those of David, must have also been about a man’s size. Like the ephod and the Urim and Thummim, they were consulted as oracles (Zech. x. 2), and their use lingered among the Jews as late as the period of the Captivity. When Hosea depicts the coming desolation of Israel, he describes it as a time when ‘the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without a sacred pillar, and without an ephod and teraphim’ (Hos. iii. 4).

The final break between Jacob and the Aramæan portion of Terah’s family was marked by a change of name. From henceforth Jacob was to be distinctively the father of the children of Israel. He and his descendants were severed from the rest of their kinsmen whether in Padan-Aram, in Edom, or in the lands beyond the Jordan. Abraham had been the ‘father of many nations’; Jacob was to be the father of but one—of that chosen people to whom the character and worship of Yahveh were revealed.

73We read of him in Hosea (xii. 3, 4), ‘By his strength he had power with God: yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed.’ What the Authorised Version translates ‘had power’ is sârâh and yâsar in Hebrew. The story of the mysterious struggle is told in full in the book of Genesis. The long caravan of Jacob had arrived at length at Mahanaim, ‘the two camps’ by the stream of the Jabbok, and from thence he sent messengers to his brother, who had already established his power in the mountains of Seir. In after days the name of the place was connected with the strange occurrence that there befel the patriarch. He was visited by the angels of God, nay, by God Himself. In the visions of the night he wrestled with one whom, when morning dawned, he believed to have been his God. He had seen God, as it were, face to face, and a popular etymology saw in the fact an explanation of the name of Peniel. When Hosea wrote his prophecies, the belief was too well established that man cannot ‘see God’s face and live,’ and the angel of God accordingly takes the place of God Himself. But when the narrative in Genesis was composed, a more primitive conception of the Divine nature still prevailed, and no reluctance was felt in stating exactly what the patriarch himself had believed. It was God with whom he had struggled, and from whom he had extorted a blessing, and a memory of the conflict and victory was preserved in the name of Israel, which Jacob henceforth bore.

The etymology, however, is really only one of those plays upon words of which the Biblical writers, like Oriental writers generally, are so fond. It has no scientific value, and never was intended to have any. Israel is, like Edom, not the name of an individual, but of the people of whom the individual was the ancestor. The name is formed like that of Jacob-el, and the abbreviated Jeshurun is used instead of it in the Song of Moses.^[87] If the latter is correct, the root will not be sârâh, ‘he fought,’ or yâsar, ‘he is king,’ but yâshar, ‘to be upright,’ ‘to direct’; and Israel will signify ‘God has directed.’ Israel, 74in fact, will be the ‘righteous’ people who have been called to walk in the ways of the Lord.

While Jacob was keeping the sheep of his Aramæan father-in-law, Esau was making a name for himself among the mountains of the Horites. Half robber, half huntsman, he had gathered about him a band of followers, and with their help had founded—if not a kingdom—at all events a nation to the south of Moab. It is true that the ‘red’ land he had occupied was rocky and barren, but the high-road of commerce from the spice-bearing regions of Southern Arabia passed through it, and the plunder or tribute of the merchants who travelled along it brought wealth to him and his well-armed Bedâwin. What David did in later days, when he made himself the head of a band of outlaws, and with their assistance eventually raised himself to the throne of Judah, had already been accomplished by Esau among the barbarians of Seir.

The message of Jacob led him northward by the desert road which ran to the east of Moab and Ammon. It is clear from the story that Jacob knew little about his brother’s power. When news was brought that he was coming with a troop of four hundred men, Jacob’s heart sank within him, and his only thought was how to save himself and at least a portion of his wealth from the powerful robber-chief. The event proved that his precautions were needless. Esau behaved with a magnanimity which it must have been hard for a Hebrew writer to describe, and pressed his brother to accompany him to Seir. Jacob feared to accept the invitation, and equally feared to refuse it. With characteristic caution and craft, he promised to come, but urged that the cattle and children that were with him made it necessary to follow slowly in Esau’s track. So the Edomite chieftain departed, and Jacob took good care to turn westward across the Jordan into the land of Canaan. There, among the cities and fields of the civilised ‘Amorite,’ he felt himself secure from the pursuit of the desert tribes.

Was it fear of Esau which kept him in Central Palestine 75and prevented him so long from venturing near that southern part of the country where his father and grandfather had mainly dwelt? At all events, while Abraham had bought land at Hebron, the land purchased by Jacob was near Shechem. Moreover, it was the ‘parcel of a field where he had spread his tent,’ not a burying-place for his family. It would seem, therefore, that it was intended for a permanent residence; here the patriarch determined to settle and to exchange the free life of the pastoral nomad for that of a villager of Canaan.^[88]

The field was bought from Hamor the father of Shechem, the founder of the city which was destined to become the seat of the first monarchy in Israel, and on it was raised the first altar consecrated to the God of Israel. El-elohê-Israel, ‘El is the God of Israel,’ the altar was termed, a declaration that the El whom the Canaanites worshipped was the God of Israel as well. But though the field was bought for one hundred ‘pieces of money’—an expression, be it noted, which is not Babylonian—we 76are assured also that Jacob had gained land at Shechem by the right of conquest. In blessing Joseph he declared to him that to the tribe of his favourite son there was given ‘a Shechem above’ his ‘brethren which’ he had taken ‘out of the hand of the Amorite with’ his ‘sword and bow’ (Gen. xlviii. 22); and the story of the ravishment of Dinah recounts how the sons of the patriarch massacred the men of the city, how they enslaved their women and carried away their goods. The terrible tale of vengeance was never forgotten; it is alluded to in the Blessing of Jacob (Gen. xlix. 5-7), and the disappearance of Simeon and Levi as separate tribes was looked upon as a punishment for the deed. It would seem that after the Israelitish conquest of Canaan the population of Shechem remained half Canaanite, half Israelite,^[89] and the Canaanitish population would naturally remember with horror and indignation the crime of the sons of Jacob. That the deed should have been attributed to the ancestors of two of the southern tribes instead of to those of Issachar or some other tribe of the north is evidence in favour of its truthfulness.

The sons of Jacob were twelve in number, like the twelve sons of Ishmael, and corresponded with the twelve tribes of Israel which were called after their names. And yet the correspondence required a little forcing. It is questionable whether, at any one time, there ever were exactly twelve Israelitish tribes. In the Song of Deborah Judah does not appear at all, Ephraim taking its place and, along with Benjamin, extending as far south as the desert of the Amalekites, while Machir is substituted for Manasseh and Gad. Levi never possessed a territory of its own; had it done so, the tribes would have been thirteen in number and not twelve. At the same time, it had just as much right to be considered a separate tribe as Dan, whose cities were in the north as well 77as in the south, where, however, they were absorbed by Judah; more right perhaps than Simeon, which hardly existed except in name. The territory of Reuben lay outside the boundaries of Palestine, and was merely the desert-wadis and grazing-grounds of the kingdom of Moab; the country can be said to have belonged to the tribe only in the sense that the wadis east of the Delta belong to the Bedâwin, whom the Egyptian government at present allows to live in them. Manasseh, lastly, was divided into two halves, in order to bring the number of tribes up to the requisite figure.

It is clear that the scheme is an artificial one. Israel, after its conquest of Canaan, could indeed be divided into twelve separate parts, but such a division was theoretical only. There were no twelve territories corresponding to the parts, while the parts themselves could be reckoned as thirteen, eleven, or ten, just as easily as twelve.

The conclusion to be drawn from this is obvious. History credited Jacob with twelve sons, and it was consequently necessary to bring the number of Israelitish tribes into harmony with the fact. Modern criticism has amused itself with reversing the history, and assuming that the twelve sons of the patriarch owed their origin to the twelve tribes. It has accordingly drawn inferences from the fact that some of the sons of Jacob are said to have been the offspring of concubines, and not of his two legitimate wives, and that Joseph and Benjamin were the youngest of all. But such inferences fall with the assumption that in the twelve sons we have merely the eponymous heroes of the twelve tribes. It is a cheap way of making history, and, after all, what we know of the tribes does not fit in with the theory. There is nothing in the history of Dan and Naphtali, or Gad and Asher, which would have caused them to be regarded of bastard descent, if that bastard descent had not been a fact; indeed, in the Song of Deborah, which is almost universally allowed to go back to the early age of the Judges, Naphtali and Zebulun are placed on exactly the same footing. The distinction between the 78sons of Leah and those of Rachel does not answer to the real cleavage between the tribes of the south and those of the north of Palestine: Benjamin, after the age of Saul, followed Judah and Simeon, while the sons of Joseph were joined with Zebulun and Issachar. Moreover, had the sons of Jacob been mere reflections of the tribes, it would be difficult to account for the existence of Joseph, or to understand why Machir takes the place of Manasseh and Gad in the Song of Deborah.

The critical theory is the result of introducing Greek modes of thought into Semitic history. The Greek tribe, it is true, traced its origin to an eponymous ancestor, but that ancestor was a god or a hero, and not a man. Among the Semites, however, as the history of Arabia may still teach us, the conception of the tribe was something wholly different. The tribe was an enlarged family which called itself by the name of its first head. It began with the individual, and to the last styled itself his children. The Greek tribe, on the contrary, began with the clan, and its theoretical ancestor, accordingly, was merely the divine personage whose common cult kept it together. In the Semitic tribe there could be no cult of its ancestor, for the ancestor was but an ordinary man, who worshipped the same form of Baal and used the same rites as his descendants after him.

Nevertheless, there may be an element of truth in the ‘critical’ assumption. The names of the ancestors of some of the Israelitish tribes may have been the reflex of the later names of the tribes themselves. It does not follow that the name by which one of the sons of Jacob became known to later generations was actually the name which he bore himself. Had Jacob been uniformly called Israel by the Hebrew writers, we should never have known his original name. And it is possible that the name of Asher is really a reflex of this kind. The Travels of the Mohar, written in Egypt in the reign of Ramses II. before the Israelitish conquest of Canaan, speak of ‘the mountain of User’ as being in the very locality in 79which the tribe of Asher was afterwards settled. And in the case of one tribe at least there is evidence that its name must have been reflected back upon that of its progenitor.

This is the tribe of Benjamin. In the book of Genesis (xxxv. 18) Benjamin is represented as having received two different names at his birth. The statement excites our suspicion, for such a double naming is inconsistent with Hebrew practice, and our suspicion is confirmed when we find that both names have a geographical meaning. Benjamin is ‘the son of the South’ or ‘Southerner’; Ben-Oni, as he is also said to have been called, is ‘the son of On,’ or ‘the Onite.’ On, or Beth-On, it will be remembered, was an ancient name of Beth-el, the great sanctuary and centre of the tribe of Benjamin, while ‘the Southerner’ was an appropriate title for the lesser brother tribe which lay to the south of the dominant Ephraim. It is of Ephraim that Deborah says, in her Song of Triumph, ‘Behind thee is Benjamin among thy peoples’ (Judg. v. 14).

The etymology suggested in Genesis for the name of Ben-Oni is a sample of those plays upon words in which Oriental writers have always delighted, and of which the Hebrew Scriptures contain so many illustrations. They all spring from the old confusion between the name and the thing, which substituted the name for the thing, and believed that if the name could be explained, the thing would be explained also. Hence the slight transformations in the form of names which allowed them to be assimilated to familiar words, or their identification with words which obviously gave an incorrect sense. Hence, too, the choice of etymologies which was offered to the reader: where the real origin of the name was unknown or uncertain, it was possible to explain it in more than one way. Isaiah (xv. 9) changes the name of the Moabite city of Dibon into Dimon in order to connect it with the Hebrew dâm, ‘blood,’ and the writer of Genesis gives two contradictory derivations of the name of Joseph (Gen. xxx. 23, 24). The latter fact is of itself a sufficient proof of the true value of these 80etymologies, or rather, popular plays upon words, and the sayings in which they are embodied can still be matched by the traveller in the East. Similar embodiments of popular etymologising are still repeated to explain the place-names of Egypt.^[90]

The origin of some of the names of the sons of Jacob is as obscure to us as it was to the writer of Genesis. We do not know, for instance, the meaning and derivation of the name of Reuben. Equally doubtful is the real etymology of the name of Issachar.^[91] The name of Simeon is already found among the places in Canaan conquered by the Egyptian Pharaoh Thothmes III. before the age of Moses, and in Judah we have a name which seems to be the same as that of a tribe in Northern Syria.^[92] Levi, like Naphtali, is a gentilic noun, and must be connected with the lau’â(n), or ‘priest’ of Southern Arabia.^[93] Gad was the god of good fortune, Dan ‘the judge,’ 81the title of certain Babylonian deities, and Dinah is the feminine corresponding to Dan.

Jacob, ever timorous, fled from Hivite vengeance after the destruction of Shechem, forsaking the property he had acquired there by purchase and the sword. He made his way southward to Beth-el, and there rested on the edge of the great mountain block of Central Palestine. Hard by was the city of Luz, soon to be eclipsed by the growing fame of the high-place on the height above it. Here, at Beth-el, an altar was erected by the patriarch to the God of the locality who had once appeared to him in a dream. It was the prototype of the altar that was hereafter to arise there when Beth-el had become a chief sanctuary of the house of Israel. Whether the altar stood on the high-place on the summit of the mountain, where the Beth-el or column of stone had been consecrated by Jacob, we do not know; there are indications in the prophets, however, that the high-place and the temple were separate from one another. Indeed, from the words of Genesis, it would seem that the altar and future temple were on the lower slope of the hill, close to the old Canaanitish town. Here, at any rate, on the road to the city, was that Allon-bachuth, that ‘Terebinth of Tears,’ which is referred to by Hosea (xii. 4), and is connected in the book of Genesis with the death of Deborah, the nurse of Rachel. In later days another Deborah dwelt under the shadow of a palm-tree on the same road (Judg. iv. 6), and modern critical ingenuity has accordingly discovered that the terebinth and the palm were one and the same tree.

Beth-el, however, was still too near the Hivites of Shechem, and Jacob continued his journey to the south. The death of Isaac called him to Hebron, where, for the last time, he met his brother Esau, who came to take part in his father’s burial. But his own residence was at Beth-lehem, ‘the Temple of the god Lakhmu,’ called Ephrath in those early days.^[94] Here 82Rachel died, and here accordingly was raised the tombstone which marked her grave down to the day when the book of Genesis assumed its present form.^[95]

It was ‘beyond the tower of Edar,’ the tower of ‘the Flock,’ that Jacob, we are told, ‘spread his tent.’ The tower of the Flock guarded the city-fortress of Jerusalem (Mic. iv. 8), and it was therefore between Jerusalem and Beth-lehem that the patriarch made his home. But his flocks were scattered northwards as far as Shechem, grazing on the mountain slopes under the charge of his sons. Jacob remained like a Bedâwi of to-day living among the settled inhabitants of the country, and yet keeping apart from them and sending his flocks far and wide wherever there was fresh grass and free pasturage.

It was while he thus lived that the disgraceful events occurred connected with the marriage of Judah and the Canaanitish Tamar, which throw an evil light on the manners and morals of the patriarch’s family. The whole episode stands in marked contrast to the ordinary character of the history, and its insertion is evidence of the impartiality of the writer. It is clear that he has put together all that reached him from the past history of his people, omitting nothing, modifying nothing. All sides of the past are brought before us, the darker as well as the lighter, and no attempt is made to spare or condone the forefathers of Israel. It has indeed been asked by an over-sensitive criticism how the recital of such abominations can be consistent with the sanctity claimed for the Mosaic writings. But the question has troubled the minds only of the critics themselves; and not more than three centuries ago the compilers of the Anglican lectionary saw no harm in ordering the chapter to be read publicly to men and maidens in church.

The episode was inserted in the midst of the story of Joseph, one of the most pathetic and touching ever told. We need not repeat its details, or describe how Joseph, the spoilt 83darling of his father, dreamed dreams which aroused the alarm and jealousy of his brothers, how he was sold by them into Egypt, how there he became the vizier of the Pharaoh, and how eventually Jacob and his family were brought into the land of Goshen, there to enjoy the good things of the valley of the Nile. But the story brings us back again to the great stream of ancient Oriental history; once more the history of Israel touches the history of the world, and ceases to be a series of idyllic pictures, such as the memory of shepherds and Bedâwin might alone preserve.

The story of Joseph forms a complete whole, distinguished by certain features that mark it off from the rest of the book of Genesis. It contains peculiar words, some of them of Egyptian origin,^[96] and it shows a very minute acquaintance with Egyptian life in the Hyksos age. There are even words and phrases which seem to have been translated into Hebrew from some other language, and the meaning of which has not been fully understood: thus it is said that the cupbearer of Pharaoh ‘pressed the grapes’ into his master’s goblet instead of pouring the wine; and the word employed to denote an Egyptian official, and translated ‘officer’ in the Authorised Version, properly signifies ‘eunuch.’ Can the story have been translated from an Egyptian papyrus? The question is suggested by the fact that one of the most characteristic portions of it has actually been embodied in an ancient Egyptian tale. This is the so-called Tale of the Two Brothers, written by the scribe Enna for Seti II. of the nineteenth dynasty while he was crown-prince, and therefore in the age of the Exodus. Here we have the episode of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife told in Egyptian form. The fellah Bata takes the place of Joseph; his sister-in-law plays the part of Potiphar’s wife.^[97]

This part of the story was therefore known among the 84literary classes of Egypt in the days when Moses was learned in all their wisdom. And if it has been preserved among the few fragments that have been saved from the wreck of ancient Egyptian literature, may we not conclude that had the whole of that literature come down to us, other portions of the story of Joseph would have been preserved in it as well? There is a gentleness in the character of Joseph which reminds us forcibly of Egyptian manners, and offers a sharp contrast to the rough ways and readiness to shed blood which distinguished the Hebrew Semite.

At all events, the story must have been written by one who was well acquainted with the age of the Hyksos. It is true that an attempt has recently been made, on the strength of certain proper names, to show that it is not the Egypt of the Hyksos that is described, but the Egypt of Shishak and his successors. The names of Potipherah or Potiphar and Asenath are said to have been unknown before that date. A couple of proper names, however, is an insecure foundation on which to build a theory, more especially when the argument rests upon the imperfections of our own knowledge. That no names corresponding in formation to Potipherah and Asenath should as yet have been met with earlier than the time of Shishak is no proof that they did not exist. A single example of each is sufficient to prove the contrary. And, as a matter of fact, such examples actually occur. A stela of the reign of Thothmes III. records the name of Pe-tu-Baal, ‘the Gift of Baal,’ as that of the sixth ancestor of the Egyptian whose name it records;^[98] while the Tel el-Amarna tablets contain the name of Subanda, the Smendes of Greek writers, which is an exact parallel in form to Asenath.^[99] Pe-tu-Baal must have lived at the close of the Hyksos period, and the Semitic deity with whose name his own is compounded indicates that it has been formed under 85Semitic influence. It was, in fact, as we learn from the Phœnician inscriptions, an imitation of a Canaanitish name.^[100] The Hyksos had come from Asia, and had imposed their yoke upon Egypt, where they ruled for more than five hundred years. Though they held all Egypt under their sway, they had established their capital at Zoan, now called Sân, far to the north on the eastern frontier of the Delta. Here they were near their kinsfolk in Canaan, and could readily summon fresh troops from Asia in case of Egyptian revolt.

The court of the Hyksos Pharaohs, however, soon became Egyptianised. They adopted the arts and science, the manners and customs, of their more cultured subjects, and one of the few scientific works of ancient Egypt that have come down to us—the famous Mathematical Papyrus—was written for a Hyksos king. It was only in physiognomy and religion that the Hyksos conqueror continued to be distinguished from the native Egyptian.

Besides Zoan, Heliopolis, or ‘On of the North,’ was a chief centre of Hyksos power. It was the oldest and most celebrated sanctuary of Egypt, where ancient schools of learning were established, and from whence the religious system had been disseminated which made the Sun-god the supreme ruler of the universe. The Hyksos had no difficulty in identifying the Sun-god of On with their own supreme deity Sutekh, who was a form of the Canaanitish Baal. On, consequently, once the chief seat of the orthodox faith of Egypt, became the centre of foreign heresy. The Sallier Papyrus, which describes the origin of the war that resulted in the expulsion of the Hyksos, specially tells us that ‘the Impure of (On), the city of Ra, were subject to Ra-Apopi,’ the Hyksos Pharaoh, and the Egyptians changed into Ra, the Egyptian Sun-god, the name of Sutekh, which a scarab of Apopi shows was really prefixed to that Pharaoh’s name.^[101] The great 86temple of the Sun-god of On, accordingly, before which Usertesen of the twelfth dynasty had planted the obelisks, one of which remains to this day, was transformed into a temple of the foreign god; and though its high-priest still continued to bear his ancient title, and perform the ceremonies of the past, it was Sutekh and not the native divinity whom he served. Potipherah—in Egyptian, Pa-tu-pa-Ra—was a literal translation of the Canaanitish Mattan-Baal, ‘the gift of Baal,’ and implied of itself the foreign cult.

Potiphar is an abbreviation of Potipherah, and reminds us of similar abbreviations met with in the letters of the Canaanitish correspondents of the Pharaoh in the Tel el-Amarna collection. It is an abbreviation which points to long familiarity with the name on the part of the Hebrew people. The titles, however, given to Potiphar are obscure. The second seems to signify ‘captain of the bodyguard,’ but the first—saris in Hebrew—means an ‘eunuch.’ Ebers, it is true, has pointed out that eunuchs in the East have not only held high positions of state, but have married wives as well;^[102] this, however, has been in Turkey, not in ancient Egypt. Perhaps the word is the Babylonian saris, ‘an officer’; at all events, the Rab-sarîs of 2 Kings xviii. 17 is the Assyrian Rab-sarisi, or ‘chief officer.’ That Babylonian words should have made their way into Egypt in the age of the Hyksos is by no means strange. We have learned from the Tel el-Amarna tablets that Babylonian was for centuries the literary language of Western Asia, and was studied and written even on the banks of the Nile, while the monuments of Babylonia itself have shown that Babylonian culture had made its way to the 87frontiers of Egypt at a very remote age. The history of Joseph contains at least one word which bears testimony to its influence. When Joseph was made ‘governor over all the land of Egypt,’ the heralds who ran before his chariot to announce the fact shouted the word ‘abrêk!’ For this word no explanation can be found either in Hebrew or in Egyptian. But the language of the Babylonian inscriptions has unexpectedly come to our aid. In Chaldæa abarakku was the title of one of the highest officers of State, and abriqqu, borrowed from the earlier Sumerian abrik, signified ‘a seer.’

We have said that the history of Joseph is marvellously true in all its details to what archæology has informed us were the facts of Egyptian life. Thus the prison in which ‘the king’s prisoners’ were confined is called by the strange name of ‘the round house.’ Such, at least, would seem to be the literal meaning of the Hebrew phrase, the second element of which signifies ‘roundness.’ The word is written sohar, though there is evidence of another reading, sokhar. Sohar or sokhar, however, is really an Egyptian word. The royal prison at Thebes, where the State prisoners were kept under guard, was: called suhan, in which we have the same interchange of final r and n that is still a characteristic of Egyptian Arabic.^[103] The term bêth has-sohar, ‘the house of the Sohar,’ is found nowhere else in the Old Testament: it is, in fact, one of the peculiarities which distinguish the story of Joseph, and at the same time testify to the acquaintance of its writer with the details of Egyptian life.

The titles of the royal cupbearer and the chief of the bakers have been found in the lists of Egyptian officials; the Pharaoh’s kitchen was organised on an elaborate scale;^[104] and the Egyptians were famed for their skill in confectionery and in making various kinds of bread.^[105] On the monuments we may see depicted the cupbearer offering the goblet of wine, 88and the baker carrying on his head the baskets filled with round ‘white loaves.’ The ‘birthday of the Pharaoh’ was a general festival, on which, as the decrees of Rosetta and Canopus have taught us, the sovereign proclaimed an amnesty and released such prisoners as were thought deserving of pardon.^[106] The dreams that Pharaoh dreamed are in full accordance with Egyptian mythology and symbolism. The seven kine fitly represent the Nile, which from time immemorial had been likened to a milch-cow. The cow-headed goddess Hathor or Isis watched over the fertility of the country, and the fertilising water of the river was called the milk that flowed from her breasts. The number seven denotes the ‘seven great Hathors,’ the seven forms under which the goddess was adored. The dreams themselves fall in with the Egyptian belief of the age. Throughout Egyptian history they have been a power not only in religion, but in politics as well. It was in consequence of a dream that Thothmes IV. cleared away the sand from before the paws of the Sphinx, and a thousand years later Nut-Amon of Ethiopia was summoned by a dream to invade Egypt. The dreams usually needed an interpreter to explain them, such as is mentioned in a Greek inscription from the Serapeum at Memphis. Books, however, had been compiled in which the signification of dreams was reduced to a science; and as in modern Egypt, so yet more in the past, men spent their lives in pondering over the signification of the dreams of the night.^[107]

Even the statement that the east wind had blasted the ears of corn (Gen. xli. 6) betrays an acquaintance with the peculiarities of the Egyptian climate. Those who have sailed up the Nile know that the wind feared alike by the peasant 89and the sailor is that which blows from the south-east; while the crops of spring are matured by the northern breeze, they are parched and destroyed by the evil wind from the south-east.

The golden collar placed around the neck of the royal favourite is equally characteristic of Egyptian customs, at all events in the age of the Hyksos and the eighteenth dynasty. ‘Captain’ Ahmes, whose tomb is at El-Kab, and who took a prominent part in the final struggle which drove the Hyksos strangers out of the Delta, describes the rewards bestowed upon him by the Pharaoh for his deeds of valour, and chief among the rewards are the chains of gold. Before Joseph was allowed to enter the presence of the monarch, he was not only clad in new raiment, but shorn as well. This, too, was in accordance with Egyptian custom. None could appear before Pharaoh unless they had been freshly shaven, and in the eyes of the Egyptian not the least part of the ‘impurity’ of the Asiatic Semite was his habit of growing a beard.^[108]

The change of name, moreover, which marked Joseph’s elevation was again characteristic of Egypt. The monuments have told us of other cases in which an Asiatic from Canaan, or a Karian from Asia Minor, became an Egyptian official, and in so doing was required to adopt an Egyptian name.^[109] That the name of Zaphnath-paaneah is of Egyptian origin has long been recognised, and that it contains the Egyptian pa-ânkh, ‘life’ or ‘the living one,’ is clear. It is only over its first elements that discussion is possible.

It is hardly necessary to notice further points which prove how intimately the writer of the history of Joseph was acquainted with Egyptian life and manners, language and soil. The Egyptians, he notes, could not eat together with the Hebrews, 90for that would have been ‘an abomination’ to them. It would, indeed, have defiled them ceremonially, and have caused them to participate in the impurity of those whom they termed ‘the unclean.’ So, too, we read, ‘every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians,’ not indeed, as has been imagined, because Egypt had been conquered by the ‘Shepherd’ kings, but because the flocks of the Delta were tended partly by Bedâwin, partly by half-caste Egyptians, whose unclean habits and unshorn faces were the butt of the literary world. The ‘marshmen,’ as they were contemptuously called, were looked upon as pariahs.^[110]

While, however, the narrative is thus thoroughly Egyptian in character, the Egypt it brings before us is the Egypt of the age of the Hyksos. Chariots and horses have already been introduced. It has been supposed that the horse came with the Hyksos; at all events, there is no trace of it before the conquest of the country by the Asiatic stranger. The Pharaoh, moreover, holds his court in the Delta, not far from the Canaanitish border and the land of Goshen; and the waggons which carried Jacob and his family travelled easily from Beth-lehem to the Egyptian capital. Zoan consequently must still have been the residence of the Pharaoh; and Thebes, in Upper Egypt, had not as yet taken its place.

There is one fact, furthermore, which stands out prominently in the history of Joseph, and points unmistakably to the Hyksos age. We are told that it was his policy which reduced the people of Egypt to the condition of serfs. Pressed by famine, they were compelled by him to sell their lands for corn, and to receive it again as tenants of the Pharaoh, with the obligation of paying him a fifth part of the produce. The priests, or rather, the temples, were alone allowed to retain their old possessions; henceforward the land of Egypt was shared between them and the king. In the language of modern Egypt, it became either Government property or waqf.

Now, this fact corresponds with a change in the tenure of 91land which the monuments have informed us must have taken place under the dominion of the Hyksos dynasties. When Egypt was conquered by the Asiatics, it was divided among a number of feudal families who were landowners on a large scale, and at times the rivals of the sovereign himself. By the side of this higher aristocracy there was also a lower one, answering in some measure to the yeomen farmers of the northern counties, but equally owners of land. When, however, the Hyksos were finally driven out, a new Egypt comes into view. The feudal aristocracy has disappeared—or almost disappeared—along with the other landowners of the country, and the only proprietors of land that are left are the Pharaoh and the priests, to whom in after times the military caste was added. Only in Southern Egypt, where the struggle against the foreigner first began, do we find instances of private ownership of land, and this, too, only in the earlier years of the eighteenth dynasty. Before long the Pharaoh had absorbed into his own hands all the land that had not been given to the gods; the old nobility had disappeared, and their place been taken by an army of officials who derived all their wealth and power from the king. The Pharaoh, the priests, and the bureaucracy henceforth are the rulers of Egypt.

This momentous change must have had a cause, but we look in vain for such a cause in the Egyptian monuments. It has been suggested that the War of Independence may have brought it about by increasing the power of the king as leader in the struggle.^[111] But this would not explain his absorption of the land; and even if all the older families had perished in the war, which is not very probable, the lesser landowners would have remained. Moreover, the generals of the king would in this case have claimed similar spoils to those of their leader. What their commander had seized would have been seized also by the officers under him.

However great may be our reluctance to accept the explanation offered by the story of Joseph, certain it is that it is the 92only adequate explanation forthcoming. And there is one strong argument in its favour. Under Ahmes, the conqueror of the Hyksos and the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, there are still instances of land being held by private individuals. But this was at El-Kab, in Upper Egypt, where the Hyksos rule had long been nominal rather than real, and where it had not been obeyed at all for three generations previously.^[112] As soon as the eighteenth dynasty kings were established firmly on the throne of the Hyksos Pharaohs in the north as well as in their ancestral homes in Southern Egypt, even these instances of individual ownership in land came to an end. It was only where the Hyksos supremacy had been weak that they had lingered on. When once the Prince of Thebes had become in all respects the successor of the foreign Pharaohs who had reigned at Zoan, they cease altogether.

The account of Joseph’s procedure is true to facts in another point also. From the time of the eighteenth dynasty onwards we hear repeatedly of the public larits or granaries which were under State control.^[113] The peasantry were required to contribute to them yearly in a fixed proportion, and the corn stored up in them was only sold to the people in case of need. It was out of these granaries, furthermore, that many of the Government officials were paid in kind, as well as the workmen employed by the State. The office of ‘superintendent of the granaries’ was therefore a very important one: once each year he presented to the king an ‘account of the harvests of the south and the north’; and if the account was exceptionally good, if the inundation had been abundant and the harvest better than ‘for thirty years,’ his grateful sovereign 93would throw chains of gold around his neck.^[114] The origin of these royal granaries and of the office of their superintendent which thus characterise the ‘new empire’ of Egypt is explained by the history of Joseph.

Before the days when the conquests of the eighteenth dynasty had created an Egyptian empire in Asia, and brought foreign supplies of food to Egypt, the rise of the Nile was a matter of vital interest. The very existence of the people depended upon it. Too high a Nile meant scarcity, too low a Nile famine. It was only when the river rose to its normal level and overflowed the fields at the stated time that the heart of the agriculturist was gladdened, and he knew that the gods had given him a year of plenty.

The seven years’ famine of Joseph’s age is not the only seven years’ famine which Egypt has had to endure. El-Makrîzî, the Arabic historian of Egypt, describes one which lasted for seven years, from A.D. 1064 to 1071, and, like that of Joseph, was caused by a deficient Nile. A stela discovered by Mr. Wilbour on the island of Sehêl, in the middle of the First Cataract, and engraved in the time of the Ptolemies, similarly records a famine that was wasting the country because ‘the Nile-flood had not come for seven years.’^[115] And it is possible that a memorial of the famine of Joseph has been discovered by Brugsch in one of the tombs of El-Kab. Here the dead man, a certain Baba, is made to say, ‘When a famine arose, lasting many years, I issued out corn to the city.’ Baba must have lived in the latter part of the Hyksos domination, so that the date of his inscription would agree with that of Joseph.^[116]

94Whether the power of Joseph and his master would still have extended as far south as El-Kab in the age of Baba, we do not know. But we do know that a famine which prevailed in Lower Egypt in consequence of a low Nile would have equally prevailed in the Thebaid. It would not, however, have prevailed in Canaan. In Canaan the ground is watered, not by the Nile, but by the rains of heaven, and in Canaan, therefore, it was only a want of rain that could have caused a scarcity of food.

Famines, indeed, did occur in Palestine from time to time, and we hear of Egyptian kings sending corn to that country to supply its needs.^[117] As Egypt was the granary of Italy in the days of the Roman Empire, so too it had been the granary of Western Asia in an earlier age. A dry season in Canaan brought famine in its train; and if that dry season coincided with a deficient Nile in Egypt, there was no other land to which its inhabitants could look for food. It is quite possible that one of these famines in Canaan may have happened at the very time when the Nile refused to irrigate the fields of Egypt. When, however, we read that ‘the famine was over all the face of the earth,’ and that ‘all countries came into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn because the famine was sore in all lands,’ it is evident that the narrative has been written from an Egyptian point of view. The Egyptians might have supposed that when a low Nile produced a scarcity of food all other countries would equally suffer—such, indeed, was the case with Ethiopia—but a supposition of the kind is inconceivable in the mind of a Canaanite. An inhabitant of Palestine knew that the crops of his country were dependent on the rain, not on the waters of the Nile; it was only the Egyptian who modelled the rest of the world after that part of it which was known to him.

95Here, then, we have a clear indication that the story of Joseph must have been written in Egypt, and further probability is added to the theory that it has been translated into Hebrew from an Egyptian original. But more than this. Is it likely that the Hebrew translator, if he had been acquainted with the climate of Canaan, would have left the words of the story just as we find them? Can we imagine that the language he employed about the extent of the famine would have been so definite, so comprehensive, so Egyptian in character? Like the Egyptian words embodied in the narrative, it points to a writer or translator who lived in Egypt, and not in Canaan.

Who was the Pharaoh under whom Joseph became the first minister of the State? Chronology shows that he must have been one of the kings of the last Hyksos dynasty. George the Syncellus makes him Aphophis, Apopi Ra-aa-kenen, or Apopi II. of the monuments, and the date would suit very well.^[118] Apopi II. was the last powerful Hyksos sovereign. His authority was still obeyed in Upper Egypt, but it was in his reign that the War of Independence broke out. According to the story in the Sallier Papyrus, it was caused by his message to the hiq or vassal prince of Thebes, requiring him to renounce the worship of Amon of Thebes and acknowledge Sutekh, the Hyksos Baal, as his supreme god.^[119] The war lasted for four generations, and ended in the expulsion of the foreigner.

But long before this took place the family of Israel was settled in the land of Goshen, on the outskirts of Northern Egypt. The geographical position of Goshen has been rediscovered by Dr. Naville. It corresponded with the modern Wadi Tumilât, through which the traveller by the railway now passes on his way from Ismailîyeh to Zagazig. It took its name from Qosem or Qos, the Pha-kussa of Greek geography, and the capital of the Arabian nome, the site of which is 96marked by the mounds of Saft el-Hennah.^[120] The very name of the ‘Arabian nome’ indicates that its occupants belonged to Arabia rather than to Egypt. It was, in fact, a district handed over to the Bedâwin by the Pharaohs, as it still is to-day. Meneptah, the son of Ramses II., says in his great inscription at Karnak that ‘the country around Pa-Bailos (now Belbeis, near Zagazig) was not cultivated, but left as pasture for cattle, because of the strangers. It was abandoned since the time of the ancestors.’^[121] Abandoned, that is to say, by the Egyptians themselves. But the Semitic nomad pitched his tent and fed his flocks there, partly because it was on the road to his own country and countrymen, partly because it was fitted for grazing and not for agriculture. Here, too, he was not in immediate contact with the Egyptian fellah, though the court of the Hyksos Pharaoh at Zoan was nigh at hand.

Joseph’s brethren were made overseers of the royal cattle, an official post of which we also hear in the native Egyptian texts. After a while, Jacob died, full of years, and his body was embalmed in the Egyptian fashion. The actual process of embalming occupied forty days, the whole period during which ‘the Egyptians mourned for him,’ being threescore and ten. The statement is in accordance with other testimony as to the length of time needed to embalm a mummy. Herodotos (ii. 86) states that the corpse was kept in natron during seventy days, ‘to which period they are strictly confined.’ According to Diodoros,^[122] ‘oil of cedar and other things were applied to the whole body for upwards of thirty days,’ the full period during which the mourning for the dead and the preparation of his mummy lasted being seventy-two days. Between the age of Joseph and that of Diodoros it would seem that little change had taken place in this part, at any rate, of the Egyptian treatment of their dead. When, however, the Hebrew text 97states that the corpse was embalmed by ‘the physicians, the slaves’ of Joseph; the word ‘physicians’ must be understood in a restricted sense. Pliny,^[123] it is true, avers that during the process of embalming physicians were employed to examine the body of the dead man and determine of what disease he had died. But the paraskhistæ, who made the needful incision, were regarded with the utmost abhorrence; they were the pariahs of society, who lived in a community apart. It was the embalmers who were the associates of the priests, and whose persons, in the words of Diodoros, were looked upon as ‘sacred.’ Nor is it easy to see who could have been the physicians who were the ‘slaves’ of the Hebrew vizier. The physician in Egypt was usually a free man, who followed a profession which brought with it honour and respect. The doctor belonged to the learned classes, and, like the scribe, had no mean opinion of his worth and dignity. But such physicians were employed in healing the sick, not in embalming the dead, and must have stood in a very different position from that of Joseph’s ‘slaves.’ More light is still wanted on the subject from monumental sources; in spite of the papyri which describe the ceremonies attendant on the various acts of the embalmment, we are still ignorant of its practical details.

When at last the days of mourning were past, Joseph spoke, we are told, to ‘the house of Pharaoh.’ The expression is purely Egyptian, and refers to the signification of the word ‘Pharaoh’ itself. Pharaoh, the Egyptian Per-âa, is the ‘Great House’; ‘the son of the Sun-god’ was too highly exalted to be spoken of as a man, and it was therefore to ‘the Great House’ that his subjects addressed themselves. Modern Europe is familiar with a similar phrase; when we allude to the ‘Sublime Porte’ we mean the Turkish Sultan, who once administered justice from the ‘High Gate’ of his palace.

Jacob was buried in the cave of Machpelah. A long procession of soldiers and mourners, partly in chariots, partly on 98foot, accompanied the mummy on its way out of Egypt. Such a procession was no unusual thing. The wealthy Egyptian desired to be buried near the tomb of Osiris at Abydos, and it was therefore not unfrequently the custom to convey his mummy in solemn procession to that sacred spot, and then to carry it back once more to its own final resting-place. The procession which accompanied the body of the patriarch must have followed the high-road which led through the Shur, or line of fortification on the eastern border of the desert, and brought the traveller with little difficulty to Southern Palestine. The reference in the narrative to the threshing-floor of Atad, on the eastern side of the Jordan, is an interpolation, which embodies merely a local etymology. The chariot-road from Egypt to Palestine naturally never ran near the Jordan; and the threshing-floor of Atad would have been far out of the way. But popular imagination had seen in the name of Abel-Mizraim, where the threshing-floor was situated, a ‘mourning of Egypt,’ and had accordingly connected it with the great mourning that was made for Jacob. As a matter of fact, however, Abel-Mizraim really signifies ‘the meadow of Egypt,’ abel, ‘a meadow,’ being a not uncommon element in the geographical names of ancient Canaan.^[124]

Two sons had been born to Joseph by his Egyptian wife, whom the Israelites knew by their Hebrew names. They had been born before the death of his father, and had thus received his blessing. Joseph himself lived ‘an hundred and ten years.’ This was the limit of life the Egyptian desired for himself and his friends, and in the inscriptions the boon of a life of ‘an hundred and ten years’ is from time to time asked for from the gods. It is the term of existence a court poet promises to Seti II. ‘on earth,’ and Ptah-hotep, the author of ‘the oldest book in the world,’ who flourished in the days of the fifth 99dynasty, assures us that, thanks to his pursuit of wisdom he had already attained the age.^[125]

Joseph was embalmed, but his mummy was not carried to Hebron for burial, like that of his father. If Apopi II. had been the Pharaoh who had transformed him from a Hebrew slave into the highest of Egyptian officials, the War of Independence must have broken out long before his death. The Hyksos dynasty was hastening to its decay. Its strength had departed from it, and the Pharaohs of Zoan, who had lost all power in Upper Egypt, would still more have lost all power in Asia. Their soldiers were needed for other purposes than that of escorting the coffin of the dead vizier across the desert of El-Arish. Moreover, Joseph was an Egyptian official, and by his marriage into the family of the high priest of Heliopolis had become as much of an Egyptian as his Hyksos master. We are told that he made the Israelites swear to carry his corpse with them should they ever return to Palestine; the triumph of the Theban princes was growing more assured, and Joseph knew well that the vengeance of the victorious party would be wreaked upon the dead as well as upon the living. The history of Egypt had already shown that the tomb and the mummy were the first to suffer.

A change of sepulchre was no unheard-of thing. King Ai of the eighteenth dynasty had two, if not three, tombs made for himself, and the mummy could be transported from one place of burial to another. All knew where it was interred; year by year offerings were made to the spirit of the dead, and in many cases the estate of the deceased was taxed to support a line of priests who should perform the stated services at the tomb. As long as the sepulchre of Joseph was in the neighbourhood of his people it would have been easy to protect his mummy from violence, and to carry the coffin out of Egypt when the needful time should come.

CHAPTER II THE COMPOSITION OF THE PENTATEUCH

The Literary Analysis and its Conclusions—Based on a Theory and an Assumption—Weakness of the Philological Evidence—Disregard of the Scientific Method of Comparison—Imperfection of our Knowledge of Hebrew—Archæology unfavourable to the Higher Criticism—Analysis of Historical Sources—Tel el-Amarna Tablets—Antiquity of Writing in the East—The Mosaic Age highly Literary—Scribes mentioned in the Song of Deborah—The Story of the Deluge brought from Babylonia to Canaan before the time of Moses—The Narratives of the Pentateuch confirmed by Archæology—Compiled from early Written Documents—Revised and re-edited from time to time—Three Strata of Legislation—Accuracy in the Text—Tendencies—Chronology.

The book of Genesis ends with the death of Joseph. When the five books of the Pentateuch were divided from one another we do not know. The division is older than the Septuagint translation, older too than the time when the Law of Moses was accepted by the Samaritans as divinely authoritative. As far back as we can trace the external history of the Pentateuch, it has consisted of five books divided from one another as they still are in our present Bibles.

An influential school of modern critics has come to conclusions which are difficult to reconcile with this external testimony. Instead of the Pentateuch it offers us a Hexateuch, the Book of Joshua being added to those of Moses, and of the origin and growth of this Hexateuch it professes to be able to give a minute and mathematically exact account. Very little, if any of it, we are told, goes back to the period of Moses, the larger part of the work having been composed or compiled in the age of the Exile. It is true, the theories of criticism have changed from time to time; what was formerly held, for instance, to be the oldest portion of the Hexateuch being now regarded as the latest; but each generation of critics has been equally confident that its own literary analysis was mathematically correct. At present the hypothetical scheme most in favour is as follows.

The earliest part of the Hexateuch, at all events in its 101existing form, is a document distinguished by the use of the name Yahveh, and sometimes therefore termed Yahvistic or Jehovistic, but more usually designated by the symbol J. The Yahvist is supposed to have been a Jew who made use of older materials, and lived in the ninth century B.C. His work begins with ‘the second’ account of the Creation, in the middle of the fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, and the last trace of it is to be found in the story of the death and burial of Moses at the end of Deuteronomy. His style is said to be naïve and lively, and his conceptions of the Deity grossly anthropomorphic.

Next in order to the Yahvist comes the Second Elohist (symbolised by the letter E), whose title is derived from the period, not very far distant, in the history of criticism, when what is now known as the Priestly Code was assigned to a First Elohist. The Elohist is characterised by the use of the word Elohim, ‘God,’ rather than Yahveh, and the critics have discovered in him a native of the northern kingdom. To him belong the ‘Ten Words’ which represent the original form of the Ten Commandments, as well as the history of Joseph. He is said to have written with a certain theological tendency, to which is due his predilection for introducing dreams and angels into his narrative. His date is ascribed to the eighth century B.C., and the combination of his narrative with that of the Yahvist (J.E.) produced a composite work to which the name of Prophetic or Pre-Deuteronomic Redaction has been applied. The Redactor endeavoured to reconcile the contradictions between the two narratives by various harmonistic expedients; his success was not great, and the nineteenth century critic accordingly believes himself able not only to separate the two original documents, but to point out the additions of the Redactor as well.

Contemporaneous with this work of redaction was the appearance of a new book, the so-called Book of the Covenant. This was of small dimensions; at any rate, all that remains of it is contained in a few chapters of Exodus (xx. 24-xxiii. 33, xxiv. 3-8). 102It was added, however, to the Prophetic Redaction, and the Mosaic Law for the first time was introduced to the world.

But now appeared a book which was of momentous consequences for both the history and the religion of Judah. This was the book of Deuteronomy, or rather the middle portion of the book of Deuteronomy (chaps. xii-xxvi.), the rest of the book being a subsequent addition. This abbreviated Deuteronomy, it is assumed, is ‘the book of the Law’ which Hilkiah the high priest declared he had ‘found in the house of the Lord’ in the reign of Josiah, and it is further assumed that the word ‘found’ is intended to cover a ‘pious fraud.’ The Egyptian inscriptions mention books of early date which had been similarly ‘found’ in the temples, and some of these books really seem to have been forgeries of a later date.^[126] Modern criticism has determined that Hilkiah and his friends imitated the example of the Egyptian priests in the case of Deuteronomy. At all events, the results were instantaneous and revolutionary. The king and his court believed that they had before them the actual commands of their God to the great lawgiver of Israel, and the Jewish religion underwent accordingly a radical reform. Nor did the effect of the supposed discovery end here. Like the forged Decretals in mediæval Europe, the book of Deuteronomy had a continuous and wide-reaching influence upon Jewish thought. Its teaching was matured during the Exile, and out of it grew that form of Jewish religion of which Christianity was the heir. The book of Deuteronomy (symbolised by D) in the first as well as in the second or enlarged edition belongs to the latter part of the seventh century B.C. But the Hexateuch was still far from complete. During the Exile a book of the Law, now contained in Lev. xvii.-xxvi., was written and promulgated, the author, it appears, having been incited to his work by Ezekiel’s ideal of a theocratic state. This book of the Law was followed by a far more ambitious production, the ‘Priestly Code’ 103(generally known as P, and not unfrequently called the ‘Grundschrift’ by German writers). The Priestly Code embodies what earlier critics knew as the work of the First Elohist; it not only in the name of Moses shapes the ritual and religion of Israel to the advantage of the priests, but it attempts to trace the history of the revelation which resulted in that religion back to the Creation itself. The name of Elohim is again a distinguishing feature in the narrative, which is described by the ‘critics’ as formal and pedantic, as affectedly archaistic, and as disfigured by a strong theological tendency. Wellhausen and Stade assure us that it transforms the patriarchs into pious Jews of the Exile. And yet it was just this narrative, which we are now told bears so plainly on its face the marks of its late age and sacerdotal character, that hardly twenty years ago was declared by the critics themselves to be the oldest portion of the Hexateuch!

By this time the Hexateuch was nearly ready to become the Pentateuch, which should be read by Ezra before the Jewish community as ‘the law of God’ (Nem. viii. 8), and be accepted by the hostile Samaritans as alone authoritative among the sacred books of Israel. All that was needed further was to combine the existing books into a whole, smoothing over the inconsistencies between them and supplying links of connection. The ‘final Redactor’ who accomplished this task lived shortly after the Exile, and has been identified with Ezra by some of the critics. Whoever he was, he was naturally more in harmony with the spirit and ideas of the Priestly Code than he was with those of the Prophetic Redaction, or even of Deuteronomy; indeed, it is hard to understand why he should have troubled himself about the Prophetic Redaction at all. Between the Jewish religion of the days of Asa or Jehoshaphat and that of the period after the Exile a great gulf was fixed.

It is clear that if the modern literary analysis of the Pentateuch is justified, it is useless to look to the five books of Moses for authentic history. There is nothing in them 104which can be ascribed with certainty to the age of Moses, nothing which goes back even to the age of the Judges. Between the Exodus out of Egypt and the composition of the earliest portion of the so-called Mosaic Law there would have been a dark and illiterate interval of several centuries. Not even tradition could be trusted to span them. For the Mosaic age, and still more for the age before the Exodus, all that we read in the Old Testament would be historically valueless.

Such criticism, therefore, as accepts the results of ‘the literary analysis’ of the Hexateuch acts consistently in stamping as mythical the whole period of Hebrew history which precedes the settlement of the Israelitish tribes in Canaan. Doubt is thrown even on their residence in Egypt and subsequent escape from ‘the house of bondage.’ Moses himself becomes a mere figure of mythland, a hero of popular imagination whose sepulchre was unknown because it had never been occupied. In order to discredit the earlier records of the Israelitish people, there is no need of indicating contradictions—real or otherwise—in the details of the narratives contained in them, of enlarging upon their chronological difficulties, or of pointing to the supernatural elements they involve; the late dates assigned to the medley of documents which have been discovered in the Hexateuch are sufficient of themselves to settle the question.^[127]

The dates are largely, if not altogether, dependent on the assumption that Hebrew literature is not older than the age of David. A few poems like the Song of Deborah may have been handed down orally from an earlier period, but readers and writers, it is assumed, there were none. The use of writing for literary purposes was coeval with the rise of the monarchy. The oldest inscription in the letters of the Phœnician alphabet yet discovered is only of the ninth century B.C., and the alphabet would have been employed for monumental purposes long before it was applied to the manufacture of books. As Wolf’s 105theory of the origin and late date of the Homeric Poems avowedly rested on the belief that the literary use of writing in Greece was of late date, so too the theory of the analysts of the Hexateuch rests tacitly on the belief that the Israelites of the age of Moses and the Judges were wholly illiterate. Moses did not write the Pentateuch because he could not have done so.

The huge edifice of modern Pentateuchal criticism is thus based on a theory and an assumption. The theory is that of ‘the literary analysis’ of the Hexateuch, the assumption that a knowledge of writing in Israel was of comparatively late date. The theory, however, is philological, not historical. The analysis is philological rather than literary, and depends entirely on the occurrence and use of certain words and phrases. Lists have been drawn up of the words and phrases held to be peculiar to the different writers between whom the Hexateuch is divided, and the portion of the Hexateuch to be assigned to each is determined accordingly. That it is sometimes necessary to cut a verse in two, somewhat to the injury of the sense, matters but little; the necessities of the theory require the sacrifice, and the analyst looks no further. Great things grow out of little, and the mathematical minuteness with which the Hexateuch is apportioned among its numerous authors, and the long lists of words and idioms by which the apportionment is supported, all have their origin in Astruc’s separation of the book of Genesis into two documents, in one of which the name of Yahveh is used, while in the other it is replaced by Elohim.^[128]

106The historian, however, is inclined to look with suspicion upon historical results which rest upon purely philological evidence. It is not so very long ago since the comparative philologists believed they had restored the early history of the Aryan race. With the help of the dictionary and grammar they had painted an idyllic picture of the life and culture of the primitive Aryan family and traced the migrations of its offshoots from their primeval Asiatic home. But anthropology has rudely dissipated all these reconstructions of primitive history, and has not spared even the Aryan family or the Asiatic home itself. The history that was based on philology has been banished to fairyland. It may be that the historical results based on the complicated and ingenious system of Hexateuchal criticism will hereafter share the same fate.

In fact, there is one characteristic of them which cannot but excite suspicion. A passage which runs counter to the theory of the critic is at once pronounced an interpolation, due to the clumsy hand of some later ‘Redactor.’ Thus ‘the tabernacle of the congregation’ is declared to have been an invention of the Priestly Code; and therefore a verse in the First Book of Samuel (ii. 22), which happens to refer to it, is arbitrarily expunged from the text. Similarly passages in the historical books which imply an acquaintance on the part of Solomon and his successors with the laws and institutions of the Priestly Code are asserted to be late additions, and assigned to the very circle of writers to which the composition of the Code is credited. Indeed, if we are to believe the analysts, a considerable part of the professedly historical literature of the Old Testament was written or ‘redacted’ chiefly with the purpose of bolstering up the ideas and inventions either of the Deuteronomist or of the later Code. This is a cheap and easy way of rewriting ancient history, but it is neither scientific nor in accordance with the historical method, however consonant it may be with the methods of the philologist.

When, however, we come to examine the philological evidence upon which we are asked to accept this new reading 107of ancient Hebrew history, we find that it is wofully defective. We are asked to believe that a European scholar of the nineteenth century can analyse with mathematical precision a work composed centuries ago in the East for Eastern readers in a language that is long since dead, can dissolve it verse by verse, and even word by word, into its several elements, and fix the approximate date and relation of each. The accomplishment of such a feat is an impossibility, and to attempt it is to sin as much against common sense as against the laws of science. Science teaches us that we can attain to truth only by the help of comparison; we can know things scientifically only in so far as they can be compared and measured one with another. Where there is no comparison there can be no scientific result. Even the logicians of the Middle Ages taught that no conclusion can be drawn from what they termed a single instance. It is just this, however, that the Hexateuchal critics have essayed to do. The Pentateuch and its history have been compared with nothing except themselves, and the results have been derived not from the method of comparison, but from the so-called ‘tact’ and arbitrary judgment of the individual scholar. Certain postulates have been assumed, the consequences of which have been gradually evolved, one after another, while the coherence and credibility of the general hypothesis has been supported by the invention of further subordinate hypotheses as the need for them arose. The ‘critical’ theory of the origin and character of the Hexateuch closely resembles the Ptolemaic theory of the universe; like the latter, it is highly complicated and elaborate, coherent in itself, and perfect on paper, but unfortunately baseless in reality.

Its very complication condemns it. It is too ingenious to be true. Had the Hexateuch been pieced together as we are told it was, it would have required a special revelation to discover the fact. We may lay it down as a general rule in science that the more simple a theory is, the more likely it is to be correct. It is the complicated theories, which demand 108all kinds of subsidiary qualifications and assistant hypotheses, that are put aside by the progress of science. The wit of man may be great, but it needs a mass of material before even a simple theory can be established with any pretence to scientific value.

There is yet another reason why the new theory of the origin of the Mosaic Law stands self-condemned. It deals with the writers and readers of the ancient East as if they were modern German professors and their literary audience. The author of the Priestly Code is supposed to go to work with scissors and paste, and with a particular object in view, like a rather wooden and unimaginative compiler of to-day. And so closely did the minds and methods of the authors of the Hexateuch resemble those of their modern European critics, that in spite of their efforts to conceal the piecemeal nature of their work, as well as of the fact that it actually deceived their countrymen to whom it was addressed, to the European scholar of to-day it all lies open and revealed. When, however, we turn to other products of Oriental thought, whether ancient or modern, we do not find that this is the way in which the authors of them have written history, or what purports to be history, neither do we find their readers to be at all like those for whom the Hexateuch is supposed to have been compiled. The point of view of an Oriental is still essentially different from that of a European, at all events so far as history and literature are concerned; and the attempt to transform the ancient Israelitish historians into somewhat inferior German compilers proves only a strange want of familiarity with Eastern modes of thought.

But it is not only science, it is common sense as well, which is violated by the endeavour to foist philological speculations into the treatment of historical questions. Hebrew is a dead language; it is moreover a language which is but imperfectly known. Our knowledge of it is derived entirely from that fragment of its literature which is preserved in the Old Testament, and the errors of copyists and the corruptions of the text 109make a good deal even of this obscure and doubtful. There are numerous words, the traditional rendering of which is questionable; there are numerous others in the case of which it is certainly wrong; and there is passage after passage in which the translations of scholars vary from one another, sometimes even to contradiction. Of both grammar and lexicon it may be said that we see them through a glass darkly. Not unfrequently the reading of the Septuagint—the earliest manuscript of which is six hundred years older than the earliest manuscript of the Hebrew text—differs entirely from the reading of the Hebrew; and there is a marked tendency among the Hexateuchal analysts to prefer it, though the recently-discovered Hebrew text of the book of Ecclesiasticus seems to show that the preference is not altogether justified.

How, then, can a modern Western scholar analyse with even approximate exactitude an ancient Hebrew work, and on the strength of the language and style dissolve it once more into its component atoms? How can he determine the relation of these atoms one to the other, or presume to fix the dates to which they severally belong? The task would be impossible even in the case of a modern English book, although English is a spoken language with which we are all supposed to be thoroughly acquainted, while its vast literature is familiar to us all. And yet even where we know that a work is composite, it passes the power of man to separate it into its elements and define the limits of each. No one, for instance, would dream of attempting such a task in the case of the novels of Besant and Rice; and the endeavour to distinguish in certain plays of Shakespeare what belongs to the poet himself and what to Fletcher has met with the oblivion it deserved. Is it likely that a problem which cannot be solved in the case of an English book can be solved where its difficulties are increased a thousandfold? The minuteness and apparent precision of Hexateuchal criticism are simply due, like that of the Ptolemaic theory, to the artificial character of the basis on which it rests. It is, in fact, a philological mirage; it attempts 110the impossible, and in place of the scientific method of comparison, it gives us as a starting-point the assumptions and arbitrary principles of a one-sided critic.^[129]

Where philology has failed, archæology has come to our help. The needful comparison of the Old Testament record with something else than itself has been afforded by the discoveries which have been made of recent years in Egypt and Babylonia and other parts of the ancient East. At last we are able to call in the aid of the scientific method, and test the age and character, the authenticity and trustworthiness of the Old Testament history, by monuments about whose historical authority there can be no question. And the result of the test has, on the whole, been in favour of tradition, and against the doctrines of the newer critical school. It has vindicated the 111antiquity and credibility of the narratives of the Pentateuch; it has proved that the Mosaic age was a highly literary one, and that consequently the marvel would be, not that Moses should have written, but that he should not have done so; and it has undermined the foundation on which the documentary hypothesis of the origin of the Hexateuch has been built. We are still indeed only at the beginning of discoveries; those made during the past year or two have for the student of Genesis been exceptionally important; but enough has now been gained to assure us that the historian may safely disregard the philological theory of Hexateuchal criticism, and treat the books of the Pentateuch from a wholly different point of view. They are a historical record, and it is for the historian and archæologist, and not for the grammarian, to determine their value and age.

112The investigation of the literary sources of history has been a peculiarly German pastime. Doubtless such an investigation has been necessary. But it is exposed to the danger of trying to make bricks without straw. More often than not the materials are wanting for arriving at conclusions of solid scientific value. The results announced in such cases are due partly to the critic’s own prepossessions and postulates, partly to the imperfection of the evidence. It is easy to doubt, still easier to deny, especially where the evidence is defective, and the criticism of the literary sources of a narrative has sometimes meant an unwarrantable and unintelligent scepticism. To reverse traditional judgments, to reject external testimony, and to discover half-a-dozen authors where antiquity knew of but one, may be a proof of the critic’s ingenuity, but it does not always demonstrate his appreciation of evidence.

Criticism of the literary sources of our historical knowledge is indeed necessary, and a recognition of the fact has much to do with the advance which has been made during the present century in the study of the past. But it must not be forgotten that such criticism has its weak side. Internal evidence alone is always unsatisfactory; it offers too much scope for the play of the critic’s imagination and the impression of his own idiosyncrasies upon the records of history. It resembles too much the procedure of the spider who spins his web out of himself. It is wanting in that element of comparison without which scientific truth is unattainable. To determine the age and trustworthiness of our literary authorities is doubtless of extreme importance to the historian, but unfortunately the materials for doing so are too often absent, and the fancies and assumptions of the critic are put in their place.

The trustworthiness of an author, like the reality of the facts he narrates, can be adequately tested in only one way. We must be able to compare his accounts of past events with other contemporaneous records of them. Sometimes these records consist of pottery or other products of human industry which anthropology is able to interpret; often they are the far 113more important inscriptions which were written or engraved by the actors in the events themselves. In other words, it is to archæology that we must look for a verification or the reverse of the ancient history that has been handed down to us as well as of the credibility of its narrators. The written monuments of the ancient East which belong to the same age as the patriarchs or Moses can alone assure us whether we are to trust the narrative of the Pentateuch or to see in it a confused medley of legends the late date of which makes belief in them impossible.

As has been said above, Oriental archæology has already disclosed sufficient to show us to which of these two alternatives we must lean. On the one hand, much of the history contained in the book of Genesis has been shown, directly or indirectly, to be authentic; on the other hand, the new-fangled theory of the composition of the Hexateuch has been decisively ruled out of court. Let us take the second point first.

In 1887 a large collection of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform characters was found by the Egyptian fellahin among the ruins of the ancient city now known as Tel el-Amarna, on the eastern bank of the Nile, about midway between Minieh and Siût. The city had enjoyed but a brief existence. Towards the close of the eighteenth dynasty, the Pharaoh, Amenophis III., had died, leaving the throne to his son, Amenophis IV., a mere lad, who was still under the influence of his mother Teie. Teie was of Asiatic extraction, and fanatically devoted to an Asiatic form of faith. This devotion was shared by her son, and soon began to bear fruit. Amon of Thebes had to make way for a new deity, who was worshipped under the visible form of the solar disk, and the old religion of Egypt of which the Pharaoh was the official head was utterly proscribed. It was not long before the Pharaoh and the powerful hierarchy of Thebes were at open war; the very name of Amon was erased from the monuments where it occurred, and the king changed his own name to that of Khu-n-Aten, ‘the glory of the Solar Disk.’ But in the end, Khu-n-Aten had to quit the 114capital of his fathers and establish himself with his adherents and courtiers in a new city further north. This city, Khut-Aten, as. it was called, is now represented by the mounds of Tel el-Amarna.

Here the Pharaoh was surrounded by his followers, a large proportion of whom were Asiatics, chiefly from Canaan. The court of Egypt, as well as its religion, became Asiatised. The revolution in religion was also accompanied by a revolution in art. The old hieratic canon of Egyptian art was cast aside, and an excessive realism was aimed at, sometimes even to the verge of caricature. In the centre of the new city a temple was raised to the new divinity of Egypt, and hard by the temple rose the palace of the king. Its ornamentation was surpassingly gorgeous. Its walls and columns were inlaid with precious stones, with coloured glass and gold; even its floors were painted with scenes from nature which are of the highest artistic excellence, and statues were erected, some of which remind us of the best work of classical Greece.^[130]

But the glory of Khut-Aten was short-lived. The latter years of the reign of its founder were clouded with religious and civil dissension. Religious persecution at home had been followed by trouble and revolt abroad in the Asiatic provinces of the Empire. When Khu-n-Aten died, his enemies were already pressing around him, and the perils that threatened him in Egypt obliged him to return no answer to the despairing appeals for help that came to him from his governors in Palestine. Hardly had the mummy of the king been deposited in the superb tomb that he had carved out of a mountain amid the desolation and solitude of a distant gorge, when the spoiler was at hand. The royal sarcophagus never reached the niche in which it was intended to be placed; the enemies of the ‘Heretic King’ hacked to pieces its granite sides as it lay upon the floor of the inner chamber, and scattered to the winds the remains of its occupant. The destruction of Khut-Aten 115soon followed; one or two princes of the family of Khu-n-Aten did indeed struggle for a brief while to maintain themselves upon his throne, but before long Amon triumphed over the Solar Disk. The great temple of Aten was razed to the ground, and its stones carried away to serve as materials for the sanctuaries of the victorious god of Thebes. The palace of Khu-n-Aten was destroyed, the religion he had essayed to force upon his subjects was forgotten, and the Asiatic officials who had filled his court were driven into exile. The city he had built was deserted, never to be inhabited again.

The clay tablets found by the fellahin were discovered on the site of the Foreign Office of the ‘Heretic King,’ the bricks of which were each stamped with the words ‘The Record Office of Aten-Ra.’^[131] It adjoined the palace, and we learn from a clay seal found among its ruins by Professor Petrie that it was under the control of a Babylonian. This, however, was not extraordinary, since the foreign correspondence of the Pharaoh was carried on in the Babylonian language and the Babylonian system of writing. In fact, the Tel el-Amarna tablets have shown that the Western Asia conquered by the Egyptian kings of the eighteenth dynasty was wholly under the domination of Babylonian culture. All over the civilised Oriental world, from the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates to those of the Nile, the common medium of literary and diplomatic intercourse was the language and script of Chaldæa. Not only the writing material, but all that was written upon it, was borrowed from Babylonia. So powerful was this Babylonian influence, that the Egyptians themselves were compelled to submit to it. In place of their own singular and less cumbrous hieratic or cursive script, they had to communicate with their Asiatic subjects and allies in the cuneiform characters and the Babylonian tongue. Indeed, there is evidence that the memoranda made by the official scribes of the Pharaoh’s court, at all 116events in Palestine, were compiled in the same foreign speech and syllabary.^[132] That the Babylonian language and script were studied in Egypt itself we know from the evidence of the Tel el-Amarna tablets. Among them have been found fragments of dictionaries as well as Babylonian mythological tales. In one of the latter certain of the words and phrases are separated from one another in order to assist the learner.

The use of the Babylonian language and system of writing in Western Asia must have been of considerable antiquity. This is proved by the fact that the characters had gradually assumed peculiar forms in the different countries in which they were employed, so that by merely glancing at the form of the writing we can tell whether a tablet was written in Palestine or in Northern Syria, in Cappadocia or Mesopotamia. The knowledge of them, moreover, was not confined to the few. On the contrary, education must have been widely spread; the Tel el-Amarna correspondence was carried on, not only by professional scribes, but also by officials, by soldiers, and by merchants. Even women appear among the writers, and take part in the politics of the day. The letters, too, are sometimes written about the most trivial matters, and not unfrequently enter into the most unimportant details.

They were sent from all parts of the known civilised world. The kings of Babylonia and Assyria, of Mesopotamia and Cappadocia, the Egyptian governors of Syria and Canaan, even the chiefs of the Bedâwin tribes on the Egyptian frontier, who were subsidised by the Pharaoh’s government like the Afghan chiefs of to-day, all alike contributed to the correspondence. Letters, in fact, must have been constantly passing to and fro along the high-roads which intersected Western Asia. From one end of it to the other the population was in perpetual literary intercourse, proving that the Oriental world in the century before the Exodus was as highly educated and literary as was Europe in the age of the Renaissance. Nor 117was all this literary activity and intercourse a new thing. Several of the letters had been sent to Amenophis III., the father of the ‘Heretic King,’ and had been removed by the latter from the archives of Thebes when he transferred his residence to his new capital. And the literary intercourse which was carried on in the time of Amenophis III. was merely a continuation of that which had been carried on for centuries previously. The culture of Babylonia, like that of Egypt, was essentially literary, and this culture had been spread over Western Asia from a remote date. The letters of Khammu-rabi or Amraphel to his vassal, the king of Larsa, have just been recovered, and among the multitudinous contract-tablets of the same epoch are specimens of commercial correspondence.

We have, however, only to consider for a moment what was meant by learning the language and script of Babylonia in order to realise what a highly-organised system of education must have prevailed throughout the whole civilised world of the day. Not only had the Babylonian language to be acquired, but some knowledge also of the older agglutinative language of Chaldæa was also needed in order to understand the system of writing. It was as if the schoolboy of to-day had to add a knowledge of Greek to a knowledge of French. And the system of writing itself involved years of hard and patient study. It consisted of a syllabary containing hundreds of characters, each of which had not only several different phonetic values, but several different ideographic significations as well. Nor was this all. A group of characters might be used ideographically to express a word the pronunciation of which had nothing to do with the sounds of the individual characters of which it was composed. The number of ideographs which had to be learned was thus increased fivefold. And, unlike the hieroglyphs of Egypt, the forms of these ideographs gave no assistance to the memory. They had long since lost all resemblance to the pictures out of which they had originally been developed, and consisted simply of various 118combinations of wedges or lines. It was difficult enough for the Babylonian or Assyrian to learn the syllabary; for a foreigner the task was almost herculean.

That it should have been undertaken implies the existence of libraries and schools. One of the distinguishing features of Babylonian culture were the libraries which existed in the great towns, and wherever Babylonian culture was carried this feature of it must have gone too. Hence in the libraries of Western Asia clay books inscribed with cuneiform characters must have been stored up, while beside them must have been the schools, where the pupils bent over their exercises and the teachers instructed them in the language and script of the foreigner. The world into which Moses was born was a world as literary as our own.

If Western Asia were the home of a long-established literary culture, Egypt was even more so. From time immemorial the land of the Pharaohs had been a land of writers and readers. At a very early period the hieroglyphic system of writing had been modified into a cursive hand, the so-called hieratic; and as far back as the days of the third and fifth dynasties famous books had been written, and the author of one of them, Ptah-hotep, already deplores the degeneracy and literary decay of his own time. The traveller up the Nile, who examines the cliffs that line the river, cannot but be struck by the multitudinous names that are scratched upon them. He is at times inclined to believe that every Egyptian in ancient times knew how to write, and had little else to do than to scribble a record of himself on the rocks. The impression is the same that we derive from the small objects which are disinterred in such thousands from the sites of the old cities. Wherever it is possible, an inscription has been put upon them, which, it seems taken for granted, could be read by all. Even the walls of the temples and tombs were covered with written texts; wherever the Egyptian turned, or whatever might be the object he used, it was difficult for him to avoid the sight of the written word. Whoever was born in the land 119of Egypt was perforce familiarised with the art of writing from the very days of his infancy.

Evidence is accumulating that the same literary culture which thus prevailed in Egypt and Western Asia had extended also to the peninsula of Arabia. Dr. Glaser and Professor Hommel, two of the foremost authorities on the subject, believe that some of the inscriptions of Southern Arabia go back to the age of the eighteenth and nineteenth Egyptian dynasties; and if they are right, as they seem to be, in holding that the kingdom of Ma’n or the Minæans preceded that of Saba or Sheba, the antiquity of writing in Arabia must be great.^[133] The fact that the Babylonian dynasty to which Amraphel belonged was of South Arabian origin supports the belief in the existence of Arabian culture at an early period, as do also the latest researches into the source of the so-called Phœnician alphabet. We now know that in the Mosaic age it was the cuneiform syllabary, and not the Phœnician alphabet, that was used in Canaan, while the oldest inscription in Phœnician letters yet found is later than the reign of Solomon. On the other hand, the South Arabian form of the alphabet contains letters which denote sounds once possessed by all the Semitic languages, but lost by the language of Canaan; and though some of these letters may be derived from other letters of the alphabet, there are some which have an independent origin. The caravan-road along which the spices of the South were carried to Syria and Egypt passed through the territory of Edom; inscriptions of the kings of Ma’n have already been discovered near Teima, not far from the frontiers of Midian; and it may be that we shall yet find records among the ranges of Mount Seir which will form a link between the early texts of Southern Arabia and the oldest text that has come from Phœnician soil.

The Exodus from Egypt, then, took place during a highly 120literary period, and the people who took part in it passed from a country where the art of writing literally stared them in the face to another country which had been the centre of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence and the home of Babylonian literary culture for unnumbered centuries. Is it conceivable that their leader and reputed lawgiver should not have been able to write, that he should not have been educated ‘in the wisdom of Egypt,’ or that the upper classes of his nation should not have been able to read? Let it be granted that the Israelites were but a Bedâwin tribe which had been reduced by the Pharaohs to the condition of public slaves; still, they necessarily had leaders and overseers among them, who, according to the State regulations of Egypt, were responsible to the Government for the rest of their countrymen, and some at least of these leaders and overseers would have been educated men. Moses could have written the Pentateuch, even if he did not do so.

Moreover, the clay tablets on which the past history of Canaan could be read were preserved in the libraries and archive-chambers of the Canaanitish cities down to the time when the latter were destroyed. If any doubt had existed on the subject after the revelations of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, it has been set at rest by the discovery of a similar tablet on the site of Lachish. In some cases the cities were not destroyed, so far as we know, until the period when it is allowed that the Israelites had ceased to be illiterate. Gezer, for example, which plays a leading part in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, does not seem to have fallen into the hands of an enemy until it was captured by the Egyptian Pharaoh and handed over to his son-in-law Solomon. As long as a knowledge of the cuneiform script continued, the early records of Canaan were thus accessible to the historian, many of them being contemporaneous with the events to which they referred.

A single archæological discovery has thus destroyed the base of operations from which a one-sided criticism of Old 121Testament history had started. The really strong point in favour of it was the assumption that the Mosaic age was illiterate. Just as Wolf founded his criticism and analysis of the Homeric Hymns on the belief that the use of writing for literary purposes was of late date in Greece, so the belief that the Israelites of the time of Moses could not read or write was the ultimate foundation on which the modern theory of the composition of the Hexateuch has been based. Whether avowed or not, it was the true starting-point of critical scepticism, the one solid foundation on which it seemed to rest. The destruction of the foundation endangers the structure which has been built upon it.

In fact, it wholly alters the position of the modern critical theory. The onus probandi no longer lies on the shoulders of the defenders of traditional views. Instead of being called upon to prove that Moses could have written a book, it is they who have to call on the disciples of the modern theory to show reason why he should not have done so. And it is always difficult to prove a negative.

It may be said that the positive arguments of the modern hypothesis remain as they were. That is possible, but their background is gone. And how conscious the Hexateuchal analysts were of the importance of this background, before the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, may be seen from their desperate efforts to rid themselves of the counter evidence afforded by the Song of Deborah. ‘Out of Machir,’ it is there said (Judg. v. 14), ‘came down lawgivers, and out of Zebulun they that handle the stylus of the scribe.’ In defiance of philology, the latter words were translated ‘the baton of the marshal’! But sopher is ‘scribe’ here, as elsewhere in Hebrew; and his shebhet, or ‘stylus,’ is often depicted on the Egyptian monuments. In the Blessing of Jacob, which is allowed to be of early date, like the Song of Deborah, the shebhet is associated with the m’khoqêq or ‘lawgiver’ (Gen. xlix. 10). The word m’khoqêq, however, meant literally an ‘engraver,’ one who did not write his laws on papyrus or 122parchment, as the scribe would have done, but caused them to be engraved on stone, or metal, or clay.^[134] In either case they were written down; and written documents are thus implied not only in the expression ‘the stylus of the scribe,’ but in the word ‘lawgiver’ as well. The Song of Deborah, by general consent, belongs to the oldest period of the Hebrew settlement in Palestine; it belongs also to an age of anarchy and national depression; and, nevertheless, it is already acquainted with Israelitish lawgivers and scribes, with engravers of the laws and handlers of the pen. It is little wonder that its evidence was explained away in accordance with a method which is neither scientific nor historical.

As historians, we are bound to admit the antiquity of writing in Israel. The scribe goes back to the Mosaic age, like the lawgiver, and in this respect, therefore, the Israelites formed no exception to the nations among whom they lived. They were no islet of illiterate barbarism in the midst of a great sea of literary culture and activity, nor were they obstinately asleep while all about them were writing and reading.

But even the analysis of the Hexateuchal critics fails to stand the test of archæological discovery. Nowhere does there seem to be clearer evidence of the documentary hypothesis than in the story of the Deluge. Here the combination of a Yahvistic and an Elohistic narrative seems to force itself upon the attention of the reader, and the advocates of the disintegration theory have triumphantly pointed to the internal contradictions and inconsistencies of the story in support of their views. If anywhere, here, at any rate, the external testimony of archæeology ought to be given on the side of modern criticism.

And yet it is not. It so happens that among the fragments of ancient Babylonian epic and legend which have come down to us is a long poem in twelve books, composed in the age of Abraham, or earlier, by a certain Sin-liqi-unnini, and recounting 123the adventures of the Chaldæan hero Gilgames. It is based on older materials, and is, in fact, the last note and final summing-up of Chaldæan epic song. Older poems have been incorporated into it, and the epic itself has been artificially moulded upon an astronomical plan. Its twelve books, in each of which a new adventure of its hero is recorded, correspond with the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the months of the year that were named after them. The eleventh month was presided over by Aquarius, and was the month of ‘the Curse of Rain’; into the eleventh book of the poem, accordingly, there has been introduced the episode of the Deluge.

The story of the Deluge had been the subject of many poems. Fragments of some of them we possess, and the details of the story were not always the same. But the version preserved in the epic of Gilgames became what we may term the standard one; the very fact that it was embodied in the most famous of the epics made it widely known. When it was discovered by Mr. George Smith in 1872, its striking resemblance to the story of the Flood in Genesis was at once apparent to every one. In details as well as in general outline the two accounts agreed; even in the moral cause assigned to the Deluge—the sin of man—the Babylonian story alone among traditions of a Deluge was at one with the Biblical narrative.

A comparison of the Chaldæan and Biblical accounts leads to the following results. The resemblances between them extend equally to the Elohistic and the Yahvistic portions of the Hebrew narrative. Like the Elohist, the epic ascribes the Deluge to the sins of mankind, and the preservation of Xisuthros, the Chaldæan Noah, and his family to the piety of the hero; all living things, moreover, are involved in the calamity, except such as are preserved in the ark; its approach is revealed to Xisuthros by the god Ea, who instructs him how to build ‘the ship’; Ea also, like Elohim, prescribes the dimensions of the ark, which is divided into rooms and stories, and pitched within and without; ‘the seed of life of all kinds’ is taken into it, together with the family of Xisuthros; 124the waters of the Flood are said to cover ‘all the high mountains,’ and to destroy all living creatures except those that were in the ark; this latter, too, had a window; and when the Deluge had subsided and Xisuthros had offered a sacrifice on the peak of the mountain, Bel blessed him and declared that he would never again destroy the world by a flood while Istar ‘lifted up’ the rainbow, which an old Babylonian hymn calls ‘the bow of the Deluge.’^[135]

Like the Yahvist, on the other hand, the Babylonian poet sees in the Flood a punishment for sin, and makes it destroy all living things except those that were in the ark. He also states that Xisuthros sent forth three birds, one after the other, in order to discover whether the waters were subsiding, two of them being a dove and a raven, and that while the dove turned back to the ark, the raven flew away. After the descent from the ark, moreover, Xisuthros, we are told, built an altar and offered sacrifice on the summit of the mountain whereon it had rested, and there ‘the gods smelled the sweet savour’ of the offering. In certain cases the epic even explains what is doubtful or obscure in the Hebrew text. Thus it shows that in the account of the sending forth of the birds one of the birds has been omitted; and that consequently, in order to complete the number of times the birds were despatched from the ark, the dove is sent forth twice, while the raven, instead of being the last to leave the ark, has been made the first to do so. In the Babylonian story the order is natural. First, the dove flies forth, then the swallow or ‘bird of destiny,’ and lastly the raven who feeds on the corpses that float upon the water, and accordingly does not return. But the ‘bird of destiny’ carried with it heathen and mythological associations. It has therefore been omitted by the Biblical writer, the result being to throw the narrative into confusion.^[136]

125The Babylonian origin of the Flood, again, alone explains the statement that it was partly caused by ‘the fountains of the great deep’ being broken up. The ‘great deep,’ called Tiamat in Babylonian mythology, had been placed under guard at the Creation, according to Chaldæan belief, and so prevented from gushing forth and destroying mankind. The whole conception takes us back to the alluvial plain of Babylonia, liable at any time to be inundated by the waters of the Persian Gulf, and is wholly inapplicable to a mountainous country like Palestine, where rain only could have produced a flood.^[137]

There are even indications that in the Biblical narrative the mythological ideas and polytheistic phraseology of the Babylonian story have been intentionally contradicted or suppressed. Thus, not only is the whole colouring of the narrative sternly monotheistic, but God Himself is made to reveal the approach of the Deluge to Noah, in contrast with the Babylonian version, according to which the god Ea announced the coming catastrophe to the Chaldæan Noah without the knowledge of the supreme god Bel. And when the Flood was past, Bel was enraged that any should have escaped living from it, and the other deities had to intercede before he could be pacified. So, too, whereas the Babylonian poet tells us that the Chaldæan Noah closed the door of his ship, in the book of Genesis it is Yahveh Himself who does so. In the view of the Biblical writer, nothing was to be allowed to lessen the omnipotence of the God of Israel.

It will be noticed that the coincidences between the Babylonian and Hebrew narratives are quite as much in details as in general outlines, and these coincidences cover the Hebrew narrative as a whole. It is not with the Elohist or with the Yahvist alone that the Babylonian poet agrees, but with the supposed combination of their two documents as we now find it in the book of Genesis. If the documentary hypothesis were right, there would be only two ways of accounting for 126this fact. Either the Babylonian poet had before him the present ‘redacted’ text of Genesis, or else the Elohist and Yahvist must have copied the Babylonian story upon the mutual understanding that the one should insert what the other omitted. There is no third alternative.

As the Babylonian epic was composed in the age of Khammu-rabi or Amraphel, neither of the two alternatives is likely to be accepted by the advocates of the Hexateuchal theory, and the whole theory, consequently, must be ruled out of court. It breaks down in the first test case to which the results of archæological discovery can be applied, a case, moreover, in which its plausibility is unusually great. Henceforth the historian who pursues a scientific method may safely disregard the whole fabric of Hexateuchal criticism.

The story of the Deluge itself suggests what may be put in place of it. With all its likeness to the Babylonian story, the Biblical narrative has nevertheless undergone a change. It has been clothed not only in a Hebrew, but also in a Palestinian dress. The ship of the Chaldæan Noah has become an ark, as was natural in a country where there were no great rivers or Persian Gulf; the period of the rainfall has been transferred from Sebet or January and February, when the winter rains fall in Babylonia, to ‘the second month’ of the Hebrew civil year, our October and November, the time of the autumn or ‘former rains’ in Canaan, while the subsidence of the waters is made to begin in the middle of ‘the seventh month,’ when the ‘latter rains’ of the Canaanitish spring are over; and the dove is said to have brought back in its mouth a leaf of the olive, a tree characteristic of the soil of Palestine. Though the Biblical narrative has been borrowed from Babylonia, it has been modified and coloured in the West. Even the hero of the Babylonian poem has become the Noah or Naham of Canaan.

We have learned from the Tel el-Amarna tablets how this could have come about. There was one period, and, so far as we know, one period only, in the history of Western Asia, 127when the literature of Babylonia was taught and studied there, and when the literary ideas and stories of Chaldæa were made familiar to the people of Canaan. This was the period of Babylonian influence which ended with the Mosaic age. With the Hittite conquests of the fourteenth century B.C., and the Israelitish invasion of Canaan, it all came to an end. The Babylonian story of the Deluge, adapted to Palestine as we find it in the Pentateuch, must belong to a pre-Mosaic epoch. And it is difficult to believe that the identity of the details in the Babylonian and Biblical versions could have remained so perfect, or that the Biblical writer could have exhibited such deliberate intention of controverting the polytheistic features of the original, if he had not still possessed a knowledge of the cuneiform script. It is difficult to believe that he belonged to an age when the Phœnician alphabet had taken the place of the syllabary of Babylonia, and the older literature of Canaan had become a sealed book.

But if so, a new light is shed on the sources of the historical narratives contained in the Pentateuch. Some of them at least have come down from the period when the literary culture of Babylonia was still dominant on the shores of the Mediterranean. So far from being popular traditions and myths first committed to writing after the disruption of Solomon’s kingdom, and amalgamated into their present form by a series of ‘redactors,’ they will have been derived from the pre-Mosaic literature of Palestine. Such of them as are Babylonian in origin will have made their way westwards like the Chaldæan legends found among the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, while others will be contemporaneous records of the events they describe. We must expect to discover in the Pentateuch not only Israelitish records, but Babylonian, Canaanitish, Egyptian, even Edomite records as well.

The progress of archæological research has already in part fulfilled this expectation. ‘Ur of the Chaldees’ has been found at Muqayyar, and the contracts of early Babylonia have shown that Amorites—or, as we should call them, Canaanites—were 128settled there, and have even brought to light such distinctively Hebrew names as Jacob-el, Joseph-el, and Ishmael.^[138] Even the name of Abram, Abi-ramu, appears as the father of an ‘Amorite’ witness to a contract in the third generation before Amraphel. And Amraphel himself, along with his contemporaries, Chedor-laomer or Kudur-Laghghamar of Elam, Arioch of Larsa, and Tid’al or Tudghula, has been restored to the history to which he and his associates had been denied a claim. The ‘nations’ over whom Tid’al ruled have been explained, and the accuracy of the political situation described in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis has been fully vindicated. Jerusalem, instead of being a name first given to the future capital of Judah after its capture by David, is proved to have been its earliest title; and the priest-king Melchizedek finds a parallel in his later successor, the priest-king Ebed-Tob, who, in the Tel el-Amarna letters, declares that he had received his royal dignity, not from his father or his mother, but through the arm of ‘the mighty king.’ If we turn to Egypt, the archæological evidence is the same. The history of Joseph displays an intimate acquaintance on the part of its writer with Egyptian life and manners in the era of the Hyksos, and offers the only explanation yet forthcoming of the revolution that took place in the tenure of land during the Hyksos domination. As we have seen, there are features in the story which suggest that it has been translated from a hieratic papyrus. As for the Exodus, we shall see presently that its geography is that of the nineteenth dynasty, and of no other period in the history of Egypt.

Thus, then, directly or indirectly, much of the history contained in the Pentateuch has been shown by archæology to be authentic. And it must be remembered that Oriental archæology is still in its infancy. Few only of the sites of ancient civilisation have as yet been excavated, and there are thousands of cuneiform texts in the Museums of Europe and America which have not as yet been deciphered. It was only in 1887 that the Tel el-Amarna tablets, which have had such momentous 129consequences for Biblical criticism, were found, and the disclosures made by the early contracts of Babylonia, even the name of Chedor-laomer itself, are of still more recent discovery. It is therefore remarkable that so much is already in our hands which confirms the antiquity and historical genuineness of the Pentateuchal narratives; and it raises the presumption that with the advance of our knowledge will come further confirmations of the Biblical story. At any rate, the historian’s path is clear; the Pentateuch has been tested by the comparative method of science, and has stood the test. It contains history, and must be dealt with accordingly like other historical works. The philological theory with its hair-splitting distinctions, its Priestly Code and ‘redactors,’ must be put aside, along with all the historical consequences which it involves.

But it does not follow that because the philological theory is untenable, all inquiries into the character and sources of the Pentateuch are waste of time. The philological theory has failed because it has attempted to build up a vast superstructure on very imperfect and questionable materials; because, in short, it has attempted to attain historical results without the use of the historical method. But no one can study the Pentateuch in the light of other ancient works of a similar kind without perceiving that it is a compilation, and that its author—or authors—has made use of a large variety of older materials. Modern Oriental history has been written in the same manner; a book, for instance, like the Egyptian history of El-Maqrîzî, though the production of a single mind, nevertheless embodies older materials which have been collected from every side. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, or the Chaldæan Epic of Gilgames, bears the same testimony. The growth of the Book of the Dead, the ritual which was needed by the souls of the Egyptian dead in their passage to the next world, can actually be traced.^[139] It included and combined 130the doctrines of more than one school of early Egyptian theological thought, and in later days was extensively interpolated and modernised. Not only were glosses, once intended to explain the obscurities of the archaic phraseology, incorporated into the text, but even whole chapters were added to the work. The Epic of Gilgames similarly embodies other poems or portions of poems, of which the Episode of the Deluge is an example. Yet no Assyriologist would dispute for a moment that from beginning to end it is the work of one author.

Archæology has already shown us that we are right in believing that the Pentateuch also has been compiled out of earlier materials. The story of the campaign of Chedor-laomer must have been derived from a cuneiform tablet; the story of Joseph seems to have been taken from a hieratic papyrus. The account of the Deluge has made its way from Babylonia to Canaan in the days when the culture of Chaldæa extended to the Mediterranean. We thus have narratives which presuppose an acquaintance not only with Babylon and Egypt, but also with Babylonian and Egyptian documents.

So, too, the list of Edomite kings contained in the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis must have been extracted from the official annals of Edom. It is a proof that such annals existed, that the Edomites, like the rest of their neighbours, were acquainted with the art of writing, and that their official records were accessible to a Hebrew scribe.

We cannot doubt the authenticity of the list, even though the ancient territory of Edom has not yet been explored, and no Edomite inscriptions consequently have as yet been found to verify it. The list, therefore, does not yet stand in the same fortunate position as the account of Chedor-laomer and his allies, which has been verified by archæological discovery. Here even the names of the foreign kings have been preserved in the Hebrew text with marvellously little corruption. The whole account must have come from a cuneiform document coeval with the event it narrates. That is to say, we can here 131trace one of the Pentateuchal narratives not only to a written source, but to a written source which is at the same time a contemporaneous record.

We may conclude, then, that the Pentateuch has been compiled from older documents—some Babylonian, some Egyptian, some Edomite; others, as we may gather from the nature of their contents, Canaanite and Aramæan—and that many of these documents belong to the periods to which they refer. This, however, is not all. In certain cases we can approximately fix the latest date at which they could have been employed and combined in the form in which we now find them. Thus in the geographical chart of Genesis (x. 6), Canaan is made the brother of Cush and Mizraim. This takes us back to the time when Canaan was a province of the Egyptian empire; when that empire came to an end the description ceased to be possible. After the epoch of the nineteenth dynasty and the Hebrew Exodus, Canaan and Egypt were cut off from one another geographically and politically, and Canaan could never again have been called in Semitic idiom the brother of Mizraim. It became instead the brother of Aram and Assur.

Here, therefore, the limit of age prescribed by archæology forbids us to pass beyond the Mosaic epoch. Moses, in short, is the compiler to whom the archæological evidence indicates that the tenth chapter of Genesis goes back in its original shape. But by the side of this evidence there is other evidence also which tells a different tale. Gomer, or the Kimmerians, as well as Madai, are named among the sons of Japhet, and the Assyrian monuments assure us that neither the one nor the other came within the geographical horizon of Western Asia before the ninth century B.C. It was in the ninth century B.C. that the Assyrian kings first became acquainted with the Medes, while the Gimirrâ or Kimmerians did not descend upon Asia from their seats on the Sea of Azof until about B.C. 680. The same reasoning which gives us the Mosaic age as that of the geographical chart of Genesis in its primitive shape 132gives us the seventh century B.C. or later for the date of another portion of the same chapter.

The list of the kings of Edom, again, is introduced by the remark that ‘these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel.’ It was not inserted in the book of Genesis, therefore, until after the age of Saul, a conclusion which is supported by the fact that the first king named seems to be Balaam, the son of Beor, who was a contemporary of Moses. If, accordingly, the Pentateuch was originally compiled in the Mosaic age, it must have undergone the fate of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and been enlarged by subsequent additions. Insertions and interpolations must have found their way into it as new editions of it were made.

That such was the case there is indirect testimony. On the one hand the text of the prophetical books was treated in a similar manner, additions and modifications being made in it from time to time by the prophet or his successors in order to adapt it to new political or religious circumstances. Isaiah, for instance, has copied a prophecy directed by one of his predecessors against Moab; and after breaking it off in the middle of a sentence, has adapted it to the needs and circumstances of his own time. On the other hand, a long-established Jewish tradition, which has found its way into the Second Book of Esdras (xiv. 21-26), makes Ezra rewrite or edit the books of Moses. There is no reason to question the substantial truth of the tradition; Ezra was the restorer of the old paths, and the Pentateuch may well have taken its present shape from him. If so, we need not be surprised if we find here and there in it echoes of the Babylonish captivity.

Side by side with materials derived from written sources, the book of Genesis contains narratives which, at all events in the first instance, must have resembled the traditions and poems orally recited in Arab lands, and commemorating the heroes and forefathers of the tribe. Thus there are two Abrahams; the one an Abraham who has been born in one of the centres 133of Babylonian civilisation, who is the ally of Amorite chieftains, whose armed followers overthrow the rearguard of the Elamite army, and whom the Hittites of Hebron address as ‘a mighty prince’; the other is an Abraham of the Bedâwin camp-fire, a nomad whose habits are those of the rude independence of the desert, whose wife kneads the bread while he himself kills the calf with which his guests are entertained. It is true that in actual Oriental life the simplicity of the desert and the wealth and culture of the town may be found combined in the same person; that in modern Egypt Arab shêkhs may still be met with who thus live like wild Bedâwin during one part of the year, and as rich and civilised townsmen during another part of it; while in the last century a considerable portion of Upper Egypt was governed by Bedâwin emirs, who realised in their own persons that curious duality of life and manners which to us Westerns appears so strange. But it is also true that the spirit and tone of the narratives in Genesis differ along with the character ascribed in them to the patriarch: we find in them not only the difference between the guest of the Egyptian Pharaoh and the entertainer of the angels, but also a difference in the point of view. The one speaks to us of literary culture, the other of the simple circle of wandering shepherds to whose limited experience the story-teller has to appeal. The story may be founded on fact; it may be substantially true; but it has been coloured by the surroundings in which it has grown up, and archæological proof of its historical character can never be forthcoming. At most, it can be shown to be true to the time and place in which its scene is laid, and so contains nothing which is inconsistent with known facts.

Such, then, are the main results of the application of the archæological test to the books of the Pentateuch. The philological theory, with its minute and mathematically exact analysis, is brushed aside; it is as little in harmony with archæology as it is with common sense. The Pentateuch substantially belongs to the Mosaic age, and may therefore be 134accepted as, in the bulk, the work of Moses himself. But it is a composite work, embodying materials of various kinds. Some of these are written documents, descriptive of contemporaneous events, or recording the cosmological beliefs of ancient Babylonia; others have been derived from the unwritten traditions of nomad tribes. The work has passed through many editions; it is full of interpolations, lengthy and otherwise; and it has probably received its final shape at the hands of Ezra. But in order to discover the interpolations, or to determine the written documents that have been used, we must have recourse to the historical method and the facts of archæology. Apart from these we cannot advance a step in safety. The archæological evidence, however, is already sufficient for the presumption that, where it fails us, the text is nevertheless ancient, and the narrative historical—a presumption, it will be noticed, the exact contrary of that in which the Hexateuchal theory has landed its disciples.

But, these same disciples will urge, what becomes of those three strata of legislation which we have so successfully disentangled one from the other in the Hexateuch, and have shown to belong to three separate and mutually exclusive periods of Israelitish history? Has not literary criticism proved that no reconciliation is possible between the enactments and point of view of the Book of the Covenant on the one side, and those of the Deuteronomist on the other, or between the legislation of the Deuteronomist and that of the Priestly Code? The altar of earth or rough-hewn stones, which may be built on any high place, makes way for the altar of the temple at Jerusalem, and this again for the ideal altar of the tabernacle in the wilderness. One sanctuary takes the place of many; the priesthood is confined first to the tribe of Levi, and then more especially to the sons of Aaron; while the simple feasts of harvest rejoicing, which were celebrated by early Israel in common with its neighbours, are replaced by sacrifices for sin and solemn festivals like the Day of Atonement.

It is strange that these inconsistencies were left to European 135scholars of the nineteenth century to discover, and that neither the contemporaries of Ezra, who allowed themselves to be bound to the yoke of a law which they believed to be divine, nor the Samaritan rivals of the Jews, should have ever perceived them. The fact seems to the historian to throw some doubt on their real existence, and he can leave them to the tender mercies of Dr. Baxter, who has met the literary critics on their own ground, and seriously damaged their house of cards.^[140] The historian can have nothing to do with a theory which not only requires the whole of the historical books of the Old Testament to be rewritten in accordance with it, but also declares at once every passage which tells against it to be a gloss and interpolation. History, like science, is not built on subjective judgments.

At the same time, there is an element of truth in the work of the ‘literary analysis.’ Years of labour on the part of able and learned scholars cannot be absolutely without result, even though the labourers may have been led astray by the will-o’-the-wisp of a false theory and have followed a wrong line of research. The minute examination to which they have subjected the text has revealed much that had never before been suspected; and they have made it clear that the historical books of the Old Testament are compilations, not free, moreover, from later interpolations, even though we cannot share the confidence with which they separate and distinguish the different elements. They have made it impossible ever to return to the old conception of the Hebrew Scriptures and the old method of treating Hebrew history. Where they have been successful has been on the negative rather than on the reconstructive side. For reconstruction, the scientific instrument of comparison was wanted, and this the literary analysts did not possess.

The Old Testament books themselves make no secret of the fact that they are compilations. The books of the Kings 136name the sources from which a large part of them has been drawn, and the books of Samuel (2 Sam. i. 18) quote David’s ‘Song of the Bow’ from the book of Jasher. The same work is referred to in the book of Joshua (x. 13), and in Numbers (xxi. 14) we have an extract from the lost Book of the Wars of the Lord. Old poems are introduced into the text, like the Song of Deborah or the Blessing of Jacob; even an Amorite song of triumph is cited in Numbers xxi. 27-30. The so-called ‘Book of the Covenant’ of the literary critics takes its name from a real ‘book of the covenant’ in which the first legislation promulgated at Sinai was written down by Moses, according to Exod. xxiv. 4, 7, and read by him ‘in the audience of the people;’ while the Song of Deborah expressly states that the forces of Zebulun, which took part in the war against Sisera, were accompanied by scribes, like the armies of Egypt or Assyria.

That Moses could not have written the account of his own death was discovered even by the Jewish rabbis; and references to the ‘Book of the Covenant’ and the ‘Book of the Wars of the Lord’ prove that the Pentateuch in its present form has not come down to us from the Mosaic age. The materials may be Mosaic; it may thus be substantially the work of the great Hebrew lawgiver, but the actual work itself is of later date.

How far may we trust the accuracy of the traditional Hebrew text? Modern criticism has been inclined to pronounce the text corrupt, not unfrequently because the critic himself cannot understand it, and to deal pretty freely in conjectural emendations. The Greek text of the Septuagint is invoked against it, and undue weight is often given to its variant readings or omissions, as, for instance, in the case of the history of Saul. Doubtless the Septuagint text is of great value; it goes back to a period centuries older than the oldest Hebrew MS. that has survived to us; but it was made by Jews of Alexandria, whose knowledge of the sacred language of their nation was not always complete or exact. The recent 137discovery of the original Hebrew text of Ecclesiasticus has gone far to shake our confidence in the readings of the Septuagint, as a comparison of it with the Greek translation made only two generations later has shown that passages are omitted in the latter, through simple carelessness, or perhaps inability to understand them. The discovery has also not been in favour of the emendations of literary and philological criticism, not one of the many attempts made to restore the lost Hebrew original having turned out to be correct.^[141]

On the other hand, a comparison of the Hebrew Scriptures with the clay books of Assyria is on the side of accuracy in the text. The scribes employed in the libraries of Assyria, and presumably, therefore, in the older libraries of Babylonia, were scrupulously exact in their copies of earlier texts. Where the tablet which they copied was injured and defective, it was stated to be so, and the scribe made no attempt to fill up by conjecture, however obvious, what was missing in the document before him. He even was careful to note whether the fracture was recent or not. Where, again, he was not certain about the Assyrian equivalent of a Babylonian character of unusual form, he gave alternative representatives of it, or else reproduced the questionable character itself. Perhaps the most striking example of the textual honesty of the Assyrian and Babylonian scribes is, however, to be found in a compilation known as the Babylonian Chronicle—a chronological abstract in which the history of Babylonia is given from a strictly Babylonian point of view. Here the author candidly confesses that he does ‘not know’ the year when the decisive battle of Khalulê took place, which laid Babylon at the feet of Sennacherib; his materials for settling the matter failed him, and, unlike the modern Hexateuchal critics, he abstained from conjecture. We are more fortunate than he was; for, as we possess the annals of Sennacherib, in which the Assyrian king 138gives a highly-coloured account of the battle, we are able to determine its date.

In the later days of the Jewish monarchy there was a library at Jerusalem similar to those of Assyria and Babylonia, and we hear of the scribes belonging to it in the days of Hezekiah re-editing the Proverbs of Solomon (Prov. xxv. 1). There are indications that they were as careful and honest in their work as the scribes of Assyria whose example they probably followed. Thus the names of Chedor-laomer and his allies are preserved with singular correctness, as well as the forms of two geographical names which seem to imply translation from a cuneiform original.^[142] So, again, the Aramaic inscriptions of a contemporary of Tiglath-pileser III. found at Sinjerli, north of the Gulf of Antioch, show that in one case at least the spelling which we find in the books of Kings has remained unchanged since the eighth century B.C. As in the books of Kings, so at Sinjerli, the Assyrian name Tukulti-Pal-Esarra is incorrectly written Tiglath-pileser, with g instead of k, and even the country over which he ruled is in both cases written plene (with the symbol of the vowel u). On the other hand, it cannot be denied that there are many clear and unmistakable corruptions of the text. In the fourteenth chapter of Genesis itself the name of the city Larsa has been transformed into Ellasar;^[143] elsewhere glosses have been received into the text, while there are whole passages which are either ungrammatical or unmeaning as they now stand. Ancient authors, whether Hebrew or otherwise, did not write nonsense; and if the natural rendering of a passage does not make sense, we may feel quite sure that it is corrupt.

The historian of the Hebrews, then, is bound to treat his authorities as the Greek historian would treat Herodotos or Thucydides or any other writer on behalf of whose character and age there is a long line of external testimony. The results 139of the ‘literary analysis’ may be left to the philologist, as well as the conjectures and theories that have been substituted by scholars of the nineteenth century for early Israelitish history. They have vanished like bubbles wherever they have been tested by the archæological evidence, which, on the other hand, has vindicated the substantial truthfulness of those Old Testament statements which had been scornfully thrown aside.

Where it is possible, the Biblical narratives must be compared with the discoveries of archæological research; where this cannot be done, they must be examined from the historical and not from the philological or literary point of view. We are bound to assume their general credibility and faithfulness, except where this can be historically disproved, and to remember that while on the one hand inconsistencies in detail do not affect the general historical trustworthiness of a document, the agreement of such details with the facts of archæology or geography—more especially when they are of the kind termed ‘undesigned coincidences’—is a powerful argument in its favour. Above all, we must beware of that favourite weapon of literary criticism, the argument from silence, which is really merely an argument from the imperfection of our own knowledge, and which a single instance to the contrary will overthrow. The literary criticism of the Old Testament is full of examples of the argument that have been demolished by the advance of Oriental archæology.

Let this accordingly be the rule of the historian: to believe all things, to hope all things, but at the same time to test and try all things. And the test must be scientific, not what we assume to be probable or natural, but external testimony in the shape of archæological or geographical facts. The history of the past is not what ought to have happened according to the ideas of the critic, but what actually did happen.

Such a manner of treating our authorities does not, of course, exclude our recognition of what the literary critics call their several ‘tendencies.’ No history, worthy of the name, can be written without a ‘tendency’ of some sort on the part 140of the writer, even though it be not consciously felt. We must have some kind of general theory within the lines of which our facts may be grouped; and however much we may strive to be impartial, our conception of the facts themselves, and our mode of presenting them, will be coloured by our beliefs and education. The historian cannot help writing with an object in view; the necessities of the subject require it.

That the historical books of the Old Testament should have been written with a ‘tendency’ is therefore natural. And literary criticism has successfully pointed out in the case of one of these books what the ‘tendency’ was. If we compare the books of Chronicles with those of Samuel and Kings, the contrast between them strikes the eye at once. The interest of the Chronicler is centred in the history of the Jewish temple and ritual, of its priests and Levites, and the manifold requirements of the Law. His history of Israel accordingly becomes a history of Israelitish ritual; all else is put aside or treated in the briefest fashion. The incidents of David’s reign narrated in the books of Samuel are subordinated to elaborate accounts of his arrangements for the services in the tabernacle or temple; the history of the northern kingdom of Israel, which lay outside that of the temple at Jerusalem, is passed over in silence; and the Passover held in Hezekiah’s reign, about which not a word is said in the books of Kings, is dwelt upon to the exclusion of almost everything else. Nor, had we only the Chronicler in our hands, should we know that the pious Hezekiah had entered into an alliance with the Babylonian king and boastfully displayed to his ambassadors the treasures of the Jewish kingdom, thereby bringing upon himself the rebuke of the prophet Isaiah. All that the Chronicler has to say on the matter is that ‘in the business of the ambassadors of the prince of Babylon, who sent to inquire of the wonder that was done in the land, God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart’; and even here a theological turn is given to the occurrence by the motive assigned for the embassy. As a matter of fact, we know from 141the cuneiform inscriptions that the real object of Merodach-baladan was to form a league with the princes of the West against their common Assyrian enemy, to which, as the books of Kings inform us, was naturally added a polite inquiry after Hezekiah’s health.

‘Tendencies’ there are, therefore, in the historical writings of the Old Testament; they would not be human productions if there were not. The authors have had one great object in view, that of showing from the past history of the people that sin brings punishment with it, while a blessing follows upon righteous action. They believed in the Divine government of the world, and wrote with that belief clearly before them. They believed also that Israel was the chosen nation in whose history that Divine government had been made manifest to mankind, and that the God of Israel was the one true omnipotent God. In this belief in a theodicy they were theologians, like most other Oriental writers. But their theological point of view did not prevent them from being historians as well. It did not interfere with their honestly recording the course of events as it had been handed down to them, or reproducing their authorities without intentional change. Doubtless they may have made mistakes at times, their judgment may not always have been strictly critical or correct, and want of sufficient materials may now and then have led them into error. But when we find that no attempt is made to palliate or conceal the sins and shortcomings of their most cherished national heroes, that even the reverses of the nation are chronicled equally with its successes, and that the early period of its history is confessed to have been one of anarchy and crime, and not the golden age of which popular (and even historical) imagination loves to dream, we are justified in according to them, in spite of their theological ‘tendencies,’ a considerable measure of confidence.

It will have been noticed that chronology—the skeleton, as it were, on which the flesh of history is laid—has been alluded to in the previous chapter only in the vaguest possible manner. 142‘The age of Abraham,’ ‘the age of the Exodus,’ ‘the Mosaic age,’ are the phrases that have been used in referring to Old Testament events. Israelitish chronology in the true sense of the word does not begin till the reign of David, and even then we have to deal with probabilities rather than with facts. Like Egyptian history, which has to be measured by dynasties instead of dates before the rise of the eighteenth dynasty, the early history of the Hebrews has no chronological record. Before we can attach dates to the events of the patriarchal period or the Exodus, it is necessary to find synchronisms between them and the dated history of other peoples.

It is a commonplace of Biblical students that numbers are peculiarly liable to corruption, and that consequently little dependence can be placed on the numbers given in the text of the Old Testament. But the conclusion does not follow from the premiss. The later dates of Israelitish history are for the most part reliable, and it would be strange if the causes of corruption were fatal only to the dates of an earlier period. Moreover, the numbers fit into a self-consistent system, the several fractions of which agree with the whole summation. Such a self-consistent system would perhaps demand acceptance were it not that there are three such systems, rivals one of the other, and mutually incompatible. One is that of the Massoretic Hebrew text, which makes the period from the Creation to the call of Abraham exactly 2000 solar years (or, 2056 lunar years), 1600 of which extend from the Creation to the Deluge, and the remaining 400 from the Deluge to the call of Abraham. A second is that of the Septuagint, according to which the period from the Creation to the Flood is 2200 solar years (or, 2262 lunar years), 1600 of these elapsing between the Creation and the birth of Noah, and 600 from that event to the Flood, while 1200 are counted from the Flood to the call of the patriarch. The third is that of the Samaritan text which divides the period into two halves of 1200 years each; the first 1200 comprising the time from the Creation to the birth of the sons of Noah, and the second 1200 the rest of the period.

143It is obvious that all these systems are like the similar chronological systems of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, or the Hindus, mere artificial schemes of an astronomical character, and differing from the latter only in their more modest computation of time. For historical purposes they are worthless, and indicate merely that materials for a chronology were entirely wanting. The ages assigned to the patriarchs before the Flood, for example, stand on a level with the reigns of the ten antediluvian kings of Chaldæa which are extended over 120 sari, or 432,000 years. The post-diluvian patriarchs are in no better position; indeed, one of them, Arphaxad, is a geographical title, and the Septuagint interpolates after him a certain Kainan, of whom neither the Hebrew nor the Samaritan text knows anything.

Even after the call of Abraham, Hebrew chronology is equally uncertain. The length of life assigned to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is surprising, though not quite impossible, but the dates connected with it do not always agree together. How, for example, can Abraham have had six children after the death of Sarah (Gen. xxv. 1, 2), when the birth of Isaac nearly forty years before had been regarded as extraordinary on account of the patriarch’s age? Or, again, to quote the words of Professor Driver^[144]: ‘Do we all realise that according to the chronology of the Book of Genesis (xxv. 26, xxvi. 34, xxxv. 28) [Isaac] must have been lying upon his deathbed for eighty years? Yet we can only diminish this period by extending proportionately the interval between Esau’s marrying his Hittite wives (Gen. xxvi. 34), and Rebekah’s suggestion to Isaac to send Jacob away, lest he should follow his brother’s example (xxvii. 46), which from the nature of the case will not admit of any but a slight extension. Keil, however, does so extend it, reducing the period of Isaac’s final illness to forty-three years, and is conscious of no incongruity in supposing that Rebekah, thirty-seven years after Esau has taken his Hittite wives, should express her fear that Jacob, then aged seventy-seven, will do the same!’

144The length of the period during which the Israelites were in Egypt has been the subject of endless controversy. The Old Testament statements in regard to it are clear enough. Abraham is told (Gen. xv. 13) that his descendants shall ‘serve’ the Egyptians and be ‘afflicted’ by them for 400 years. As a generation was counted at thirty years, this implies that the whole period spent in Egypt was 430 years, though the statement is not quite exact, since Joseph lived more than thirty years after the settlement of his brethren in the land of Goshen, and their servitude and affliction did not begin till after his death. In Exodus (xii. 40) we are informed explicitly that ‘the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was 430 years.’ Four hundred and thirty years, therefore, must have been the length of time during which Israel was officially regarded as having lived in Goshen.

But it is difficult to reconcile it with another statement in Gen. xv. 16, where it is said that ‘in the fourth generation’ the children of Israel should return to Canaan. As the words were spoken to Abraham, the fourth generation would be that of Joseph himself. Since this seems out of the question, they are usually interpreted to refer to Moses and Aaron, who are placed in the fourth generation from Levi. Moses and Aaron, however, did not ‘come again’ to Palestine, and the genealogy of the daughters of Zelophehad (Num. xxvii. 1) makes the generation that did so the seventh from Joseph. Time, in fact, cannot be reckoned by generations; we do not know how many links in the chain may have been dropped, ‘son’ in Semitic idiom being frequently equivalent to ‘descendant,’ while the names are often merely geographical, like Gilead and Machir in the genealogy of Zelophehad, and therefore have no chronological value. It was, however, the mention of ‘the fourth. generation’ which produced the rabbinical gloss, alluded to by S. Paul (Gal. iii. 17), according to which the four hundred and thirty years of Gen. xv. 13 did not mean the time during which the Israelites were ‘afflicted’ in Egypt, but—in spite of the definite assertion to the contrary—a period which 145included the lives of the patriarchs as well as the government of Joseph.

If the statements in regard to the period of the Israelitish settlement in Egypt are contradictory, the statements in regard to the lapse of time from the conquest of Canaan to the building of Solomon’s temple are still more so. In 1 Kings vi. 1 we read that the foundations of the temple were laid in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign, and four hundred and eighty years after the Exodus from Egypt. If we add together the numbers given in the book of Judges, they amount to four hundred and ten years, thus leaving only seventy years for the wanderings in the desert, the judgeships of Eli and Samuel, the reigns of Saul and David, and the first four years of Solomon! The endeavours that have been made to get over the difficulty have all been fruitless. Wellhausen and others, for instance, have conjectured that the four hundred and eighty years are intended to represent twelve generations, each being reckoned at forty years, and the seventy years assigned to the five ‘lesser judges’ being overlooked. But the conjecture is destitute of support, and is contrary to such notices as we have of the number of generations which covered the period of the judges. Moreover, the five lesser judges do not constitute a group by themselves.

The period of four hundred and eighty years cannot be reconciled with the genealogies any better than with the apparent chronology of the book of Judges. Between Nahshon, who was a contemporary of Moses, and Solomon, only five generations are given (Ruth iv. 20-22); and between Phinehas and Zadok, whom Solomon removed from the priesthood, there were only seven generations of priests (1 Chron. vi. 4-8). Doubtless some of the links in the ancestry of David have been dropped, but that can hardly be the case as regards the priests. Seven generations would give, at the most, not more than two hundred and ten years.

That the number four hundred and eighty, however, has really been based on the number forty seems probable. Forty 146years in Hebrew idiom merely signified an indeterminate and unknown period of time, and the Moabite Stone shows that the same idiom existed also in the Moabite language.^[145] Thus Absalom is said, in 2 Sam. xv. 7, to have asked permission to leave Jerusalem ‘after forty years,’ although the length of time was really little more than two years (2 Sam. xiv. 28 sqq.), and Jewish tradition has supplied the lost record of the length of Saul’s reign with a date of forty years. The period of forty years, which meets us again and again in the book of Judges, is simply the equivalent of an unknown length of time; it denotes the want of materials, and the consequent ignorance of the writer. Twenty, the half of forty, is equally an expression of ignorance; and the only dates available for chronology are those which represent a definite space of time, like the eight years of Chushan-rishathaim’s oppression of Israel, or the six years of Jephthah’s judgeship.

We can learn nothing, accordingly, from the books of the Old Testament about the chronology of Israel down to the time of David. For David’s reign we have the seven years of his rule at Hebron, followed by the thirty-three years of his sway over the whole of Israel. For the reign of Solomon we have again the indeterminate ‘forty years’; but since Rezon of Damascus, like Hadad of Edom, was ‘an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon,’ it is probable that the reign did not actually last more than thirty years at the most. Even the chronology of the divided kingdom after the death of Solomon, in spite of the synchronisms the compiler of the books of Kings has endeavoured to establish between the kings of Judah and those of Israel, has been the despair of historians, and scheme after scheme has been proposed in order to make it self-consistent. The Assyrian monuments, however, have now come to our help, and shown that between 147the time of Ahab and that of Hezekiah it is forty years in excess.

For Hebrew chronology, therefore, we must look outside the Bible itself. At certain points Hebrew history comes into touch with the monumental records of Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria; and if we are to date the events it records, it must be by their aid. Egypt can assist us only after the rise of the eighteenth dynasty; before that period it is as much without a chronology as the Israelites themselves. But the case is different as regards Babylonia and Assyria. In Babylonia time was dated by the reigns of the kings and the events of the several years of each reign. The extensive commercial relations of the country, and the contracts that were constantly being drawn up, made accurate dating a matter of necessity. The Assyrians were even more exact than the Babylonians; they were distinguished among Oriental nations by their strong historical sense, and at an early epoch had devised an accurate system of chronology. The years were reckoned by a succession of officers called limmi, each of whom held office for a year and gave his name to it, the king himself, during the earlier period of Assyrian history, taking the office in the first year of his reign. Lists of the limmi were kept, and a reference to them would show at once the exact age of a document dated by the name of a particular limmu. None of the lists hitherto discovered are, unfortunately, older than the tenth century B.C.; but, thanks to those that have been found, from B.C. 909 to 666 we have a continuous and accurate register of time.

Abraham was the contemporary of Chedor-laomer and Amraphel, and the position of Amraphel among the Babylonian kings has been given us by the native annalists. He was the sixth king of the first dynasty of Babylon, and reigned fifty-five years. Unfortunately, the only copy we possess at present of the native Babylonian list of dynasties is broken, and owing to the fracture of the tablet, a doubt hangs over his precise date. The most probable restoration of the text would make 148it about B.C. 2300.^[146] Between this and the Exodus there would be an interval of more than a thousand years.

Dr. Mahler has attempted to fix astronomically the dates of the two leading Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, Thothmes III. and Ramses II., and his dates have been accepted by Brugsch and other Egyptologists. If his calculations are correct, Thothmes III. will have reigned from the 20th of March B.C. 1503 to the 14th of February B.C. 1449;^[147] and Ramses II., the Pharaoh of the oppression, from B.C. 1348 to 1281. The eighteenth dynasty, accordingly, would have commenced about B.C. 1600, and the Exodus would have taken place subsequently to B.C. 1280.

If Apophis II. was the Hyksos king under whom Joseph governed Egypt, he would have lived four generations before Ahmes, the founder of the eighteenth dynasty.^[148] The ‘four hundred years,’ therefore, during which Israel was evil-entreated in Egypt (Acts vii. 6) will correspond with the era of four hundred years mentioned on a stela discovered by Mariette at San, the ancient Zoan.^[149] The stela commemorates a visit paid to Zoan in the reign of Ramses II. by Seti, the governor of the frontier, on the fourth day of the month Mesori, and ‘the four hundredth year of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Set-âa-pehti, the son of the Sun, who loved him, also named Set-Nubti, beloved of Harmakhis.’ Since Set or Sutekh was the Hyksos god, and Zoan the Hyksos capital, it is clear that we have here a Hyksos era, the four hundredth anniversary of 149which fell in the reign of Ramses II. It seems probable that it marked the accession of the third and last Hyksos dynasty. According to Manetho, as reported by Africanus, this lasted for one hundred and fifty-one years, which would take us to about B.C. 1720, and the same date is obtained if we calculate the four hundred years of the stela of Sân, back from the thirtieth year of Ramses II. One generation more—the thirty additional years given in Exod. xii. 40—will bring us to the period of the Exodus, which, as we shall see hereafter, must have taken place under Meneptah, the son and successor of Ramses II.

The precise connection between the Hyksos and Hebrew eras must be left to the future to discover. At present, the only reference found to the first is that on the stela of Sân. Some connection, however, there must be between them, like the connection between Zoan and Hebron indicated in Numb. xiii. 22, where it is said that ‘Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.’ The Hyksos were invaders from Asia, and between them and the Hebrews there may have been a closer relationship than we now suspect.

Two approximate dates have accordingly been found for early Hebrew history. One results from the synchronism between Abraham and Amraphel, and may be set down as about 2300 B.C.; the other is the synchronism with Egyptian history, which gives us about B.C. 1720 for the settlement of the Hebrew tribes in Goshen. We must now see what light can be thrown by the Egyptian monuments on the date of the Exodus.

Various reasons had led an increasing majority of Egyptologists to regard Ramses II., the most prominent figure in the nineteenth dynasty, if not in the whole history of the Pharaohs, as the Pharaoh of the Oppression, and the question was finally settled by Dr. Naville’s excavations at Tel el-Maskhûta on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund.^[150] Tel el-Maskhûta proved to be the site of Pi-Tum, the Biblical Pithom, and to have had the civil name of Thuku or Thukut from the nome of the district in which it was situated. Brugsch had already 150pointed out that Thukut is the Succoth of the Old Testament, the Egyptian th corresponding to the Hebrew ’s, and Succoth was the first stage in the flight of the Israelites after their departure from Raamses (Exod. xii. 37). Pi-Tum was the sacred name of the city, which was dedicated to Tum, the setting Sun.

The monuments found on the spot showed that the founder of the city was Ramses II.; and since the Pharaoh of the Oppression was also the builder of Pithom (Exod. i. 11), those who attach any credit to the historical character of the Biblical statement must necessarily see in him the great Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty. The conclusion is further supported by the name of ‘Raamses,’ or Ramses, the second of the two cities which it is said the Hebrews were employed in building. Ramses I., the founder of the nineteenth dynasty, and the grandfather of Ramses II., was the first king of Egypt who bore that name; and the shortness of his reign, which does not seem to have exceeded two years, as well as the disturbed condition of the country, would have prevented him from undertaking any architectural works. Ramses II., however, was essentially a building Pharaoh; he covered Egypt from one end to the other with his constructions; he founded cities, erected or restored monuments, and not unfrequently usurped them. There was more than one city or temple of Ramses which owed its existence to his architectural zeal and was called after his name. As the date of the third Ramses of the twentieth dynasty is too late to fit in with any theory of the Exodus, there remains only Ramses II. for ‘the treasure-city’ mentioned in Exodus. Ramses II. restored Zoan, and made it a seat of residence; this will explain why, in Gen. xlvii. 11, Goshen is proleptically said to have been situated in ‘the land of Rameses.’ Brugsch has made it probable that ‘the city of Ramses’ referred to in an Egyptian papyrus was Zoan itself.^[151]

151If Ramses II. was the Pharaoh of the Oppression, the Pharaoh of the Exodus will have been one of his immediate successors. The choice lies between Meneptah II., who succeeded him, his grandson, the feeble Seti II., and the usurper Si-Ptah, with whom the dynasty came to an inglorious end. The Egyptian legend of the Exodus given by Manetho places it in the reign of Meneptah; and a stela discovered at Thebes in 1896 by Professor Petrie makes any other dating difficult. Here the ‘Israelites’ are spoken of as having been brought low, ‘so that no seed should be left to them’; and since their name alone is without the determinative of locality which is added to the names of all the other conquered populations associated with them, we may conclude that they had already been lost in the desert, and, so far at any rate as was known to the Egyptian scribe, had no fixed local habitation.^[152] As this was in the fifth year of Meneptah’s reign, B.C. 1276, according to Dr. Mahler’s chronology, the Exodus from Egypt may be approximately assigned to B.C. 1277. The period of oppression, according to the calculation in Gen. xv. 13, would consequently have commenced in B.C. 1677, or nearly a hundred years before the expulsion of the Hyksos.

It must be remembered, however, that the date is more precise in appearance than in reality. It depends partly on the accuracy of Dr. Mahler’s calculations, which is disputed by Professors Eisenlohr and Maspero, partly on our regarding the round number 400 as representing an exact period of time. If we knew in what year of Ramses II.’s long reign of sixty-seven years the stela of Sân was inscribed, we should be better able to check the reckoning. As it is, we have to be grateful for what we have already learned from the excavated monuments of the past, and to look forward with confidence to more light and certainty in the future.

CHAPTER III THE EXODUS OUT OF EGYPT

Goshen—The Pharaohs of the Oppression and Exodus—The Heretic King at Tel el-Amarna—Causes of the Exodus—The Stela of Meneptah—Moses—Flight to Midian—The Ten Plagues—The Exodus—Egyptian Version of it—Origin of the Passover—Geography of the Exodus—Position of Sinai—-Promulgation of the Law—Babylonian Analogies—The Tabernacle—The Levitical Law—The Feasts—Number of the Israelites—Kadesh-barnea—Failure to conquer Canaan—The High-priest and the Levites—Edom—Conquests on the East of the Jordan—Balaam—Destruction of the Midianites—Cities of Refuge and of the Levites—The Deuteronomic Law—Death of Moses.

‘There arose up a new king over Egypt which knew not Joseph.’ Commentators on the passage have often imagined that this event followed almost immediately upon the death of Joseph and his generation. So, too, it was supposed before the decipherment of the Assyrian inscriptions that the murder of Sennacherib took place immediately after his return from Palestine. In both cases the student had been misled by the brevity of the Hebrew narrative, and that foreshortening of the past which causes events to be grouped together even though they may have been separated by an interval of many years. In the present instance, however, the Biblical writer has done his best to indicate that the interval was a long one. Before the rise of ‘the new king which knew not Joseph,’ the children of Israel had had time to ‘increase abundantly,’ to ‘multiply’ so that ‘the land was filled with them.’ The family of Jacob had become a tribe, or rather a collection of tribes. They had become dangerous to their rulers; the Pharaoh is even made to say that they were ‘more and mightier than’ the Egyptians themselves. In case of invasion, they might assist the enemy and expose Egypt to another Asiatic conquest.

Hence came the determination to transform them into public serfs, and even to destroy the males altogether. The free Bedâwin-like settlers in Goshen, who had kept apart from their Egyptian neighbours, and had been unwilling to perform even agricultural work, were made the slaves of the State. 153They were taken from their herds and sheep, from their independent life on the outskirts of the Delta, and compelled to toil under the lash of the Egyptian taskmaster and build for the Pharaoh his ‘treasure-cities’ of Pithom and Raamses.

Egypt is the most conservative of countries, and the children of Israel still have their representatives in it. The Bedâwin still feed their flocks and enjoy an independent existence on the outskirts of the cultivated land, and in that very district of Goshen where the descendants of Jacob once dwelt. Even when they adopt a settled agriculturist life, like the villagers of Gizeh, they still claim immunity from the burdens of their fellahin neighbours on the ground of their Bedâwin descent. They are exempt from the conscription and the corvée, the modern equivalents of the forced brickmaking of the Mosaic age. The attempt to interfere with these privileges has actually led to an exodus in our own time.^[153] The Wadi Tumilât, the Goshen of old days, was colonised with Arabs from the Nejd and Babylonia by Mohammed Ali, who wished to employ them in the culture of the silkworm. Here they lived with their flocks and cattle, protected by the Government, and exempt from taxation, from military service, and the corvée. Mohammed Ali died, however, and an attempt was then made to force them into the army, and lay upon them the ordinary burdens of taxation. Thereupon, in a single night, the whole population silently departed with all their possessions, leaving behind them nothing but the hearths of their forsaken homes. They made their way back to their kinsfolk eastward of Egypt, and the Wadi remained deserted until M. de Lesseps carried through it the Freshwater Canal.

We owe to Dr. Naville the recovery of Goshen. In 1884 he excavated at Saft el-Henna an ancient mound close to the line of railway between Zagazig and Tel el-Kebîr. The monuments he found there showed that the mound represents the ancient Qosem or Qos, called Pha-kussa by the Greek geographers, which was the capital of the Arabian nome. 154The Septuagint, with its Gesem instead of Goshen, implies that the site of Goshen was still remembered in Alexandrine times.^[154]

The Arabian nome took its name not only from its proximity to Arabia, but also from the fact that its inhabitants were mainly of the Arab race. But the name did not come into existence until after the age of the nineteenth dynasty. When Ramses II. was Pharaoh, the whole region from the neighbourhood of Cairo to the Suez Canal was included in the nome of On or Heliopolis. It was only at a subsequent date that the nomes of Arabia and of Bubastis were carved out of that of On.

Previously to this, Qosem was the name of a district as well as of its chief city. It comprised not only the fertile fields immediately surrounding Saft el-Henna, and stretching from the mounds of Bubastis, close to Zagazig, on the west to Tel el-Kebîr on the east, but also the Wadi Tumilât, through which the railway now runs eastward as far as Ismailiya. Belbeis, south of Zagazig, was also included within its limits. At the eastern extremity of the Wadi was Pithom, now marked by the ruins of Tel el-Maskhûta.

Meneptah II., the Pharaoh of the Exodus, thus refers at Karnak to the arable land about Pi-Bailos, the modern Belbeis. ‘The country around it,’ he says, ‘is not cultivated, but left as pasture for cattle because of the foreigners. It has been abandoned (to them) since ancient times.’ They had settled with their herds in the neighbouring-valley of Tumilât, and the richer land which adjoined the valley was also assigned to them. Here they were in the nome of Heliopolis, the daughter of whose high-priest was married by Joseph, as well as in the near neighbourhood of Bubastis, where Dr. Naville has found Hyksos remains.

When the great inscription of Meneptah II. was engraved on the walls of Karnak the Exodus would have already taken 155place. The ‘foreigners,’ therefore, to whom he alludes must have been the Israelites, who had now deserted the spot. The district accordingly would once more have needed inhabitants, and the Pharaoh had the power of handing it over to the first Bedâwin tribe who begged for pasturage in the Delta. He had not long to wait. Among the papyri in the British Museum there is a letter dated in the eighth year of Meneptah’s reign, and addressed to the king. In this the scribe writes as follows:—‘Another matter for the consideration of my master’s heart. We have allowed the tribes of the Shasu from the land of Edom to pass the fortress of Meneptah in the land of Thukut (Succoth), (and go) to the lakes of Pithom of Meneptah in the land of Thukut, in order to feed themselves, and to feed their herds on the great estate of Pharaoh, the beneficent sun of all countries. In the year 8.’^[155]

The Wâdi Tumilât was accordingly regarded as crown-land, as indeed it is to-day, and it was handed over to the Edomites by officers of the Pharaoh, just as it had been to the Israelites several centuries before. But now the Israelites had fled from it, and disappeared into the wilderness, and it was necessary to fill their place.

The Biblical writer distinguishes the Pharaoh of the Oppression from the Pharaoh of the Exodus (Exod. ii. 23). It was after the death of the great royal builder of Egypt that the Hebrews were delivered from their bondage. The Pharaoh of the Oppression and not the Pharaoh of the Exodus was ‘the new king which knew not Joseph.’

The full meaning of the phrase has been explained to us by the tablets of Tel el-Amarna. They have made it clear that towards the end of the eighteenth dynasty the Egyptian court became semi-Asiatic. The Pharaohs married Asiatic wives; and eventually Amenophis IV., under the influence of his mother Teie, publicly abandoned the religion of which he was the official head, and avowed himself a convert to an 156Asiatic form of faith. Amon, the god of Thebes, was dethroned by a new deity, Aten-Ra, ‘the Solar Disk.’ The Solar Disk, however, was but the visible manifestation of the one Supreme God, who was diffused throughout nature, and corresponded in many respects with the Semitic Baal. The Egyptians accordingly identified him with Ra, the ancient Sun-god of Heliopolis, who in earlier times had similarly been identified with the Hyksos Baal.

Amenophis, the cast of whose face taken immediately after death displays the features and expression of a philosopher and enthusiast,^[156] endeavoured to force the new faith upon his unwilling subjects. The very name of Amon was proscribed and was erased wherever it occurred, the followers of the old religion of Egypt were persecuted, and the Pharaoh changed his own name to that of Khu-n-Aten, ‘the radiance of the Solar Disk.’ A violent struggle ensued with the powerful hierarchy of Thebes. Khu-n-Aten was finally compelled to leave the capital of his fathers, and build himself a new city further north, where its site is now marked by the mounds of Tel el-Amarna. He carried with him the State-archives, consisting mainly of foreign correspondence in the Babylonian language and cuneiform script, and these were deposited in one of the public buildings adjoining the palace, every brick of which was stamped with the words, ‘Aten-Ra! the Record-Office.’^[157]

The palace itself was a marvel of art. Its walls and columns were encrusted with precious stones, with gold and with bronze, and it was adorned with painting and statuary, some of which reminds us of Greek art in its best period. Even the floors were frescoed with pictures of birds and animals, of flowers and trees. The new religion was accompanied by a new form of art, which cast aside the traditions of Egypt, and looked rather to Asiatic models. It strove after a realism which was sometimes exaggerated, and was 157always in strange contrast to the conventionalism of Egyptian art. Hard by the gardens of the palace rose the temple of Aten-Ra in the centre of the city. Like the palace, it was gorgeous with ornament. But it contained no image of the deity to whom it was consecrated. His symbol, the Disk, was alone permitted to appear. The pantheistic monotheism of the Pharaoh thus anticipated the puritanism of the Israelitish Law.

We learn from the inscriptions that Khu-n-Aten was not contented with making himself the high-priest of the new faith. Daily in the morning he gave instruction in it, expounding its mysteries to those who would listen to him. Acceptance of its doctrines was naturally a passport to the offices of State. Many of these had long been held by Asiatics, more especially by Syrians and Canaanites, and under Khu-n-Aten these foreign immigrants more and more usurped the highest functions of the Government. The native Egyptians saw themselves excluded from the posts which had brought them not only dignity, but wealth. Naturally, therefore, the bitter feelings engendered by the war waged against the old religion of Egypt were increased by this promotion of the stranger to the offices of State which they had regarded as their own. The Canaan they had conquered had revenged itself by conquering their king. Not only religion, but self-interest also, urged the native Egyptian to put an end to the reforming schemes of the Pharaoh, and to religious animosity was added race hatred as well.

The storm broke shortly before Khu-n-Aten’s death. His mummy indeed was laid in the magnificent grave he had excavated in the recesses of a desolate mountain-valley, but the granite sarcophagus in which it was deposited was never placed in the niche prepared for it, but was hacked to pieces by his enemies as it lay in the columned hall of the tomb, while the body within it was torn to shreds. Nor was his mother Teie ever laid by his side. Even the bodies of his dead daughters were maltreated and despoiled.

158Khu-n-Aten was followed by one or two short-lived Pharaohs in the city he had built. Then the end came. The city was destroyed, the stones of its temple were transported elsewhere to furnish materials for the sanctuaries of the victorious Amon, and such of the adherents of the new faith as could not escape from the country either apostatised or were slain. A new king arose who represented the national party and the worship of the national god, and the Semitic strangers who had governed Egypt as European strangers govern it to-day disappeared for a time from the land. Their kinsfolk who remained, like the Israelites in Goshen, were reduced to the condition of public slaves.

Here, then, is the explanation of the rise of that ‘new king which knew not Joseph.’ We must see in him, not the founder of the eighteenth dynasty who expelled the Hyksos, but Ramses I., the founder of the nineteenth dynasty, with whom all danger of Asiatic domination in Egypt came finally to an end. The nineteenth dynasty represented the national reaction against the Asiatic faith of Khu-n-Aten and the government of the country by Asiatic officials. It meant Egypt as against Asia. And the policy of the new rulers of Egypt was not long in declaring itself. Ramses I. indeed reigned too short a time to do more than establish his family firmly on the throne; but his son and successor, Seti Meneptah I., once more overran Syria and made Palestine an Egyptian province; while Ramses II., who followed him, took measures to prevent such of the Asiatics as were still in Egypt from ever again becoming formidable to the native population.

The causes that led to the enslavement of the Israelites and to the Exodus out of Egypt were the same as those which in our own day led to the rebellion of Arabi. Religious and race hatreds were mingled together, and the ‘national party’ which grudged to the foreigner his share in the spoils of government aimed at destroying both him and his religion. Ramses I., however, was more fortunate than Arabi. No foreign power 159came to the help of the Syrian settlers on the Nile, and the leader of the Egyptian patriots became the favourite of the Theban priesthood and the sovereign of Egypt. From this time forward we hear no more of the use of the Babylonian language and script in the public correspondence of the Egyptians.

The oppression of the Israelites, then, is a natural and necessary part of the political history of the nineteenth dynasty. It fits in with the policy which the dynasty was placed on the throne to carry out. And an inscription discovered by Professor Flinders Petrie in 1896 supplements the story in an unexpected way. It was engraved by order of Meneptah II., the son and successor of Ramses II., on a large slab of granite, and placed in a temple he built at Thebes, on the western bank of the Nile. Its twenty-eight lines contain a song of triumph over the defeat of the Libyans and their allies from the Greek seas which took place in the fifth year of the king’s reign. Towards the end the poet sums up all the glorious deeds of the Pharaoh. ‘The chiefs,’ he says, ‘are overthrown and speak only of peace. None of the Barbarians (literally, the Nine Bows) lifts up his head. Wasted (?) is the land of the Libyans; the land of the Hittites is tranquillised; captive is the land of Canaan and utterly miserable; carried away is the land of Ashkelon; overpowered is the land of Gezer; the land of Innuam (in Central Syria) is brought to nought. The Israelites are spoiled so that they have no seed, the land of Khar (Southern Palestine) is become like the widows of Egypt.’

Here the Israelites alone are described as without local habitation. They alone had no ‘land’ in which they dwelt, and which was called after their name. It would seem, therefore, that when the song was composed they had already fled from Egypt and been lost in the unknown recesses of the eastern desert. But the poet knew that they were of Canaanitish origin; that they were, in fact, the kinsmen of the Horites of Southern Palestine. Their misfortunes, consequently, were 160equally the misfortunes of ‘Khar,’ whose women had been made as widows since the male seed of Israel had been cut off.^[158]

After the fashion of court-poets, the author of the hymn of victory is not careful about ascribing to his royal master such successes as he could himself really claim. He has skilfully combined the victories of Meneptah with those of his father, and given him the credit of conquests which he had not made. The Hittites had been ‘tranquillised’ by Ramses II., not by Meneptah, and Canaan had been the conquest of Ramses and his father Seti. We may accordingly conclude that in the case of the Israelites also Meneptah is made to claim what does not properly belong to him. According to the book of Exodus, it was the Pharaoh of the Oppression rather than the Pharaoh of the Exodus who ordered that ‘every son’ should be ‘cast into the river,’ and only the daughters saved alive.

The agreement, however, between the Biblical narrative and the expression used on the stela of Meneptah is very remarkable. It is almost as if the writer of Exodus had had the inscription before him. In both it is the male seed which we are told was destroyed: the women were left as widows, for all ‘the men children’ were cut off. The victory over the Israelites, of which the poet boasts, was a victory obtained by slaying, like Herod, all the children who were males.

Nevertheless, ‘the people multiplied.’ It was impossible to carry out literally the order of the Pharaoh, and there must have been many children who were saved from death. Among these was Moses, the future legislator of his race. The story of his preservation is familiar to every one. We are told how his mother made ‘an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.’ Then the daughter of the Pharaoh came to bathe, and taking compassion on the child, brought him up as her own son.

161A similar story had been told centuries before of Sargon of Akkad, the great Babylonian conqueror and lawgiver. He, too, it was said, had been placed by his mother ‘in an ark of reeds, the mouth whereof she closed with pitch,’ and then launched it on the waters of the Euphrates. The child was carried to Akki the irrigator, who adopted him as his son, and brought him up until the day came when, through the help of the goddess Istar, the true origin and birth of the hero were made known, and he became one of the mightiest of the Babylonian kings.

A like destiny seemed in store for Moses. He was introduced into the family of the Pharaoh, and took his place at court among the royal princes. A punning etymology makes the princess who adopted him speak Hebrew and give him the name of Mosheh or Moses, from the Hebrew mâshah, ‘to draw out.’ Mosheh, however, is really the Egyptian messu, ‘son,’ a very appropriate name for an adopted child. The name was not uncommon in Egypt; and in the time of Meneptah, the contemporary of Moses, it was actually borne by a ‘Prince of Kush,’ that is to say, the Egyptian governor of Ethiopia.^[159] The coincidence doubtless was the origin of that Jewish tradition of the successful campaign of Moses in Ethiopia as general of the Egyptian army, which is recorded in full by Josephus.

Conjecture, both ancient and modern, has played freely round the person of Pharaoh’s daughter. Modern writers have pointed to the fact that the favourite daughter of Ramses II. bore the Canaanitish name of Bint-Anat, and had been born of a Syrian mother. That she should have adopted a Hebrew child would have been nothing strange. Her own sympathies would naturally have been on the side of her Semitic ancestry. 162Moses himself belonged to the tribe of Levi, and future generations remembered that his father was Amram and his mother Jochebed. He had a brother Aaron, three years older than himself, and a sister Miriam. The names of all three were never forgotten in Israel.^[160]

Nor did Moses, when he came to man’s estate, forget his own people. One day, when he was of that unknown age which the Hebrew writers expressed by the term of forty years, he saw one of his Israelitish brethren ill-treated by the Egyptian taskmaster; and with the unrestrained licence of a young Oriental prince, he forthwith remedied the injustice by slaying the Egyptian with his own hand. The act was soon known and discussed among the Hebrew slaves; and when he endeavoured to reconcile two of them who were quarrelling with each other, he was told that though he might be ‘a prince’ in the eyes of the Egyptians, he had no authority over the Hebrew tribes. The suspicions of the Pharaoh had already been aroused against him, and he now fled from Egypt in fear of his life. An Egyptian papyrus, written in the time of the twelfth dynasty, tells the story of a similar fugitive from the Pharaoh’s wrath. This was Sinuhit, who seems to have been accused of conspiring against the government, and who fled, accordingly, like Moses, alone and on foot. He made his way to the eastern boundary of Egypt; and there, when fainting from thirst, was rescued by the Bedâwin of the desert, and finally reached in safety the land of the Kadmonites among the mountains of Seir. The shêkh received him kindly, and Sinuhit in course of time married the daughter of the Bedâwi chieftain, and became one of the princes of the tribe. Children were born to him, and he possessed herds and flocks in abundance. But his heart still 163yearned for his native land; and when in his old age a new Pharaoh sent messengers to say that his political offences were forgiven, and that he might return to Egypt, Sinuhit left his Arab wife and children and went back once more to his own country.^[161]

Like Sinuhit, Moses also fled to the eastern desert, beyond the reach of the Egyptian power. He did not feel himself safe till he found himself in Midian. The Sinaitic Peninsula—Mafkat, as it was called—was an Egyptian province, and the mines of malachite and copper on its western side were garrisoned by Egyptian troops. The ‘salt’ desert of Melukhkha, moreover, which lay between Egypt and Palestine, was equally under Egyptian control; and, as we learn from the Tel el-Amarna tablets, supplied contingents to the Pharaoh’s army.^[162] But in Midian Moses was safe from pursuit; and the ‘priest of Midian,’ like the shêkh of Kedem with whom Sinuhit had to do, gave him a kindly welcome, and married him to Zipporah, one of his daughters.

Government by a priest was a peculiarly Semitic institution. Assur, the primitive capital of Assyria, had been governed by high-priests before it had been governed by kings, and so too had Saba or Sheba in the south of Arabia. There, as we learn from inscriptions, the Makârib, or High-priests, had preceded the kings.

Tradition has handed down more than one name for the high-priest of Midian. In one part of the narrative in Exodus he is called Reuel, in another part Jethro. Jethro is a distinctively north Arabian name, for which there is monumental evidence, and it is probably more correct than Reuel.^[163] Whatever may have been his name, however, Moses remained with him for some time; but instead of being treated like a prince, 164as Sinuhit had been among the Kadmonites, he was set to keep the flocks of his father-in-law.

It was while thus shepherding the flocks of Jethro that Moses came one day to Horeb, ‘the mountain of God,’ which rose into the sky at the back of the desert. Here he beheld a seneh or ‘thorn-bush,’ lighted up with fire, which nevertheless did not consume it.^[164] Approaching nearer, he heard a voice which he believed was that of God Himself, and which told him that the mountain whereon he stood was holy ground. Moses was then ordered to return to Egypt, and there in the name of the God of Israel to command Pharaoh to let His people go. Wonders and signs were to be performed before consent would be wrung from the obdurate heart of the Egyptian king, and ten sore plagues were to be sent upon the inhabitants of the Delta who had joined with the Pharaoh in his oppression of the Israelites. At the same time, God revealed Himself under a new name, which was henceforth to be that of the national God of Israel. On the slopes of Horeb the name of Yahveh was first made known to man.^[165]

165Moses was met by Aaron ‘in the Mount of God,’ and the two brothers returned to Egypt together, determined to deliver Israel from its bondage, and to lead it to that sacred mountain whereon the name of its national God had been revealed. Unlike Sinuhit, Moses took with him his Midianitish wife and the children she had borne him. At this point in the narrative there has been inserted the fragment of a story which harmonises but ill with it, or with the general spirit of Old Testament history. The anthropomorphising legend that ‘the Lord’ met Moses and would have killed him had not Zipporah appeased the wrathful Deity by circumcising her son, belongs to the folklore of a people still in a state of crude barbarism, and is part of a story which enforced the necessity of circumcision among the Hebrew worshippers of Yahveh. An over-minute criticism might find a contradiction between the statement that Zipporah had but one son to circumcise, and the fact that it was the ‘sons’ of Moses who accompanied him to Egypt (Exod. iv. 20). Such verbal criticism, however, is needless; it is sufficient for the historian that the story is a mere fragment, almost unintelligible as it stands, and in complete disaccord with the historical setting in which it is placed.

Moses and Aaron made their way to the court of the Pharaoh, and there requested that the Israelites might be allowed to journey three days into the desert, and hold a feast to their God. The gods of the Asiatic nomads on the outskirts of the Delta were gods of the wilderness, whom the Egyptians identified with Set, the enemy of Horus, the deity of the cultivated land.^[166] The Pharaoh refused the request. Once lost in the desert, the royal slaves would be lost for ever, and would never turn back to the line of fortifications which guarded the eastern frontier of Egypt, and, at the same time, prevented the escape of those who dwelt within them. The God of the Hebrews was no god whom the Pharaoh—himself the offspring and incarnation of the Sun-god—could recognise; they were the servants of the Egyptian king, and of none else.

166The embassy of the representatives of Israel was followed by severer measures of repression. It indicated a rising spirit of rebellion, a desire to return to the old free life of the desert, and to be quit for ever of Egyptian burdens. Strikes were not unknown among the free workmen of Thebes; but a strike among the royal slaves was a more serious matter, and seemed to prove that the Bedâwi spirit of independence and insubordination was still active among the settlers in Goshen.^[167] The Israelites were still employed in building cities and fortresses, and they were now bidden to find for themselves the tibn or chopped straw, which they mixed with the clay of the bricks, and, at the same time, to deliver the same number of bricks as before. The tibn was employed, as it still is, for binding the clay more closely together, but it is not essential, and many of the ancient bricks of Egypt, more especially those used in Upper Egypt, are made without it. In the Delta, however, with its damper climate, the tibn was more necessary, and the Egyptian taskmasters, accordingly, required it, or else some substitute for it.^[168] The condition of the Israelites thus became intolerable; they were scattered over the land, seeking for ‘stubble instead of straw,’ and beaten mercilessly in traditional Egyptian fashion if the full tale of bricks was not delivered. The ‘stubble’ corresponded with the dry stalks of the durra, which are still sometimes used for a similar purpose, and was obtained from the beds of dry reeds which lined the marshes in the Eastern Delta.

Once more Moses and Aaron appeared before the Pharaoh, this time prepared to enforce their petition by signs and wonders. That they should have had such ready access to the sovereign may seem strange to the Western mind. But it is in full accordance with the traditions of the Egyptian court, which have been maintained down to the reign of the late 167Khedive. The ruler of the country was accessible to all who had a complaint to make before him, or a petition to offer. Bakshish might be needful before the charmed circle of officials by which he was surrounded could be broken through; but once it was broken, he was bound to give audience to whosoever came to him. Moses and Aaron, moreover, were the delegates and representatives of their people, and as such had a right to be heard. The system they represented is still in full force in modern Egypt. Each class of the community, each religion, each trade, each nationality, has its recognised representative or ‘shêkh,’ who stands between it and the government, and acts on its behalf in all political and legal matters. He is as much its representative as an ambassador or consul is the representative of the nation which has accredited him, and the rights and privileges which belong to an ambassador belong also to the ‘shêkh.’ The Pharaoh could not exclude Moses and Aaron from his presence, even though the people they represented were public slaves.

The Hebrew wonder-workers were confronted by the magicians of Egypt. Amon-Ra could not yield without a struggle to the God of the ‘impure’ stranger. The miracles performed by the representatives of the Israelitish people were not beyond the powers of his servants, and the magical powers of the Egyptian priests had been famous from the beginning of time. The Egyptian had an intense belief in magic—a belief which still survives in the modern Egypt of to-day. Books had been compiled which reduced this magic to a science, and enabled those who would learn its formulæ and methods to reverse the order of nature and work whatsoever wonder they desired.^[169] To transform a rod into a serpent, or a serpent into a rod, was a comparatively easy feat, and one which the jugglers of Cairo can still perform. Equally easy was it to turn the water of the river into blood, or even to multiply the frogs on the wet land. It was only when the plague of lice touched themselves that the power of the 168magicians failed, and that they confessed themselves overcome by a stronger deity than those they owned. Their magic could not remove the plague which had fallen upon them; their own garments were defiled in spite of their charms and amulets, and they had become more unclean than the ‘unclean’ foreigner himself.

The account of the ten plagues of Egypt betrays an intimate acquaintance with the characteristics and peculiarities of the valley of the Nile. They are all plagues which still recur there; some of them indeed may be said never to have left the country. Still, each year, the water of the river becomes like blood at the time of the inundation. When the Nile first begins to rise, towards the end of June, the red marl brought from the mountains of Abyssinia stains it to a dark colour, which glistens like blood in the light of the setting sun.^[170] Each year, too, the inundation brings with it myriads of frogs, which swarm along the banks of the river and canals, and fill the night air with continuous croakings. The lice, again, are an ever-present plague among the poorer natives, while every spring the flies still swarm in the houses and open air, and irritate the visitor to Egypt almost beyond endurance. Flies and lice, frogs and blood-red water, are all as much a part of modern Egypt as they were of the Egypt of the Mosaic age. Natives and strangers alike suffered from them, and that the plague of flies did not reach to Goshen must have seemed to the Egyptians a miracle of miracles.

Those who have had experience of the flies of Egypt can sympathise with the Pharaoh when he hastily summoned the leaders of Israel and bade them offer sacrifice to the God who 169had thus shown himself a veritable ‘Lord of Flies.’ The plague which followed—the murrain upon the cattle^[171]—is of rarer occurrence, though from time to time it still decimates the cattle and horses of Egypt. A strict quarantine upon animals, however, is now enforced at the Asiatic frontier, and some years, therefore, have elapsed since the last outbreak of the cattle-plague. But the plague of boils and blains is still endemic, and residents in the country seldom wholly escape it. The plague of the thunder and hail is also not unfrequent; as recently as the spring of 1895 a violent storm of the kind swept along the valley of the Nile and destroyed three thousand acres of cultivated land. The locusts, too, now and again, are carried by the south-east wind from the shores of the Red Sea to devour the rising crops, while the darkness that might be felt was but a heightened form of the darkness occasioned by the khamasin winds and sand-storms of the spring. Even the death of the firstborn has its parallel in the epidemic of cholera. In the space of a single year (1895-1896) the Egypt of our own days has experienced most of the plagues of which we read in the book of Exodus. Blood-red water, frogs and lice, flies and boils, hailstorms and darkness, the scourge of cholera, have all visited the land.

There was nothing, consequently, in the plagues themselves that was either supernatural or contra-natural. They were all characteristic of Egypt, and of Egypt alone. They were signs and wonders, not because they introduced new and unknown forces into the life of the Egyptians, but because the diseases and plagues already known to the country were intensified in action and crowded into a short space of time. The magicians beheld in them ‘the finger’ of the God of the 170Hebrews, since they came and went at the command of the Hebrew leader, and all the magic of Egypt was powerless before them. Amon-Ra had found a mightier than himself; and the books of Thoth contained no spells or mystical incantations which could avail against the scourges that afflicted priest and layman alike. The reluctant Pharaoh could no longer resist the cries of his people. Egypt was perishing, and his own son had died of the plague. It was better that his cities should remain unfinished than that there should be none to fill them when they were built. In the plagues that had descended on them, his subjects saw the hand of the wrathful Hebrew Deity, eager for the sacrifices which His people had been prevented from offering to Him in the desert, and the sceptical Pharaoh himself at last became a convert to their belief. In fear lest a worse evil might befall him, he gave the order that the Israelites should be allowed to pass the fortresses that separated Goshen from the wilderness beyond, and the royal slaves were free to depart.

For how long a time Egypt had thus been stricken by plague after plague is hard to determine. The impression left by the narrative is that they followed quickly one upon the other, and that consequently the period was of no great length. It is true that the Nile turns ‘red’ in July, and that the wheat ripens in the spring; but, on the other hand, the locusts, we are told, eat ‘all that the hail had left.’ At any rate, it is clear that the Hebrew writer intended us to believe that less than a year elapsed between the first visit of the Israelitish representatives to the Pharaoh and the flight into the wilderness. All was over before the end of March—‘the first month’ of the Hebrew year.

The Egyptian monuments have given us a different version of the causes which obliged Meneptah to consent to the exodus of his Asiatic serfs. In the light of the stela discovered by Professor Petrie at Thebes, we can now understand the mutilated inscription in which the Pharaoh records on the walls of Karnak his victory over the barbarians in the fifth 171year of his reign. Lower Egypt and its civilisation were never nearer to destruction. The Libyans of Northern Africa had combined with the populations of the Greek Seas, and the barbarians had overrun the Delta, destroying its cities, massacring its population, and carrying away its spoil. While Maraiu, the Libyan king, devastated the eastern banks of the Nile, his northern allies—the Sardinians and Achæans, the Lycians and Siculians—landed on the coasts of the Delta, and marched southward until they joined him.

It would seem that they found allies in Egypt itself. Meneptah tells us that he endeavoured to save what was left of his dominions by throwing up fortifications in front of Memphis and Heliopolis, ‘the city of Tum.’ For Egypt was threatened not only on the west and on the north. Eastward also, in the land of Goshen, there were enemies, pastoral nomads from Asia, who had been allowed to live there for many generations. Their ‘tents,’ the Pharaoh declares, had been pitched ‘in front of the city of Pi-Bailos,’ the modern Belbeis, at the western extremity of the region in which the Israelites were settled. ‘The kings of Lower Egypt’ found themselves shut up and isolated in their fortified cities, ‘cut off from everything by the foe, with no mercenaries whom they could oppose to them.’^[172]

But Meneptah had been ‘crowned to preserve the life’ of his subjects. In the month of Epiphi, our July, the great battle 172was fought which annihilated the hordes of the invaders and saved the inhabitants of Egypt. Six thousand three hundred and sixty-five Libyan slain were counted on the field of battle, and 2370 of the northern barbarians, while 9376 prisoners fell into the hands of the conqueror. It was little wonder that the Egyptian poets composed pæans in honour of the victory, or that one of these hymns of triumph should have been engraved on a stela of the temple which Meneptah raised at Thebes to Amon-Ra.

It is in this latter hymn, as has been already said, that the name of the ‘Israelites’ has been found. They are included among the enemies over whom the Pharaoh had triumphed; but, unlike his other enemies, they possessed no land which they could call their own. They had no fixed habitation, there was no locality which was called after their name. But the Egyptian poet knew that they had come originally from Southern Palestine; the destruction of their male ‘seed’ had widowed the women of ‘Khar.’

It was the pressure of the Libyan invasion, therefore, which had placed Meneptah at the mercy of his Israelitish slaves. With the Libyans and their allies in the east and north, and a hostile population in the land of Goshen, he had been forced to fortify Memphis and Heliopolis, and to yield to those demands for freedom which he was not strong enough to resist. To the ten plagues of which we have the record in the book of Exodus there was added the more terrible plague of the Libyan invasion. In his inscription Meneptah speaks not only of the barbarian enemy who harassed the frontier and devastated the seaports, but also of the ‘rebels’ who were destroying the country from within, and in these rebels whose tents were pitched ‘in front of Pi-Bailos’ we must see the 173Israelites of the Old Testament. Crushed and unwarlike though they may have been, they were nevertheless a source of danger, and, like Mohammed Ali in the presence of the Bedâwin, the Pharaoh found it necessary to agree to their demands.

Meneptah’s victory was gained in the middle of the summer. It was in the spring that the Exodus of the Israelites had taken place. Along with the descendants of Jacob had gone ‘a mixed multitude,’ fragments, it may be, of that wave of Libyan invasion which was rolling over the Delta. At any rate, it was not the Israelites only who had made their way towards Asia. There were other royal slaves also, like the ‘Apuriu who were employed in drawing the stone that was quarried on the eastern bank of the Nile. The resemblance between their name and that of the Hebrews may have led to a confusion between the brickmakers of Pharaoh and the transporters of his stone.

There was an Egyptian legend of the Israelitish Exodus which was embodied in the history of Manetho, from whom it has been quoted by Josephus.^[173] The Pharaoh Amenôphis, it was said, desired to see the gods, as his predecessor Oros (or Khu-n-Aten) had done. On the advice of the seer, Amenôphis the son of Paapis, he accordingly cleared the land of the leprous and ‘impure,’ separating them from the rest of the Egyptians, to the number of eighty thousand, and condemning them to work, like the ’Apuriu of the monuments, in the quarries on the eastern side of the Nile. But among them were some priests who were under the special protection of the gods. When the seer heard of the sacrilege that had been committed against their persons, he prophesied that the impure people would find allies, and with their help rule over Egypt for thirteen years. Not daring to tell the king of his prophecy, he committed it to writing, and then destroyed himself. After a while the workers in the quarries begged the Pharaoh to send them to Avaris, the old fortress of the 174Hyksos, which lay on the Asiatic frontier of Egypt, empty and uninhabited. The request was granted; but no sooner were they settled in their new abode than they rose in rebellion, and chose as their leader Osarsiph, a priest of On. He gave them new laws, forbidding them, among other things, to revere the sacred animals, and set them to rebuild the walls of Avaris. He also sent to the Hyksos at Jerusalem asking them for their help. A force of two hundred thousand men was accordingly despatched to Avaris, and this was followed by the invasion of Egypt. Amenôphis fled to Ethiopia, with the bull Apis and other holy animals, after ordering the images of the gods to be concealed. His son Sethos, who was also called Ramesses, after his grandfather Ramesses the Great, and who was at the time only five years of age, was placed in charge of a friend. Amenôphis remained in Ethiopia for thirteen years, while Osarsiph, who had assumed the name of Moses, and his Hyksos allies committed innumerable atrocities. Temples and towns were destroyed, and the priests and sacred animals were killed. But at last the fated term of years was over; Amenôphis returned at the head of an army, and the enemy was utterly overthrown and pursued to the borders of Syria.

In this legend truth and fiction have been mingled together. The foreigner, and more especially the Asiatic foreigner, was stigmatised as ‘impure’ by the Egyptians, and in the leprous people who were confined in the quarries of the eastern desert we must, therefore, see simply a stranger race. Osarsiph derives his name from Joseph, the latter name being regarded (as in Psalm lxxxi. 6) as a compound of Yo or Yahveh, which is identified with the Egyptian Osiris. Amenôphis,^[174] the son of Paapis, is Amenôphis (or rather, Amenôthes), the son of Hapi who erected the colossal statues of ‘Memnon’ and its companion at Thebes during the reign of Amenôphis III., and 175the Pharaoh Amenôphis, the son of Ramesses, and father of Sethos, is Meneptah, the son of Ramses II., and father of Seti II.

The return of Amenôphis from Ethiopia was derived from a sort of Messianic prophecy found already in a papyrus of the age of Thothmes III. Here we read that ‘a king will come from the South, Ameni the truth-declaring by name. He will be the son of a woman of Nubia, and will be born in.... He will assume the crown of Upper Egypt, and will lift up the red crown of Lower Egypt. He will unite the double crown.... The people of the age of the son of man will rejoice and establish his name for all eternity. They will be far from evil, and the wicked will humble their mouths for fear of him. The Asiatics will fall before his blows, and the Libyans before his flame. The wicked will wait on his judgments, the rebels on his power. The royal serpent on his brow will pacify the revolted. A wall shall be built, even that of the prince, so that the Asiatics may no more enter into Egypt.’^[175]

With this prince of ancient prophecy who should save Egypt from its Asiatic and Libyan foes, it was easy for popular tradition to identify the Meneptah who had annihilated both Libyans and Asiatics, and to combine his name with that of Ameni into the compound Amenôphis. At any rate, the Egyptian legend bears witness to the fact that Meneptah was the Pharaoh of the Exodus, and that the flight of the Israelites was connected with the Libyan invasion of the valley of the Nile.^[176]

176The Israelites themselves connected the flight with the institution of the feast of the Passover. But the feast of the Passover seems to have been a combination of two older festivals. One of these was commemorated by eating for seven days unleavened bread; the other by the sacrifice of a lamb, the blood of which was smeared on the doorposts and lintel of the house, the lamb itself being roasted and eaten at midnight with bitter herbs. The feast of unleavened bread followed immediately upon the feast of the Passover, which lasted from the tenth to the fourteenth day of the first month of the Hebrew sacred year.

Dr. Clay Trumbull has shown that the Passover was but an adaptation of the old rite which he terms the ‘Threshold Covenant.’^[177] It was a rite which went back to the earliest age of mankind, and of which we find traces in many parts of the world. Even in the Egypt of to-day the building of a new house or boat is not complete without the slaughter of a sheep, the blood of which is allowed to fall on the threshold of the house or the deck and side of a vessel. The blood was the mark of the sacrifice by which the master of the house entered into covenant with the stranger, or even with his god. Where it appeared the avenging deity passed by, mindful of the covenant, and remembering that the house contained a friend and not an enemy. The threshold became an altar, and those who passed over it were made members of the family, and shared with them their rights and their religion. When once the bride had crossed the threshold of her new home, she left behind her all her old ties and relations, and became a member of a new family.

177To quote the words of Dr. Clay Trumbull, ‘Long before’ the night of the Exodus, ‘a covenant welcome was given to a guest who was to become as one of the family, or to a bride or bridegroom in marriage, by the outpouring of blood on the threshold of the door, and by staining the doorway itself with the blood of the covenant. And now,’ on the eve of the flight from Goshen, ‘Jehovah announced that He was to visit Egypt on a designated night, and that those who would welcome Him should prepare a threshold covenant, or a passover sacrifice, as a proof of that welcome; for where no such welcome was made ready for Him by the family, He must count the threshold as His enemy.’^[178]

The belief that sacrifice alone could secure the house from the wrath of Heaven has been spread widely over the world. Numberless traces of it are to be found in the folklore of Europe. Popular legend knows of bridges and castles which refused to stand until the human victim had been buried beneath their foundations, and even S. Columba was held to have been unable to build his cathedral at Iona until his companion Oran had been immured alive beneath its foundation-stones. We learn from the Old Testament that the belief was strong among the Israelites also. When Hiel of Beth-el rebuilt the ruined Jericho, we are told that ‘he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub’ (1 Kings xvi. 34). The Deity had a right to the firstborn; and if this right were not recognised by the sacrifice either of the firstborn himself or of a substitute, there could be no covenant between the family and its gods. A new building implied a new local habitation for the family and the gods it worshipped; and where there was no covenant between them, the gods would come as foes and not as friends.

The Passover feast was therefore nothing new. The rite connected with it and the ideas associated with the rite must have long been familiar to the Israelites. What was new was 178the adaptation of the rite to the new covenant that Yahveh was about to enter into with His people. It became ‘the Lord’s Passover,’ commemorating the deliverance from Egypt when Yahveh smote the Egyptian firstborn, but ‘passed over the houses of the children of Israel.’ Like the old springtide feast of unleavened bread, it was given a new signification, and made a memorial of the first event in the national life of Israel. A similar significance was given to a change that was made in the calendar. The Hebrew year had begun in the autumn with the month of September; but side by side with this West-Semitic calendar there had also been in use in Palestine another calendar, that of Babylonia, according to which the year began with Nisan or March. It was this Babylonian calendar which was now introduced for ritual purposes. While the civil year still began in the autumn, it was ordained that the sacred year should begin in the spring. The sacred year was determined by the annual festivals, and the first of the festivals was henceforth to be the Passover. The beginning of the new year was henceforth fixed by the Passover moon.

It was at midnight that the angel of death passed over the land of Egypt. The plague spared neither rich nor poor. The firstborn of Pharaoh died like the firstborn of the captive in prison. Vain attempts have been made to discover which among the sons of Meneptah this may have been. But Meneptah lived many years after the overthrow of the Libyans, and consequently after the Exodus of the Israelites, and it may not have been till late in his reign that his successor, Seti II., became crown-prince. More than one elder brother may have died meanwhile. Moreover, none but the son of a princess of the royal solar race could sit on the throne of the Pharaohs. The reigning king might have elder sons born to him by foreign princesses, but his successor could not be chosen from among them. He only who could trace his descent to the Sun-god, who was, in short, a direct descendant of the Pharaohs, had any right to the throne.

179Amid the terrors of the plague, and under cover of the darkness, the Israelites and their companions, the ‘mixed multitude,’ departed from the land of Goshen. They took with them their flocks and herds; they took also such precious plunder as they could easily carry away from the houses of their terrified masters. They ‘borrowed,’ according to the euphemistic expression of the chronicler, ‘jewels of silver and jewels of gold, and raiment,’ ‘and they spoiled the Egyptians.’ It was little wonder that the Pharaoh subsequently determined to pursue the retreating hordes.

They first made their way from ‘Rameses to Succoth.’ Succoth is the Thukut of the Egyptian texts, the district in which Pithom was situated, and which extended from the land of Goshen to the line of fortifications that enclosed Egypt on the East. It is mentioned in the letter sent to Meneptah three years after the Israelitish Exodus, which we have already had occasion to quote.^[179] The flight of the Israelites had left the district uninhabited, and it was not very long before it was again handed over to some of their Edomite kinsmen, who wanted pasture for their herds.

The site of the town of Rameses is still uncertain. It is called Pi-Ramses, ‘the House of Ramses,’ in the hieroglyphic texts, and, like Zoan, it lay near the canal of Pa-shet-Hor. A long description is given of it by the scribe Paebpasa, who was stationed at Zaru, on the eastern frontier of Egypt, during the early part of Meneptah’s reign. He tells us (according to Brugsch’s translation)^[180] how he had ‘arrived at the city of Ramses and found it excellent, for nothing can compare with it on the Theban land and soil.... Its canals are rich in fish, its lakes swarm with birds, its meadows are green with vegetables, there is no end of the lentils; melons with a taste like honey grow in the irrigated fields. Its barns are full of wheat and durra, and reach as high as heaven.... The canal, Pa-shet-Hor, produces salt, the lake-region of 180Pa-Hirnatron. Their sea-ships enter the harbour, plenty and abundance is abundant in it.’ And then the scribe goes on to describe the annual festivities of its inhabitants in honour of their founder Ramses II.

In Thukut or Succoth were fortresses which protected the Delta from Asiatic incursions, and at the same time prevented those who were in Egypt from escaping out of it without the permission of the Government. One of them was called ‘the Khetem,’ or ‘Fortress, of Thukut’; another the Khetem of Ramses II. Both seem to be mentioned in a report sent to Meneptah’s successor, Seti II. Here we read: ‘I set out from the hall of the royal palace (in Zoan) on the 9th day of the month Epiphi, in the evening, after the two (fugitive) slaves. I arrived at the Khetem of Thukut on the 10th of Epiphi. I was informed that the men had resolved to take their way towards the south. On the 12th I reached the Khetem. There I was informed that grooms who had come from the neighbourhood [had reported] that the fugitives had already passed the Wall to the north of the Migdol of king Seti Meneptah.’^[181]

The runaway slaves must have taken the same road as that which had been taken by the Israelites before them. The Israelites had avoided the nearest and more usual road to Palestine, which ran along the edge of the Mediterranean and passed through Gaza. The Philistines were already threatening the southern coast of Canaan, and Gaza was garrisoned by Egyptian troops. The undisciplined and unwarlike multitude which followed Moses would have been cut to pieces had they ventured to force their way through them, or else would have returned to Egypt. They turned therefore southward towards the desert and ‘the way of the wilderness of the Yâm Sûph.’

From Succoth, we are told, they marched to Etham ‘in the edge of the wilderness.’ Brugsch was the first to see that in 181Etham we have a Hebrew transcription of the Egyptian Khetem. The only question is, which of the many Khetemu or ‘Fortresses’ which protected the Asiatic frontier of Egypt this particular Etham may have been. We hear of ‘the Khetem of Ramses II., which is in the district of Zaru,’ at the very point where one of the roads to Asia passed through the great line of fortification, and the report quoted above tells us of another Khetem, that of Thukut. It was, however, the second Khetem mentioned in the report which is referred to in the Old Testament narrative. This second Khetem lay between Succoth and the lines of fortification, and might therefore be described as ‘in the edge of the wilderness,’ which began on the eastern side of the Shur or fortified wall. It was, in fact, the fortress which guarded one of the roads out of Egypt at the point where it intersected the lines. To the south of it came the Migdol or Tower of King Meneptah.

It is possible that this may be the Migdol which is stated in the book of Exodus to have been near the next camping-place of the Israelites. From the fortress of Etham they had turned to the ‘sea,’ and had there pitched their tents ‘before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over against Baal-zephon.’ In Baal-zephon, ‘Baal of the North,’ we have the name of a Phœnician temple, which is alluded to in an Egyptian papyrus;^[182] and in place of Pi-hahiroth, the Septuagint and Coptic versions read ‘the farmstead,’ reminding us of the ahu or ‘estate’ of Pharaoh in the district of Thukut, on which the Edomite herdsmen were afterwards allowed to settle.

But what is ‘the sea,’ by the side of which the Israelites encamped? Its identification has been the subject of much controversy—a fact, however, which ceases to astonish us when we find that the Hebrew writers themselves were uncertain about it. While in the narrative of the Exodus ‘the sea’ crossed by the Israelites is carefully distinguished from the ‘Yâm Sûph’ or ‘Reedy Sea,’ at which they subsequently arrived, there are other passages in the Old Testament, 182more especially of a poetical nature, in which the two seas are confounded together. Two irreconcileable systems of geography are thus presented to us which have hitherto made the geography of the Exodus an insoluble problem.

In the narrative, however, all is clear and exact. The children of Israel, it was determined, instead of following the northern road to Palestine, should march along that which led to ‘the wilderness of the Yâm Sûph.’ But between them and this wilderness lay the Egyptian wall of fortification, which extended from the marshes in the north to the Gulf of Suez, or its prolongation, in the south. It was only when they had turned the southern end of the wall by crossing ‘the sea’ that they entered ‘the wilderness of the wall,’ where they wandered for three days without finding water (Exod. xv. 22). Later they came to the palm-grove of Elim, and then after that to the Yâm Sûph (Numb. xxxiii. 10).

The Yâm Sûph was well known to Hebrew geography, and corresponded with the modern Gulf of Aqaba. It was upon the Yâm Sûph, at Elath and Ezion-geber, ‘in the land of Edom,’ that Solomon built his ships (1 Kings ix. 26); and after the capture of Arad, in the extreme south of Canaan, the Israelites marched ‘from mount Hor by the way of Yâm Sûph, in order to compass the land of Edom’ (Numb. xxi. 4). Elim is but another form of Elath, the ruins of which lie close to Aqaba, while the town of Sûph lay ‘over against’ the wilderness in the plains of Moab (Deut. i. 1). The Yâm Sûph, in fact, so erroneously rendered ‘the Red Sea’ in the Authorised Version, was the Gulf of Aqaba. The sister Gulf of Suez was called by the Hebrews ‘the Egyptian Sea’ (Isa. xi. 15), a very appropriate name, since it was enclosed on either side by Egyptian territory. From the days of the third dynasty to those of the Ptolemies, Mafkat, the Sinaitic peninsula, was included among the provinces of Egypt.

In the list of the Israelitish stations given in Numb. xxxiii. a careful distinction is made between the Yâm Sûph (ver. 10) and ‘the sea,’ through the midst of which the fugitives from 183Pharaoh passed safely into the wilderness. This ‘sea’ washed the southern extremity of the Shur or ‘Wall’ of fortification, the line of which was approximately that of the Suez Canal. If Dr. Naville is right, in the days of the Exodus it would have extended much further to the north than is at present the case; the Bitter Lakes, in fact, marking its northern boundary. But there are serious difficulties in the way of this hypothesis. The canal which, in the time of Seti I., already united the Pelusiac arm of the Nile with the Gulf of Suez, ran southward as far as the modern town of Suez, where its mouth can still be traced. Only five miles north of Suez, moreover, the fragments of a stela can still be seen, on which Darius commemorated his reopening of the old canal of the Pharaohs. Had the gulf really extended so far north as Ismailîya and the Bitter Lakes, this southern prolongation of the canal would be hard to understand.

However this may be, the poets and later writers of the Old Testament came to forget what was meant by ‘the sea.’ It was confounded with the Yâm Sûph, and the scene of the Exodus was accordingly transferred from the Gulf of Suez to the Gulf of Aqaba. Dr. Winckler has recently endeavoured to show that besides Muzri or Egypt, the Assyrian inscriptions know of another Muzri or ‘borderland’ in the north-west of Arabia. If so, this second Muzri or Egypt might help to explain the confusion between the two seas.

It is in the song of triumph over the destruction of the Egyptians that the confusion first makes its appearance. Here (Exod. xv. 4) ‘the sea’ and ‘the Yâm Sûph’ are used as equivalents, and the contents of the song are summed up at the end in the statement that ‘Moses brought Israel from the Yâm Sûph.’ But elsewhere in the Pentateuch the geography is accurate, and it is not until we come to the speeches in the book of Joshua that the two seas are once more confused together.^[183] The same geographical error is repeated in two of the later Psalms, as well as in a passage of the book of 184Nehemiah.^[184] The older Hebrew geography had by this time been forgotten; with the loss of Edom and its seaports an exact knowledge of the two arms of the Red Sea had faded from the memories of the Jews. But in the historical narrative of the Pentateuch all is still distinct and clear.

Hardly had the Israelites left Goshen before the Pharaoh repented of his permission for their departure. The retreating multitude, encumbered with women and children, with flocks and herds, and with the booty that had been carried off from the Egyptians, was still encamped within the lines of fortification, near the southernmost Migdol or ‘Tower,’ and on the shores of ‘the sea.’ Southward was a waterless desert; behind were the hostile forces of Egypt. The situation seemed hopeless; ‘the wilderness,’ as the Pharaoh said, had ‘shut them in,’ and there seemed no escape from the Egyptian troops which had now been sent in pursuit of them.

But Israel was saved, as it were, by miracle. All night long the sky was black with clouds, while a strong east wind drove the shallow waters of ‘the sea’ before it towards the western bank. The fugitives marched in haste through its dried-up bed, and before morning dawned they had reached the eastern shore. The Egyptian forces pursued, but it was too late. The wheels of the chariots sank into the soft sand, and before they could advance far the wind dropped and the waters returned upon them. The chariots and host of Pharaoh were overwhelmed by the flowing tide.

Classical history knew of similar events. Diodoros (xvi. 46) tells us that when Artaxerxes of Persia led his forces against Egypt, part of his army perished, swallowed up in the ‘gulfs’ of the Sirbonian Lake on the Mediterranean Sea. Alexander’s troops, moreover, narrowly escaped being swallowed up by the waters of the Pamphylian Gulf, through which they passed during the winter, and their escape was magnified by later writers into a miracle.^[185]

185The Pharaoh was not himself among the six hundred chariots which had pursued the flying Israelites into ‘the sea.’^[186] As in the great battle against the Libyans, Meneptah, while taking the field in person, nevertheless took care to avoid actual danger and to delegate his authority to others when there was a prospect of fighting. He lived several years after the Libyan victory, and therefore after the Israelitish Exodus; and though his tomb in the Bibân el-Molûk at Thebes was never finished, he was buried in it at a ripe old age. A dirge,^[187] probably composed at the time of his death, speaks of the king as dying at an advanced period of life.

With the waters of ‘the sea’ between themselves and Egypt, the Israelites felt that they were at last free men. The fortified wall of Egypt was behind them; they were already in the desert-home of their Asiatic kinsmen, free to move whithersoever they desired. But there was one road which they 186could not take. If the fear of ‘seeing war’ had kept them back from the northern road to Palestine, it would still more keep them from the road which led into the Egyptian province of Mafkat. Here on the western side of the Sinaitic peninsula were the mines of copper and malachite worked by Egyptian convicts, and strongly garrisoned by Egyptian troops. To venture near them would have been to court again the danger from which the fugitives had just escaped.^[188]

The road was well known. For centuries it had been trodden by Egyptian troops and miners, by civil officials and the convicts of whom they had charge. There was no difficulty, therefore, in avoiding it, and in plunging instead into the desert which led to their kinsfolk in Edom and that land of Canaan which was their ultimate goal.

Old errors die hard, and the belief that the Sinaitic peninsula was the scene of the wanderings of the Israelites still prevails among students of the Old Testament. It originated in the wish of the early Christian anchorites in the Sinaitic peninsula to find the localities of the Pentateuch in their own neighbourhood, and has been fostered by the geographical confusion between ‘the sea’ crossed by the Israelites and the Yâm Sûph. But the belief is not only irreconcileable with the facts of Egyptian history, it is also irreconcileable with the narrative of the Pentateuch itself. It transports the Amalekites or Bedâwin of the desert south of Judah to the western side of the Sinaitic peninsula, and performs the same feat for the wilderness of Paran.^[189] It makes Jethro, the high-priest of 187Midian, cross the Gulf of Aqaba and make his way through barren gorges and hostile tribes in order to visit his son-in-law, and sets at defiance the express testimony of Hebrew literature that Mount Sinai was among the mountains of Seir.^[190]

The wilderness into which the Israelites emerged is called indifferently that of Shur and Etham. Shur was the Semitic equivalent of the Egyptian Anbu or ‘Wall’ of fortification, while Etham took its name from one of the Khetemu or ‘Fortresses’ which guarded the approach to the valley of the Nile. It was a wilderness which stretched away to the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Hebrew tribes accordingly marched along it. They took, we are told, ‘the way of the wilderness of the Yâm Sûph,’ following the Haj road, which is still traversed by the pilgrims from Egypt to Mecca. But the caravan moved slowly, and for three days they could find no water. Had they turned southward into the Sinaitic peninsula, a few hours would have brought them to the Wells of Moses—now a place of picnic for the visitors to Suez,—while the road to the Egyptian mines was provided with cisterns and wells. But to have done so would have been merely to exchange Egypt for one of its strongly-garrisoned provinces.

How long the wanderers were in crossing the desert we do not know; nor do we know where Marah was, whose ‘bitter’ waters refreshed them after three days of scarcity. But at last they reached the oasis of Elim, which the itinerary in the book of Numbers (xxxiii. 10) couples with the Yâm Sûph. Elim, in fact, is but a variant form of Elath,^[191] and Elath is the Aila of classical geography, of which Aqaba is the modern 188successor. When the Israelites left Elim a whole month had elapsed since their departure from Egypt (Exod. xvi. 1).

Between Elim or the Yâm Sûph^[192] and Mount Sinai lay the Wilderness of Sin. Sinai and Sin alike derived their names from Sin, the moon-god of Babylonia, whose worship had long since been brought by Babylonian conquest to the West. More than two thousand years before the Exodus the Babylonian conqueror, Naram-Sin, ‘the beloved of Sin,’ had carried his arms as far as the Sinaitic peninsula, and the inscriptions of Southern Arabia show that there also the Babylonian deity was adored.^[193] It would seem probable that a temple dedicated to his service stood on the slopes of Mount Sinai.

Numerous attempts have been made to identify the mountain which the Israelites regarded as the scene of the first pronouncement of their Law. Most of these attempts are based on the belief that it is to be sought in the Sinaitic peninsula. The rival claims of Jebel el-’Ejmeh, Jebel Umm ’Alawî, Jebel Zebîr-Katarîna, Jebel Serbâl, and Jebel Mûsa have all been eagerly discussed. Jebel Mûsa alone can claim the support of tradition, though this does not go back further than the third or fourth century A.D., when the Christian hermits first settled in its neighbourhood. The Sinai of S. Paul and Josephus was still in the Arabia of Roman geography, the kingdom of which Petra was the capital.

In the geography of the Old Testament, however, Mount Sinai was in Edom. This is expressly stated in the Song of Deborah, one of the oldest products of Hebrew literature. Here we read (Judg. v. 4, 5), ‘Lord, when Thou wentest out of Seir, when Thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water. The mountains melted from before the Lord, 189even that Sinai from before the Lord God of Israel.’ Similar testimony is borne by the blessing of Moses (Deut. xxxiii. 2), ‘The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; He shined forth from the Mount of Paran,’ an expression which appears in another form in Habakkuk (iii. 3), ‘God came from Teman, and the Holy One from the Mount of Paran.’ Teman denoted Southern Edom, and Paran was the desert which adjoined Edom on the west and Judah on the south, and in whose midst was the sanctuary of Kadesh-barnea.^[194] In the Blessing of Moses the parallelism of Hebrew poetry requires that Sinai and Seir should be equivalent terms.

We must, then, look to the frontiers of Edom and the desert of Paran for the real Sinai of Hebrew history. But it is useless to seek for a more exact localisation until the mountains of Seir and the old kingdom of Edom have been explored. Then, if ever, the Sinai of the Pentateuch may be discovered. It would seem that it formed part of a range that was known as ‘Horeb,’ the ‘desert’ mountains, and as late as the age of Elijah it was still reverenced as ‘the Mount of God’ (1 Kings xix. 8).^[195]

Before the Israelites actually reached the sacred mountain, they had to make more than one encampment in ‘the Wilderness of Sin.’ The itinerary in the book of Numbers gives the names of three—Dophkah, Alush, and Rephidim—the narrative mentions only the last. Rephidim, the ‘Encampments,’ was the scene of the first conflict the Israelites were called upon to face. Here they were attacked by the Amalekites, the Bedâwin tribes who still consider the desert as their own, and whose hand is against all that pass through it. The attack was repulsed, but not without loss, and the 190remembrance of it never faded from the minds of the Hebrew people. There was henceforth to be war between Amalek and Israel ‘from generation to generation,’ until the Bedâwin marauders of the desert should be destroyed. The Song of Deborah (Judg. v. 14) tells us how the struggle was continued after the settlement in Canaan, and the first Israelitish king did his utmost to root out these pests of the Hebrew borderland. Saul smote them, it is said, from Havilah to Shur (1 Sam. xv. 7), from the ‘sandy’ desert of Arabia Petræa to the great Wall of Egypt. And the Hebrew writer expressly adds that these were the same Amalekites as those who had lain in wait for Israel ‘in the way when he came up from Egypt.’ There were no Amalekites in the Sinaitic peninsula; the desert in which they ranged was that which adjoined Edom, and was known to the ancient Babylonians as the ‘land of Melukhkha.’ Hence it was that Edomites and Amalekites were mingled together, and that Amalek was counted by the genealogists a grandson of Esau.

The battle at Rephidim was followed by the visit of the father-in-law of Moses, Jethro, ‘the priest of Midian.’ The visit was natural, for the real Sinai lay on the frontier of Midian. It was while Moses was feeding the flock of Jethro that he had first come to it and received his commission from Yahveh. Here, therefore, at ‘the Mount of God,’ he was within hail of his old home.

Jethro’s visit marked the first step in the organisation of Israel. Under his guidance and counsel judges of various grades were appointed before whom minor cases could be brought, and each of whom was invested with a certain amount of power. The functions of the ‘judge’ were administrative and executive as well as legal; what was meant by the term we may learn from the book of Judges as well as from the Shophetim or judges who at one time took the place of the kings at Tyre. They corresponded closely with the higher officials in the Turkish provinces, who possess an undefined and in some respects absolute authority, subject 191only to the official who is immediately above them. The ‘judges’ established by Moses on Jethro’s advice derived their titles from the numerical extent of their jurisdiction. They were judges ‘of thousands,’ ‘of hundreds,’ ‘of fifties,’ and ‘of tens.’ The community was divided into ideal units, of larger and smaller size, the basis of the arrangement being the decimal system. The whole arrangement may have been of Midianite origin; at all events, in the Assyrian texts we hear also of a ‘captain of fifty’ and a ‘captain of ten.’^[196]

Moses remained the supreme ‘judge’ and lawgiver of his people. To him alone all ‘great matters’ were referred, and from him came all the laws and ordinances, the rules and regulations which they were called upon to obey. The leader who had brought them safely out of ‘the house of bondage’ now became their recognised head and legislator. Moses ‘was king in Jeshurun,’ exercising all the authority in Israel which in later times belonged to the king.

Hardly was the political organisation of the new community completed before the Israelitish tribes reached the venerated sanctuary of Sinai, and encamped before ‘the Mount of God.’ The first object of their journey was accomplished, and the promise of Yahveh was fulfilled that they should ‘serve God’ on the mountain where He had appeared to their leader. Here at Sinai the earlier portion of the Mosaic legislation was promulgated. It was subsequently supplemented by the legislation at Kadesh-Barnea, that second resting-place of the tribes, where by the side of En-Mishpat, ‘the Spring of Judgment,’ they prepared themselves in the security of the heart of the desert for the future invasion of Canaan.

It was amid the terrors of a thunderstorm that Yahveh declared His laws to the people of Israel. While darkness 192rested on the summit of the mountain, broken only by the flashes of the lightning and the voice of the thunder, ‘the Ten Words’ were delivered to man. In their forefront stood that stern, uncompromising declaration of monotheism which henceforth marked the religion of Israel. They began with the commandment that Israel should have ‘no other gods before’ the Lord. Yahveh had brought them forth from Egypt, and Yahveh only must they therefore serve. The commands which followed were partly general, partly applicable to the Israelites alone. The prohibition to make ‘the likeness of any thing in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth,’ defined the character of the God before whom no other was to be worshipped. He had no form or attributes which could be represented by art; it was the gods of the Gentiles only of whom images or pictures could be made. Egypt had been a land of idols, and in leaving Egypt Yahveh required that the idols also should be left behind. In the simple life of the desert there was no place for art: here man was alone with his Creator, who revealed Himself in the light of the burning bush or the thunderings of the storm, not under the forms of the creatures He had made. The second commandment was part of the teaching which the wanderings in the desert were intended to enforce; and if Israel was to remain a ‘peculiar people,’ dedicated to the service of Yahveh, and secure from absorption into the nations that surrounded it, it was necessary that it should be fenced about with a law of puritanical strictness, which forbade the introduction of art under any shape. Art in the world of the Exodus was too closely interwoven with the religions of Egypt and Canaan and Babylonia to be other than a forbidden thing. The subsequent history of Israel proved how wise and needful had been the prohibition. The art which adorned the temple and palace of Solomon was followed by the erection of altars to the divinities of the heathen, and even in the wilderness the golden calf was worshipped in sight of Sinai itself.

193The third and fourth commandments were, like the second, Israelitish rather than general in character. The third forbade taking in vain the name of Yahveh; the name of the national God of Israel which had been so specially revealed was too sacred to be lightly spoken of. The ‘name’ of Yahveh, in fact, was equivalent to Yahveh Himself, and to deal lightly with the name was to deal lightly with One of whose essence it was. The obligation to keep the Sabbath was part of the culture which Western Asia had received from Babylonia. Among the Babylonians the Sabbath had been observed from early times, and the institution seems to have gone back to a pre-Semitic period. At all events, it was denoted in Sumerian by a term which a cuneiform tablet explains as ‘a day of rest for the heart,’ and its Assyrian name of Sabattu or ‘Sabbath’ was even derived by the native etymologists from the two Sumerian words sa, ‘a heart,’ and bat, ‘to rest.’^[197] In Babylonia and Assyria, as in Israel, the Sabbath was observed every seventh day, perhaps in accordance with the astronomical system which dedicated the seven days of the week to the seven planets of Babylonian science. These seven-day weeks, however, were based on the lunar months of the Babylonian year, the Sabbath or rest-day being on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th of each month. There was, moreover, another Sabbath on the 19th of the month, that being the end of the seventh week from the first day of the preceding month. On these Sabbath days work of all kinds was forbidden to be performed. The king, it was laid down, ‘must not eat flesh that has been cooked over the coals or in the smoke, must not change the garments of his body, must not wear white clothing, must not offer sacrifices, must not ride in a chariot, must not issue royal decrees.’ Even the diviner was not allowed to ‘mutter incantations in a secret place.’ Nor was it permitted to take medicine.

With the other elements of Babylonian culture the institution 194of the Sabbath had made its way to the West. But at Sinai it was given a new and special application. Not only was it to be observed each seventh day of the week, irrespective of the beginning of the month, it became also a sign and mark of the covenant between Israel and its national God. In the book of Exodus, it is true, the reason given for keeping it is that Yahveh had rested on the seventh day from His work of creation—a reason which will hardly be accepted by the geologist—but in Deuteronomy (v. 15) it is more fittingly brought into direct connection with the deliverance from Egypt: ‘Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.’

The sanction of the fifth commandment is also one which applied to Israel alone: children were enjoined to honour their parents that their days might be long in the land which Yahveh had promised to give them. But the last five commandments are of general application, and accordingly no reason is given for keeping them derived from the accidents of Hebrew history. They apply to all mankind, at all times and in all parts of the world. Murder, adultery, theft, false witness, and covetousness are all crimes forbidden everywhere by the legal or moral code. But it is strange that lying and deceit are not included among them; in this respect the so-called negative confession, which the soul of the dead Egyptian was called upon to make in the next world, was more complete.^[198] The lie, however, which does not involve false witness is apt to be condoned among the nations of the East.

The ten commandments were followed by a series of other laws, many of which were probably re-enactments of laws or regulations already in force. The law of retaliation, for 195instance (Exod. xxi. 23-25), is as old as human society; so also is the law that murder should be punished by death (xxi. 12). The law which punished the master for the murder of a slave if he died on the spot, but allowed him to go scot-free if the slave lingered for a day or two (xxi. 20, 21), had its parallel in ancient Babylonia, and the death-penalty exacted from the ox which had gored a man (xxi. 28-32) is a survival from the days when dumb animals and even inanimate objects were regarded as responsible for the injuries they had caused.^[199] The regulations in regard to ‘a field or vineyard,’ or ‘the standing corn’ of a field (xxii. 5, 6), belonged to the land of Goshen or to Canaan, not to the life in the wilderness, and the dedication of the firstborn to God (xxii. 29, 30) was one of the most ancient articles of Semitic faith.

Equally applicable to Egypt or Canaan only are the injunctions to let the land lie fallow every seventh year (xxiii. 11), and to celebrate the three great feasts of the year (xxiii. 14-19). They were all feasts of the agriculturist rather than of the pastoral nomad. The year was ushered in with the spring festival of unleavened bread; then in the summer came the feast of harvest, and finally in the autumn—‘the end’ of the old civil year—the feast of the ingathering of the fruits.

Such were some of the laws promulgated under the shadow of the sacred mountain, when Israel first encamped before Mount Sinai. They concluded with an exhortation to march against Canaan. Yahveh declared that He would send His Angel before His people to guide them in their way, like the sukkalli or ‘angels’ of the Babylonian gods. Yahveh would fight for them, and they should drive out the older inhabitants of the land and take their place. They were in no wise to mingle with them or worship their gods; like the idolaters 196themselves, the idols they adored were to be destroyed. ‘From the Yâm Sûph to the sea of the Philistines and from the desert to the river’ were to be the bounds of their new home, a promise which was fulfilled in the kingdom of David.^[200] That, too, extended to ‘the river’ Euphrates, and included the land of Edom with its two ports on the Yâm Sûph. ‘The sea of the Philistines’ is a new name for the Mediterranean, and bears testimony to the maritime fame those pirates from the north had already acquired.^[201]

The laws thus promulgated at Sinai became the first code of Israel. They rested on the covenant that had been made between Yahveh and His people, of which the first clause was that they should worship none other gods but Him. The book in which they were written by Moses was accordingly called the Book of the Covenant, and its words were read aloud to the assembled multitude (Exod. xxiv. 7). The audience, it must be remembered, included not the Israelites only, but the ‘mixed multitude’ as well (Numb. xi. 4).

Once more Moses ascended the sacred mountain, to learn the ‘pattern’ of the tabernacle in which Yahveh was henceforth to be worshipped. It was to be a tent, moving along with the people, and containing all the objects of Israelitish veneration. Chief among these was the ark of the Covenant, surmounted by the mercy-seat and its two cherubim, between which Yahveh sat enthroned when He revealed Himself to His worshippers. Babylonia also had its arks, its mercy-seats, and its cherubim, and Nebuchadrezzar speaks of ‘the seat of the oracles’ in the great temple of Babylon ‘whereon at the festival of Zagmuku, the beginning of the year, on the 8th and 11th days, Bel, the god, seats himself, while the gods of 197heaven and earth reverently regard him, standing before him with bowed heads.’^[202] The cherubim, indeed, were of Babylonian origin, and their presence in the tabernacle seems somewhat inconsistent with the prohibition to make a carven image. But the Israelites were the heirs of the ancient culture of Western Asia, and the tabernacle and its furniture embodied familiar forms of architecture and older religious conceptions.

In Egypt, too, the gods had their shrines, though these were usually boats which on the days of festival floated over the sacred lakes. Arks, however, were not unknown, and, as in Babylonia, contained the images of the gods. Sometimes, however, in Babylonia and Assyria, the ark, like that of Israel, had no image within it: the stone coffer, for instance, found by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam in the inner sanctuary of the little temple of Balawât contained two tables of alabaster on which the annals of king Assur-nazir-pal were engraved. The native workmen who discovered them naturally saw in them the two tables of stone which had been similarly placed by Moses in the ark (Deut. x. 5).^[203]

The parallelism between the temples and ritual of Israel and of Babylonia is indeed close. The temple itself was of the same square or rectangular form. Outwardly it presented the appearance of a huge box. Within were the forecourt and court, while at the back came the Holy of Holies, with its altar and ark. There was, however, one distinguishing feature in the Babylonian temple which was lacking in the Hebrew tabernacle. That was the great tower which mounted up towards heaven, and the topmost stage of which seemed to approach the gods. In the absence of a tower the Hebrew tabernacle agreed with the temples of Canaan.

The Israelitish altars found their counterpart in Babylonia. So, too, did the table of shewbread, which similarly stood in the sanctuaries of the Chaldæan deities. The sacrifices and offerings were also similar. Babylonia had its daily sacrifice. 198its ‘meal-offering,’ and its offerings for sin; the same animals that were sacrificed to Yahveh were sacrificed also to Bel; and the Babylonian worshipper sought the favour of his gods with the same birds and the same fruits of the field. Oil, moreover, was used for purposes of anointing, and herein the ritual of Babylonia and Israel differed from that of Egypt, where oil was not employed.^[204]

The contrast between Egypt and Israel, indeed, in the details of religious service was as great as the agreement in this respect between Israel and Babylonia. The children of Israel had never forgotten their Asiatic origin; throughout their long sojourn in Goshen they had preserved their old culture and habits of thought as tenaciously as they had preserved their language. Between them and the Egyptians, on the contrary, there had been antagonism from the outset. And this antagonism was accentuated by their lawgiver, who was naturally anxious to turn their thoughts from ‘the fleshpots of Egypt,’ and to prevent them from lapsing into Egyptian idolatries. Even the Egyptian legend of the Exodus bears witness to this fact.

199In one detail, however, we find an analogy in Egypt. Professor Hommel^[205] has pointed out that the breastplate of the high-priest, the mysterious Urim and Thummim, with its twelve engraved stones, is pictured on the breast of an Egyptian priest. Thus Seker-Khâbau, a high-priest of Memphis in the age of the nineteenth dynasty, wears upon his breast a sort of double network with four rows of precious stones set in it, each row consisting of three stones, alternately in the form of crosses and disks.^[206] The Hebrew breastplate was used as an oracle, like the linen ephod which was worn under it, though how the future was divined from it we do not know. But in moments of danger it was usual to consult it; and the fact that ‘when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets,’ is brought forward as a proof that he had been forsaken by his God (1 Sam. xxviii. 6). Like the lawgiver himself, it was the mouthpiece of Yahveh, and as such it bore the name of ‘the breastplate of judgment.’

The architects of the tabernacle and its adornment in precious metals were Bezaleel of Judah and Aholiab of Dan.^[207] Modern criticism would hold them to be part of an elaborate fiction, of which the tabernacle was the subject. But the fiction would be too elaborate, too detailed, to be conceivable. Moreover, we have references to the tabernacle or ‘tent of meeting’ in the later history of Israel; and to declare these to be interpolations or the products of the same pen as that which invented the tabernacle itself may be an easy way of saving a theory, but it is not scientific. How far the description of the tabernacle is exact, how far it has not been 200coloured by the conceptions of a later age, is, of course, a question that may be asked. Those who maintain that the Pentateuch goes back in substance to the Mosaic age must nevertheless allow that it has undergone many changes and modifications before assuming its present shape. But, except in rare instances, it is impossible to indicate these changes with the assurance that the historian demands, and we must therefore be content with the probability that in the description of the tabernacle we have the revised version of an old story.

It has been asked how the materials used in the construction of the tabernacle could have been obtained in the desert, from whence came the silver and gold, the bronze and precious stones, the rich embroideries and cloths stained with Tyrian dye? Those who ask such questions have forgotten that the Israelites were not wild Bedâwin, and that they were laden with the spoils of Egypt. Like the invading hosts who attacked Egypt in the reign of Ramses III., they carried with them in their retreat the treasures of their late masters. And we are specially told that the gold was obtained from the bracelets and earrings and rings which were offered by the people and melted down.

It was during the second absence of Moses, when the conception and form of the tabernacle were being revealed to his mental vision, that his followers showed how little they understood the spirit and character of the legislation he was endeavouring to give them. They believed he had deserted them, and with his departure his religious teaching departed also. Israelitish religion was no slow growth: like Zoroastrianism or Buddhism or Christianity itself, it implies an individual founder who gave it the impress of his own individuality. Modern theories which attempt to explain it as a process of evolution start with a false assumption, and arrive consequently at false conclusions. None of the great religions of the world has been a product of evolution except in an indirect sense; they are all stamped with individualism, and 201owe their existence to the genius or inspiration of an individual. The religions of Babylonia and Egypt, as far as we know, were the results of a slow development; but Mosaism and Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Christianity derived not only their names, but their essence also from the individual founders who created them. We cannot understand the religion of Israel without the Law in its background, and we cannot understand the Law without the personality of its lawgiver.

The declaration that Israel should serve no other gods before Yahveh stood or fell with Moses, to whom Yahveh had revealed Himself. And Moses seemed to have vanished among the clouds that enveloped the summit of the sacred mountain. Their leader and his God had deserted them, and the people required another. Aaron the priest was ready to take the place of the lost lawgiver, and to provide them with a new deity and a new faith. And, after all, it was but an ancient faith, the faith of the kindred nations that surrounded them, their own faith, moreover, in the days before the Exodus. A calf was fashioned out of their golden earrings, and in it both priest and people beheld the god who had brought them out of Egypt. Aaron proclaimed a feast in honour of the divinity whose worship was celebrated with the same shameless rites as those which characterised the cult of the Semitic populations of Babylonia, of Canaan, and of Arabia.

But in the midst of the festival Moses suddenly reappeared. The sons of Levi rallied round their tribesman, and fell with him upon the rebels against his laws. Some of the latter were slain, the rest were terrorised, and the golden calf was ground to powder.^[208] Aaron was forgiven, perhaps because he too had gone over to the side of Moses, perhaps because he was too 202powerful or too necessary to be removed.^[209] But in his wrath at the defection of his people Moses had dashed to the ground the two stone tables on which the words of God had been written, and it was needful that they should be replaced. Once more, therefore, Moses left the camp and sought solitary communion with Yahveh on the summit of Sinai. Two fresh tables of stone were hewn, and with these he ascended the mountain.

We must not picture to ourselves heavy stelæ of stone such as the kings and princes of Egypt delighted to set up in their tombs and temples, or the ‘great slab’ which Isaiah was bidden to engrave (Isa. viii. 1). They were rather like the small alabaster slabs found in the ark of the Assyrian temple at Balawât, which measure only twelve and a half inches in length by eight in width and two and a half inches in thickness, and nevertheless contain a long and valuable text. They were, in fact, stone tablets cut in imitation of the clay tablets which served as books in the Asiatic world of the Exodus, and, like the latter, were probably inscribed with cuneiform characters. That these characters were used for ‘the language of Canaan’ we know from the existence of two seals of the age of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, now in the possession of M. de Clercq, which record the names of two Sidonians.^[210] It is probable that the first draft of the Ten Commandments was also in the cuneiform script.

The book of Exodus ends fitly with the conclusion of the legislation which was promulgated from Mount Sinai and with the building of the tabernacle. Henceforward Yahveh 203was to reveal Himself to His people, not amid the clouds of a mountain in the wilderness, but in the sanctuary which they had raised in His honour. The first stage in the education of Israel had been completed; the Israelites had become a nation with a national God and a national sanctuary. Henceforth the sanctuary was to be the centre of their religious faith, the place where the law and judgment of God were to be declared, and to which the tribes were to resort that they might ask counsel from Him. The tabernacle, nomad though it still was, like the tribes themselves, had taken the place of ‘the mount of God,’ and with the legislation of Leviticus a new book of the Pentateuch begins.

We are not to suppose that this legislation has descended to us from the age of Moses without addition and change. Such a belief would be contrary to the history of other religious law-books, or indeed to historical probability. As the utterances of the Hebrew prophets were modified or enlarged according to the circumstances of the successive ages to which they were applied, so too the Mosaic legislation must have undergone revision and enlargement. Laws and regulations which suited the life in the desert needed adaptation to the changed conditions of life in Canaan; tribes fresh from their servitude in Egypt required different guidance from that required by a nation of conquerors; and the details of a legislation which was adapted to the period of Moses would have been wholly unsuited to the period of the Judges, and still more to the period of the Kings. So far as the change and modifications are concerned, which all institutions in this world must necessarily undergo, the Mosaic legislation was a matter of growth. But it was the form and details that changed, not the substance of the legislation. The spirit and conceptions of the legislator had imprinted themselves too indelibly upon it ever to be obliterated. The reiteration of the same law in various forms, and the confused arrangement of many of them, may indeed show that later hands have been at work, but in essence and origin they remain his. The 204book of Leviticus, modernised though it may be, nevertheless goes back to the age of Moses.

Even in the age of Moses many of its regulations were not new. We find their parallels in Babylonia and Canaan, and they had doubtless long been among the unwritten institutions of Israel. But Moses gave them a new sanction and a new adaptation. The Israelites must have had priests like the nations round about them; but it was Moses who defined the priestly character of the sons of Aaron, and consecrated his own tribe to the service of Yahveh. If Yahveh was the national God of Israel, He was also in a special way the tribal God of Levi.

We still know too little about the details of Babylonian ritual to be able to compare it with the religious institutions of Israel. We know, however, that the peace-offerings and trespass-offerings of the Mosaic Law were represented in it, that even the heave-offerings found in it their counterpart, and that solemn fasts and days of atonement were observed in Babylonia and Assyria as well as among the Israelites. In Babylonia, too, a distinction was made between clean and unclean animals, and, as in Israel (Lev. xxi. 17-23), none who was maimed or diseased was allowed to minister to the gods. Purification with water, moreover, played much the same part in Babylonian ritual that it played in the ritual of the Israelites, and tithes were exacted for the support of the service in the temples.

Similar regulations prevailed in Canaan, as we may learn from the Phœnician sacrificial tariffs found at Carthage and Marseilles. Both are mutilated, but the missing portions of the one can to a large extent be supplied from the other. The text thus obtained is as follows:—

‘In the temple of Baal the following tariff of offerings shall be observed which was prescribed in the time of the judge ...-Baal, the son of Bod-Tanit, the son of Bod-Ashmun, and in the time of Halzi-Baal, the judge, the son of Bod-Ashmun the son of Halzi-Baal, and their comrades. For an ox as a full-offering, 205whether it be a prayer-offering or a full thank-offering, the priests shall receive ten shekels of silver for each beast, and if it be a full-offering, the priests shall receive besides this three hundred shekels’ weight of flesh. And for a prayer-offering they shall receive besides the small joints (?) and the roast (?), but the skin and the haunches and the feet and the rest of the flesh shall belong to the offerer. For a bullock which has horns, but is not yet broken in and made to serve, or for a ram, as a full-offering, whether it be a prayer-offering or a full thank-offering, the priests shall receive five shekels of silver for each beast, and if it be a full-offering they shall receive besides this one hundred and fifty shekels’ weight of flesh; and for a prayer-offering the small joints (?) and the roast, but the skin and the haunches and the feet and the rest of the flesh shall belong to the offerer. For a sheep or a goat as a full-offering, whether it be a prayer-offering or a full thank-offering, the priests shall receive one shekel of silver and two zar for each beast; and in the case of a prayer-offering they shall have besides this the small joints (?) and the roast (?), but the skin and the haunches and the feet and the rest of the flesh shall belong to the offerer. For a lamb or a kid or a fawn as a full-offering, whether it be a prayer-offering or a full thank-offering, the priests shall receive three-fourths of a shekel of silver and two zar for each beast; and in the case of a prayer-offering they shall have besides this the small joints (?) and the roast (?), but the skin and the haunches and the feet and the rest of the flesh shall belong to the offerer. For a bird, whether wild or tame, as a full-offering, whether it be shetseph or khazuth, the priests shall receive three-fourths of a shekel of silver and two zar for each bird, and [a certain amount of flesh besides]. For a bird, or for the offering of the firstborn of an animal, or for a meal-offering, or for an offering with oil, the priests shall receive ten pieces of gold for each.... In the case of every prayer-offering which is offered to the gods, the priests shall receive the small joints (?) and the roast (?); and the prayer-offering ... for a cake and 206for milk and for fat, and for every offering which is offered without blood.... For every offering which is brought by a poor man in cattle or birds, the priests shall receive nothing.... Anything leprous or scabby or lean is forbidden, and no one as regards that which he offers shall taste of the blood of the dead. The tariff for each offering shall be according to that which is prescribed in this publication.... As for every offering which is not prescribed in this table, and which is not made according to the regulations which have been published in the time of ...-Baal the son of Bod-Tanit, and of Bod-Ashmun the son of Halzi-Baal, and of their comrades, every priest who accepts the offering which is not included in that which is prescribed in this table shall be punished.... As for the property of the offerer who does not discharge his debt for his offering [it shall be taken from him].’^[211]

The general resemblances between these regulations and those of the Levitical law are obvious. In both we have the same kind of sacrifices and offerings—the ox, the sheep and the goat, the lamb and kid, birds and cakes, meal and oil. Silver shekels were to be paid to the priests, like the silver shekels of the sanctuary exacted in certain cases from the Israelite (Lev. v. 15, xxvii. 25), and the blood and the fat were to be offered to the gods. The necessities of the poor man were remembered as they were in the Levitical law (Lev. v. 7, xii. 8, xiv. 21), and whatever was ‘leprous or scabby or lean’ was forbidden to be brought to the altar. The firstborn could be claimed by Baal as they were claimed by Yahveh, and the offerer was not permitted to taste of the blood of the slain beast (compare Lev. vii. 26, 27). The ‘full-offerings’ of the Phœnician tariffs mean that the whole of the victim had been given to the gods, and so correspond with the burnt sacrifices of the Mosaic Code. It is unfortunate that we cannot fix with certainty the exact signification of the words denoting the parts of the animal which were the due of the priests, and consequently cannot be sure whether 207or not they answer to the breast and shoulder of the peace-offering, which under the Levitical legislation were assigned to the sons of Aaron (Lev. vii. 33, 34).

It is true that the tariffs of Carthage and Marseilles belong to a late period. But they embody regulations and usages which were common to the Semitic world of Western Asia, as we may gather from a comparison of them with the ritual of Babylonia, and which therefore must have been—at least in substance—of great antiquity. Two conclusions result from this fact. On the one hand the Levitical legislation cannot have been the invention of the Exilic age, as some adventurous critics have believed; on the other hand, it is based on customs and ideas which must have been prevalent in Israel long before the birth of Moses. The Hebrew legislator did but develop, modify, and define existing rites; the Levitical Code is not a new creation, but a body of religious and ritual laws which has been formed deliberately and with individual effort out of older customs and habits of thought. Doubtless there are laws and regulations which were the immediate creation of the lawgiver; from time to time new cases arose for which special legislation was needed, and of which the cases of Nadab and Abihu (Lev. x. 1-3), of the son of Shelomith and the Egyptian (Lev. xxiv. 10-16), and of the daughters of Zelophehad (Numb. xxvii. 1-11) are examples. To assume that such cases originated in the laws which they illustrated, and not the reverse, is a gratuitous supposition which is contradicted by the history of modern European law.^[212]

208Whether the Day of Atonement, the Feast of Trumpets on the first of each seventh month and the Year of Jubilee were also new creations of the lawgiver, may be questioned. The special legislation connected with them, as well as their association with the Exodus out of Egypt, was certainly peculiar to the Levitical code, but the same is true of the three older feasts of the Semitic calendar. These too were made to illustrate the events of Israelitish history, and new regulations were laid down for their observance. The Day of Atonement, however, had its counterpart in Babylonia and Assyria. There also in periods of danger or distress, days of humiliation and fasting were prescribed, and prayers and offerings were made to the gods that they might forgive the sins of the people. When at the beginning of Esar-haddon’s reign Assyria was threatened by the Kimmerian invasion, ‘religious ordinances and holy days’ were proclaimed by the priests for ‘a hundred days and a hundred nights,’ and the sun-god was besought to remove the sin of his worshippers.^[213] So, again, after the suppression of the Babylonian revolt, Assur-bani-pal tells us that ‘by the command of the prophets I purified their sanctuaries and cleaned their streets which had been defiled. Their wrathful gods and angry goddesses I tranquillised with prayers and penitential hymns. Their daily sacrifice, which had been discontinued, I restored in peace and established again as it had been before.’ The Feast of Trumpets reminds us that in Babylonia the first day of each month was kept as a Sabbath, and the Babylonian analogy is still more manifest in the case of the Feast of Pentecost, on ‘the morrow after the seventh Sabbath,’ after the offering of the firstfruits. This ‘seventh Sabbath’ is the Babylonian Sabbath, on the 19th of the month, forty-nine days after the first Sabbath of the preceding month. The Year of Jubilee was a Babylonian institution of exceeding antiquity. We learn from classical writers^[214] that once each year in the month of July the feast of 209Sakea was held at Babylon, when the slave changed places with his master, and for five days lived and was clothed as a free man. We can now carry the history of the institution back to the age of the third dynasty of Ur. Gudea, the high-priest of Lagas, B.C. 2700, states in his inscriptions that after he had finished building the temple of E-ninnu, he celebrated a festival; and ‘for seven days no obedience was exacted; the female slave became the equal of her mistress, and the male slave the equal of his master; the subject became the equal of the chief; and all that was evil was removed from the temple.’^[215]

The Year of Jubilee, it is clear, was but an adaptation and improvement of one of the oldest institutions of Babylonian culture. To assert that, together with the other holy days of the Levitical Code, it was borrowed from Babylonia in the age of the Exile, is to assert what not only cannot be proved, but is in the highest degree improbable. In the age of the Exile, Babylonia had become a second Egypt to the Jews, and the religious party among them regarded with abhorrence all that was specifically Babylonian. The feasts consecrated to ‘Bel and Nebo,’ the rites associated with the worship of the Babylonian gods, were the last things that would be adopted or adapted by a pious Jew. Moreover, we now know that the culture which had been carried from Chaldæa to the west long before the period of the Exodus included the gods and sacred rites of the Babylonians. So distinctive a characteristic of it as ‘the feast of Sakea,’ or days of prayer and humiliation for ‘the removal of sin,’ would not be forgotten when Anu and Moloch and Ashtoreth and Nin-ip made their way to Canaan.

There are passages in the Levitical Code which look back very distinctly to Egypt. Thus marriage with a sister, whether a full sister or a half-sister, is forbidden (Lev. xviii. 9). This was one of ‘the doings of the land of Egypt’ (Lev. xviii. 3) which had been consecrated there both by the civil and by the religious law, and continued in force down to the time of the 210Roman conquest. So, too, tattooing the flesh, and shaving the head or lacerating the flesh for the dead, were prohibited (Lev. xix. 27, 28, xxi. 5), all of them practices which are still common in the valley of the Nile. But, on the whole, it is remarkable how entirely Egypt is ignored. The Mosaic legislation seems intentionally to close its eyes to all things Egyptian, and, wherever it is possible, to make enactments which tacitly contradict or set aside the beliefs and customs of Egypt. Even the doctrine of the resurrection, as Bishop Warburton long ago observed, is carefully dropped out of sight. There is no reference to it, no sign that obedience to the laws of Yahveh will benefit the Israelite in any other world than this. On any theory of the age and authorship of the Levitical law such a silence is remarkable. Indeed, if the law is as late as the epoch of the Babylonish exile the silence would be more than remarkable, since the doctrine of a future life and of the power of the god Merodach to raise the dead to life had been firmly established for centuries among the Babylonians. A belief in the resurrection, or at all events, in a life beyond the grave, could not but have betrayed itself in the atmosphere of the Exile. For those, however, who had the Egyptian house of bondage immediately behind them, and who feared lest the tribes in the desert might again lust after the flesh-pots and green pastures of the Delta, the silence is intelligible. The doctrine was closely associated with Egyptian idolatry, with Osiris and Anubis, with the assessors of the dead, and with the pictured polytheism of the Egyptian monuments.

The Levitical legislation was accompanied by a census of the people. What credit we are to attach to the numbers which have been handed down is a question that has been much debated. On the one hand it has been shown that the vast multitude presupposed by them could not have moved about in the desert, as it is represented to have done, and that many of the regulations in the Levitical Code could not have been carried out with a nomad population of over two millions.^[216] 211On the other hand, the 600,000 men above twenty years of age who were ‘able to go forth to war’ are specified again and again, and the same number is implied in all the calculations that are made of the numerical strength of Israel. It is also the sum of the numbers assigned to the fighting men of the individual tribes. Throughout the history the ciphers are consistent with one another. If the number is exaggerated, it it is an exaggeration which has been consistently adhered to. We must either accept it, or believe that it belongs to an artificial system which has been framed with deliberate intention. But the same may be said of the chronology of the early patriarchs as well as of the chronology of the kings of Israel and Judah, and in both instances we know that the system is wrong. In the case of the chronology of the early patriarchs, indeed, there are at least three rival systems, all equally complete and self-coherent, while the chronology of the kings involves such hopeless anachronisms as have long since caused it to be rejected by the historian. The difficulties presented by the census of the Israelites in the wilderness are similar in character to the anachronisms presented by the chronology of the kings, and the same reasons which lead us to reject the one ought equally to induce us to reject the other.

Nevertheless, the chronology of the kings is not wholly incorrect. The length of reign assigned to the several kings is usually right. It is only the system into which it has been fitted that is at fault. And probably this is also the case as regards the numbering of the tribes of Israel. It may be that the 8580 Levites and the 22,273 firstborn males are authentic, and that the increase of the population by 3550 (Exod. xxxviii. 26; Numb. i. 46) a few months after the flight from Egypt, and its decrease by 1820 at the end of the wanderings (Numb. xxvi. 51), rest on a foundation of fact. Even the traditional number of 600,000 may have better support than its being a multiple of the Babylonian soss and ner.^[217] Perhaps it originally represented the whole body of fugitives from Egypt.

212At all events, some light may be thrown on the matter by a comparison of the numbers given in the Pentateuch with those of the Libyans and their allies as recorded in the inscription of Meneptah. Of the Libyans, 6365 men were slain and 230 (including 12 women) were captured; of their allies, 2370 fell on the field of battle, and 9146 were taken prisoners, while no less than 9111 bronze swords were taken from the Maxyes. We gather from the history of the battle that few, if any, of the enemy escaped. The whole force of fighting men, therefore, would not have amounted to very much over 25,000. And yet this was one of the most formidable hosts that had invaded Egypt; and its male population had not been decimated by the tyranny of an Egyptian king. On the other hand, a population of 2,000,000 in the land of Goshen is inconceivable, and there would hardly have been room in the eastern Delta for 600,000 able-bodied brickmakers. The Sweet-water Canal was dug by only 25,000 fellahin, though 250,000 worked at the Mahmudîya Canal, and for some years 20,000 fresh labourers were sent monthly to excavate the Suez Canal. Even in the desert, moreover, the Egyptians required a considerable number of troops to guard the serfs or convicts who worked for them. At Hammamât, for example, in the reign of Ramses IV., the 2000 bondservants of the temples who effected the transport of the stone were attended by 5000 soldiers, 800 mercenaries, and 200 officers; and provisions for this large body of men were carried across the desert in ten waggons, each drawn by six pairs of oxen, and laden with bread, meat, and cakes.^[218] For 600,000 Israelites the whole Egyptian army would not have sufficed. According to Manetho, the Hyksos, when driven from Egypt, did not number more than 240,000 in all.

We cannot, then, look upon the numbers that have come down to us as exact. The occupants of the Israelitish camp, continually under the personal supervision of Moses, and constantly required to assemble before the tabernacle, could not 213have been a very large body of men. Had the fighting population amounted to anything like the number recorded, there would have been no need of avoiding ‘the way of the land of the Philistines,’ lest the people should ‘see war,’ or of doubting the issue of the combat at Rephidim with the Bedâwin tribes.

The year after the flight from Egypt, Sinai, ‘the mount of God,’ was left behind. The service that Yahveh required had been performed, the legislation revealed there had been completed, and the tabernacle and ark had been made. Israel had henceforth another religious centre than the sacred mountain of the desert, which had now fulfilled its part in the religious training of the tribes. Canaan, and not the wilderness, was the destined home of the descendants of Jacob, and to Canaan the ark and the tabernacle were to accompany them.

The guiding column of cloud moved accordingly from the wilderness of Sinai to that of Paran (Numb. x. 12). This is in harmony with the rest of Old Testament geography. In the blessing of Moses (Deut. xxxiii. 2) it is said that when God came from Sinai, ‘He shined forth from the mount of Paran,’ and in Habakkuk (iii. 3) the mount of Paran takes the place of Sinai itself. Paran, in fact, was the desert which formed not only the southern boundary of Canaan, but also the western frontier of Edom. The real Mount Sinai of Hebrew geography, therefore, was upon the Edomite border; and since Paran was the home of Ishmael (Gen. xxi. 21), it is not surprising that Esau should have taken one of Ishmael’s daughters to wife (Gen. xxxvi. 3).

Before Sinai was left, however, Hobab the Midianite, the brother-in-law of Moses, proposed to return to his own land. Sinai adjoined Midian, if indeed it was not included in Midianitish territory, and here, therefore, if at all, it was needful for the Midianite chief to quit the Israelitish camp. But his knowledge of the district was too valuable to be lost, and Moses persuaded him to remain with the Israelitish tribes 214and guide them to the places where they should encamp. The Kenites in later days traced their descent to him (Judg. i. 16, iv. 11), and the rocky nest of the Kenites was visible from the heights of Moab, perhaps in Petra itself (Numb. xxiv. 21).

The geographical details which follow are confused. In the itinerary (Numb. xxxiii. 15, 16) the camp is transported at once from the wilderness of Sinai to Kibroth-hattaavah. In the narrative, however, we are told that the people first went ‘three days’ journey,’ and then rested at Taberah, which seems to be identified with Kibroth-hattaavah; from thence they travelled to Hazeroth, and then pitched their tents ‘in the wilderness of Paran.’ On the other hand, the book of Deuteronomy (ix. 22) distinguishes between Taberah and Kibroth-hattaavah, and interpolates Massah between them, which, according to Exod. xvii. 7, was visited before Sinai. If we follow the official record, we must suppose that the incident connected with Taberah has been inserted in the wrong place, or else that Taberah and Kibroth-hattaavah are, like Massah and Meribah, one and the same. At all events, all these encampments must have lain on the outskirts of the desert of Paran. Hazeroth, ‘the enclosures,’ was a common name for the Bedâwin encampments in the desert south of Judah, and the Hazeroth mentioned here is doubtless that of which we read in Deut. i. 1. It lay near Paran on the borders of the plains of Moab.

Taberah, it was said, derived its name from the fire which had here consumed some of the people, while Kibroth-hattaavah marked the ‘graves’ of the murmurers who had died from a surfeit of quails. Similar flights of quails still visit the Egyptian Delta in the early spring, when the sky is sometimes overshadowed by myriads of birds. Hazeroth was remembered for the rebellion of Aaron and Miriam against their brother Moses, and the punishment that Miriam the prophetess had in consequence to endure. The authority of Moses was disputed because he had married an Ethiopian wife. It is the only passage in the Pentateuch where this 215‘Cushite’ wife is alluded to; elsewhere we hear only of Zipporah the Midianitess. But it points to a traditional recollection of the days when Moses was still Messu, the Egyptian prince, and when, like that other Messu, his contemporary, he might have been the Egyptian governor of Ethiopia.^[219] The objection to the Ethiopian wife came but ill from Aaron, whose grandson bore the Egyptian name of Phinehas, Pi-nehasi, ‘the negro.’ But Yahveh declared that the Cushite affinities of Moses were no bar to his being a true servant of the God of Israel and the divinely-appointed leader of the tribes. To him Yahveh had revealed His will openly, and as it were face to face; not, as to other prophets, in waking visions and dreams.

In the heart of the wilderness of Paran was the venerable sanctuary of Kadesh-barnea. Centuries before, the army of Chedor-laomer had swept through it, slaughtering its Amalekite inhabitants, and drinking the water of En-Mishpat, ‘the Spring of Judgment,’ where the shêkhs of the desert had given laws to their people. Its site has been found again in our own days by Dr. John Rowlands and Dr. Clay Trumbull.^[220] The spring of clear water which fills the oasis with life and verdure is still called ’Ain Qadîs, the ‘Spring of Kadesh.’ It rises at the foot of a limestone cliff, in which a two-chambered tomb has been cut in early times, in the hollow of an amphitheatre of hills. The hills form a block of mountains which occupy the central part of the desert, midway between El-Arîsh and Mount Hor, and more than forty miles to the south of Sebaita, the supposed site of Hormah.

Kadesh, the ‘Sanctuary,’ was destined to be the second resting-place and scene of Israelitish legislation. The work which had been left unfinished at Sinai was completed here. The will of Yahveh, which had first been declared on the summit of the mountain, was now to be more fully unfolded among the soft surroundings of the oasis in the valley. Sinai 216and Kadesh-barnea were the two schools of the desert in which Israel was trained.

But Kadesh-barnea had other advantages as well. It was on the high-road from the desert to Canaan, it commanded the approach to the latter country, and nevertheless within its rocky barriers the Israelites were safe from attack. Here, therefore, at Kadesh-barnea, the first preparations were made for the invasion of Palestine. Twelve scouts were sent, in Egyptian fashion, to explore the land, and bring back a report of its capabilities for defence. They made their way as far as Hebron,^[221] where a popular etymology derived the name of the valley of Eshcol from the cluster of grapes they had cut there.^[222] But the report with which they returned was discouraging. The Amorites were tall and strong; by their side the children of Israel appeared but as grasshoppers; while the cities in which they dwelt were ‘very great,’ and walled, as it were, to heaven. It was folly for the desert tribes to dream of assaulting them; that would need the disciplined army of a Pharaoh, with its chariots and horses and machines for scaling the walls. ‘We be not able to go up against the people,’ they declared, ‘for they are stronger than we.’

Here, then, was an end to all the promises of Moses. The Promised Land was in sight, and they were excluded from it for ever. ‘Let us make another captain,’ they cried, ‘and return to Egypt.’ The leader who had brought them thus far had failed on the very threshold of their goal. The Hyksos, when they forsook Egypt, had found a refuge in Canaan; but the barren wastes of the wilderness were all that the Israelites could expect. It was little wonder that a rebellion broke out in the Israelitish camp, and that the supporters of Moses were threatened with stoning.

217But experience soon showed that the Israelitish tribes were as yet no match for the people whose possessions they desired to seize. Despite the report of the spies, they climbed the cliff which formed the northern boundary of the oasis, and attempted to force their way beyond the frontiers of Canaan. But their enemies proved the stronger. When Seti I. had attacked the frontier fortress of Canaan, not far from Hebron, he had found it defended by Shasu or Bedâwin, and so, too, the Israelites now found themselves confronted not by the Canaanites only, but also by their Amalekite or Bedâwin allies. The assailants were utterly defeated and ‘discomfited even unto Hormah.’

Hormah was more usually known as Zephath (Judg. i. 17), and its site must be looked for south of Tell ’Arad. It was one of the cities of Palestine which Thothmes III. claims to have captured, and it lay towards the southern end of the Dead Sea, on the road to Hazezon Tamar (Gen. xiv. 7). The mention of it makes it clear that the Israelitish invasion of Canaan had been a serious attempt. The invaders had marched along the same military road as that followed by Chedor-laomer, and had penetrated as far as the hill country of what was afterwards Judah. But they did not succeed in getting further, and their shattered relics must have made their way with difficulty back to the fastness of Kadesh. The first attempt to conquer Palestine had failed.^[223]

The disaster was never forgotten. It was some years before the Israelites again attempted to cross the Canaanitish boundary, and when they did so it was from a different quarter. A new generation had to grow up before they were strong enough to renew the attack; indeed, it is probable that most of the fighting men had been lost in the earlier expedition. When at last Israel felt able once more to march against Canaan, 218it was already in possession of land on the east of the Jordan, but its great ‘captain’ and lawgiver was dead. Israelitish history found its leader to the conquest of Palestine not in Moses, but in Joshua.

The history of the period that followed the disaster left little that was worth recording. The chief incidents of the life in the desert had been crowded into the first few months of the wanderings. But it was during this later period that trouble arose with Moses’ own tribesmen, the Levites. It was again a question of authority. The democratic spirit of the Israelites resented claims to superior power; and just as Aaron and Miriam had disputed the authority of Moses, so now the Levites disputed that of Aaron. It was a dispute which, if we are to believe modern criticism, was continued into later Jewish history, when it ended, as it did in the desert, in the triumph of the high-priest.

Aaron and his sons, like Moses, were at the outset Levites, and as such doubtless had no claim to superior sanctity and power. But circumstances had placed them at the head of their tribe; and when that tribe became the ministers of the sanctuary, Aaron and his descendants necessarily occupied the foremost place in its services. They were in a special sense the guardians of the ark, and thus alone privileged to enter the Holy of Holies, where Yahveh revealed Himself above the cherubim. As long as there was but one sanctuary, it was easy to maintain the distinction between the priest of the house of Aaron and the ordinary Levite. But with the conquest of Canaan all this was changed. Sanctuaries were multiplied all over the land; the old high-places became seats of the worship of Yahveh, and there were rival centres of religious authority, like that of Baal-berith at Shechem, or that of the graven image at Dan (Judg. xviii. 14, etc.). Local temples or tabernacles took the place of the one that was hallowed by the presence of the ark, and the line of Aaron fell into the background. In the age of national trouble and disintegration which preceded the accession of Saul, the 219character of the high-priestly family itself had much to do with the loss of its power and influence. Eli, its representative at Shiloh, was old and feeble, and his sons set at defiance the Mosaic law, which required that Yahveh’s portion of the sacrifice should be burned on the altar before the priests received their share, and so they made ‘the offering of the Lord’ to be ‘abhorred.’ The capture of the ark by the Philistines and the massacre of the priests at Nob by order of Saul completed the dissolution of the high-priestly authority; and when the temple at Jerusalem was built under Solomon, a new branch of the family of Aaron was appointed to minister in it, and his descendants became little more than hereditary court-chaplains. It has even been doubted whether there was any high-priest, properly so called, under the kings; if there were, he had been divested of the power and position which had been given him by the Levitical law.

To conclude, however, as has sometimes been done by modern criticism, that because the priests of Solomon’s temple were no longer the high-priests of the Pentateuchal law, therefore there had been no such high-priests at all, is contrary to the evidence of archæology. Monumental discovery has disclosed the fact that among the Semitic kinsmen of the Israelites as well as in Chaldæa the high-priest preceded the king. Not to speak of the patesis or high-priests of the Babylonian cities who exercised royal sway within the limits of their territories, like the Popes within the limits of the Romagna, the earliest rulers both of Assyria and of Saba or Sheba in Southern Arabia were high-priests. The Assyrian kings followed the high-priests of the god Assur, and the Makârib or ‘high-priests’ of Saba came before the kings. Israel also had the same experience. The Israelitish kings appeared at a comparatively late period on the scene of Hebrew history, and Saul was preceded by the high-priest Eli.

In the book of Deuteronomy, it is true, we do not find the distinction between ‘the priests, the sons of Aaron,’ and the rest of the Levites that is made in the Levitical law. Here 220the priests are all alike called Levites; it is not ‘the priests, the sons of Aaron,’ but ‘the priests the Levites’ who are appointed to perform the highest offices of the sanctuary. How far the phraseology is due to a different conception of the Mosaic law, or how far it testifies to an older usage of language, is a question which need not concern us; what is important to observe is that the difference of expression is linguistic and not historical. Historically all the priests were Levites, though from the outset some of them must have been assigned higher positions than others, and have been invested with more sacred functions. The Levitical law draws the distinction which the book of Deuteronomy is not so careful to do. In fact, there was not the same necessity for doing so in the case of the Deuteronomic retrospect.

The tabernacle had been constructed, its services arranged, and the grades and duties of its ministers appointed. Now, therefore, disappointed in their hope of invading Canaan from the south, the Israelites settled themselves tranquilly at Kadesh, in the heart of the wilderness of Zin, and slowly developed into a strong and united community. Here it was, by the waters of En-Mishpat, that the legislation of Moses was completed, and the undisciplined horde of fugitive serfs from Egypt was moulded into a formidable band of warriors knit together by a common religion and worship, and continually gathering increased confidence in its own strength.^[224]

221How long the Israelites remained in their desert fastness we do not know. A time came when they once more resumed their wanderings, or at all events a portion of them must have done so. The Itinerary in Numb. xxxiii. gives a long list of their encampments before they again found themselves in the oasis of Kadesh. One of the places at which they rested was Mount Shapher, another was Moseroth, of which we hear in the book of Deuteronomy (x. 6). Moseroth was in the territory of the Horite tribe of Beni-Yaakan,^[225] and it was from the Beeroth or ‘Wells’ of the Beni-Yaakan—Hashmonah, as it is called in the Itinerary—that they had made their way to it.

At Mosera or Moseroth, according to Deuteronomy, Aaron died, and was succeeded in his office by his son Eleazar. The statement, however, is not easily reconcileable with what we are told in the book of Numbers. There it is said that the death of the high-priest took place on the summit of Mount Hor after the departure from Kadesh.^[226] The fact that Gudgodah was also called Hor-hagidgad, ‘the mountain of clefts,’ may have been the cause of the transference.

But it must be remembered that Kadesh was merely the headquarters of Israel during its weary years of waiting in the wilderness. The scanty notice of the unsuccessful invasion of Southern Palestine shows that it was only the camp as a whole which remained fixed there. Like the Bedâwin of to-day, portions of the tribes made distant expeditions, and the Itinerary may relate rather to their encampments than to that of the stationary part of the people. Kadesh was a sort of 222centre from which fragments of the main body could be sent forth to scour the frontiers of Seir and Edom, or to encamp at the foot of Ezion-geber on the Yâm Sûph.

In the book of Numbers (xxi. 14, 15) there is a quotation from ‘the Book of the Wars of the Lord,’ one of the old documents on which the history of Israel in the wilderness is based. The introductory words are unintelligible as they stand, thus testifying to the antiquity of the passage; all that can be made out of them is that they relate not only to the struggle between Israel and the Amorites at ‘the brooks of Arnon,’ but also to a previous war carried on by the Israelites ‘in Suphah,’ near the gulf of Aqaba.^[227] Here the Israelites would have been on the borders of Edom, if indeed they were not in Edom itself; and it is therefore noticeable that the Egyptian Pharaoh, Ramses III., whose reign coincided with the period of the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert, declares that he had ‘smitten the Shasu (or Bedâwin) tribes of Seir and plundered their tents’ (ohélu). Ramses III. was the only Pharaoh of Egypt who had ventured to attack the Edomite Bedâwin in their mountain strongholds; while Canaan and the plateau east of the Jordan had been Egyptian provinces the inhabitants of Mount Seir had retained their independence. The synchronism, therefore, of this Egyptian expedition against, not the Edomites only, but ‘the Bedâwin of Seir’ and the war in which Israel was engaged ‘in Suphah,’ is, at least, worthy of notice. It may be that part of the training undergone by the Israelites in the desert for their future conquest of Canaan was the help they had rendered their kinsfolk of Edom in their contest with the old taskmasters of the Hebrew tribes.

However this may be, of the three leaders who had brought Israel out of the house of bondage, Moses alone survived the 223long sojourn at Kadesh. Miriam had died there; the death of Aaron also, if we may trust Deuteronomy, had taken place before the final departure from the great desert sanctuary. In any case, it had happened in sight of Kadesh, and before the march had commenced which was to lead the Israelitish tribes to the Promised Land. The time had now arrived when Israel felt strong enough once more to attempt its conquest; not, this time, by the road through the mountains of the south along which Chedor-laomer had marched to Kadesh, but from the plateau eastward of the Jordan where the kindred nations of Moab and Ammon had already established themselves. Here, too, the Israelites made their first permanent settlements in the land which they had marked out for their own.

The Canaanite population east of the Jordan was sparse and weak compared with that to the west. It had been further weakened by foreign conquest. Between the fall of the Egyptian empire and the Israelitish invasion the Amorites under Sihon had formed a kingdom and occupied the territory of Moab as far south as the Arnon. As in the age of the eighteenth dynasty, so too under the kings of the nineteenth dynasty, Egyptian rule extended over what is called in one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets ‘the field of Bashan.’ The so-called Sakhret Eyyûb, or ‘Stone of Job,’ a little to the north of Tell ’Ashtereh, eastward of the Jordan, has been discovered by Dr. Schumacher to be a monument of Ramses II.^[228] The figure of the Pharaoh is engraved upon it, with his name beside him, as well as the figure of a deity who wears the crown of Osiris, and is represented with a full face, while his Canaanitish name is written in hieroglyphs.^[229] At Luxor^[230] Ramses claims Moab 224among his conquests, and we may therefore gather that up to the time of the Exodus the authority of Egypt had been restored throughout the country east of the Jordan. But the Libyan invasion shattered the strength of Egypt, and long before the close of the nineteenth dynasty its possessions in Palestine passed from it forever. This is precisely the period to which the Pentateuch refers the kingdom of Og in Bashan and the conquests of Sihon in Moab, and the Biblical and monumental evidence thus stand in complete agreement.

Moses had requested permission from the Edomite king to pass through his dominions. The Song of Moses (Exod. xv. 15) still speaks of the alûphim, or ‘dukes,’ of Edom, who had originally governed the country; but while the Israelites had been lingering in the desert, the ‘dukes’ had made way for an elective monarchy. The dissolution of the Egyptian power may have had something to do with this; possibly the invasion of Mount Seir by Ramses III. had produced the same result in Edom that the Philistine invasion produced among the Israelites, and had obliged them to elect a king. At all events, the first king of Edom, we read, was ‘Bela, the son of Beor.’ Bela, however, is merely a contracted form of Balaam, and in the first Edomite king we must therefore see Balaam, the son of Beor. What relation he bore to the seer from Pethor will have to be considered later on.^[231]

It is not surprising that the Edomite king refused the request that had been made to him. To have admitted within his frontiers a large body of emigrants like the Israelites, many of whom were armed, might have been as dangerous as the passage of the Crusaders through the Eastern Empire proved to Constantinople. The Israelites were not strong enough to force their way through a hostile country, and very reluctantly, therefore, they once more turned southward to the 225Gulf of Aqaba, and from thence marched northward again to the east of Edom. Their route brought them to the southeastern part of Moab.

The people, we are told, bitterly complained of the length of ‘the way.’ It was not strange. The Promised Land, so constantly in sight, seemed always to recede as soon as it was approached. They had vainly attempted to enter it from the south; the Philistines kept garrison in the cities on the Mediterranean coast; and now, when a third and last mode of approach was undertaken, their brethren of Edom closed the path. The road, too, which they were thus forced to adopt led them through a desert, which the Assyrian king Esar-haddon describes as a land of drought, inhabited only by ‘snakes and scorpions, which filled the ground like locusts.’^[232] These were the ‘fiery serpents’ that bit the Israelites and increased their miseries. A memorial of their sufferings lasted down to the age of Hezekiah. The brazen ‘seraph’ or ‘fiery serpent’ which had been wrought by order of Moses, and planted on the top of a pole, was religiously preserved in the chief sanctuary of the nation. Incense was burned before it, for it had been the means of preserving the people from the fiery poison of the snakes. But the idolatry of which it was the object brought about its destruction. The relic, which had been spared by the earlier kings and priests of Judah, was destroyed by Hezekiah, who realised at last that it was but ‘a piece of brass.’ It is true that doubts have been cast upon its having actually been a monument of the life in the wilderness; but it is difficult for the historian to understand how a modern critic can be better informed on such a point than the contemporaries of Hezekiah.^[233]

Zalmonah, Punon, and Oboth were the next stages on the 226journey after Mount Hor. Then came Iye-ha-Abârim, ‘the Ruins of the Hebrews’—a name, it may be, which contained a reminiscence of the settlement of the Israelites in the country.^[234] Iye-ha-Abârim was in the plain east of Moab, under the shadow of the mountain-range of Abarim. Then the stream of the Zered was crossed, and the emigrants found themselves in Moab. The banks of the Arnon were the next resting-place.

The nation retained but little recollection of the dreary years that had been passed in the wilderness. A few incidents alone were recorded which had broken the monotony of their desert life. But here, on the verge of Canaan and of conquest, the national consciousness awakened into new life. The song was handed down which had been sung when at some station in the desert the ground had been pierced and water found. ‘Spring up, O well!’ it said; ‘sing ye unto it. O well that hast been dug by princes, that hast been pierced by the nobles of the people, by (the direction of) the lawgiver, with their staves!’ Similar songs, according to Professor Goldziher, were sung in old days by the Arab kinsmen of the Israelites when they too dug wells in the desert and the refreshing water bubbled up from below.^[235]

Arnon was now the boundary between Moab and the new kingdom of Sihon the Amorite. Sihon refused permission to the Israelites to pass through his territories, along the ‘royal highway,’ and endeavoured to stop their advance. But the 227tribes were no longer the undisciplined rabble who had fled from the Canaanites of Zephath, and the result of the struggle was the complete overthrow of the Amorite forces. The district between the Arnon and the Jabbok, which had been taken by Sihon from ‘the former king of Moab,’ was occupied by the Israelites, who accordingly established themselves midway between Moab and Ammon. It is on the occasion of this conquest that the Hebrew historian has preserved the fragment of an Amorite song of triumph which had celebrated the capture of Ar, the Moabite capital, and which was now embodied by the Israelites in a similar song of triumph for their own victory over Sihon.

Ammon was too strong to be attacked (Numb. xxi. 24), but ‘Moses sent to spy out Jaazer,’ not far from Rabbah, the future capital of the Ammonites, and the fall of the Amorite city of Jaazer brought with it the conquest of Gilead. The tribes of Reuben and Gad were settled in the newly-acquired districts, on condition, however, that they should acknowledge their relationship to the rest of the tribes, and help the latter in case of necessity (Numb. xxxii. 29-32; Judg. v. 15-17). Gilead had been conquered by Machir, a branch of the tribe of Manasseh (Numb. xxxii. 39; Deut. iii. 15; Judg. v. 14), and the conquest was subsequently extended further by armed bands under chieftains, like Jair and Nobah, who occupied outlying districts on their own account.^[236]

The Havoth-Jair, or ‘Villages of Jair,’ were in the ‘stony’ region of Argob, the Trachonitis of Greek geography, which extended northward to the Aramaic kingdoms of Geshur and Maachah. It formed part of the ‘Field of Bashan,’ which in the Mosaic age was ruled by Og ‘of the remnant of the Rephaim.’ Like Sihon, he is called an Amorite, and his two capitals were at Edrei and Ashtaroth-Karnaim.^[237] His rule was acknowledged 228from the Haurân in the south to Mount Hermon in the north, and he must thus have been one of the native princes who arose out of the ruins of the Egyptian empire. But his power was shortlived. He was unable to withstand the shock of the invaders from the desert, and his dominions became Israelitish territory. It would seem that what was afterwards the eastern side of Ammon was included in his kingdom, since in after ages a huge sarcophagus of black basalt, which was preserved in Rabbah of Ammon, was pointed out as his ‘iron bed’ (Deut. iii. 11).

These conquests of the Israelites doubtless occupied a considerable space of time. Some of them, indeed, were made after the Mosaic age, and were merely extensions of the conquests made at that time. But the overthrow of Og must have followed quickly on that of Sihon. A year or two would have sufficed to allow the Israelitish bands to overrun the districts to the north-east of the Arnon.

It is not wonderful that the Moabites should have wished to rid themselves of such dangerous neighbours. But their king, Balak the son of Zippor,^[238] was uncertain how to act. The Moabite forces were no match for the fierce desert-tribes who had overthrown Sihon and burnt his towns. An embassy was accordingly sent to the seer, Balaam the son of Beor, who lived at Pethor on the Euphrates, in ‘the land of the children of Ammo.’ The site of Pethor has been recovered from the Assyrian monuments. It lay on the west bank of the Euphrates, a little to the north of its junction with the Sajur, and consequently only a few miles south of the Hittite capital Carchemish, now Jerablûs. The Beni-Ammo must have claimed the same ancestry as the Beni-Ammi or Ammonites, and the name is probably to be found in that of the country 229of Ammiya or Ammi, which is mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna tablets.^[239]

The fame of Balaam must have been widespread. But it is permissible to ask whether the only object of the embassy was that the seer should ‘curse’ the descendants of Jacob. A curse usually meant something more substantial than a form of words; and, as we have already seen, the first Edomite king given in the extract from the chronicles of Edom bears the same name and has the same father as Balaam. Did Balaam end by becoming elected king of Edom, and finally falling in battle against the Israelites, along with his allies the Midianitish chiefs?^[240] The materials for an answer are not yet before us.

The story of Balaam seems to form an episode by itself. The narrative and the prophecies constitute a single whole, which cannot be torn apart. It is the first example in the Old Testament of a written prophecy, and that the prophet should have been a Gentile diviner is of itself significant. Nothing can be more vivid and lifelike than the picture that is presented to us. We see the ambassadors of Balak persuading the half-reluctant seer to accompany them; we read of the strange miracles that accompanied the journey, and of the altars that were reared, and the sacrifices that were offered in the hope that his enchantments might prevail over those of Israel. He was taken from high-place to high-place, whence he could look down upon the distant hosts of the enemy, and upon each, in Babylonian fashion, seven altars were erected. But all was unavailing. The God of Jacob refused to be turned from His purpose by the bullocks and the rams that 230were offered Him, and the curses of the Aramæan seer were turned into blessings. When Balaam fell into the prophetic trance, seeing ‘the vision of the Almighty, but having his eyes open,’ the words which were put into his mouth were words which predicted the future glories of Israel. ‘A star should come out of Jacob, and a sceptre should arise out of Israel, which should smite the corners of Moab and destroy all the children of Sheth.’^[241] Edom, too, should at last become the possession of his younger brother, and the Amalekites of the desert should perish for ever.

The age of the episode has been often disputed. Much depends on the question whether the references in the last prophecy to the Kenites and others belong to the original document, or are later insertions. The Assyrians did not penetrate into the desert south of Judah, where the Kenites lived, until the time of Tiglath-pileser III. and Sargon in the eighth century B.C. The Amalekites were destroyed by Saul; Moab and Edom were conquered by David. But the concluding verse of the prophecy is at present difficult to explain. When was it that ships came from Cyprus and ‘afflicted’ Assyria and the Hebrews, so that they too perished for ever? In the age of the Exodus, the pirates of the Greek seas joined their forces with those of the Libyans in the invasion of Egypt, and the Philistines and their allies sailed from Krete and other islands of the Mediterranean, and established themselves on the coast of Palestine. Was it here that the Hebrews lived who were to perish for ever? It is, at any rate, worthy of note that it was the Philistines more especially among whom the Israelites were known as the ‘Hebrews.’ In the time of the Tel el-Amarna tablets we already hear of Assyrian intrigues in the far West. The Babylonian king asks the Pharaoh why the Assyrians, his ‘vassals,’ have been allowed to come to Canaan 231and enter into relations with the Egyptian court.^[242] At a later period, while Israel was ruled by judges, more than one Assyrian monarch actually made his way to the Mediterranean coast.^[243]

As the historical chapters of the book of Isaiah, including the prophecies contained in them, have been embodied in the book of Kings, so, too, the history of Balaam and Balak has been embodied in the book of Numbers. There is no reason for denying its substantial authenticity. Written prophecies were already known both in Egypt and in Babylonia,^[244] and it is almost inconceivable that a Jewish fabricator of prophecies would have made a Gentile diviner the mouthpiece of Yahveh. Moreover, there is nothing in the narrative or the prophecies themselves which is inconsistent with the date to which they profess to belong, unless indeed it is maintained that the 232conquest of Moab and Edom by the Israelites could not have been predicted at the time. But, apart from theological considerations which lie outside the province of the historian, it did not require much political foresight to conclude that a people which had begun by destroying the power of Sihon was likely to end by conquering the nations surrounding them. In fact, it would seem from the enumeration of the cities occupied by Reuben and Gad (Numb. xxxii. 34-38) that at one time little, if any, territory was left to the Moabite king.

In the embassy to Balaam ‘the elders of Midian’ are united with those of Moab. In fact, it is to the ‘elders of Midian,’ and not to those of Moab, that Balak first addresses himself (Numb. xxii. 4). It is the Midianites, moreover, and not the Moabites, who tempted Israel to sin ‘in the matter of Baal-Peor,’ and who were accordingly massacred in the war that followed, although ‘the people had begun to commit whoredom’ with ‘the daughters of Moab’ (Numb. xxv. 1). It is clear, therefore, that Moab was at the time occupied by the Midianites, just as the eastern portion of Israelitish territory was occupied by them in later days before it was freed by Gideon. Then they had swarmed up from the south along with the Amalekite Bedâwin and the Kadmônim of the south-east, and under their five shêkhs had overrun the land of Israel. Moab had now undergone the same fate, perhaps in consequence of its weakened condition after the unsuccessful war against Sihon. At any rate, it is probable that the Moabites had eventually to thank their Edomite neighbours for their deliverance from the invaders, since in the list of the Edomite kings we are told that the fourth of them, Hadad, the son of Bedad, ‘smote Midian in the field of Moab’ (Gen. xxxvi. 35). The age of Hadad and that of Gideon could not have been far apart, and Gideon’s success may therefore have been one of the results that followed upon the Midianite defeat in Moab. The losses sustained by the Midianites, however, in their struggle with the invading Israelites, must have weakened their hold upon the territories of the Moabite 233king. The storm-cloud which had terrified Balak passed over him to his Midianite foes.

The conquest of the Moabite cities brought with it intermarriages between the Israelites and their inhabitants as well as an adoption of the native forms of faith. Yahveh was deserted for Baal-Peor, the Moabite Baal of Mount Peor, but it was not long before He avenged Himself. Pestilence broke out in the camp, and the people saw in it the finger of God. By command of Moses ‘all the heads of the people’ were ‘hanged before the Lord in face of the sun’; while Phinehas, the son of the high-priest, jealous of the rights of Yahveh, stabbed to the death an Israelite and his Midianitish wife who had dared to show themselves before the sanctuary of the Lord. The time had passed when Moses was justified in marrying a wife of Midianitish race; Israel had now become a peculiar people, dedicated to Yahveh, who would allow ‘no other god’ to share His place. The Midianitish wife was a sign and evidence that Yahveh of Israel had been forsaken for a Midianitish Baal.

Thus far, it would seem, Israel and Midian had mixed together on friendly terms. Both were desert tribes, both were connected together by old traditions and intercourse, and claimed descent from a common ancestor. But it was now a question of rival deities and forms of faith. The very existence of the Law that had been promulgated from Sinai and Kadesh was at stake; and if Israel and its religion were not to be absorbed into the world of heathenism around them, it was time for the tribe of Levi—the keepers of the sanctuary—to awake. Moses and Phinehas saw the danger, and swift punishment descended on the backsliders within Israel itself. How formidable, however, the danger had been may be gathered from the statement that ‘all the heads of the people’ were put to death.

The turn of Midian came next. The Midianite tribes were overthrown, and their five shêkhs slain, one of whom, Rekem, gave his name to the city which is better known as Petra. 234‘Balaam also, the son of Beor, they slew with the sword.’ The Midianite villages and forts were burned to the ground, and the captives and spoil were brought to the Israelitish camp. Here they were divided among the people, Yahveh and His priests receiving their share. Out of a total of 16,000 captives, thirty-two slaves were given to the Lord. Henceforth it became the rule that the spoil taken in war should be divided into two equal parts, one-half for the fighting men, the rest for the people as a whole; and that while the fighting men had to deliver up only one share in five hundred to the Levites, the priestly tribute levied on the rest of the ‘congregation’ was as much as one in fifty. The regulation was reinforced by David after his defeat of the Amalekites when his companions clamoured for the whole of the spoil (1 Sam. xxx. 24, 25), at all events in so far as the equal division of it was concerned between the combatants and those who remained at home.

The Midianites were driven from Moab and its frontiers. Their overthrow meant the triumph of the priestly tribe in Israel. The war had been waged not against Midian only, but against the allies and kinsmen of Midian in Israel itself. The old relationship between Israel and Midian had been severed on the confines of the Promised Land; the supremacy of Yahveh in Israel had been once more asserted, and Israel had become more than ever His peculiar people. Before they entered Canaan, it was needful that the last links that bound them to the wild tribes of the desert should be cut in two.

The work of Moses was completed. He had led Israel from the house of bondage, had given it laws and made it a nation in the wilderness, and had fitted it for the conquest of Canaan. The land flowing with milk and honey, which the Semitic settlers in Egypt seem always to have regarded as a home of refuge to which they should ultimately return, was now within their grasp. Egyptian troops no longer garrisoned it, and its population was weakened by intestine troubles, by 235the long war between Egypt and the Hittites, and, above all, by the invasion of the Philistines and other pirates from the Greek seas. A large portion of the cultivated territory on the east side of the Jordan was already in Israelite hands; all that was needed was to cross the river and take possession of ‘the land of promise.’ Israel never forgot that it was from hence that its ancestors had come, and tradition recorded that the bodies of the patriarchs still lay in the rock-tomb of Machpelah. Even now the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh carried with them the mummy of Joseph, from whom they claimed their origin, ready to deposit it wherever they could gain a permanent foothold and build for themselves a central sanctuary.

The scene of the last legislation of Moses is laid in the plains of Moab, in the newly-won territory of Israel, and almost within sight of the mountains of Canaan. The additional laws and regulations which needed to be made were not many. Reuben and Gad were settled in the districts which subsequently bore their names, the Reubenites pasturing their flocks like nomad Bedâwin among the northern wadis of Moab, while Gad occupied the greater portion of the Amorite kingdom of Sihon. Part of the tribe of Manasseh also made its home in the districts of Gilead and Bashan, which it had won by the sword.

The institution of the six cities of refuge, moreover, as well as of the forty-eight cities of the Levites, is assigned to the same period. Modern criticism, however, has shown itself unwilling to accept its Mosaic authorship. But sacred cities, to which the homicide could flee for refuge, were an ancient institution in both Syria and Asia Minor. We find them also in the region of the Hittites. Such asyla, as the Greeks called them, lasted down to the classical period, and played a considerable part in the local history of Asia Minor. Wherever we find a Kadesh or a Hierapolis, there we may expect to find also an asylum in which the gods and their ministers would protect the unintentional shedder of blood from the 236vengeance of man. It was a means of checking the vendetta or blood feud, which was in full harmony with primitive law.^[245]

In establishing the cities of refuge, therefore, the Israelites did but carry on the traditions of the past. And two at least of the cities, which were subsequently set apart for the purpose, were sanctuaries, and consequently ‘asyla,’ long before the children of Jacob entered Palestine. These were Kadesh in Galilee and Hebron (Josh. xx. 7). The name of Kadesh declares its sacred character, and the sanctuary of Hebron had been famous for centuries.

The institution of the Levitical cities, again, was a result of the new position assigned to the tribe of Levi as the priests and representatives of the national God. The overthrow of the Midianites and their Israelitish allies had definitely settled the place of the tribe in Israel. Yahveh had prevailed over all other gods, and those who worshipped another god had been put to the sword. It had been the work of Levi, of those who had been chosen to be the ministers of Yahveh or had voluntarily devoted themselves to the service of the sanctuary. On the day that the spoil of Midian was divided it was recognised that Levi was not a tribe in the sense that the other tribes were so; it represented the priests and ministers of Yahveh, whoever and wheresoever they might be. And as, in the division of the spoil, due care was taken of Yahveh and His priests, so, too, in the division of the land, 237it was needful that similar care should be taken for them. The priests of Egypt had their lands, out of the revenues of which the temples were supported, and Egypt was not the only country of the Oriental world in which the same practice prevailed. Indeed, while Canaan was an Egyptian province temples had been built in it by the Pharaohs, and doubtless endowed in the same way as the temples of Egypt itself. The revenues of Syrian towns, moreover, had been given to Egyptian temples; Thothmes III., for example, immediately after the conquest of Syria, settled three of its towns (Anaugas, Innuam, and Harankal) upon Amon of Thebes.^[246] The custom lingered on into late times; the Persian king assigned the three cities of Magnesia, Myos, and Lampsacus for the maintenance of Themistoklês,^[247] and the taxes of the Fayyûm in Egypt formed the ‘pin-money’ of Queen Arsinoê Philadelphos.^[248]

Later ages misunderstood the regulations that related to the Levitical cities, and, misled by the belief that the tribe of Levi was constituted like the other tribes of Israel, imagined that they were intended to be places where the Levites should dwell and none else. This misconception has coloured the existing text of Numb. xxxv. 2-8, but we have only to turn to the list of the cities given in Josh. xxi. to see how unfounded it is. In fact, the Levites, as ministers of the national God, lived wherever there was a sanctuary of Yahveh to be served; in the days of the Judges we find a Levite even in the private house of Micah, on Mount Ephraim, from whence he is taken by the Danite raiders along with the image of his God (Judg. xviii.). There was no intention of shutting up the 238Levites in certain cities apart from the rest of the people; on the contrary, they were to be ‘scattered’ throughout Israel, the priests and representatives everywhere of the national God.

The book of Deuteronomy is the testament of Moses. Even the most sceptical criticism admits that such was already the belief in the age of Josiah, so far, at any rate, as regards the main portion of the book. At the same time, the stoutest advocates of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch also admit that it cannot all have come from his hand. The account of his death, which forms the close of the book, cannot have been written by the great legislator himself. Here, as elsewhere, it is for the historian to decide where the narrative may belong to the Mosaic age, and where it transports us to the atmosphere of a later period.

The original Deuteronomy of philological criticism begins with the twelfth chapter, without introduction or even explanation. The Deuteronomy of Hebrew tradition is the fitting conclusion of the Pentateuch. Moses, worn out with years and labour, addresses his people for the last time. They are about to cross the Jordan and enter Canaan; here on the threshold of the Promised Land his task is done, and he must leave the work of conquest to other and younger hands. He has been the legislator of Israel, Joshua must be its general.

We have, first, a recapitulation of the chief events of the wanderings in the wilderness from the day that the Covenant was made in Horeb, the mount of God.^[249] They are intermingled with antiquarian notes, which may, or may not, be of the Mosaic age, as well as with exhortations to obedience to the Law. Then follows a series of enactments which constitute the Deuteronomic Law itself. The enactments necessarily go over some of the ground already traversed by 239the previous legislation; in some points they even seem to contradict it. But the contradictions are more apparent than real, like the reason assigned for observing the Sabbath. Sometimes they are supplementary to the Levitical laws, sometimes are supplemented by the latter; at other times the same regulation is repeated from a different point of view.^[250]

A special characteristic of the Deuteronomic Law is its tenderness and care for animals as well as for the poor, ‘the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.’^[251] Even the Egyptian is not to be ‘abhorred’ (Deut. xxiii. 7), and all Hebrew slaves are to be released every seventh year. Along with this, however, we find the ferocity which distinguished the Semites in time of war. If the enemy lived afar off, all the males of a vanquished city were to be mercilessly slain, and the children and women spared, only to become the slaves and concubines of the conquerors. But even this amount of mercy was forbidden in the case of the Canaanitish cities; here the massacre was to be universal, lest the Israelites should take wives from the conquered population and fall away from the worship of Yahveh. A similar spirit of ferocity breathes through the Assyrian inscriptions, where the kings boast of the multitudes of the vanquished whom they had tortured and slain in honour of their god Assur. Alone of the ancient nations of the East the Egyptians seem to have understood what we mean by humanity in war.

Like the poor, the Levite is commended to the care and support of the people. He has no land or property of his own—much less a ‘Levitical city,’—the Lord alone ‘is his inheritance,’ and consequently those who remember the Levite remember at the same time the Lord whom he serves. The portion of the offering is defined which is to be the due of the 240Levites, and tithe is to be paid to them upon all the produce of the land. No distinction is drawn in the book of Deuteronomy between the Levites and the priests, ‘the sons of Aaron,’ and therefore the laws relating to the Levites apply to all the priests alike.

Another characteristic of the Deuteronomic Law is its insistence on a central sanctuary. It was to this central sanctuary that the God-fearing Israelite was commanded to ‘go up’ three times in the year at each of the great feasts, and there offer his firstlings and sacrifices to the Lord. This central sanctuary, however, did not exclude the existence of local altars or shrines. The Levite is described as living in the families of the other tribes throughout the land (xii. 19, xiv. 27), and as deciding cases at law, wherever they might occur, along with the judges (xvi. 18, xvii. 9, xix. 17, xxi. 6). Nor was it necessary when an animal was slaughtered, and its life-blood poured out before Yahveh, that this should be done in the one chief temple of the nation. It was only such offerings as had been specially vowed to the national God that were required to be brought there. They had been dedicated to Yahveh as God of the whole nation, and it was therefore to that sanctuary in which Yahveh was worshipped by the nation as a whole that they had to be taken. In his individual or local capacity the Israelite was free to offer his sacrifices where he would. For, it must be remembered, the very fact that the life-blood was shed made the death of the animal a sacrifice to the Lord, and the feast on its flesh which followed was a feast eaten in the presence of the Lord.

The insistence on the central sanctuary implied an equal insistence on the absolute supremacy of Yahveh in Israel. Idolaters and enticers to idolatry were to be cut off without pity; even the prophet who spoke in the name of another god, and whose words came to pass, was to be stoned to death. The fulfilment of a prediction guaranteed its truth only if the prophet was the messenger of Yahveh. Yahveh would suffer no other gods to be worshipped at His side, and 241the Deuteronomic Law accordingly forbids all such practices as were connected with the heathenism of the neighbouring peoples. The Israelites were forbidden to tattoo themselves like the Syrian worshippers of Hadad, to scarify their flesh like the Egyptians in mourning for the dead, far less like the Canaanites around them to sacrifice their firstborn by fire. Every effort was made to preserve them from contact with their neighbours; their king was forbidden to ‘multiply’ horses and wives; for the one would lead to intercourse with Egypt, the other would introduce into Israel the worship and the images of foreign deities. The sacred trees which from time immemorial had been planted near the altars of the gods, some of them by the patriarchs themselves, were to be destroyed like the conical pillar of the goddess Asherah and the upright column which symbolised the sun-god.

Few aspects of Hebrew life are left untouched by the enactments of Deuteronomy. Marriage and divorce, murder and other crimes, the institution of the cities of refuge, the observance of the great feasts, the election and duty of a king, sanitary laws including the distinction between clean and unclean meats, slavery, commerce, and usury, are all alike subjects of the Deuteronomic legislation. And the whole legislation is marked by a spirit of compassion for the poor and suffering, at all events if they belong to the house of Israel, or have been allowed to share some of its privileges. The creditor is enjoined to give back to the poor man before nightfall the raiment he had taken in pledge, and the master is bidden to pay at the close of the day the wages of ‘the hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates.’ Even the curious prohibition to mix like and unlike together, as in the case of a garment of wool and linen (xxii. 11), seems to be a reduction from the principle which forbade the yoking together of the ox and ass.

The legislation relating to the king is perhaps somewhat striking, especially when we bear in mind the protest raised 242by Samuel against the election of one (1 Sam. vii. 6-18). Samuel, however, was not altogether disinterested in the matter; and it was obvious that as soon as the conquest of Canaan was completed, there could be no national unity without a monarch who could represent the people and lead them in war. Before the time of Samuel, Abimelech had established a kingdom in Central Palestine, and tradition spoke of Moses also as ‘king in Jeshurun’ (Deut. xxxiii. 5). The Israelites, if ever they were to form a nation, were destined to follow the example of their neighbours; even in the wild fastnesses of Mount Seir the ‘dukes’ of Edom had been succeeded by kings. The idea of kingship was so familiar to the Mosaic age, that it is difficult to conceive of any legislation which did not contemplate it. Whether the legislation would have taken precisely the same form as that which we find in Deuteronomy is another question.

The commandments enjoined by Moses were ordered to be written on the stuccoed face of ‘great stones.’ Whether the whole of the Deuteronomic legislation is meant is more than doubtful. But that the chief enactments of the code should be thus placed before the eyes of the people was in accordance with the customs of the age. The acts and events of the reign of Augustus engraved on the marble slabs of Ancyra are a late example of the same usage; and the great inscription of Darius on the cliff of Behistun has similarly preserved to us the history of the foundation of the Persian empire. To cover stone or rock with stucco, which was then painted white and written upon, was a common practice in Egypt. It seems to imply, however, that the writing could be painted with the brush, and thus to exclude the use of cuneiform characters. At the same time, these characters could be cut in stucco as well as in stone, and it is possible that the stucco was intended to be a substitute for clay, where a large surface had to be covered. However this may be, the monument was ordered to be erected on Mount Ebal, by the side of an altar of unwrought stones.

243On Ebal, moreover, and the opposite height of Gerizim, it was prescribed that a strange ceremony should be performed. While half the tribes stood on the one mountain, and the other half on the other mountain, the Levites were to curse from Ebal all those who disobeyed the law, and to bless from Gerizim those who obeyed it.^[252] Unfortunately, as might have been expected, the curses much predominated over the blessings. We hear afterwards in the book of Joshua that the ceremony was duly performed, excepting only that Joshua read the words of cursing and benediction in place of ‘the priests the Levites.’ Critics have doubted the historical character of the occurrence, but it is inconsistent with no known fact, and it is difficult to find a reason for its gratuitous invention.

The latter part of the book of Deuteronomy brings the life of Moses to an end. It includes the final covenant made between himself on behalf of Yahveh and the people of Israel, to which are attached the various calamities that would await the breaking of it. It also tells us that the law contained in Deuteronomy was really written by the legislator, and delivered to the priests the sons of Levi with an injunction that it should be read every seventh year (xxxi. 9-11). Like the ‘witness’ to S. John’s Gospel, therefore, the compiler of the Pentateuch in its present form wishes to add his testimony to the belief that the Mosaic law was written by Moses himself.

Two songs, attributed to Moses, are also incorporated in the book. They seem to be a reflection of the curses and blessings pronounced respectively on Ebal and Gerizim. The one paints the sufferings which forgetfulness of Yahveh was to bring upon Israel; the other describes the future happiness and glory of the several tribes. Chiefest among them are Levi and the house of Joseph; ‘the precious things’ of the Promised Land are reserved for Ephraim and Manasseh, 244whose warriors shall drive the enemies of Yahveh to the ends of the earth. Levi shall be the lawgiver and instructor of Israel, while Benjamin shall be the ‘beloved of the Lord,’ who shall ‘dwell between his shoulders’ at Shiloh. Judah, on the other hand, stands in the background; little is said of him except a prayer that he should be delivered from his enemies. And Simeon is passed over altogether. It is plain that this second song or ‘blessing’ must be of early date. It cannot be later than the early days of the conquest of Canaan, when Ephraim and Manasseh were still the most powerful of the tribes, and when the tabernacle of Yahveh was erected at Shiloh. The tribes were still united among themselves; they still recognised a common God and a common worship, and had not as yet fallen upon the evil days depicted in the book of Judges. The tone of the song throughout is that of triumph and success; the Israelites must have still been in their first flush of victory, and the house of Joseph have still been their leader in war. But history knows of only two periods when such was the case; the one period that which followed the conquest of the Amorite kingdoms east of the Jordan, the other period that which saw Joshua the Ephraimite at the head of the armies of Israel. Hebrew antiquity decided that it was to the first period that the song belonged.^[253]

The death of Moses was placed on the summit of one of the mountains of Abarim—the mountains of the ‘Hebrews’—in the land of Moab over against the temple of Baal-Peor. On the one side he looked down upon the scene of his last victory over the opponents of his law, on the place where the Midianites and their Israelitish sympathisers had been slain; 245on the other side lay the Land of Promise, to the borders of which he had led his people. The peak of Pisgah on which he stood had been dedicated in old days to the worship of Nebo, the Babylonian god of prophecy and literature, the interpreter of the will of Merodach, the supreme divinity of Babylon. It was no accident that the prophet and legislator of Israel, the interpreter of the will of Yahveh, should die on the same mountain-peak.

The high-places which the kindred Semitic nations dedicated to the gods become in the history of Israel the scenes of the death of its great men. Aaron dies on the summit of Mount Hor, and even to-day the tomb of the prophet Samuel is pointed out on the lofty top of Mizpah. But no tomb marked the spot where Moses died; alone among the heroes of Hebrew history he was buried in a foreign land, and the place where he was buried was unknown. The legislator of Israel, he who had made Israel a nation, and with whom Israelitish history began, vanished utterly out of sight. The fact is a strange one, whatever be the explanation we attempt to give of it. Can it be that Moab had been more completely conquered by Israel than the narrative in the Pentateuch would lead us to suppose, but that with the death of Moses the dominion of Israel passed away?^[254] In that case Moab would have had little interest in preserving a memory of the last resting-place of its conqueror, and the time would soon have come when its site was forgotten.

CHAPTER IV THE CONQUEST OF CANAAN

Joshua not the Conqueror of Canaan—The Conquest gradual—The Passage of the Jordan—Jericho, Ai and the Gibeonites—Battle of Makkedah—Lachish and Hazor—The Kenizzites at Hebron and Kirjath-Sepher—Shechem—Death of Joshua.

Hebrew tradition ascribed the conquest of Canaan to Joshua the son of Nun. But when we come to examine the book of Joshua or the book of Judges, we find that the extent of his work has been greatly magnified in the imagination of later ages. The Ephraimitish chieftain successfully established Israel on the western side of the Jordan, gained permanent possession of Mount Ephraim, and defeated the Canaanitish princes to the south and north. But the conquest of Canaan was a longer work, which was not completed till the days of David and Solomon.

The first chapter of Judges tells us in outline what the map of Palestine was like after the settlement of the Israelitish tribes. In the south the mountainous country was held by the Edomite tribe of Caleb as well as by the more strictly Israelitish tribe of Judah. But it was only ‘the mountain’ that was thus held. Though ‘the Lord was with Judah,’ he ‘could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.’ Further south, however, Judah and Simeon in combination succeeded in making themselves masters of the Negeb or desert plain as far as Zephath, where a mixed population, partly Israelitish, partly Edomite, and partly Kenite, took the place of the older inhabitants.

Jerusalem remained in the hands of the Jebusites until it was captured by David. It is true, we read (Judg. i. 8) that ‘the children of Judah had fought against Jerusalem, and had taken it and smitten it with the edge of the sword.’ But if 247so, it must soon have been again fortified by its former possessors, since we are expressly told (Judg. i. 21) that the children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem; but the Jebusites ‘dwell with the children of Judah in Jerusalem unto this day.’^[255] Modern critics have been in the habit of dismissing the alleged capture of the city as unhistorical, but it is quite possible that Jerusalem really suffered momentarily from a sudden raid. The capture of the city is not ascribed to Joshua—indeed, though he defeated its king and his allies, he seems to have made no effort to reduce the city itself—and it is said to have been effected by Judah after Joshua’s death. This may have been at any time during the period of the Judges. The Tel el-Amarna tablets show us how easily the cities of Canaan could be taken and retaken in the course of local quarrels, and the fact that Jerusalem was for a while in Jewish hands seems to form an integral part of the story of the conquest of Bezek.

Even the great sanctuary of Beth-el, destined to be the possession of Benjamin as well as of Ephraim,^[256] had not fallen into the hands of ‘the house of Joseph’ when Joshua died, though the ‘ruined heap’ of Ai which lay near it was one of the first of the Israelitish conquests. All the chief towns in the territory of Manasseh—Megiddo and Taanach, Dor and Beth-Shean—remained Canaanite, the utmost that Israel could do in the days of its strength being to exact tribute from them. Gezer defied the power of Ephraim down to the time when it was given to Solomon by the Egyptian Pharaoh; while the great cities of Zebulon and Naphtali, like those of Manasseh, never became Israelitish, but paid tribute to the 248Hebrews whenever the latter were ‘strong.’ Asher failed to secure the territory that had been assigned to him, where Moses in his song had promised that his foot should be dipped in oil and his sandals should be of iron and bronze. The Phœnicians continued to hold the coast long after the Israelitish tribes had been carried into Assyrian captivity, and even in the mountains that overlooked the shore the Asherites were forced to live and be lost among the older Canaanites (Judg. i. 32). ‘The children of Dan’ were in even worse case; the Amorites drove them into the mountains and ‘would not suffer them to come down to the valley.’ When at last their enemies were made tributary by ‘the house of Joseph,’ it was too late; the tribe of Dan was merged into that of Judah, or had found a refuge in the city of Laish in the extreme north.

Joshua, therefore, was not the conqueror of Canaan in any exact sense of the term. The districts east of the Jordan had been occupied by the Israelites before the death of Moses, and north of Moab the occupation had been fairly complete. In Canaan itself the amount of territory won by Joshua was practically confined to the passage over the Jordan and the mountainous region of the centre. Few of the Canaanitish cities were captured by him; and with the exception of Jericho and Lachish, and perhaps Hazor, none of them was of primary importance. But he succeeded in doing what had been attempted in vain in earlier days; he led his people into Palestine, and planted them there so firmly that the future conquest of the whole country became merely a matter of time.

It was at Jericho, ‘the city of palms,’ that the passage into Canaan was forced. The army of Israel crossed the Jordan dry-shod, for ‘the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that is beside Zaretan; and those which came down towards the sea of the plain, even the Salt Sea, failed, and were cut off.’ A similar phenomenon is recorded as having occurred in the 249Middle Ages. M. Clermont-Ganneau has pointed out a passage in the Arabic historian Nowairi, in which an account is given of the construction in A.D. 1266 of a bridge across the Jordan by the Sultan Beybars I. of Egypt, when in consequence of a landslip the bed of the river was for a time left dry. The bridge was built on five arches between the stream of the Qurawa and Tel Damieh, perhaps the Adam of the Old Testament. But no sooner was it completed than ‘part of the piers gave way. The Sultan was greatly vexed, and blamed the builders, and sent them back to repair the damage. They found the task very difficult, owing to the rise of the waters and the strength of the current. But in the night preceding the dawn of the 17th of the month Rabi the First of the year of the Hijra 666 (i.e. the 8th of December, A.D. 1267) the water of the river ceased to flow so that none remained in its bed. The people hurried and kindled numerous fires and cressets, and seized the opportunity offered by the occurrence. They remedied the defects in the piers, and strengthened them, and effected repairs which would otherwise have been impossible. They then despatched mounted men to ascertain the nature of the event that had occurred. The riders urged their horses, and found that a lofty mound (Kabâr) which overlooked the river on the west had fallen into it and dammed it up. A Kabâr resembles a hill, but is not actually a hill, for water will quickly disintegrate it into mud. The water was held up, and had spread itself over the valley above the dam. The messengers returned with this explanation, and the water was arrested from midnight until the 4th hour of the day. Then the water prevailed upon the dam and broke it up. The water flowed down in a body equal in depth to the length of a lance, but made no impression upon the building owing to the strength given to it.’^[257]

250The megalithic ‘circle’ of Gilgal commemorated the passage of the Jordan. The camp was fixed there, and a popular etymology explained the name by the circumcision that had ‘rolled away the reproach of Egypt.’^[258] Jericho, the city of the ‘Moon-god’ Yârêakh, was next invested and captured in spite of its strong walls. All its inhabitants were put to the sword, Rahab only being spared to become the founder of a family in Israel because she had sheltered the Israelitish spies. The city was razed to the ground, and was not again rebuilt till the reign of Ahab.

We can still trace the site of Jericho in the hollow of the deep valley through which the Jordan flows into the Dead Sea. Its ruins lie round about the ’Ain es-Sultân, a spring of warm water which gushes into an ancient basin, overgrown with reeds and brushwood, among which the birds flutter and watch the fish in the water below. Above towers the huge mass of Mount Qarantel, while the black soil which forms the floor of the hollow is covered with small artificial mounds of earth, and is thick with the decayed relics of a tropical vegetation. In the coldest weather it is still warm at Jericho; in summer the damp heat is stifling, and the mosquitoes are innumerable. Now it is given over to idle Bedâwin, but in the old days when the country was filled with an industrious population, it was as ‘the garden of the Lord.’ No place in Palestine was more fertile, and it commanded the ford that led across the Jordan from the east.

The destruction of Jericho opened to Joshua the way into Canaan. Laden with its spoil, the Israelites matched westward, up into the mountains and through the pass of 251Michmash towards Beth-el. Beth-el itself was too strong to be attacked. But a neighbouring town, whose later name of Ai, ‘the ruined heap,’ was a lasting record of its fate, was not so fortunate. The Israelites took it by means of an ambuscade, and the same merciless treatment was dealt out to it that had been dealt to Jericho. The inhabitants were all massacred, ‘only the cattle and the spoil Israel took for a prey unto themselves.’

The conquest of Ai, however, had not been easy. The Canaanites had made a brave defence, and the invaders had at first suffered a check. The cause was discovered in the Israelitish camp. A Jew, Achan or Achar, had hidden under his tent some of the booty of Jericho which ought to have been either destroyed or dedicated to Yahveh. ‘A goodly Babylonish garment,’ two hundred shekels of silver, and a tongue-like wedge of gold fifty shekels in weight, were the objects which he had coveted and concealed. But the order had been issued that all objects of metal should be given to the tabernacle, and that all things else should be burned with fire. Achan accordingly was condemned to be stoned to death, and along with him the rest of his family as well as his oxen, his asses, and his sheep. Then the bodies were burnt, and a heap of stones piled over them in memory of the event.

The mention of the ‘goodly Babylonish garment’ takes us back to the time when Assyria had not as yet supplanted Babylonia in the west. For centuries Babylonia had been the home of weavers and embroiderers whose fabrics were famous all over the east. The cuneiform tablets contain long lists of articles of clothing, each of which had its own name; and, as we learn from the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, the merchants of Babylonia found a ready market for their goods in the cities of Canaan. The age of the Exodus marks the period when the old peaceful intercourse with Babylonia was coming to an end; alien peoples had barred the road across the Euphrates, and Babylon itself was about to fall into the hands of an Assyrian conqueror. Henceforth it was Assyria, 252and not Babylonia, whose name was known or feared in Palestine, and the writer of a later day would have spoken of the wares of Assyria rather than those of the Babylonians.^[259]

The destruction of Ai gave Joshua a foothold in the mountain of Ephraim. Then came the league with the Gibeonites, secured, so we are told, by craft. Modern criticism, with needless scepticism, has seen in the narrative merely a popular legend to account for the fact that the four cities which formed the western half of the future territory of Benjamin were laid under tribute, and not destroyed. But the extermination of the Canaanites was relative, not absolute; their utter destruction, like that of the Britons by the Saxon invaders, was the dream of a later day. As we have seen, the Hebrew occupation of Canaan was a slow and gradual process, and in the more important cities the older population remained to the end. Even the temple of Solomon was built on the threshing-floor of a Jebusite, and the heads of the prisoners which surmount the names of the places captured by Shishak in the south of Palestine are Amorite rather than Jewish. The Amorite population was still predominant there; and the fellahin of to-day, as has been pointed out by M. Clermont-Ganneau, are the lineal descendants of the old races.^[260]

Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, and Kirjath-jearim are not the only cities of which we hear as having been made tributary. This was also the case with Megiddo and Taanach, Beth-shean, Dor, and Ibleam (Judg. i. 27), as well as with the chief cities in the territories of Zebulon and Naphtali (Judg. i. 30, 33); while, on the other hand, the tribe of Issachar became tributary to its Canaanitish neighbours (Gen. xlix. 15).^[261] It is 253more profitable to exact tribute from a wealthy and industrious population than to exterminate it, as Mohammed found; and the near neighbourhood of the central sanctuaries of Israel, first at Shiloh, then at Jerusalem and Beth-el, afforded a special reason why the Gibeonites should be made ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of God.’

The greater part of the future territory of Benjamin was now in Israelitish hands. The destruction of Jericho had secured the ford across the Jordan and communication with the Israelitish settlers on the east side of the river. But it must be remembered that the tribe of Benjamin as distinct from that of Ephraim did not as yet exist. Its territory formed the southern part of Mount Ephraim, and for military and political purposes the two tribes constituted a single whole. This was still the case as late as the age of Deborah and Barak, when the power of Ephraim, ‘behind’ Benjamin, is said to extend as far as the desert of the Amalekites to the south of Judah (Judg. v. 14). The name of Benjamin, in fact, means ‘the southerner’; the tribe lay southward of Ephraim; and the second name by which it was known—that of Ben-Oni, ‘the Onite’—indicated that it was settled round the great sanctuary of Beth-On. And such indeed was the case when the tribe had vindicated its individual existence and been definitely separated from Ephraim. Beth-On or Beth-el was then included within its boundaries (Josh. xviii. 22). Originally, however, Beth-el belonged to Ephraim, and had been an Ephraimitish conquest (Judg. i. 22-26).

The conquest of Beth-el did not take place until after Joshua’s death, and as long as it remained independent it must have been a constant menace to the Israelitish settlers in Mount Ephraim. With its capture all danger passed away, and Mount Ephraim—the heart of Palestine—became at last the secure possession of the ‘house of Joseph.’ From hence, as from an impregnable fortress, they were able to make descents upon the fertile lands to the west and attack the cities which stood there. The powerful city of Gezer was eventually 254compelled to pay them tribute (Josh. xvi. 10), and the territory which had been assigned to Dan became tributary to ‘the house of Joseph’ (Judg. i. 35).

But all this was after Joshua had passed away. Besides crossing the Jordan and securing a footing in Mount Ephraim, Joshua had made a successful raid into those mountains in the ‘Negeb’ of Judah which had been so fatal to the first Israelitish invaders of Canaan. The destruction of Ai had excited the fears of Adoni-zedek of Jerusalem, and in the league that had been made between Gibeon and the invaders he saw danger to his own state. Gibeon lay only a few miles to the north of Jerusalem, and the Tel el-Amarna tablets have shown us that the neighbourhood of two Canaanitish cities was a quite sufficient cause of war between them. When the tablets were written, Ebed-Tob was king of Jerusalem, and his letters to the Pharaoh are filled with imploring appeals for help against his enemies. These were partly the neighbouring ‘governors,’ partly the Khabiri or ‘Confederates,’ who seem to have been of foreign origin, and who had already captured some of his cities. The situation, therefore, was very much like what it was in the later days of Adoni-zedek, the place of the Egyptian ‘governors’ being taken by Gibeon, while the Khabiri were represented by the Israelites. But Adoni-zedek had no suzerain lord in Egypt to whom he could apply for aid. He was therefore forced to turn to the Canaanitish princes around him and form a league with them against the invading hordes from the desert. Hoham of Hebron, Piram of Jarmuth, Yaphia of Lachish, and Debir of Eglon rallied to his summons, and the combined forces marched against Gibeon and besieged the town.^[262] The 255Gibeonites at once sent messengers to Joshua, who accordingly left the camp at Gilgal and fell suddenly on the besieging army. The Canaanites were utterly routed, and fled towards Beth-horon and Makkedah, a hailstorm adding to their discomfiture. The five kings were discovered hiding in a cave at Makkedah, and dragged before Joshua, who pitilessly put them all to death. The bodies were buried in the cave and great stones laid upon its mouth, which, the compiler of the book of Joshua states, remained there unto his day (Josh. x. 27).

The defeat of the Canaanite army was followed by the capture of Makkedah and Libnah, which opened the road to Lachish. The site of Lachish was rediscovered by Professor Flinders Petrie in 1890 at Tell el-Hesy, sixteen miles eastward of Gaza. The great mound that covers its ruins has been excavated partly by him, partly by Dr. Bliss, and the huge wall that surrounded it in the days of the Amorites, and before which the Israelites encamped, has been explored and measured.^[263]

The city stood on a natural eminence some forty feet in height. Close to it rises the only good spring of water in the district, which when swollen by the winter rains becomes the torrent of the Hesy. The stream ran past the eastern side of the city, and has eaten away part of the remains of the successive cities which rose upon the site, one above the ruins of the other. Fragments of the pottery used by the Amorite defenders of the city in the days of Joshua can now be seen in the rooms of the Palestine Exploration Fund.

256The walls of Lachish, like those of the cities of Egypt, were built of crude brick, and were nearly thirty feet in thickness. It had, in fact, long been one of the principal fortresses of Southern Palestine. Among the Tel el-Amarna tablets are letters from two of its governors Zimrida and Yabniel, the first of whom was murdered, and who is mentioned on another tablet found by Dr. Bliss among the ruins of Lachish itself. Its capture, therefore, by the Israelites was a serious blow to the Canaanites in the southern part of the country. But, though Horam king of Gezer came to its assistance, all was no avail; the strong fortress fell at last before the invaders, and ‘all the souls’ that were in it were massacred.^[264] For at least a century its site lay desolate and uninhabited; and the explorers found in the soil that accumulated above the ruins of the Amorite city nothing but the ashes of the camp-fires of Bedâwin nomads.

Eglon, now probably Tell Ejlân, close to Tell el-Hesy, naturally shared the fate of the neighbouring city. According to the compiler of the book of Joshua, the fall of Hebron and Debir followed immediately after that of Eglon. But this cannot be correct. Debir, as we afterwards learn, was taken at a later date by Othniel (Josh. xv. 16, 17; Judg. i. 12, 13), not by Joshua, and the error seems to have been due to the fact that Debir was the name of the king of Eglon. It was the king and not the town of that name who fell before the arms of Joshua.

It is, moreover, difficult to reconcile the statement that Hebron was captured by Joshua after the defeat of the five kings with the narrative of its capture by Caleb, which is given in detail elsewhere (Josh. xv. 13, 14; Judg. i. 9, 10). Here, as in other parts of the book of Joshua, we find a tendency to ascribe the gradual occupation of Canaan to a single point of time, and to assign all the successive conquests made in it by the Israelites 257to the general who first led them across the Jordan. The individual hero has absorbed all the victories gained by his people, and the past has been foreshortened in the retrospect of the later historian. As in the books of Kings the murder of Sennacherib is made to follow immediately after his flight from Judah twenty years before, so in the book of Joshua, the conquest of Canaan is all placed in one age, the lifetime of the hero himself. As Moses was the lawgiver of Israel and its deliverer from the house of bondage, posterity saw in his successor the conqueror of Canaan.

It is noticeable, however, that neither Jerusalem nor Gezer is said to have been taken after the battle of Makkedah. Both cities were doubtless too strong to be attacked; and though Gezer was subsequently forced to become the vassal of Ephraim, Jerusalem was destined to fall before a Jewish and not an Ephraimitish leader.

The battle of Makkedah became the subject of a national song. It was embodied, like David’s dirge over Saul and Jonathan, in the book of Jashar, a fragment of which is quoted by the compiler of the book of Joshua. ‘Sun, be thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, moon, in the valley of Ajalon!’ cried Joshua, ‘in the sight of Israel,’ ‘when the Lord delivered up the Amorites’ before them: ‘and the sun was still, and the moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.’ So ran the words of the poem, and the prose historian seems to have taken them literally.

The alliance with Gibeon and the destruction of Lachish opened the way to the south. Westward, the sea-coast was in the hands of the Philistines, whom the Israelites would have found more formidable enemies than the disunited and effeminate Canaanites. The five Philistine cities, accordingly, which had been but recently wrested from Egyptian hands, were left untouched, and the Israelitish raiders made their way into the Negeb towards the south-east, where they succeeded in penetrating as far as Arad and Zephath. They had thus reached the very spot where the first attempt to invade Canaan 258had failed, and from which the disappointed tribes had been driven back again into the wilderness. Zephath was not far distant from Kadesh-barnea, so that it is with a pardonable exaggeration that the Jewish historian describes Joshua as smiting his enemies ‘from Kadesh-barnea even unto Gaza’ (Josh. x. 41).

It is true that his victories in this part of Canaan have been questioned. No detailed account is given of them, and it is only in the list of the ‘kings’ who were overthrown by ‘Joshua and the children of Israel’ on the western side of the Jordan that the names of Arad and Zephath, or Hormah, appear (Josh. xii. 14). Moreover, we are told in the book of Judges (i. 17) that Zephath was destroyed by Judah and Simeon after the death of the Ephraimitish leader (v. 1), a memorial of the destruction being preserved in the change of name to Hormah. But it must be noted that it is only the ‘kings’ of Arad and Zephath who are said to have been ‘smitten’ by Joshua, not the cities over which they ruled. The expedition to the Negeb was merely a raid, such as the possession of Lachish and the mountainous country to the north-west of it enabled the Israelitish chieftain to make with impunity. Indeed, such raids into the fertile land to the south would have been natural, if not inevitable.

No detailed account was preserved of them, since they were connected with no striking and important event, like the capture and destruction of a Canaanitish city. The four military deeds with which history associated the name of Joshua centered each of them round the overthrow of a Canaanitish stronghold and gave the Israelites the command of the surrounding country. They were campaigns which led to the permanent possession of territory, not mere raids or barren victories. The capture of Jericho secured the passage across the Jordan, that of Ai planted Ephraim and Benjamin in the mountains of central Palestine, the destruction of Lachish opened up communication with that desert of the south in which the Israelites had received the legislation of Kadesh-barnea, while the overthrow of the king of Hazor gave 259them a foothold in the north. The alliance with the Gibeonites was of equal importance, for it secured friends and allies in the very heart of the enemy’s country, and its firstfruits were the victory at Makkedah and the destruction of Lachish. Jericho, Ai, Lachish, Hazor, and Gibeon,—these were the names which guaranteed to Joshua his claim to have been the conqueror of Canaan.

The victory at Hazor seems to have been his last. Hazor stood near Kadesh of Galilee, now represented by the ruins of Qedes, to the north of Safed, and on the western side of the marshes of Hûleh, the Lake Merom of the Old Testament.^[265] In the age of the Tel el-Amarna letters it was still governed by its native kings, and in one of them an Egyptian officer complains that the king had joined with Sidon in intriguing with the Bedâwin.^[266] When the Israelites entered Palestine it was the leading city of the northern part of the country. While Megiddo was the capital of the centre of the country, Hazor was the capital of the north. Its king, Jabin, now put himself at the head of a great confederacy which extended from Sidon to Dor on the sea-coast, and from the slopes of Hermon to the Sea of Galilee in the inland region. Among the confederates history remembered the names of Jobab, the king of Madon, and the kings of Shimron and Achshaph. Achshaph is the Phœnician Ekdippa, now Zîb, on the sea-coast, which is called Aksap by Thothmes III. But Madon is written Marôn in the Septuagint, though the reading of the Hebrew text seems to be confirmed by the modern name of Khurbet Madîn, ‘the ruins of Madîn.’ Shimron, moreover, is Symoôn in the Septuagint, and this form of the name finds support in the Simônias of Josephus, Simonia in the Talmud, now Semûnieh, sixteen miles from Khurbet Madîn. Mr. Tomkins would identify it with the Shmânau of Thothmes III.^[267]

260But, again, the reading of the Hebrew text is probably the more correct. In what may be termed the official list of Joshua’s victories (Josh. xii. 20), the name appears as Shimronmeron, and this reminds us of Samsi-muruna (‘the Sun-god is lord’), which is given by the Assyrian inscriptions as the name of a town in this very neighbourhood. It was from ‘Menahem, king of Samsi-muruna,’ that Sennacherib received tribute during his campaign against Hezekiah, and it is possible that Shimron may be a contracted form of Shem[esh-me]ron or Sam[si-mu]runa.

Once more criticism has raised doubts as to the truth of the narrative. We hear of another Jabin of Hazor, at a later date, in the time of Deborah and Barak, and we hear also of another great victory gained by Israel over Jabin’s troops. It is urged that if Hazor had been burnt to the ground by Joshua, and all its inhabitants put to the sword, it could hardly have risen so soon again from its ashes and have assumed a leading position in the north. Had Joshua’s conquest been as complete as it is represented to have been, the country would have been Israelitish, and not Canaanite.

But it does not follow that because there was one king of Hazor called Jabin, there should not have been another of the same name. Such repetitions of name have been common in other countries of the world, and it is difficult to see why the rulers of Hazor should not be allowed a similar privilege. That a city should rise from its ruins and recover its former power is again no unique event. Much depends upon its position and the character of its inhabitants. We gather from the Egyptian annals that the towns of Canaan were accustomed to capture and temporary destruction. But they soon recovered themselves, the old population flocked back, and their ruined walls were again repaired.

It is true that the conquest of the country by Joshua could not have been as thorough as the narrative describes. But that we already knew from the first chapter of Judges (vv. 30-33). Oriental expressions and modes of thought are not to be 261measured by the precise terminology of the modern West, and an Eastern writer speaks absolutely where we should speak relatively. When it is said that ‘all the earth sought to Solomon, to hear his wisdom’ (1 Kings x. 24), the universality of the statement must be very considerably limited, and so too when it is said that ‘Joshua took all that land’ (Josh. xi. 16), the expression admits of a similarly liberal discount. In fact, the narrative itself contains its own corrective. The words, ‘All the cities of those kings ... did Joshua take, and smote them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed them’ (ver. 12), are followed immediately by the conditioning clause, ‘Only the cities which were built upon tels, Israel burned none of them: Hazor alone did Joshua burn.’

Between the story of Joshua’s campaign and that of the rising under Barak there is no resemblance whatever. In the time of the Hebrew judge the army of Jabin was commanded by Sisera, not by Jabin himself. The decisive battle took place on the banks of the Kishon, not on the shores of Lake Hûleh, miles away to the north, and the city of Hazor was neither captured nor destroyed. Kadesh of Galilee and other districts were already in the hands of the Israelites, and must therefore have been occupied by them at some earlier period. The account in the book of Joshua, brief as it is, tells us when the occupation took place.

Jabin had summoned his allies and vassals to oppose the northward march of the Israelites. The Canaanites stood upon the defensive, and the Israelites therefore must have been the attacking party. That they did not cross the Jordan from the plains of Bashan we may gather from the list of the kings vanquished by Joshua.^[268] Among them we find the kings of Taanach and Megiddo, Kadesh of Naphtali and Jokneam, Dor, Gilgal, and Tirzah.^[269] Tirzah would have been the first 262stage northward of Shechem; the fortress of Megiddo commanded the plain of Jezreel. A common danger would thus have forced the kings of the centre and the north of Canaan to fight together, and the confederacy would have covered much the same extent of territory as that which confronted Barak on the banks of the Kishon. But instead of advancing upon the enemy from the north, as was the case with Barak, Joshua would have moved up from the south.

It was on the shore of Lake Merom that the Israelites fell suddenly upon the Canaanitish encampment. The Canaanites were taken by surprise and fled in all directions. Some made their way across the narrow gorge of the Jordan towards Mizpeh of Gilead;^[270] the larger body was pursued as far as Sidon, where they at last found a shelter behind the strong walls of the city. The chariots of their cavalry, useless to mountaineers, were burned, and their horses were maimed. The flight of the army had left Hazor undefended; the Israelites accordingly turned back from the pursuit, and took the city by assault. Its houses were burned, its spoil carried away, and ‘every man’ was smitten with the edge of the sword, ‘neither left they any to breathe.’ The merciless ferocity of Joshua finds a close parallel in that of the Assyrian kings.

The life of Joshua was drawing to an end. He was an old man; it was said he was 110 years of age at his death, the length of time the Egyptian wished his friends to live. He had brought his people into the Promised Land, had shown them how to take cities and defeat their adversaries, and had planted Israel firmly in the mountainous part of Canaan. Before his death the tribes were provisionally established in 263the territories subsequently called after their names. We are not bound to believe that the division of the land was made with the mathematical precision which had become possible in the days of the compiler of the book of Joshua, but to deny that it was made at all is merely an abuse of criticism. In the period of the Judges we find most of the tribes actually settled in the very districts which we are told were given to them, and the fact that in one or two instances—Dan and Simeon, for example—the tribe never gained possession of the larger part of the territory said to have been assigned to it, shows that the story of the division could not have been based on the later geographical position of the tribes. The doctrine of development may have no limitations in the domain of organic nature, but history has to take account of individual action and the arbitrary enactments of great men. To suppose that the tribal division of Palestine was the result of a process of development has little in support of it, and fails to explain the geographical position traditionally assigned to a tribe like Dan.

There was one tribe, however, to whose history the theory of development is to some extent applicable. This was the tribe of Judah. The tribe was only partly of Israelitish descent. Its most important family, that of Caleb and Othniel, belonged to the Edomite tribe of Kenaz; while another Edomite tribe, that of Jerahmeel, occupied the southern part of the Jewish territory (1 Chron. ii. 25-33, 42). Even ‘the families of the scribes which dwelt at Jabez’ were Kenites from Midian (1 Chron. ii. 55).^[271] Down to the time of the kings the Israelitish members of the tribe of Judah mixed freely with their neighbours; David himself was descended from Ruth the Moabitess, and Bath-sheba, the mother of his successor, had been the wife of a Hittite. As has been already noticed, the prisoners whose figures surmount the names of Shishak’s 264conquests in Judah have the features of the Amorite and not of the Jew. In the Song of Deborah the tribe of Judah, like those of Dan and Simeon, is unknown. It is Ephraim and Benjamin who form the Israelitish vanguard against the Amalekites of the southern desert. And the deliverers of southern Israel from its two first oppressors were Othniel the Kenizzite and Ehud the Benjamite.

The tribe of Judah as a compact and definite whole first makes its appearance at a later period, and, unlike the other tribes of Israel, represents a geographical rather than an ethnographical unity.^[272] Jews were commingled in it with Edomites, as well as with other tribes—Dan, Simeon, and Levi. Its cities were only partly Israelitish; even the future capital, Jerusalem, retained its Jebusite population, and the temple was built on land that had been bought from a Gentile owner.

Nevertheless, the fact that both tribe and territory bore to the last the name of Judah indicates that in this mixture of nationalities the Hebrew element remained the stronger and more predominant. It is true that Hebron, the first centre and capital of Judah, had been conquered, not by a Jew, but by the Kenizzite Caleb, and that his brother Othniel was the first ‘Judge’; but it is also true that the settlement of the country was in the main due to an amalgamation of Hebrew and Edomite elements. Gedor, Socho, Zanoah, Keilah, and Eshtemoa traced their second foundation to a Kenizzite father and a Jewish mother (1 Chron. iii. 18, 19), and Hebron itself soon ceased to be distinctively Kenizzite and became Jewish.

Caleb the Kenizzite had been one of the spies sent out from Kadesh-barnea when the Israelites made their first, and unsuccessful, attempt to invade Canaan. He consequently belonged to the generation which had escaped from the bondage of Egypt, of which he and Joshua were said to have been the only survivors at the time of the passage of the 265Jordan. Hebron had been the chief point and goal of exploration on the part of the spies, and it was from its neighbourhood that the grapes were brought which testified to the fertility of the land. It was natural, therefore, that Hebron should again be the object of Caleb’s aim, and that while the Ephraimitish general was establishing himself in the north Caleb should lead his followers to its assault. The destruction of Lachish had opened the way; and the steep path which led up the limestone hills from Lachish to Hebron was left undefended.

Modern writers have seen in the name of Caleb a mere tribal designation denoting the ‘Calebites’ or ‘Dog-men.’ But the cuneiform inscriptions show us that Caleb or ‘Dog’ was the name of an individual, and they also explain how it came to be so. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets, as well as in later Assyrian letters, the word Kalbu or ‘Dog’ is used in the sense of ‘officer’ or ‘messenger’; the king’s officer was his ‘faithful dog,’ and the term was an honourable one.^[273] It conveyed none of those ideas of contempt or abuse with which it was afterwards associated in the Semitic mind, and which may have had their origin in Arabia. It is possible that Caleb had been an ‘officer’ of the Pharaoh before he became a Hebrew spy.

The capture of Hebron is said to have taken place five years after the passage of the Jordan (Josh. xiv. 10). At any rate, it was before the death of Joshua (notwithstanding Judg. i. 1, 10). It was after that event, however, that the further conquests of the Kenizzites were made.

Somewhere near Hebron, but higher in ‘the mountains,’ was the Canaanitish city of Debir. Debir signified the ‘Sanctuary’; and it was here, as in Babylonia and Assyria, that a great library of books was stored in one of the chambers of the temple. Like the Babylonian cities, moreover, Debir had more than one name. It was also called Kirjath-Sannah, ‘the 266city of Instruction,’ from the schools which gathered round its library,^[274] and in the Old Testament it is further known as Kirjath-Sepher or ‘Booktown.’ In The Travels of the Mohar, however, a satirical account of a tourist’s adventures in Palestine, which was written by an Egyptian in the reign of Ramses II., it is termed Beth-Sopher, ‘the house of the scribe,’ and is coupled with Kirjath-Anab. It is plain, therefore, that the Massoretic punctuation Sepher ‘book’ is erroneous, and must be corrected to Sopher or ‘scribe.’ Whether Kirjath, ‘city,’ should also be corrected into Beth, ‘house’ or ‘temple,’ is more doubtful. Beth would be the more appropriate term in the case of a town which possessed a sanctuary, and it may be that the word Kirjath has been derived from the neighbouring town of [Kirjath-] Anab, which is called simply Anab in Josh. xv. 50. But it is also possible that the Egyptian writer has made a mistake, and has interchanged the words ‘city’ and ‘house,’ the true names of the two cities having been Kirjath-Sopher and Beth-Anab.^[275]

However this may be, Caleb promised his daughter Achsah as a reward to the conqueror of Debir. The prize was won by his ‘younger brother’ Othniel, and the Canaanitish city was so completely destroyed that its very site is still unknown. Its library perished in the ruins, though the clay tablets with which it was doubtless filled must still be lying beneath the soil, awaiting the discoverer who shall with their aid reconstruct 267the ancient history of southern Canaan. Hebron was more fortunate. The city was spared after its capture, and became the chief seat of the Kenizzites, and subsequently, when the Kenizzites were merged in Judah, the capital of Judah itself.

The Hebrew tribe of Judah was slow in following the example of its Edomite comrades. The ‘children of Judah,’ it is said, had at first been content to live with the Midianitish Kenites in the neighbourhood of Jericho, and when the Kenites returned to the desert of Kadesh-barnea to settle there along with them (Judg. i. 16). But there were other Jews who remained behind in Canaan, and there carved out a patrimony for themselves. Judah and Simeon, we are told, ‘went up’ together into the country which had been allotted to them, and eventually succeeded in occupying the greater part of it. The expression is a curious one, and seems to imply that the invaders started from the desert of Kadesh-barnea, though Lachish and its neighbourhood may be meant. At all events, Adoni-bezek, ‘the lord of Bezek,’ was defeated and captured, and his thumbs and great toes cut off, like those of the seventy vassal princes who had ‘picked up their meat’ under his own table. It is added that he was brought to Jerusalem, where he died.

That he was brought there by the Hebrews is not certain. However, the compiler of the book of Judges seems to have thought so, as he goes on to say, ‘And the children of Judah fought^[276] against Jerusalem, and took it, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and set the city on fire.’ It is difficult to reconcile this with the very definite statement in the book of Joshua (xv. 63), ‘As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out: but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day’; or with the equally explicit statement in the first chapter of Judges itself (verse 21), ‘The children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem; 268but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem unto this day.’^[277] The latter passage belongs to the period when Judah had not yet become a corporate whole, and when, therefore, as in the Song of Deborah, Benjamin was still regarded as forming the southern boundary of the tribes of Israel; but the first passage takes us down to the time when Benjamin had been supplanted by Judah, and Israel was being prepared to receive a king. It was during the earlier period that the Levite of Mount Ephraim, when returning from Beth-lehem, would not lodge in ‘Jebus’ because it was a ‘city of the Jebusites’ (Judg. xix. 10, 11); the later period extended to the time when Jerusalem was taken by David, and when the Jewish king, so far from massacring its inhabitants and setting it on fire, allowed the Jebusites in it to retain their property (2 Sam. xxiv. 18-24), and made it the capital of his empire. Doubtless Jerusalem might have been captured by the ‘children of Judah,’ and nevertheless have continued to exist. We may gather from the Tel el-Amarna tablets that such an occurrence actually took place at the close of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, and one of the cities of southern Canaan taken by Ramses II. was Shalama or Salem. But if so, there could have been no massacre of the population and burning of the town; the passages of the Old Testament which describe the Jebusites as living uninterruptedly in their city are too clear and definite to admit of such a supposition. On the contrary, the Jebusites lived in peace and harmony along with both Jews and Benjamites; and were it not for the words of the Levite (Judg. xix. 11), that Jerusalem was still ‘the city of a stranger,’ we could well believe that the fate which overtook it in the time of David had been anticipated in an earlier century. But neither Benjamin nor Judah could ‘drive out the Jebusites that inhabited’ the great fortress-city of Southern Palestine.

The rise of Judah dated from the overthrow of Adoni-bezek, ‘Afterwards,’ we read, ‘the children of Judah went down to 269fight against the Canaanites that dwelt in the mountain, and in the Negeb of the south, and in the plain.’ It was all long subsequent to the death both of Joshua and of Caleb. The last survivors of the first attempt to penetrate into that part of Canaan had passed away before it at last fell—if only partially—into Israelitish hands. The first dreams of conquest had long since made way for a sober and disappointing reality. Canaan had proved for Israel a more difficult prize to secure than Britain proved for the Saxons. It was only in the mountains and a few isolated cities that the invaders succeeded in holding their own. Elsewhere the walls and chariots of the Canaanites kept them at bay, while the strongholds of the Philistines and Phœnicians barred them from the coast. The children of Israel were compelled to dwell ‘among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites,’ and there was little cause for wonder that ‘they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods’ (Judg. iii. 5, 6).

Before Joshua died the tabernacle was set up at Shiloh, on the slopes of Mount Ephraim, in the heart of the newly-conquered land. That the central sanctuary should thus be under the protection of Ephraim was a token that ‘the house of Joseph’ was paramount among the tribes of Israel. A further token was the burial of the mummy of Joseph at Shechem. Here, too, at Shechem were the two mountains Ebal and Gerizim, on which the curses and the blessings of the Law had been ordered to be pronounced. History has left no record of the conquest of the place, and the name of the king of Shechem is not even found in the list of the kings vanquished by Joshua. But the city must have fallen during the early period of the invasion, and the narrative in Josh. viii. 33 would imply that its capture followed closely upon the destruction of Ai.

We may gather from the silence of history that there was neither siege nor massacre to make an impression on the memory of posterity. And the inference is confirmed by what we know of the subsequent history of Shechem. In the time 270of Gideon and Abimelech its population was still half-Amorite (Judg. ix. 28). As at Jerusalem, the older inhabitants cannot have been destroyed or driven out. Like the Gibeonites, they must have made terms with the invaders, or mixed peaceably with them in the course of years.

At the outset, however, Shechem would have been the capital of Ephraim. Here was the sepulchre of the founder of ‘the house of Joseph,’ here were the two sacred mountains of the Law, and here, too, it was that Joshua gathered the people together to hear his last words. Like Moses at Sinai and Kadesh-barnea, ‘Joshua made a covenant with the people ... and set them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem. And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the Law of God, and took a great stone, and set it up there under the terebinth that was in the sanctuary of the Lord.’ Here, therefore, was the local sanctuary of Ephraim, separate from the central one at Shiloh, and a sacred terebinth stood within its precincts. Criticism finds no reason to doubt that ‘the great stone’ spoken of in the text was actually set up, like a ‘Beth-el,’ under the shadow of the tree, and it is hard to see why it should be more sceptical towards the further statement that the covenant which the stone commemorated was written by Joshua ‘in the book of the Law of God.’

While Shechem was thus the local sanctuary of Ephraim, the tribes east of the Jordan had consecrated a ‘great altar’ of their own on the banks of the river. The altar was the occasion of a dispute between the two branches of the house of Israel, which nearly resulted in war. But the danger was averted through the mediation of the priests; and although the tribes east and west of the Jordan necessarily had different interests, it was long ere this led to open hostility, or even to forgetfulness of their common ancestry and common God. Deborah reproaches Reuben and Gilead for having stood aloof while Zebulon and Naphtali were hazarding their lives in the field, and the son of Gideon had his kingdom on the eastern side of the Jordan.

271Joshua was buried at Timnath-serah or Timnath-heres^[278] in Mount Ephraim, in a piece of ground which had become the property of himself and his family. The Israelites of a later day looked back upon his memory with gratitude and veneration; he had been the hero who had succeeded in doing what Moses had failed to accomplish, and had led his people into the Promised Land. But history judges somewhat differently. He was not a lawgiver or a leader of men like Moses, and even from a military point of view the conquest of the Amorite kingdoms of Sihon and Og was a greater achievement than securing a foothold in the mountains of central Palestine. Joshua was not the conqueror of Canaan, as the pious imagination of a later age supposed him to be: he merely opened the way to it. He taught the Israelites how to defeat the Canaanites, and he succeeded in destroying a few of their cities. But that was all; and the wholesale massacres which marked his progress, the wanton destruction of everything which could not be carried away as spoil, and the barbaric extermination of the elements of culture, find their match only in the sanguinary campaigns of some of the Assyrian kings and the Saxon invasion of Britain.

CHAPTER V THE AGE OF THE JUDGES

The Condition of Israel—The Destruction of the Benjamites—Story of Micah and the Conquest of Dan—Chushan-rishathaim- and Ramses III.—Office of Judge—Eglon of Moab—The Philistines—Deborah and Barak—Sisera and the Hittites—The Song of Deborah—Gideon—Kingdom of Abimelech—Jephthah—Sacrifice of his Daughter—Defeat and Slaughter of the Ephraimites—Samson—Historical Character of the Book of Judges.

Israel has at last forced its way into the Promised Land. Mount Ephraim is in its hands, and it has already planted itself in other parts of Palestine. Joshua, the leader who taught it how to cross the Jordan and defeat the princes of Canaan, is dead. The age of wandering is over; the age of settlement has begun.

But the age of settlement was a stormy one. The Canaanites were but partially subdued; the Israelites themselves were little better than a collection of raiding bands. They had brought with them, moreover, the nomadic habits of the desert, and were but little inclined to rebuild the cities which they had so ruthlessly destroyed. And in almost every direction they were encircled by enemies, better organised, better armed, or more numerous than themselves, who from time to time succeeded in overrunning their fields and reducing them to subjection. The tribes who had dreamed of conquering Canaan found themselves, instead, the prey of others.

It was a period of anarchy and perpetual war. Without a head, and without cohesion, it seems strange that they did not perish utterly or become absorbed by the older population of the land. That the nation should have survived admits of only one explanation. It possessed a common faith, a common sanctuary, and a common code of sacred laws. As in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire the Church preserved the fabric of society, and eventually brought order out of chaos, so, too, in ancient Israel, the nation owed 273its continued existence to the law which had been given by Moses. Only the iron fetters of a written law, with its organised priesthood and sanctions, and, above all, the knowledge that it existed, could have prevented the process of political and social disintegration from rapidly running its course. Had the religion of Israel been merely that result of evolution which is dreamed of by some modern writers, and the law of Moses the invention of a later age, there would have been no Israel in which a religion could have developed, or a code of laws have been compiled. The outward unity of the tribes in Egypt and the desert was shattered by the settlement in Canaan, and all that remained was the inward and religious unity that had been forced upon them by the genius of an individual legislator. The place of the political head and leader was supplied by the organised cult and elaborate code of laws which he had bequeathed to the nation. To all external appearance, indeed, Israel had ceased to be a nation, and had been reduced to a scattered and anarchical collection of marauding tribes; but the elements which could again bind them together still existed—the belief in the same national God, the rites with which He was worshipped, and the priesthood and sanctuary where the tradition of the law was preserved.

That this is no imaginary picture is proved by the Song of Deborah. The Song is admitted by the most sceptical of critics to belong to the age to which it is assigned, and consequently to reflect the ideas of the Israelite shortly after the settlement in Canaan. No composition of the Exilic period could be more uncompromising in its monotheism, and its assertion that Yahveh alone is the God of Israel. And the Song further assumes that the tribes of Israel, disunited though they otherwise may be, are nevertheless bound together by a common faith in the one national God. Nor is this all. Israel still possesses, even among its northern tribes, ‘legislators’ like Moses, and scribes who handle the pen (Judg. v. 14). Writing, therefore, is still known and practised 274even among a people so oppressed by their enemies that ‘the highways were unoccupied,’ and the fellahin of the villages had ceased to exist. Laws, too, were still promulgated in continuation of the laws of Moses, and the people of Israel are ‘the people of the Lord.’

And yet there was another side to the picture. While Zebulon and Naphtali were hazarding ‘their lives unto the death’ ‘on behalf of Yahveh,’ there were tribes and cities which forgot their duty to their God and their brethren, and ‘came not to the help of the Lord.’ Such was the case with the inhabitants of Meroz; such, too, was the conduct of Reuben and Gilead, of Dan and Asher. The description given by the compiler of the Book of Judges of the condition of the tribes after the death of Joshua cannot be far from the truth. They were planted in the midst of enemies whom they had found too strong to be destroyed or driven out. On all sides of them were ‘the Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and the Sidonians, and the Hittites that dwelt in Mount Lebanon from Mount Baal-Hermon unto the entering in of Hamath.’^[279] ‘And the children of Israel,’ we are told, dwelt among them, and ‘took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Ashêrahs.’^[280] Even more expressive are the words with which the Book of Judges ends: ‘In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes.’ It was an age of individual lawlessness; the bands of society were unloosed, and none was strong enough to lead and 275control. Outside the influence of the representatives of the Mosaic law there was neither curb nor order.

Two incidents have been recorded which throw a lurid light on the manners and character of the age which immediately followed the settlement in Canaan. In one of them we hear of a Levite of Mount Ephraim ‘who took to him a concubine out of Beth-lehem in Judah.’ Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, had succeeded his father Eleazar as high-priest at Shiloh (Judg. xx. 28), where ‘the ark of the covenant’ had been placed. The concubine proved unfaithful to the Levite, and eventually fled to her father’s house in Beth-lehem. Thither the Levite followed her, and persuaded her to return with him to his home. The woman’s father, however, highly pleased at the reconciliation, continued to press his hospitality upon his guest, and it was not until the afternoon of the fifth day that the Levite succeeded in getting away. The evening soon fell upon him, and, rejecting the advice of his slave that he should spend the night in Jerusalem, on the ground that it was ‘the city of a stranger,’ he pressed on with his concubine to Gibeah, which belonged to Benjamin. It had been better for him, however, to have sought hospitality from ‘the stranger’ rather than from his own people; for, in spite of the fact that he had with him food in plenty both for himself and for his asses, he was left to spend the night in the street. But at the last moment an old man, who was not a native of Gibeah, came in from his work in the fields, and seeing the Levite in the street, asked him and his companions into the house. While they were eating and drinking, the rabble gathered about the house and demanded that the man should be brought out to them that they might ‘know him.’ It was a repetition of the scene enacted in Sodom when the angels visited the house of Lot, with the difference that the actors were Israelites instead of Canaanites, whom the Hebrews had been called upon to destroy for their sins. In vain ‘the master of the house’ intreated his fellow-townsmen not to act ‘so wickedly,’ offering them his own daughter as well as 276his guest’s concubine in place of the guest himself. Finally, however, they were satisfied with the unfortunate concubine, whom they ‘abused’ all night, and then left dead on the doorstep of the house. The first thing ‘her lord’ saw when he opened the door in the morning was the woman’s corpse. This he placed on his ass and carried to his home, where he divided it into twelve pieces, which he sent ‘into all the coasts of Israel.’^[281] The horror of the deed, or perhaps of the visible proofs with which it was announced, aroused the Israelites, and they demanded the punishment of the guilty. The crime had been committed against a Levite, whose brethren were to be found wherever the Israelites were settled, and who had on his side the priesthood of the central sanctuary at Shiloh. He was, too, a Levite of Mount Ephraim, and the sympathy of the powerful tribe of Ephraim was accordingly assured to him. The Benjamites, however, refused to hand over their fellow-tribesman to justice, and the result was an inter-fraternal war. Before the tribes had conquered half the country which had been promised them, they were already fighting among themselves.

The Benjamites at first were successful, and their opponents were defeated with considerable slaughter in two successive battles. Then they fell into an ambuscade: the main body of their troops being drawn away after the retreating enemy towards the north, while an ambush rose up from ‘the meadows of Gibeah’ in their rear, and set fire to the city. The retreating foe now turned back; and the Benjamites, enclosed as it were between two fires, were cut to pieces almost to a man. Six hundred only escaped ‘towards the 277wilderness unto the rock of Rimmon,’ where they maintained themselves for four months. Meanwhile ‘the men of Israel’ treated their Benjamite brethren like Canaanitish outcasts, smiting ‘them with the edge of the sword, from the men of each city even unto the beasts and all that was found; and all the cities they came to did they set on fire.’

Benjamin was almost exterminated. A few men alone survived. But at the outset of the war they had been placed under the same ban as the Canaanites, and a solemn vow had been made that no Israelitish woman should be married to them. When peace was restored with the practical annihilation of the guilty tribe, the prohibition was evaded by a stratagem, which, however inconsequent it may appear to the European of to-day, was fully in keeping with the ideas of the ancient East. Jabesh-Gilead had refused to take part in the war against Benjamin, and the victors accordingly resolved to take summary vengeance upon it. The city was taken by surprise, and every male in it massacred in cold blood, as well as ‘every woman that had lain by man.’ About four hundred unmarried maidens were carried off to Shiloh, and there forcibly married to the surviving Benjamites. But even these did not suffice, and the Benjamite youths were consequently encouraged to hide in the vineyards near Shiloh, and there capture and make wives of the maidens of the place who came out to dance at the yearly ‘feast of the Lord.’ The place, we are told, was northward of Beth-el, ‘on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Beth-el to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah.’

Recent critics have seen in this story merely a popular legend intended to account for the fact that marriage by capture was practised among the Benjamites. We might just as well assert that the story of Gunpowder Plot is a legend which has grown out of the customs of the 5th of November. The critics have not even the justification that marriage by capture was common among the Israelites. In fact, this is the only instance of it which we meet with in the Old 278Testament history of Israel—an instance so exceptional as to be inexplicable unless it had originated under special circumstances. It was certainly not the survival of an earlier custom common to the rest of the tribes, nor is there any trace of its having been general in the tribe of Benjamin itself. In fact, we look in vain for any other example of it alike among Israelites and Canaanites, or even among the Benjamites in any other period of their history.

It is true, however, that the account of the war between Benjamin and its brother tribes has passed through the magnifying lenses of later history. The exaggerated numbers of the combatants and the slain, like the use of the universal ‘all’ and ‘every’ where the partial ‘some’ is intended, are in thorough accordance with Oriental habits of expression. The modern resident in the East is only too familiar with such exaggerations of language, and in studying Oriental history due allowance must always be made for them. In the account of the war, moreover, its real character has been somewhat obscured. Benjamin has been regarded too much as a separate entity, distinct and cut off from the rest of Israel, rather than as the tribe which had once gathered round the sanctuary of Beth-On, and which continued to form the ‘southern’ frontier of the house of Joseph. The war against Benjamin, in fact, was like the war against Jabesh-Gilead—a quarrel not with a tribe, but with certain Israelitish cities. It is even possible that in this quarrel Jabesh-Gilead was from the beginning associated with Gibeah and the other cities of Benjamin. At all events, we find it so allied in the age of Saul. Saul’s first act as king was to rescue Jabesh-Gilead from the Ammonites, and it was the men of Jabesh-Gilead who took down the bodies of Saul and Jonathan from the walls of Beth-Shan and gave them honourable burial.^[282]

279The second incident, which tells us something of the manners of Israel in the years that immediately followed the invasion of Palestine, is recorded in language which has been little, if at all, altered by the compiler of the Book of Judges. The gruesome horror of the story of the Levite’s concubine is absent from it, but it equally shows how far from the truth is the idyllic picture sometimes painted of the first Israelitish conquerors of Canaan. It is again a Levite who is the central personage of the story. An Ephraimite named Micah, we are told, stole eleven hundred shekels of silver from his mother, but, terrified by her imprecations upon the thief, confessed the deed and restored the money. His mother thereupon informed him that the treasure had been dedicated to Yahveh by her on his behalf, in order that a graven and a molten image might be made out of it for him. Two hundred of the shekels were accordingly taken, and the silver employed to make the images. These were set up in the house of Micah, along with ‘an ephod and teraphim,’ and one of his sons was consecrated as priest. This, however, was recognised as contrary to the law, and when therefore a wandering Levite from Beth-lehem, ‘of the family of Judah,’ came seeking employment, he was welcomed by Micah, who asked him if he would be his priest. His wages for undertaking the office were to be ten shekels of silver each year, as well as ‘a suit of apparel’ and food. The terms were accepted, and ‘Micah consecrated’ him his priest. The provisions of the Mosaic law had been satisfied, and the Ephraimite complacently remarked, ‘Now know I that the Lord will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest.’

His complacency, however, was of no long duration. The Danites, unable to establish themselves in the south of Canaan, sent out five spies from their camp near Kirjath-jearim^[283] who 280on their way northward were hospitably received in Micah’s house. Here they found the Levite, with whom, it would appear, they had been previously acquainted, and asked him to inquire ‘of God’ whether their journey would be prosperous or not. The priest’s reply was favourable: ‘before Yahveh is your way wherein you go.’

Far away, to the north of the other Hebrew settlements, the spies found the Phœnician city of Laish, already mentioned in the geographical lists of the Egyptian conqueror Thothmes III. Its inhabitants were living in peaceful security, ‘after the manner of the Zidonians,’ with no one to interfere with them, and no enemy of whom they could be afraid. The spies saw at once that the city was unprepared for a sudden attack by armed men; that, in short, ‘God had given it into’ their hands. They returned therefore to Mahaneh-Dan, the Camp of Dan, and reported what they had seen. Thereupon the Danites determined to seize an inheritance for themselves in the north, and six hundred men ‘girded with weapons of war,’ along with their families and cattle, started for Laish.^[284] On the road the spies led them to the house of Micah, whom they robbed of his images, ephod and teraphim, as well as of his priest. The latter at first protested; but on being told that he would be the priest of ‘a tribe,’ his ‘heart was glad,’ and ‘he took the ephod and the teraphim and the graven image and went into the midst of the people.’ Micah and his friends on discovering the robbery pursued after the Danites, but finding they were too strong for him he judged it prudent to return home.

The Danites continued their march, and had little difficulty in capturing the unguarded Laish, in massacring its inhabitants, and burning the houses with fire. On the ruins they built a new city, the Dan of future Israelitish history. Here the 281graven image of Micah was erected, and worship carried on ‘all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh.’ The Levite who presided over the sanctuary became the ancestor of a long line of priests who continued to be ‘priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land.’^[285] The compiler of the Book of Judges adds that his name was Jonathan, the grandson of Moses, whose name has been changed to Manasseh in the majority of Hebrew manuscripts.^[286] The statement fixes the date of the conquest of Laish, and shows that, like the war against Benjamin, it took place only two generations after the great legislator’s death.

The picture presented to us by the narrative stands in sharp contrast to the ideal aimed at in the legislation of the Pentateuch. The golden calf has been revived in an intensified form, and the ordinary Israelite, including a Levite who was the grandson of Moses, takes it for granted that Yahveh must be adored in the shape of a twofold idol. Nay, more; by the side of the graven and molten images which were meant to represent the God of Israel in defiance of the second commandment, we find also the images of the household gods or teraphim, whose cult forms part of that which was paid to the national deity. The cult, in fact, survived to the latest days of the northern kingdom; it was practised in the household of David (1 Sam. xix. 13), and is even regarded by a prophet of Samaria as an integral portion of the established religion of the state (Hos. iii. 4). The priestly powers of the Levite, however, suffered in no way from the idolatrous nature of the worship over which he presided. Like David in a later age (1 Sam. xxiii. 2, 4, 9, xxx. 8; 2 Sam. v. 19, 23) when the men of Dan inquired through him whether their journey 282would be successful, he was able to answer them in the name of the Lord.

But this is not all. Micah, the Ephraimite, consecrates his own son as priest, while the Levite wanders through the land, seeking employment and begging his bread. There is no endowment that is his by right; no Levitical city where he can claim a shelter and a field; no central sanctuary where his services are required. He is said to be ‘of the family of Judah,’ not a descendant of Levi, though the compiler implies that the expression must not be understood in a literal sense. And the priesthood which he established at Dan continued to be a rival of that of ‘the sons of Aaron’ through nearly five centuries of Israelitish national life.

Criticism has drawn the conclusion that the Pentateuchal legislation could not have been in existence at the time when the city of Laish was taken by the tribe of Dan. The conclusion, however, by no means follows. It is quite certain that it was not drawn by the compiler of the Book of Judges, who has preserved the narrative for us; and, after all, he is more likely to have understood the ideas and feelings of the Israelites of an earlier generation than is a European critic of the nineteenth century. In fact, he has given us an explanation of the contradiction between the Mosaic law and early Israelitish practice, which not only satisfies all the conditions of the problem, but is on the whole more probable than the rough-and-ready solution of modern criticism. Israel in Canaan in the first throes of the invasion was a very different Israel from that which had lived in the desert under the immediate control and superintendence of the legislator. It was disorganised, it was lawless, it was broken up into fragments which were surrounded on all sides by an alien population whose superior culture and wealth, when it could not be seized or destroyed, necessarily exercised a profound influence over the ruder tribes of marauders from the desert. The Israelites inevitably fell under the spell; they intermarried with the natives, and adopted their gods and religious ideas.

283The proof that this is the true explanation of the disregard or forgetfulness of the Mosaic law which characterised the age of the Judges is furnished by the fact that this disregard or forgetfulness was not universal. Throughout the age of the Judges Israel possessed a central sanctuary, little though it seems to have been frequented, and in this central sanctuary the worship of Yahveh was conducted by ‘the sons of Aaron,’ who kept alive the memory of the legislation in the wilderness. At Shiloh there was no image, whether graven or molten, no figures of the teraphim, no idolatrous rites. Instead of an image there was the ark of the covenant, with nothing within it except the tables of the law.^[287] Shiloh was the only place in Israel where the Pentateuchal enactments could be observed, and it is only at Shiloh that we find them to have been so.

But the influence of Shiloh did not extend far. It did not even become the central sanctuary of Ephraim. The history of Micah is alone sufficient to prove this. Ephraimite as he was, Shiloh and its priesthood had no existence for him; his gods and his priests were part of his own household. Equally conclusive is the history of Gideon.

The ephod after which Israel went ‘a whoring,’ was not dedicated at Shiloh but at Ophrah, a few miles to the north; and Baal-berith in the Ephraimitish city of Shechem had more worshippers than Yahveh of Shiloh. Just as the spirit of Judaism was kept alive in the age of the Maccabees among a small remnant of the people, amid the obscurity of a country town, so in the time of the Judges the spirit of the law was preserved among the mountains of Ephraim in the midst of an insignificant body of priests.

It was not only with the Canaanites and with its own internal disorganisation and dissensions that the infant nation of Israel was called upon to contend. Foreign invasion followed quickly on the settlement in Palestine. We have learnt from 284the tablets of Tel el-Amarna that already before the days of the Exodus the kings of Mesopotamia had cast longing eyes upon Canaan. To the Semites of the west Mesopotamia was known as Naharaim, or Aram Naharaim, ‘Aram of the Two Rivers,’ the Euphrates and Tigris, and the name was borrowed by the Egyptians under its Aramaic form of Naharain or Nahrina.^[288] The leading state of Mesopotamia had for some centuries been Mitanni, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, not far from Carchemish, and the rulers of Mitanni had made themselves masters not only of the district between the Euphrates and the Tigris, but also of the country westward to the Orontes. In the age of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty Mitanni was the most powerful of the Asiatic kingdoms, and the Pharaohs themselves did not disdain to unite their solar blood with that of its royal family.

From time to time, the Tel el-Amarna correspondence teaches us, the princes of Mitanni had interfered in the affairs of Palestine. Rib-Hadad, the governor of Phœnicia, declares that ‘from of old’ the kings of Mitanni had been hostile to the ancestors of the Pharaoh, and his letters are filled with complaints that the Amorites to the north of Palestine had revolted against Egypt with the help of Mitanni and Babylonia. Ebed-Tob of Jerusalem, who uses the name Nahrina or Naharain like the writers of the Old Testament, refers to the struggles that had taken place on the waters of the Mediterranean when Nahrina and Babylonia held possession of Canaan. ‘When the ships,’ he says, ‘were on the sea, the arm of the Mighty King (the god of Jerusalem) overcame 285Nahrima and Babylonia; yet now the Khabiri have overcome the cities of the king’ (of Egypt in Southern Palestine).^[289]

It was not the last time that Mitanni and Egypt were ranged on opposite sides. Ramses II. claims to have defeated the forces of Mitanni, and the name of the same country appears among the conquests of Ramses III. of the twentieth dynasty.^[290] It is coupled with Carchemish the Hittite capital among the kingdoms over which the last of the conquering Pharaohs had gained a victory. In the great struggle which Egypt had to face against the Philistines and other piratic hordes from the Greek seas, the northern invaders had carried with them in their train contingents from the various peoples of Northern Syria through whose lands they had passed. The Hittites and Amorites, the inhabitants of Carchemish and Arvad, even the people of Elishah or Cyprus, joined the invaders of Egypt, and among the captured leaders of the enemy recorded on the walls of Medinet Habu are the kings of the Hittites and Amorites. The king of Mitanni, however, is wanting; enemy though he was of the Pharaoh, he never ventured into Egypt, and his name therefore does not appear among the conquered chiefs. All that the Pharaoh could do was to include the name of his kingdom among those whose forces he had overthrown.^[291]

The reign of Ramses III. brings us to the moment when the Israelites under Joshua were about to enter Canaan. Egypt had annihilated the enemies who had invaded it, and had carried a war of vengeance into Palestine and Syria. The Israelite had not as yet crossed the Jordan. Among the places in Southern Palestine subdued by Ramses are Beth-Anoth (Josh. xv. 59), Carmel of Judah, Hebron, Ir-Shemesh, 286Hadashah (Josh. xv. 37), Shalam or Jerusalem, the districts of the Dead Sea and the Jordan, even Korkha in the land of Moab.^[292] There is as yet no trace of Israel, and Hebron had not as yet become the spoil of the Kenizzite.

The chronology, however, makes it certain that though the Israelites had not entered Palestine at the time of the Egyptian campaign in that country, it could not have been very long before they actually did so. The campaign of Ramses III., in fact, prepared the way for the Israelitish invasion by weakening the forces of the Canaanites. In any case, the victory over the northern nations and their allies, commemorated in the temple of Medinet Habu, must have taken place only a few years before the Israelitish conquest of southern Canaan.^[293]

The king of Mitanni was numbered among the enemies of Egypt; nevertheless he had not joined the invading hordes in their attack upon the valley of the Nile. Can it have been that he lingered in what had once been an Egyptian province, that land of Canaan which his forefathers had coveted before him? The Egyptian Empire had fallen, the very existence of Egypt itself was at stake, and the favourable opportunity had come at last when Naharaim might make herself the mistress of Western Asia. Babylonia was powerless like Egypt, Assyria had not yet put forth its strength, and the Hittites barred the old road which had led from Chaldæa to the West.

The armies of Chushan-rishathaim^[294] of Naharaim, accordingly, made their way through Syria to the southern frontiers of 287Palestine. They were no longer associated with those of Babylonia, as in the days of Ebed-Tob; for a short while Naharaim ruled supreme on the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean. For eight years both the Canaanites and their Israelite and Kenizzite invaders were forced to submit to its sway. The work of conquest was checked by the stronger hand of the foreign power.

How soon after the Israelitish settlement in Canaan the invasion of Chushan-rishathaim must have been is shown by the fact that Othniel, the Kenizzite, the brother of Caleb, and the conqueror of Kirjath-Sepher, was the hero who ‘delivered’ Israel from the foreign yoke. How the deliverance was effected we do not know, whether through the death of the king of Naharaim, or through a revolt of the Canaanites and Syrians, or whether it was only the Israelitish tribes and not the Canaanitish cities to which it came. What is certain is that both the ‘oppression’ and the deliverance followed closely on the occupation of Palestine by the Israelites. Caleb belonged to the same generation as Moses and Joshua, and though Othniel was his ‘younger brother,’ he too must be counted in it. Joshua can hardly have been dead before Israel had passed under the yoke of Naharaim.

The supremacy of Naharaim extended to the southernmost borders of Palestine. It was not an Ephraimite who ‘delivered’ Israel, but the Edomite chief at Hebron, where the tribe of Judah had not yet established itself. The fact is noteworthy: the first of the ‘Judges’ was a Kenizzite of Edomite origin, and the yoke which he shook off was one which pressed equally upon Israelites and Canaanites. In the very act of conquering and exterminating the Canaanites, Israel was forced to sympathise and join with them against a common foe.

The sign which gave Othniel the right to be a Shophêt or 288‘Judge’ was twofold. ‘The spirit of Yahveh came upon him,’ and he delivered Israel from its oppressor. The Shophêt was thus marked out by Yahveh for his office, and his success in war was a visible token that he had been called to be the leader of his people. The office was a peculiarly Canaanitish institution. When Kingship was abolished at Tyre in the time of Nebuchadrezzar, the kings were replaced by ‘Judges,’ and at Carthage the ‘Sufetes’ or ‘Judges’ were the chief magistrates of the state.^[295] Whether the institution existed elsewhere in the Semitic world we do not know. But it was as it were indigenous to the soil of Canaan, and in submitting themselves to the rule of the Judges, the Israelites submitted themselves at the same time to Canaanitish influence. It was a step backward, a step towards absorption into the population around them, and it is therefore not without reason that the period of the Judges is a synonym for the period when the religion and manners of Canaan were dominant among the Israelitish tribes. The Pentateuch recognised the priest, the lawgiver, and the king; the judge was the creation of an age in which the Baalim seemed to have gained the mastery over Yahveh.

That the first of the Judges should have been of Edomite descent is a striking commentary on what may be termed the catholicity of pre-exilic Israel. It was not race so much as participation in the worship and favour of Yahveh, that gave a right to be included among ‘the chosen people.’ The ancestress of David was a Moabitess, and the Deuteronomic law lays down that the children of an Edomite, or even of an Egyptian, ‘shall enter into the congregation of the Lord in their third generation’ (Deut. xxiii. 7, 8).^[296] A ‘mixed multitude’ accompanied the Israelites in their flight from Egypt, and the Kenites, with whom Moses was allied, shared like the 289Kenizzites in the conquest of Canaan. Hebron, the future capital of Judah, and a Levitical city, was a Kenizzite possession, and the Judah of later days was itself a mixture of Israelitish and Edomite elements.

How far the authority of Othniel extended it is difficult to say. But the fact that the enemy, whose yoke he had broken, was an invader from the north makes it probable that his rule was acknowledged in Mount Ephraim as well as among the northern tribes. That it was also acknowledged on the east side of the Jordan there is no proof. Though the Song of Deborah shows that the solidarity of Israel was recognised, it also shows that this feeling of a common God and of a common history had but little political effect. The eastern tribes lived apart from those of the west, and the judges whom we hear of as rising among them had purely local powers. Indeed, between Jephthah and the Ephraimites there was internecine war.

The rule of Othniel could not have lasted long. If he belonged to the generation which had witnessed the Exodus out of Egypt, he would have been already an old man at the time of the war with Chushan-rishathaim. Hardly was he dead before Israel was again under the yoke of an oppressor. Moab had recovered from its reverses at the hands of the Amorites and Israelites, the Reubenites had degenerated into mere Bedâwin squatters in the wadis of the Arnon,^[297] and Eglon, the Moabite king, now prepared to possess himself of southern Canaan. Jericho was seized, or rather ‘the city of palm-trees’ which had succeeded to the Canaanitish Jericho, and the ford over the Jordan was therefore secure. Eglon was followed by bands of Amalekite Bedâwin, eager for spoil, like the Sutê who in the age of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence were hired by the rival princes of Canaan in their quarrels with one another. He was also allied with the Ammonites, from which we may 290infer that the Israelites north of the Arnon, between Moab and Ammon, had been either expelled or brought into subjection.

The capture of Jericho opened the road to Mount Ephraim to Eglon as it had done a few years previously to Joshua. But the Israelites were treated more mercifully than Joshua had treated the Canaanites. Perhaps they lived in unwalled villages rather than in fortified towns, and their culture was not high enough to tempt an enemy with the prospect of a rich booty. At all events we hear of no massacres or burnt cities; the Israelites are laid under tribute, that is all.

For eighteen years they served Eglon. Then Ehud, the Benjamite, who like so many of his tribe was left-handed,^[298] was chosen to carry the yearly tribute to the conqueror. Eglon was encamped at Gilgal, in the very spot where the Israelitish camp had so long stood, and received the envoys in the upper story of his house, immediately under the roof. When the tribute-bearers had been dismissed, Ehud, who had gone as far as the sacred ‘circle’ of hallowed stones,^[299] turned back with the excuse that he had a secret message for the king, which demanded the utmost privacy. Taking advantage of his solitude, Ehud seized his sword with his left hand and plunged it into the body of Eglon, then, locking the door of the room behind him, he escaped through the columned verandah. Before the murder was discovered he had made his way to Seirath, and gathered around him the Israelites of Mount Ephraim. The fords across the Jordan were occupied, and the flying Moabites slain at them to a man.

It would seem that the Moabite ‘oppression’ did not extend 291beyond Mount Ephraim. Ephraim and Benjamin were the tribes who had suffered from it, and it was over them accordingly that Ehud was judge. His authority does not appear to have been recognised further to the north or to the south.

In the south, indeed, there were other enemies to be contended against, and there was another hero who had risen up against them. The Edomite and Jewish settlers found themselves confronted by those formidable sea-robbers who had once dared the whole power of Egypt, and were now established on the southern coast of Palestine. The Philistines, called Pulista by the Egyptians, Palastâ and Pilistâ by the Assyrians, were new-comers like the Israelites. They had come from Caphtor, which modern research tends to identify with the island of Krete, and, along with their kinsfolk the Zakkal, had taken part in the invasion of Egypt by the barbarians of the north at the beginning of the reign of Ramses III.^[300] It is the first time that their name is mentioned in the Egyptian annals. But the Zakkal, who afterwards settled on the Canaanitish coast to the north of them, and whom they resembled in dress and features, are mentioned among the invaders against whom Meneptah II. had to contend, and it is therefore possible that the Philistines also were included in the host whose assault upon Egypt seems to have been connected with the Hebrew Exodus. At any rate, at the very moment when the Israelites were making ready to enter Canaan, the Philistines had already possessed themselves of the five cities which guarded its southern frontier. The date 292of the conquest can be fixed within a few years. Ramses III. tells us that the barbarians had swept through Syria, where they had established their camp in the ‘land of the Amorites’ northward of Canaan. Then they fell upon Egypt partly by land, partly by sea. This may be the time when the five cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath were captured by the Philistines; if so, Gaza must have again become Egyptian after the overthrow of the invading hordes, since Ramses III. includes it among the conquests of his campaign in southern Palestine. But it could not have remained long in his hands. The key of Syria, the frontier town which had so long been garrisoned by Egyptian troops, at last ceased to be Egyptian, and became Philistine. Henceforth Egypt was cut off from Asia; ‘the way of the Philistines’ was guarded by the Philistines themselves.^[301]

The actual occupation of ‘Philistia’ was doubtless preceded by piratical descents upon the coast. This, in fact, seems to be indicated by the statement in the book of Exodus that the Israelitish fugitives were not led by ‘the way of the Philistines’ lest they should ‘see war.’ From the time when the northern barbarians first attacked Egypt in the reign of Meneptah II. down to the final settlement of the Philistines on the Syrian coast after the Asiatic campaign of Ramses III., the conquest of the Canaanitish coast was slowly going on. All the while that the Israelites were in the desert, the Philistines of Caphtor 293were creating their new kingdom for themselves. They were one of the ‘hornets’ which Yahveh had sent before Israel into the Promised Land. When Judah and Simeon eventually took possession of southern Canaan, they found the Philistines too firmly established to be dislodged.^[302]

It was not only from their walled cities in Palestine that the Philistines derived their strength. They were within easy reach of their kinsmen in Krete, and fresh supplies of emigrants were doubtless brought to them from time to time in Kretan ships. Greek tradition knew of a time when Minôs, the Kretan king, held command of the sea, and it is said that the sea between Gaza and Egypt was called ‘the Ionian.’^[303] In the reign of Hezekiah we learn from the Assyrian king Sargon that when the people of Ashdod deposed their prince the usurper whom they placed on the throne was still a ‘Greek’ (Yavani).

The features of the Philistine are known to us from the Egyptian sculptures. They offer a marked contrast to those of his Semitic neighbours. They are, in fact, the features of the typical Greek, with straight nose, high forehead, and thin lips. Like the Zakkal he wears on his head a curious sort of pleated cap, which is fastened round the chin by a strap. Besides the cap, and sometimes a cuirass of leather, his dress consisted of a kilt, or perhaps a pair of drawers, similar to those depicted on objects of the ‘Mykenæan’ period, and he was armed with a small round shield with two handles, a spear, and a short but broad sword of bronze. The kilt and arms were the same as those of the Shardana or Sardinians.^[304]

The Philistines were thus aliens on the soil of Canaan. 294Their Hebrew neighbours stigmatised them as the ‘uncircumcised,’ and in the Septuagint they are called the Allophyli or ‘Foreigners.’ But they mixed in time with the Avim whom they had displaced.^[305] The Amoritish Anakim survived at Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod (Josh. xi. 22), and Goliath of Gath was reputed one of their descendants. The Philistines borrowed, moreover, numerous words from the Semitic vocabulary, if indeed they did not adopt ‘the language of Canaan’ altogether. Their five ‘lords’ took the Semitic title of seren, and the supreme god of Gaza was called by the Semitic name of Marna or ‘Lord.’ Dagon, whose temple stood at Gaza, was a Babylonian god whose name and worship had been brought to the West in early days.^[306]

The Israelites soon found that the Philistines were dangerous neighbours. From their five strongholds in the south they issued forth to plunder and destroy. Judah and Simeon were the first to suffer, while such parts of the heritage assigned to Dan as had not been annexed to Ephraim or Benjamin passed into Philistine hands.^[307] But the central and northern tribes did not escape. We learn from an unpublished Egyptian papyrus in the possession of M. Golénischeff that Dor, a little to the south of Mount Carmel, had been occupied by the Zakkal, the kinsmen of the Philistines, so that the whole coast from Gaza to Carmel may be said to have become Philistine. From hence their raiding parties penetrated into the interior, 295and depopulated the villages of Ephraim and Manasseh, of Zebulon and of Naphtali.

Such at least is the conclusion to be drawn from a comparison of the Song of Deborah with the statement that the Shamgar ben Anath, Shamgar the son of Anath, ‘delivered Israel,’ by slaying six hundred Philistines with an ox-goad. Shamgar, as we gather from the Song, lived but a short while before Deborah herself, and it was in his days, we further read, that the Israelitish peasantry were almost exterminated by their enemies. The Philistine invasion in the time of Samuel was but a repetition of earlier raids.

The name of Shamgar testifies to the survival of Babylonian influence in Canaan. It is the Babylonian Sumgir, while Anath is the Babylonian goddess Anat, the consort of Anu, the god of the sky. In one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets two Syrians are referred to, who bear the names of Ben-Ana and Anat.^[308] Does this survival of Babylonian names imply a survival also of the Babylonian script and language? At all events the worship of Babylonian deities still survived, and an Israelite and a ‘judge’ was named after one of them.

Deborah couples with Shamgar the otherwise unknown Jael. The reading is possibly corrupt, another name having been assimilated to that of the wife of the Kenite. But it is also possible that it is due to a marginal gloss which has crept into the text.

However this may be, the age of Shamgar overlapped that of the prophetess Deborah. ‘In the days of Shamgar,’ she says, ‘the highways were unoccupied ... until that I, Deborah, arose—that I arose a mother in Israel.’ It was not only from the incursions of the Philistines that the Israelites suffered. 296In the north the tribes were called upon to face a confederacy of the Canaanitish states. It was the last effort of Canaan to stem the gradual advance of Israel, and the struggle was decided in the plain of Megiddo, as it had been in the older days of Egyptian invasion and conquest.

Megiddo and Taanach were still Canaanitish fortresses; so, too, was Beth-shean, in the valley of the Jordan,^[309] and the Israelites of Mount Ephraim were thus cut off from their brethren in the north. Here Jabin, the king of Hazor, was the dominant Canaanite prince, whose standard was followed by the other ‘kings of Canaan.’ Twenty years long, we are told, ‘he mightily oppressed the children of Israel,’ ‘for he had nine hundred chariots of iron.’^[310] Two accounts of the ‘oppression’ and the war that put an end to it have been handed down, one a prose version, which the compiler of the book of Judges has made part of his narrative, while the other is contained in the song of victory composed by Deborah after the overthrow of the foe.

Critics have found discrepancies between the two accounts, and have maintained that where they differ the prose version is unhistorical. In the latter the Canaanitish leader is the king of Hazor, Sisera being his general, who ‘dwelt in Harosheth of the Gentiles,’ whereas in the song there is no mention of Hazor, and Sisera appears as a Canaanitish king. Moreover, it is alleged that, according to the Song (v. 12), Barak seems to have belonged to the tribe of Issachar, while in the prose narrative he is said to have come from Kadesh of Naphtali, and it is further asserted that Hazor had already been taken and destroyed in the time of Joshua.

The author of the book of Judges, however, failed to see the discrepancies which have been discovered by the modern 297European critic, and he has accordingly set the prose narrative by the side of the Song without note or comment. As the king of Hazor did not personally take part in the battle on the banks of the Kishon, there was no occasion for any reference to him in the Song, and that the commander of his army should have been one of his royal allies is surely nothing extraordinary. In the Song, Barak is expressly distinguished from ‘the princes of Issachar,’^[311] and the question of the destruction of Hazor by Joshua has already been dealt with. It is a gratuitous supposition that the introduction of Jabin into the narrative, and the reference to Harosheth, are the inventions of popular legend or interested historians.

The prophetess Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, ‘judged Israel’ at the time of the war. Her name means ‘Bee,’ and a connection has been sought between it and the fact that the priestesses of Apollo at Delphi, of Dêmêter, of Artemis, and of Kybelê, were called ‘bees,’ while the high priest of Artemis at Ephesus bore the title of the ‘king-bee.’^[312] We might as well look for a connection between the name of her husband and the ‘lamps’ of the sanctuary. Deborah ‘judged Israel’ because she was a prophetess, because she was the interpretress of the will of Yahveh, whose spirit breathed within her. The ‘judgments’ she delivered were accordingly the judgments of Yahveh Himself, and the indwelling of His spirit was the sign of her claim to the office of ‘judge.’ We hear of other prophetesses in Israel besides Deborah; Huldah, for example, who was consulted by the king and the priests in the reign of Josiah. The position held by the prophetess prevented the Israelitish women from sinking into the abject condition of the women among some of the Arab and other Semitic tribes. 298In fact, women have played a leading part in Hebrew history. It has long ago been noticed that the mother had much to do with the character of the successive kings of Judah, and Athaliah of Samaria filled a prominent place in the history of the northern kingdom. Prophecy was no respecter of persons; it came to rich and poor, to learned and simple, to men and women alike, and upon whomsoever the spirit of prophecy fell, it made him fit to be the leader and the counsellor of his people. Deborah had been marked out by Yahveh Himself to be the judge of Israel.

She dwelt, we are told, under the palm-tree of Deborah, between Ramah and Beth-el in Mount Ephraim. She was, therefore, presumably of Ephraimitish descent, though the conclusion does not necessarily follow, and the palm-tree which was called after her continued to be a landmark on the high-road down to the time when the narrative in the book of Judges was written. There was another tree, a terebinth, and not a palm, which stood within the sacred precincts of Beth-el itself, and also bore the name of Deborah, but this Deborah was said to have been Rebekah’s nurse, whose tomb was pointed out under the branches of the tree.^[313] The writers of the Old Testament have carefully distinguished between the two trees; it has been reserved for modern criticism to confound them.

With a woman’s insight and enthusiasm, Deborah perceived that the time had come when the highways should no longer be deserted, and when the northern tribes of Israel should be freed from their bondage to the Canaanite, and she also perceived who it was that was destined to lead the Israelitish troops to victory. This was Barak of Kadesh in Naphtali, the near neighbour of Jabin and Sisera. Like the Carthaginian Barcas, he bore a name—‘the Lightning’—which fitly 299symbolised the vengeance he was born to take on the enemies of Israel.^[314] But Barak shrank from the undertaking at first, and it was not until the prophetess had consented to go with him to Kadesh that he summoned his countrymen together, and occupied the summit of Mount Tabor. Here, protected by the forests which clothed its slopes, he trained and multiplied his forces until he felt strong enough to attack the foe. Then he descended into the plain of Megiddo, where the Canaanitish host was marching from Harosheth to meet him. It was the old battlefield of Canaan; it was there that in the days of the Egyptian conquerors the fate of the country had been decided and the Canaanitish princes under Hittite commanders from Kadesh on the Orontes had been utterly overthrown.

In the camp on the lofty summit of Tabor, Barak had done more than train his men. Time had been given them in which to provide themselves with arms. Deborah declares that in the days of the oppression a shield or spear had not been seen ‘among forty thousand in Israel.’^[315] The statement receives explanation from what we are told of the policy of the Philistines at a later date. When they had laid the Israelites under tribute in the time of Samuel, they banished all the smiths from the land of Israel, to prevent ‘the Hebrews’ from making themselves ‘swords and spears’ (1 Sam. xiii. 19). Agricultural implements alone were allowed (ver. 20). It would seem that a similar policy had been pursued by the Philistines and Canaanites in the earlier age of Deborah, though probably with less success. At all events Heber the Kenite, or itinerant ‘smith,’ still pitched his tent in Israelitish territory, and his 300wife Jael sympathised with the Israelites rather than with their Canaanitish lords.

When Thothmes III. of Egypt met the confederated kings of Canaan in the plain of Megiddo, they were led by the Hittite sovereign of Kadesh on the Orontes. It is possible that Barak was called upon to meet a similar combination of forces. Sisera is not a Semitic name, while, as Mr. Tomkins has pointed out, it finds striking analogies in such Hittite names as Khata-sar, Khilip-sar, and Pi-siri[s]. The Hittite power at Kadesh on the Orontes had not yet passed away. It still existed in the time of David, when it formed one of the frontiers of the Israelitish kingdom.^[316] In the age of the Tel el-Amarna letters we find the Hittites intriguing in Palestine along with Mitanni or Naharaim, and it is not likely that they would have been less disposed to resume their old influence in that country when Egypt was no longer to be feared. Sisera may not only have been the commander of the Canaanitish forces, but also a Hittite prince, nominally the ally of Jabin, but in reality his suzerain lord. He dwelt, we are told, in ‘Harosheth of the Gentiles,’ an otherwise unknown place. It may have been in ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’ (Is. ix. 1), but it may also have been further north among the Gentile Hittites of Kadesh.^[317]

The battle took place on the banks of the Kishon, and ended in a complete victory for the Israelites. The nine hundred iron chariots of Sisera availed him nothing; ‘the stars in their courses’ had fought against him. He escaped 301on foot to the tent of Heber the Kenite, whose wife Jael received him as a guest, and then murdered him by driving a peg of the tent through his temples while he lay asleep. When Barak arrived in pursuit, Jael showed him the corpse of his enemy.

The pæan of triumph, ‘sung by Deborah and Barak’ on the day of the victory, is one of the oldest fragments of Hebrew poetry. To its antiquity and the archaic character of its language are due the many corruptions of the text. Some of the passages in it are quite unintelligible as they stand, and the conjectural emendations that have been proposed for them are seldom acceptable except to their authors.^[318] But, as a whole, the pæan is not only a magnificent relic of ancient Hebrew song, full of fire and vivid imagery, it is also a document of the highest value for the historian. It gives us a picture of Israelitish life and thought in the age of the Judges, untouched by the hands of compilers and historians, and few have been hardy enough to question its genuineness. It is a solid proof that the traditional view of Israelitish history is more correct than that which modern criticism would substitute for it, and that the ‘development’ of Israelitish religion, of which we have heard so much, is a mere product of the imagination. The belief in Yahveh displayed in the Song is 302as uncompromising as that of later Judaism; Yahveh is the God of Israel, who has fought for His people, and beside Him there is no other god. The monotheism of Deborah is the monotheism of the Pentateuch. Nor is the song less of a witness to the truth of the history which we have in the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua. It tells us that Yahveh revealed Himself to Israel on Mount Sinai, and it distinguishes the tribes one from the other, and assigns to them the territories which bore their names.

The Song began with words which, as we see from Deut. xxxiii. 2, Ps. lxviii. 7, were a common property of Hebrew poetry.

Of Barak and Deborah we hear no more. The next judge and deliverer who appears upon the canvas is an Abi-ezrite of Manasseh, who came from the northern borders of Ephraim between Ophrah and Shechem. His father was Joash, the head, it would seem, of the clan. But he himself bears a double name. It is as Gideon, the ‘cutter-down’ of his father’s idol, that he is first introduced to us. In later history his name is Jerubbaal. The latter name is said to have been given him because he had thrown down the altar of Baal, and is interpreted to mean ‘Let Baal plead against him.’^[330] But the other Old Testament examples we have met with of the interpretation of proper names may well make us hesitate about accepting this. They are all mere plays upon words, mere ‘popular etymologies,’ which have no claim to be regarded as history. Whether the philology 306is that of an ancient Hebrew writer or of a modern critic, its conclusions do not belong to the domain of the historian.

Jerubbaal signifies ‘Baal will contend,’ not ‘Baal will plead against him,’ and therefore really has a meaning exactly the reverse of that ascribed to it in the narrative. The name seems substantially identical with that of Rib-Hadad, the governor of Phœnicia in the age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets. Joash, the father of Jerubbaal, was a worshipper of Baal, and consequently there was nothing strange in his calling his son after his god. It is only as Jerubbaal that the future judge was known to the generation that followed him,^[331] and his successor in the kingdom of Manasseh was called even in his own day ‘Abimelech the son of Jerubbaal.’^[332] It has been suggested that Jerubbaal and Gideon were two different personages, whom tradition has amalgamated together,^[333] but double names of the kind were not unknown in Oriental antiquity. Solomon himself also bore the name of Jedidiah (2 Sam. xii. 25), and Gideon, ‘the cutter-down,’ was not an inappropriate epithet for the conqueror of the Midianites. There was a good reason why the pious Israelite of a later generation should shrink from admitting that one of his national heroes had borne a name compounded with that of Baal.^[334]

The tribes of the desert, Amalekites, Midianites, and those Benê-Qedem or ‘Children of the East,’ whom an Egyptian papyrus of the twelfth dynasty places in the neighbourhood of 307Edom,^[335] had fallen upon the lands of the settled fellahin, as their Bedâwin descendants still do whenever the Turkish soldiery are insufficient to keep them away. Year by year bands of raiders swarmed over the cultivated fields, murdering the peasants and carrying off their crops. At first it was Gilead that suffered, but the Hebrews were weak and divided, and the robbers of the desert were soon emboldened to cross the Jordan, and extend their raids as far as the western frontiers of Israel. ‘They destroyed the increase of the earth, till thou come unto Gaza, and left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor ass.’

At last the Lord sent a prophet to the people and an angel to Gideon the Abi-ezrite. Gideon was threshing wheat by the winepress near the sacred terebinth of Ophrah. Here, under the shadow of the tree, was an altar of Baal, and by the side of it the cone of stone which symbolised the goddess Asherah. The angel summoned Gideon to rise and deliver Israel, and as a sign that he was indeed the angel of Yahveh he touched with his staff the offerings of flesh and unleavened cakes that Gideon had made to him, so that fire rose out of the rock and consumed them all. On the threshing-floor Gideon built an altar to Yahveh, like that more stately sanctuary which David raised in later days on the threshing-floor of rock which had belonged to Araunah the Jebusite.

Recent criticism has discovered in the history of Jerubbaal two different and mutually inconsistent narratives, which are again subdivided among a variety of writers. To these some critics would add a third version of the story, which is supposed to be referred to in Is. x. 26, though others maintain that the reference in the book of Isaiah is to the first of the two narratives. It cannot be denied that the history of the war against the Midianites in its present form is confused, and that it is difficult to construct from it a clear and intelligible picture of the course of events. That the compiler of the 308book of Judges should have made use of more than one narrative, if such existed, is indeed only natural, and what a conscientious historian would be bound to do. But to distinguish minutely the narratives one from the other, much more to analyse them into still smaller fragments, is the work of Sisyphus. It is even more impossible than to distinguish between Rice and Besant in The Golden Butterfly or Celia’s Arbour. The historian must leave all such literary trifling to the collectors of lists of words, and content himself with comparing and analysing the facts recorded in the story.^[336]

The altar raised by Gideon was dedicated to Yahveh-shalom, ‘the Yahveh of Peace,’ and it was still standing at Ophrah when the narrative relating to it was written.^[337] Its name shows that it could hardly have been built before Gideon had returned in peace from the Midianitish war. There was much that had first to be done.

Gideon’s first task was to destroy the symbol of Asherah and the altar of Baal. The revelation made to him had been made in the name of Yahveh, and it was in the name of Yahveh alone that he was about to lead his countrymen to victory. It is true that between Yahveh and Baal the Israelite villager of the day saw but little difference. Yahveh was addressed as Baal or ‘Lord,’^[338] and the local altars that were dedicated to Him in most instances did but take the place of the older altars of a Canaanitish Baal. Mixture between Israelites and Canaanites, moreover, had brought with it a mixture in religion. Along with the title, Yahveh had assumed the attributes of a Baal, at all events among the mass of the people. Joash and the villagers, who demanded that Gideon should be put to death for destroying the altar of Baal, doubtless thought that they were zealous for the God of Israel. 309It was the symbol of Asherah only which was the token of a foreign cult.

Perhaps the answer made by Joash to the charge against his son has been coloured by the theology of the later historian. It breathes rather the spirit of an age when the antagonism between Yahveh and Baal had become acute than that of one who was himself a worshipper of Baal and Asherah, and whose son in the hour of victory made an idol out of the enemy’s spoil. The Baal worshipped by the villagers of Abi-ezer was regarded as Yahveh himself, and hence it was that the offence committed by Gideon against him was an offence committed against the national God, and therefore punishable with death. To set him up as another god in opposition to the God of Israel carries us down to the age of Elijah, when the subjects of Ahab were called upon to choose between the Yahveh who had led them out of Egypt and the Phœnician Baal. It belongs to the same period as the etymological play on the name of Jerubbaal.

There was a special reason why Jerubbaal should thus have come forward to deliver his countrymen from the Midianites. The Bedâwin raiders had slain his brothers in a previous struggle at Mount Tabor (viii. 18-21). Jerubbaal thus had a blood-feud to avenge. He was the last and presumably the youngest of his family, and upon him therefore devolved the duty of revenging his brothers’ death. Moreover, it would appear from the words of the Midianite chiefs that Joash and his sons were not only the heads of their clan, but that they also exercised a sort of kingly authority in Ophrah and its neighbourhood. The history of Abimelech seems to imply that the family of Abi-ezer had succeeded to the power and even the name of the Canaanitish ‘kings’ of Shechem, and that the subsequent ingratitude of the inhabitants of Shechem to the house of Jerubbaal was due to jealousy of the preference displayed by it for Ophrah. Shechem contained a large Canaanitish element which was wanting at Ophrah, where the population was more purely Israelitish. If Joash were thus 310king of a mixed population, recognised by Canaanites and Israelites alike, we can understand why by the side of the altar of Baal there stood also the symbol of the Canaanitish goddess. The very fact that the sanctuary of Ophrah belonged to him (vi. 25) indicates that he possessed royal prerogatives. Even at Jerusalem the temple of Solomon was as it were the chapel of the kings.^[339]

It has been suggested that the Baal whose altar stood on the land of Joash at Ophrah was the Baal-berith or ‘Baal of the Covenant,’ worshipped at Shechem,^[340] and that the ‘covenant’ over which the god presided was that made between the Canaanites of Shechem and their Hebrew master. Doubtless the two elements in the population would have interpreted the name in a different way. For the Hebrews the ‘Baal of the Covenant’ would have been Yahveh; for the Canaanites he would have been the local sun-god. But there is nothing to prove that the attributes of the Baals of Ophrah and Shechem were the same, or that they were adored under the same form. Indeed, the fact that the altar erected by Jerubbaal at Ophrah was dedicated to the ‘Yahveh of Peace’ tells rather in a contrary direction. Shechem had its Baal-berith, while Ophrah may have had its Baal-shalom. While the one commemorated the covenant that had been entered into between the two parts of the population, the other would have commemorated its ‘peaceful’ settlement. For the Canaanite it was a covenant, for the Hebrew it was peace.

The struggle at Mount Tabor, in which the brothers of Jerubbaal had fallen, laid the fruitful valley of Jezreel at the feet of the Bedâwin plunderers. The plain of Megiddo was now in the hands of the Israelites. The battle on the banks of the Kishon had broken for ever the power of the Canaanites and their ‘chariots of iron,’ and they were now tributary to 311Manasseh.^[341] The Canaanite townsman and the Israelitish peasant were now living in peaceful intermixture, and the torrent of raiders from the desert fell upon both alike. We hear no more of any attempts made by the older population to shake off the Hebrew yoke; it suffers from the Midianite invasion equally with its Hebrew masters, and the family of Joash govern it as much as they govern the Israelites themselves. Jerubbaal is the deliverer of the Canaanite as well as of the Israelite.

From Ophrah he sends messengers throughout Manasseh, as well as to the tribes of Asher, Zebulon, and Naphtali, and their fighting-men gather together at his summons. He thus acts like a king, and is obeyed like a king. Though he may not have actually borne the royal title, he was more than a mere ‘judge.’ Barak may have assumed the name and prerogatives of the Canaanitish kings he had conquered, and have passed them on to the family of Ebi-ezer. At any rate the power of Joash must have extended beyond Shechem and Ophrah; all Manasseh obeys the call of his son, and even the more distant northern tribes come at his bidding. The subjugation of the Canaanites had demanded a head to the state, and their union with their conquerors implied an organised community under a common king.

It was, however, with three hundred chosen followers that Jerubbaal made his first attack upon the foe. Encouraged by a dream, he fell upon their camp by night, and his followers, breaking the pitchers they carried with them, and waving torches in their left hands, caused such a panic among the undisciplined hordes of the desert that they fled in all directions.^[342] The rout of the enemy was completed by the rest 312of the Israelitish army, which pursued the Midianites eastward towards the Jordan. Part of them under the shêkhs Oreb and Zeeb made for the ford at Beth-barah, where, however, they were intercepted by the Ephraimites, and their chiefs slain at ‘the rock of Oreb’ and the ‘winepress of Zeeb.’^[343]

Meanwhile Jerubbaal was already on the eastern side of the Jordan, following in hot haste a detachment of the Midianites under two other of their shêkhs, Zebah and Zalmunna. His road led past Succoth and Penuel, but their Israelitish inhabitants refused all help, and even bread, to their brethren of Manasseh. It is clear that between Gilead and the western tribes there was now a diversity of interests and feelings, and that the half-nomad Israelites on the eastern side of the Jordan had more sympathy with the heathen of the desert than with the ruler of the organised state on the other side of the river. Perhaps they feared that his arms would next be turned against themselves, and that they too would be forced to become part of a kingdom of Manasseh.

But if they had hoped that the Midianites would have freed them from all fears upon this score they were doomed to disappointment. Once more ‘the sword of Yahveh and of Gideon’ prevailed, and Zebah and Zalmunna were slain. The claims of the blood-feud were satisfied, and Jerubbaal now returned to his old home. Condign vengeance was taken on ‘the elders’ of Succoth and ‘the men’ of Penuel. The first 313were scourged with the thorns of the wilderness, the others were put to death, and their tower, which guarded the approach from the desert, was razed to the ground.

Now, however, Jerubbaal had to meet with more formidable adversaries. The house of Joseph was divided against itself, and the Ephraimites resented his conduct in acting independently of the elder tribe.^[344] In the earlier days of the occupation of Palestine it had been Ephraim which took the leading part; Joshua, who first opened the path into Canaan, had been an Ephraimite, and Mount Ephraim had been the first stronghold of Israel on the western side of the Jordan. In the time of Barak Ephraim had still been the dominant tribe, at least such is the impression we gather from the Song of Deborah; but it had begun to live on its past glories rather than on its present achievements. The Benjamites had definitely separated from it, and become a separate tribe, and Issachar, Zebulon, and Naphtali had carried on the war against Jabin and Sisera. Manasseh, however, had not yet appeared on the political scene; its place was taken by Machir, whose territory lay in Gilead, not to the west of the Jordan. But between the age of Barak and that of Jerubbaal a change had occurred. The Canaanitish towns, which the victory on the banks of the Kishon had laid at the feet of the northern tribes, passed into the possession of the younger branch of the house of Joseph, and Issachar had to be content that Shechem also should become a part of its territory.^[345] Manasseh grew at the expense of its neighbours. 314It is possible that the clan of the Abi-ezrites at Ophrah had, by their conquest of Shechem, paved the way for the rise of Manasseh; if so, the dominant position they occupied in the tribe would become intelligible. Ophrah would have been the first home and gathering-place of the tribe. The treaty with Shechem, which united that city with Ophrah, may have been the beginning of Manasseh’s rise to power.

But Ephraim could ill brook the growing ascendency of the younger tribe. Manasseh had become wealthy from the tribute levied on its Canaanitish subjects; it had united itself with the older inhabitants of the land, and had borrowed their habits and their culture, and therewith their idolatries as well. The mountaineers of Ephraim, on the other hand, had retained much of the roughness and the virtues of the first invaders of Palestine. They were still warlike and hardy; they held the fortress of the Israelitish possessions in Canaan; and Shiloh, with its Aaronic priesthood, its traditions of the Mosaic law, and its purer worship of Yahveh was in their midst. Jerubbaal was forced to temporise with them. He pointed out that the destruction of the main body of the Midianites at the fords of the Jordan was a greater achievement than his own successful pursuit of the remaining bands. He had slain Zebah and Zalmunna in revenge for the death of his brothers; the slaughter of Oreb and Zeeb had been for the sake of all Israel. ‘Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abi-ezer?’

Jerubbaal was fitted to rule, for he possessed statecraft as well as military ability. His statecraft was shown not only in his answer to the Ephraimites, but also in his refusal to accept the title of king. It was pressed upon him, we are told, by 315‘the men of Israel’—that is to say, by the northern tribes. Whether his father had actually borne the title we cannot say, though it would seem from the subsequent history of Abimelech, as well as from the words of Zebah and Zalmunna (viii. 18), that he must have done so. But at any rate he had exercised the authority of a king, like his son Jerubbaal, at the outset of the Midianite war, and it may be that among the Canaanites of Shechem he had also the name of king. Jerubbaal, however, if we are to regard the passage as historical, rejected the crown offered him by the Israelites, declaring that their king was Yahveh alone.

That the passage is historical seems to admit of little doubt. Jerubbaal’s words were in harmony with the feelings of the time among the stricter adherents of Yahveh, as we learn from the language of Samuel when the people demanded of him a king. How different were the feelings of the compiler of the book of Judges may be gathered from the words with which it ends. Moreover, Jerubbaal’s refusal of the royal title was politic. He had already realised that he had powerful enemies in Ephraim, who viewed his success and claims to power with suspicion and hostility, and he also knew that it was in Ephraim and among the priesthood of Shiloh that the belief in the theocratic government of Israel was strongest. As in Assyria, in Midian, and in Sheba, so too in Israel, the high priest preceded the king; it was not until the need for a single head and a leader in war became too urgent to be resisted that the national God made way for a national king.^[346]

Phœnician tradition remembered that Jerubbaal was a priest of Yahveh, not that he was a king.^[347] It was as a priest that he 316exacted from the people the golden earrings they had won from the Midianites in order that he might make with them an image of his God. The Hebrew text has substituted for the image the ephod which accompanied it.^[348] But the ephod was the linen garment of the priest, which he wore when ministering, and with the help of which the future was divined.^[349] It was not the vestment but the image, in whose service the vestment was used, that Jerubbaal set up in Ophrah, and after which ‘all Israel went a whoring.’ Like his father, Jerubbaal saw no idolatry where it was Yahveh of Israel who was represented by the idol. The religious beliefs and practices of Canaan had entered deeply into the soul of Israel; at Shiloh alone was no image of its God.

High priest among the Israelites, king among his Canaanitish subjects, Jerubbaal lived long in his father’s home at Ophrah. He acted like a king, even if he did not take the royal title. Like Solomon, he had ‘many wives,’ and like Solomon also, he built a sanctuary attached to his own house.^[350] The Bedâwin spoilers came no more: there was now a strong hand ruling over the northern tribes of Israel, checking all tendency to disunion, and building up an organised community.

But the kingdom of Jerubbaal contained within it those seeds of dissolution which have brought about the fall of so many Oriental monarchies. They spring up, not among the people, but in the family of the ruler. Polygamy brings with it a curse, and the king is hardly dead before the children of his numerous wives are murdering and fighting with one another. Even during his lifetime the palace is honeycombed with the intrigues of the harîm, which break out into open war as soon as he has passed away. The family of Jerubbaal was no exception to the rule. Abimelech, the son of his concubine, a Canaanitess of Shechem,^[351] conspired with his mother’s 317kinsmen in Shechem, and taking seventy shekels of silver from the temple of Baal-berith, hired with them a band of mercenaries, who fell upon the other sons of Jerubbaal at Ophrah and murdered them all save one. Alone of the ‘seventy’ brethren of Abimelech, Jotham, the youngest, hid himself and escaped. The rest were slaughtered like oxen on a block of stone. Abimelech then returned to Shechem, and there under the sacred terebinth, which stood by the consecrated ‘pillar’ or Beth-el of the city, he was anointed king. The garrison of the Millo, or fortress, of Shechem took part in the ceremony.

The report of Abimelech’s usurpation was brought to Jotham. He left his place of concealment, and, standing on the top of Mount Gerizim, upbraided the men of Shechem with ingratitude towards Jerubbaal. He clothed his words in one of those parables of which the East is the home. ‘The trees went forth,’ he told them, once on a time, ‘to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive-tree, Reign thou over us. But the olive-tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? And the trees said unto the fig-tree, Come thou and reign over us. But the fig-tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees? Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou and reign over us. And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou and reign over us. And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow; and if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon.’

The moral of the parable was so obvious that it did not need Jotham’s explanation to make it clear. He had been bold in venturing near his enemies, and as soon as he had 318finished speaking, he fled to a place of safety. Beer, ‘the well,’ where he found a refuge, may have been the place of that name in the extreme north of Naphtali.^[352] Here at least he would have been secure from pursuit.

The usurpation of Abimelech was the revolt of the older Canaanitish population against their Israelitish masters. It marked the successful rising of the native element. Ophrah has to make way for Shechem, and ‘the men of Hamor the father of Shechem’ take the place of the children of Jacob. Yet the deliverance from the Midianites wrought by Jerubbaal had been achieved as much for the benefit of the Canaanitish part of the population as for the Israelites themselves. The murder of his sons and the destruction of his family was a poor requital for all that he had done for them. Jotham was justified in prophesying that their own god Baal-berith would avenge the broken ‘covenant,’ and that Abimelech and his Shechemite conspirators would fall by one another’s hand.

Before three years were ended the prophecy was fulfilled. The ‘god’ of Shechem ‘sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the Shechemites,’ who began a plot against his rule. Abimelech had withdrawn from the city and was living at the otherwise unknown Arumah, the garrison and government of Shechem being placed under the command of a certain Zebul.^[353] Perhaps the king had already begun to be suspicious of his subjects; perhaps his retirement to another town had aroused their jealousy. However it may have been, the Shechemites openly set at naught his authority. Bands of brigands left the city and infested the neighbouring mountains, where they robbed all who passed that way. They were soon joined by another band of bandits, under the leadership of Gaal the son of Jobaal.^[354] Under him the disaffection towards Abimelech 319came to a head, and Gaal proposed that the citizens should revolt against Abimelech and Zebul. Zebul, however, while professing to be upon their side, sent messengers to Abimelech and urged him to march against Shechem before it was too late. Abimelech gave heed to the message, and Gaal’s forces were defeated outside the city, and driven back within its gates. Abimelech then pretended to retire to Arumah, and the citizens accordingly once more went out to their work in the fields. But the royal troops were really lying in ambush, divided into three companies, two of which fell upon the fellahin in the fields and massacred them; while the third, with Abimelech himself at their head, rushed into the city through the open gate. All day long the battle raged in the streets; then the survivors fled to the ‘crypt’ of the temple of Baal-berith which adjoined the Millo or fort.^[355] By the orders of Abimelech brushwood was brought from the neighbouring Mount Zalmon, piled up over the entrance to the crypt and set on fire. All who were inside, men and women, to the number of about a thousand, perished in the flames. Shechem itself was razed to the ground, and its site sown with salt. For a time the old Canaanitish city disappeared from the soil of Palestine.

The destined punishment had now fallen upon Shechem; it was not long before it fell also upon its destroyer. The town of Thebez had shared in the revolt of Shechem, and Abimelech’s next action was to besiege it. The town itself offered little resistance, but there was a ‘strong tower’ within it, to which its defenders fled for refuge. Abimelech again 320had recourse to fire. But while the wood was being laid against the gate of the tower, a woman on the parapet above threw a broken millstone upon his head and shattered his skull. The king felt himself dying, and besought his armour-bearer to thrust a sword through his body, lest it might be said that he had been slain by the hand of a woman. But the request was made in vain, and future generations remembered that the last king of Shechem, the murderer of his brethren, had perished ignominiously by a woman’s hands.^[356] With Abimelech the sovereignty of the house of Joash seems to have come to an end. We hear no more of Jotham, or of any other attempt to found a monarchy among the northern tribes. The first endeavour to organise Israel into a state had but little success. Once more the old elements of disorder and disunion reigned supreme. The tribes stood further and further apart from each other, and mutual jealousies led to intestine wars. The influence of Ephraim and of the sanctuary of Shiloh grew daily less, and the power of the northern tribes waned at the same time. The Israelites on the eastern side of Jordan began to forget that they had brethren on its western bank; Reuben is lost among the Bedâwin of Moab, and Gilead and Ephraim engage in interfraternal war. Meanwhile a new tribe is rising in the south. Judah has absorbed Simeon and the Kenizzites of Hebron; the few relics of Dan which have been left in the neighbourhood of Zorah have become Jews in all but name, and the Kenites and the Jerahmeelites, and the other foreign settlers in the Negeb have followed the example of the Kenizzites. A common enemy and a common danger has thus forced them together.

The enemy were the Philistines. In the early days of the Hebrew settlement in Canaan the Philistines had already made the raids inland which had been checked, if not suppressed, by Shamgar ben-Anath. For a time they had remained quiet in their five cities of the coast. But fresh immigrants from Krete or other Ægean lands introduced new blood and 321warlike energy. Once more their armed bands marched forth to plunder and destroy. This time they are no longer contented with mere raids; they now aim at conquest. Hardly have the Canaanites been subjugated after long generations of struggle, when the Israelites are called upon to meet a new foe. It is a foe, moreover, which is not enervated by centuries of luxury and culture, not accustomed to foreign rule or divided within itself, but a hardy nation of pirates whose whole life has been passed in fighting, and in seizing the possessions of others.

The first brunt of the Philistine attack was borne by Judah. But it was not long before the armies of the Philistines made their way northwards, and even penetrated into the fastnesses of Mount Ephraim.^[357] Of all this, however, the record has been lost. The compiler of the book of Judges failed to find it in the fragmentary annals of the past, and has been compelled to fill up the interval between the fall of the kingdom of Manasseh and the supremacy of the Philistines in Palestine with notices of judges and events whose exact place in Hebrew history was uncertain.

It is here, accordingly, that we have the names of the so-called lesser Judges, of whom little more was known than the names. Two of them, Tola the son of Puah, and Elon, belonged to Issachar and Zebulon; and it is somewhat singular that while the book of Numbers makes Tola and Puah the heads of families in Issachar, it makes Elon the head of a family in Zebulon.^[358] Of Tola we are told that he lived and died at Shamir in Mount Ephraim, which at that time therefore must have been in the hands of Issachar, and that he judged Israel twenty-three years. The account of Elon is 322equally laconic; he judged Israel ten years, and was buried at Aijalon in Zebulon. Another judge in Zebulon was Ibzan of Beth-lehem,^[359] who was judge for seven years only, but of whom it was recorded that he had thirty sons and thirty. daughters. A similar record has been handed down of another of these minor judges, Abdon the son of Hillel. He, it is said, had forty sons and thirty grandsons, who rode on seventy colts. Abdon was judge for eight years, and ‘was buried at Pirathon in the land of Ephraim, in the mount of the Amalekites.’ This statement seems to push back the date of Abdon to an early period when Benjamin had not yet separated from the ‘House of Joseph,’ and ‘the land of Ephraim’ accordingly extended southwards into the Amalekite region. It would be of the same age as that of the Song of Deborah.

Gilead also had its judges, though the names of only two of them have been preserved. One was Jair, who ruled as judge for twenty-two years, and who ‘had thirty sons that rode on thirty ass-colts, and they had thirty cities which are called the villages of Jair.’ We hear something more of this Jair in the Pentateuch. He had taken the villages which were called after his name, and must have lived not long after the Israelitish conquest of Bashan.^[360] He belongs, therefore, to the earliest period of Israelitish history in Canaan, and may have been a contemporary of Joshua himself.

The second judge left a more famous record behind him. This was Jephthah, who delivered Gilead from its bondage to the Ammonites. His father’s name was doubtful, his mother was a harlot, and ‘the elders’ of Gilead accordingly expelled him from what he claimed to be his father’s house.^[361] He fled 323to the desert land of Tob,^[362] and there gathering a band of bandits around him, lived on the spoils of brigandage. He soon became known, like David in later days, for his skill and courage in deeds of arms. For eighteen years the Ammonite domination had lasted, and the Gileadites sighed for independence. But it was long before a champion could be found. At last the fame of the bandit captain in Tob reached the ears of the Israelitish elders, and they begged him to come to their help. Jephthah taunted them with their conduct towards him, but feelings of patriotism finally prevailed, and he agreed to lead his followers against the national enemy if the Gileadites would promise to make him their ‘head.’ The representatives of the people had no choice but to agree to his terms, and the struggle for independence began. It ended in the deliverance of the Israelites; the Ammonites were again driven from the land which had once been theirs, and Gilead was free.^[363]

The rejoicings over the victory, however, were clouded by the rash vow of the Israelitish chieftain. Before marching forth to attack the Ammonites, Jephthah had vowed to sacrifice 324as a burnt-offering to Yahveh whatever first came out of his house at Mizpeh to meet him should he return ‘in peace.’ It was his own daughter, his only child, who thus came forth to meet him, and to celebrate his victory with timbrels and dances. The spirit of the Gileadites was very far removed from that which had taught Abraham a newer and better way; the Canaanite belief was strong in them that their firstborn could be claimed by their God; and none questioned that Yahveh Himself had selected the victim and led her forth from the house to welcome the conqueror. The vow had to be fulfilled; Yahveh had claimed that which was nearest and dearest to the Gileadite chief in return for the victory He had given him. All Jephthah could do was to grant his daughter’s request that she might wander for two months in the mountains with her comrades, bewailing ‘her virginity,’ before the day of sacrifice arrived.

The memory of the sacrifice was never forgotten. It became a custom in Israel, we are told, for the Israelitish maidens year by year to ‘lament’ for four whole days the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite. It has been maintained that this custom was the origin of the story, and that the lamentation was not for the daughter of a Hebrew judge, but for some mountain goddess who corresponded with the Phœnician god Adonis. As the maidens of Phœnicia once each year mourned the death of Adonis, so the maidens of Gilead bewailed the untimely death of a virgin goddess. But the theory is part of that reconstruction of ancient Israelitish history, one of the postulates of which is that a custom has never arisen out of a historical incident. The historian, on the other hand, finds in the story evidences of its truth. There is no trace elsewhere of such a goddess as the story demands, or of an anniversary of lamentation in her honour, while the account of the vow and its fulfilment is in thorough harmony with the beliefs and customs of the time. It is wholly contrary to the spirit of later Israel as well as to the feelings of those who adhered faithfully to the Mosaic Law. If the story 325were an invention, it must have originated either in the days when human sacrifice was still practised, or else in the later period when it was regarded with abhorrence. In either case, its invention would be inconceivable. In the earlier period there would have been no reason to invent what actually took place; in the later period, the character of a judge and deliverer of Israel would never have been needlessly blackened. Moreover, the belief that the first thing met with on leaving or entering a house is unlucky and devoted to the gods, is a belief which is probably as old as humanity. It still survives in our own folklore, and testifies to a time when he who first left the protection of the hearth and threshold could be claimed by the powers of the other world.

Jephthah’s term of office as ruler of Gilead was only six years. He seems to have been already advanced in years when he was called upon to oppose the Ammonites. But his rule was signalised by a war with Ephraim. The ever-increasing dissensions between the tribes on the eastern and western sides of the Jordan came openly to a head, and the elder and younger branches of the house of Joseph engaged in a struggle to the death. Ephraim, it seems, still claimed predominance, and asserted its right to interfere in the concerns of its eastern brethren. ‘Ye Gileadites,’ it was said, ‘are fugitives of Ephraim among the Ephraimites and among the Manassites.’ But the ‘fugitives’ soon proved that they were the stronger of the two. The Ephraimites invaded Gilead, but were compelled to retreat. Before they could reach the Jordan Jephthah had seized the fords across it, and the retreat of the Ephraimites was cut off. A terrible massacre took place; whoever said sibboleth for shibboleth, ‘river-channel,’ was thereby known to belong to the western bank, and was at once put to death. Altogether 42,000 men of Ephraim perished, and the power of the tribe was broken. Jephthah, however, did not follow up his success; that would have brought upon him the hostility of the other western tribes, and he seems to have returned to Gilead. There he died and was buried in one of its cities, 326the name of which was not stated in the sources used by the compiler of the book of Judges.^[364]

The date of Jephthah it is impossible to fix. That the author of the book of Judges was ignorant of it would appear from his making Jephthah follow immediately after Jair. But it is clear that he believed it to have been towards the close of the period of the Judges. This, too, would agree with the fact that it corresponded with the fall of the power of Ephraim. In the time of Jerubbaal, the Ephraimites were still strong enough to command the respect of the conqueror of the Midianites; when the light once more breaks upon the history of central Israel we find the Philistines in possession of the passes that led into Mount Ephraim, and threatening Shiloh itself. The destruction of the Ephraimite forces at the fords of the Jordan can best explain the Philistine success.

With the period of the Philistine supremacy the history of the Judges comes to an end. That supremacy forced Israel to the conviction that they must either submit to the organised authority of a king or cease to be a nation at all. The kingdom of Israel was born amid the struggle with the Philistines; and though the first king perished in the conflict, his successor succeeded in founding an empire.

The Philistine wars lasted for many years. They began with raids on the Israelitish territory immediately adjoining that of the Philistines. Perhaps the conquest of the plain at the foot of the mountains of Judah first roused their hostility against Judah; at all events, it brought them into contact with the conquering tribe. A desultory warfare was carried on for some years; then the plans of the Philistines became more definite, and they aimed at nothing less than the conquest of the whole of Canaan. The sea-robbers had been gradually changed into a nation of soldiers.

Samson, the hero of popular tradition, belongs to the earlier part of the Philistine wars. The last relics of the tribe of Dan 327in the neighbourhood of Zorah and Eshtaol have not as yet been absorbed by Judah; the Philistines, on the other hand, have gained possession of the whole plain. Between them and the Israelites there is constant intercourse, partly friendly, partly hostile; at one time the two peoples intermarry, visit, and trade with one another; at another time they carry on a guerilla warfare.

Of late years it has been the fashion to transform Samson into the hero of a myth.^[365] It is true that his name is derived from Shemesh, ‘the sun,’ and it cannot be denied that the stories relating to him have come rather from popular tradition than from written records. His hair, in which his strength lay, reminds us of the face of the sun-god engraved on the platform of the Phœnician temple of Rakleh on Mount Hermon, where the flaming rays of the sun take the place of human hair. But it must be remembered that Samson is represented as a Nazarite—a purely Israelitish institution between which and a solar myth there is no connection—and that his strength was dependent on the keeping of the vow which consecrated him to Yahveh as a Nazarite from the day of his birth. With the loss of the hair the vow was broken, the consecration at an end; the strength had been given by Yahveh, and Yahveh took it away. Between this and the fiery locks of the sun-god there is but little connection.

The character of Samson, however, is that of a hero of popular tradition. His utter ignoring of moral principles, his hankering after foreign women, his riddle, his devices for deceiving and slaying his enemies, belong to the tales told by the Easterns at the door of a café, or around the camp-fire, rather than to sober history. When we hear that Ramath-lehi was so called from the ‘jawbone’ of an ass which Samson had ‘flung away’ after slaying a thousand men with it, or that Ên-hakkorê received its name from the water which flowed from the bone to quench the hero’s thirst, we find ourselves in the 328presence of those etymological puns with which the historian has nothing to do.^[366]

The compiler of the book of Judges has turned this hero of popular story, this lover of Philistine women, into a Judge of Israel. He was, however, merely a Danite champion, the one hero of Danite tradition, of whom indeed the tribe had little reason to be proud. Even in Judah his achievements gained him no honour. When the Philistines sought to seize him after he had burnt their corn, ‘three thousand men of Judah’ ascended to his place of refuge ‘on the top of the rock Etam’ and handed him over to his enemies. The wiles of a Philistine harlot deprived him of his strength and his eyes, and he ended his days as a fettered slave at Gaza, grinding wheat for his Philistine lords. The glory of his death, however, in the eyes of his fellow-tribesmen redeemed the rest of his life. Called to make sport for his masters in the temple of Dagon, while they feasted in honour of their god, he laid hold of the two central columns on which the building was supported, and brought it down on the assembled crowd. Samson and the Philistines alike were buried under its ruins. And ‘so,’ the chronicler adds, ‘the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.’

In the story of Samson we hear for the first and the last time in the book of Judges of ‘the men of Judah.’ It is the first time that they appear in history. Judah produced no Judges, for Othniel was a Kenizzite, and throughout the epoch of the Judges its history is a blank. Nothing can show more clearly how modern a tribe it was as compared with the other tribes of Israel, and how insignificant was the power which it possessed. The original Judah had its home at Beth-lehem, shut in between the Jebusite Jerusalem and the Edomite Hebron, and it was not until it had absorbed and coalesced with the other occupants of its future territory that 329the Judah of history was born. It is possible that the union was brought about, or at all events completed, by the Philistine wars; at any rate we find no traces of it at an earlier date. Even Lachish had been an Ephraimitic conquest, and in the time of Deborah it must still have been reckoned among the cities of Ephraim.^[367]

Ephraim was yet to have a judge, the last of the race. Though the title must be denied to Samson, it must be given to Samuel the seer. In Samuel the judges and the prophets of Israel met together, and the spirit of Yahveh which had marked out the judge now passed over into the prophet.

But the history of Samuel is not contained in the book of Judges. We have to look for it in a new book which records the foundation of the Israelitish kingdom. The books of Samuel take their name from that of the prophet which appears on their first page. They begin, however, with the conjunction ‘And,’ and thus presuppose an earlier volume. They are, in fact, merely the continuation of the book of Judges. Whether or not the same compiler has worked at the two books we cannot tell; that is a question which must be left to the philological critics who have long since settled his character and date, and determined exactly the limits of his work.

There is one fact, however, connected with the compilation of the book of Judges which the historian cannot but notice. The narratives embodied in it differ from one another in tone and character. The religious point of view of the stories of Jephthah or Micah is wholly different from that of the stories of Barak or Jerubbaal. Between the account of the overthrow of the Canaanites on the Kishon and the stories narrated of Samson, there is the contrast between written history and 330folklore. Each narrative preserves its own individuality, its own point of view, its own reflection of the age and locality to which it belongs.

Here and there, indeed, the pen of the historian who has collected and combined these fragments of the past history of Israel can be clearly traced. The speeches sometimes remind us of those in Thucydides, and exhibit the colouring of a later age. The framework of the narrative, moreover, is the writer’s own; in fact, he shows himself to be more than a compiler; he is a historian as well. But with all this, the narratives he has collected differ as much in character and tone as they do in the events they record.

What more convincing proof can we have of the faithfulness with which he has reproduced his materials? In most cases they have not even passed through the assimilating medium of his own mind; instead of using his privilege as a historian he has given them to us unchanged and unmodified. And yet in many cases they must have shocked both his religious and his patriotic sense. Whatever else he may have been, the author of the book of Judges possessed a historical restraint and honesty which is rare even among the modern writers of Europe. He has given us the older records of his country just as he found them.

They were for the most part written records. The scribes of Zebulon are alluded to in the Song of Deborah, and the notices of the ‘lesser’ Judges have the same annalistic character as the notices of the early kings of Egypt in the fragments of Marretho. The Canaanites of Shechem, from whom Abimelech was sprung, had been acquainted with the art of writing from untold centuries, and the Canaanitish cities which were laid under tribute by Manasseh and the neighbouring tribes contained archive-chambers and libraries where the older literature of the country was stored. It is only in the future territory of Judah that we hear of a Kirjath-Sepher, ‘a town of books,’ being destroyed, and it is just this part of the country whose history in the age of the Judges is a blank. Between Othniel 331the destroyer of Kirjath-Sepher and David the conqueror and embellisher of Jerusalem, the name of no single Judge or hero has been preserved. Samson belonged to the feeble relics of the tribe of Dan, and the story of his deeds is the one narrative in the book of Judges which betrays an origin in folklore instead of written history.

CHAPTER VI THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MONARCHY

Influence of Shiloh—Samuel and the Philistines—Duplicate Narratives in the Books of Samuel—Prophet and Seer—Dervish Monasteries—Capture of the Ark and Destruction of Shiloh—Saul made King—Quarrels with Samuel—Delivers Israel from the Philistines—Attacks the Amalekites—David—Two Accounts of his Rise to Power—Jealousy of Saul—David’s Flight—Massacre of the Priests at Nob—Wanderings of David—He sells his Services to the King of Gath—Duties of a Mercenary—Battle of Gilboa and David’s Position—He is made King of Judah—War with Esh-Baal—Intrigues with Abner—Murder of Esh-Baal—David revolts from the Philistines and becomes King of Israel—Capture of Jerusalem, which is made the Capital—Results of this—Conquest of the Philistines, of Moab, Ammon, Zobah, and Edom—The Israelitish Empire—Murder of Uriah and Birth of Solomon—Influence of Nathan—Polygamy and its Effects in the Family of David—Revolt of Absalom—Of Sheba—Folly and Ingratitude of David—Saul’s Descendants sacrificed because of a Drought—The Plague and the Purchase of the Site of the Temple—David’s Officers and last Instructions—His Character—Chronology—Solomon puts Joab and Others to Death—His Religious Policy—Queen of Sheba—Trade and Buildings—Hiram of Tyre—Palace and Temple Built—Tadmor—Zoological and Botanical Gardens—Discontent in Israel—Impoverishment of the Country—Jeroboam—Tastes and Character of Solomon.

When Samuel was born, the Hebrew settlement in Palestine had long been a matter of the past. Little by little Canaan had passed into the possession of the Israelitish tribes. The older population had at first been massacred, then laid under tribute and amalgamated with the newcomers. The tribes themselves had changed much. Some had disappeared, others had grown at their expense. Ephraim, which from the first days of the conquest had been the most powerful among them, was now in a state of decadence, and a new force was rising in the south in the shape of the mixed tribe of Judah. A few of the Canaanite cities in the interior still remained independent, like Gezer and Jerusalem, as well as all those on the Phœnician coast.

The tribes had suffered from want of cohesion. The attempt to found a monarchy in Manasseh had failed; it was too local and limited, and served only to arouse the jealousy of the tribes which lay outside it. It had done little more than bring to light the dissensions and differences that existed within Israel itself. The bond that connected the tribes had become continually looser, and the ‘House of Joseph’ was divided into hostile factions. Benjamin had been decimated by its brother Israelites under the leadership of Ephraim, and Ephraim had undergone the same treatment at the hands of 333its brethren from Gilead. The conquest of Canaan had brought with it the old Canaanitish spirit of disunion and discord; the spectacle which the Tel el-Amarna letters present to us of city arrayed against city is reproduced in the Israel of the period of the Judges. The common brotherhood, which was still felt in the age of Deborah, tended to be forgotten. The tribes no longer come to one another’s aid; they fight with one another instead. The authority of the Judges become more and more circumscribed, their jurisdiction more and more confined. The tribes on the east of the Jordan begin to lead a separate life, and hardly acknowledge that the tribes to the west are kinsmen at all. The incorporation of the Canaanite element had weakened the recollection of a common descent, and at the same time had introduced into Israel a spirit of selfish isolation. The causes which had brought about the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites were now working among its conquerors, and it seemed as if the fate of the Canaanites was to be the fate of the Israelites also.

The sanctuary at Shiloh still existed, but it had lost much of its influence. It had become little more than the local sanctuary of Ephraim,^[368] and as the power of Ephraim waned the influence of Shiloh declined as well. Elsewhere rival sanctuaries and rival forms of worship had arisen. The high-places, whereon the Canaanites had adored Baalim and Ashtaroth, still continued sacred, and though officially the Baal of Israel was Yahveh, the mass of the people worshipped the local Baal of the place in which they lived. Yahveh was scarcely remembered, even in name: His place was taken by the Baalim and Ashtaroth of Canaan. Manasseh went ‘a whoring’ after the golden image erected by Jerubbaal in Ophrah, or after the Canaanitish Baal-berith in Shechem; a rival priesthood to that of Shiloh served before the idols of Micah at Dan; and Jephthah sacrificed his daughter in accordance with Canaanitish beliefs. The Law of Moses was forgotten; each man did that which was right in his own eyes.

334Modern criticism has asked how it is possible that all this could have been the case if a written Law actually existed. But the question forgets to take account of the circumstances of the time. A knowledge of reading and writing was confined to a particular class, that of the scribes; Israel was divided; intercommunication was difficult, and a Law which presupposed a camp of nomads continually under the eye of their legislator, was not adapted to the changed conditions in which the Israelites found themselves. Moreover, it must be remembered that the Israelites were for the most part a peasantry living in scattered villages; the inhabitants of the towns were Canaanites either by race or marriage. The one were too ignorant, the others too alien, to be affected by the Mosaic Code.

Nevertheless, the Code was preserved at Shiloh. Here there was an Aaronic priesthood, and the few notices that we possess of the worship carried on there show that it was in accordance with the Mosaic Law. Outside Shiloh, among those who still remained true to the faith of their fathers, the Law was remembered and presumably observed. Of this the Song of Deborah is a witness. The God of Israel, in whose name Barak and Deborah went forth against the heathen, is the Yahveh of the Pentateuch, not the Baal of Canaan. The history of Israel in the age of the Judges is, religiously as well as politically, the history of degeneracy, not of development.

In fact, religion and politics cannot be separated one from the other in the history of the ancient East, least of all in the history of the Hebrews. The one presupposes the other, and the political decay of the nation is a sure sign of its religious retrogression. The same causes which broke up its political unity broke up its religious unity as well. The knowledge and worship of Yahveh lingered in Ephraim, because in Ephraim alone the old ideal and spirit of Israel continued to survive. Ephraim was, as it were, the heart and core of Israel; it had led the attack upon Palestine, and its blood was purer than that of the other tribes. It remained more genuinely Israelite, with less admixture of foreign blood.

335After Joshua and Othniel the history of most of the Judges is connected with that of Ephraim. Ehud is a Benjamite—the Ephraimitic ‘Southerner’; Shamgar is referred to in the Song of Deborah;^[369] Deborah herself dwelt near ‘Beth-el in Mount Ephraim’; between Ephraim and Jerubbaal, who reigned on the Ephraimitic frontier, there was smothered hostility, which burst into open war in the case of Jephthah; Tola was buried in ‘Shamir in Mount Ephraim’; Abdon was an Ephraimite; while Ibzan and Elon came from adjoining tribes. Jair the Manassite, and Samson from ‘the camp of Dan,’ are the sole exceptions to the rule. What else can this mean except that such annals as survived the stormy age of the Judges were preserved amid the fastnesses of Mount Ephraim? The scribes of early Israel were not confined to Zebulon, and as in Babylonia or Egypt, so also in Palestine, the temple was the seat of the library. In the sanctuary at Shiloh the written records of the country would have found a safe harbourage along with the tables of the Law and the other monuments of the Mosaic age.^[370]

The lifetime of Samuel separated the age of the Judges from that of the Kings. It marked the transition from a period of anarchy and disunion to one of order and organised unity under a single head. But never had the fortunes of Israel seemed so desperate. Disunited, with its former leader, Ephraim, disabled and half-exterminated through civil war, it had become the prey of a foreign enemy. The Philistines 336were no longer content with raiding expeditions. They now occupied the districts they overran, and built forts to secure the passes that led into the very heart of the Israelitish territory.^[371] Their supremacy extended from one end of Palestine to another, and so gave a name to the country which it never afterwards lost. The tribes were reduced to a condition of serfdom; they ceased to be free men who could go forth with arms in their hands to fight their foes; and were compelled, as in the subsequent days of Chaldæan domination, to confine themselves to tilling the soil. The wandering smiths, the Kenite gypsies, were driven from the land; the Israelite was deprived of all warlike weapons, and was forced to go to the nearest Philistine post if he wished merely to sharpen his implements of agriculture. The sons of Jacob had almost ceased to be a nation.

It was while Samuel was still young that the chief Philistine victories were gained, and as he grew older the Philistine yoke became heavier and more severe. In the general wreck, his was the one prominent figure in Israel. To him the people looked for counsel and help, and saw in him a prophet of Yahveh. But Samuel was a man of peace, not of war. He could not lead his people to battle, or check the rising tide of Philistine success. Other men were wanted for the work, and these were not forthcoming. Perhaps a time came when Samuel himself was unwilling they should be found, and that the authority he had possessed should pass to another. Such, at least, is the impression we derive from his opposition to the demand of the people that they should have a king.

Samuel possessed, moreover, something more than personal influence. He was the last representative of the ancient sanctuary at Shiloh. He had been dedicated to it even before he was born; he had grown up in it among the last descendants of the earlier high-priests; he had seen the ark taken from it to fall into the hands of the Philistines; he had also witnessed, probably, the destruction of the temple itself. 337All the older traditions of Mosaic worship gathered about him; he was the living link in the chain which bound the religious past of Israel with its present. In his person the doctrines and practices which had been preserved at Shiloh were handed on to the newer age of the kings.

The Hebrew historian who put together the books of Samuel was no longer embarrassed, like the compiler of the book of Judges, by a want of materials. His embarrassment arose from a contrary cause. The documents before him relating to the history of the seer, to the rise of the monarchy and the adventures of David, were numerous, and the same event was sometimes recorded in different forms. He was called upon to harmonise and combine them together, and he doubtless experienced the same difficulty in doing so that the Assyriologists at present experience in reconciling the various accounts they have of the history of Babylonia in the thirteenth century B.C. That the latter can be reconciled, if only we knew a little more, we cannot doubt; but for the present the chronological inconsistencies seem irreconcilable. All that can be done is to set them side by side.

The compiler of the books of Samuel treated his materials in the same way. The result is that the picture of the Hebrew prophet which is presented to us is not always uniform in its colours. Sometimes he is a priest, sometimes the judge of all Israel, sometimes a mere local seer whose very name appears to be unknown to Saul.^[372] Throughout the greater part of the narrative the Philistines are represented as the irresistible masters of the country; once, however, we hear that the cities they had captured were restored to Israel.^[373] 338But it does not follow that because the colours of the picture are not uniform, a fuller knowledge of the history would not show that they are in harmony with one another. European critics are apt to forget that in the East, and more especially in the ancient East, conditions of life and society which are incompatible in Europe may exist side by side. John, the hermit of Lykopolis in Upper Egypt, was nevertheless on more than one occasion the arbiter of the destinies of the Roman Empire. And in the border warfare of Canaan cities passed backwards and forwards from one side to the other with a rapidity which it is difficult for the modern historian to realise.

Whether Samuel was a Levite or an Ephraimite by descent has been disputed. His father came from the village of Ramathaim-zophim in Mount Ephraim, and was descended from a certain Zuph, who is called ‘an Ephrathite.’^[374] ‘Ephrathite’ signifies ‘a man of Ephraim’ (as in 1 Kings xi. 26). But it also signifies a native of Ephratah or Bethlehem in Judah (Ruth i. 2, 1 Sam. xvii. 12), and could therefore signify any other place of the same name. That there were other places of the name, the very name of Ephraim, ‘the two Ephras,’ is a witness,^[375] and we might therefore see in the ‘Ephrathite’ merely a native of one of them. The Chronicler (1 Chron. vi. 26, 27, 33-38) definitely makes Samuel a Levite, and traces his genealogy back to Kohath. It is true that in the age of Samuel the priests, in spite of the Mosaic law, were not always of the family of 339Levi—the fact that David’s sons were ‘priests’ is a sufficient proof of this,^[376]—but it seems hard to believe that such an infringement of the Levitical tradition would have been permitted at Shiloh. Nor is it likely that the genealogy given by the Chronicler was an invention. Samuel had been in a special manner the gift of Yahveh. His mother Hannah had borne no children to her husband Elkanah, and was accordingly exposed to the taunts of a second and more fortunate wife. Once each year did the whole family ‘go up’ to Shiloh, ‘to worship and to sacrifice unto the Lord of Hosts.’ On one of these occasions Hannah besought Yahveh with tears that He would grant her a son, promising to dedicate him to the service of the sanctuary should he be born. A Babylonian tablet, dated in the fifth year of Kambyses, records a similar dedication by a Babylonian mother of her three sons to the service of the sun-god at Sippara.^[377] In this case, however, the sons did not leave their mother’s house until they were grown up, when they entered the temple, where part of their duty was to attend the daily service.

Hannah’s prayer was granted, and a son was born. The name which he received has no relation to the circumstances of his birth, in spite of the etymology suggested for it in 1 Sam. i. 20, so long as we look only to its Hebrew spelling. But if this spelling has been derived from a cuneiform original all becomes clear. Samû-il in Assyrian would mean ‘God hears,’ and there would thus be a fitting connection between the name and the story of the prophet’s birth. The fact is noteworthy, as it suggests that the history of Samuel was first written in the cuneiform characters of Babylonia; and that the cuneiform syllabary was used in Israel up to the time of the fall of Shiloh.^[378]

340As soon as the child was weaned he was brought to the sanctuary along with other gifts. These consisted of meal and wine, and three bullocks, one of which was slain at the time of the dedication. ‘The priest’ who presided over the services of the temple was old and infirm, and the management of the sanctuary was really in the hands of his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas. His own name was Eli. But he comes before us without introduction; we know nothing of his parentage and descent, and even the Chronicler found no record of his genealogy. That he was a lineal descendant of Aaron, however, admits of no doubt. This, indeed, is plainly stated not only in the prediction of the destruction that should overtake Eli’s house (1 Sam. iii. 14), but also in the opening words of the prophecy of ‘the man of God’ (1 Sam. ii. 27, 28).^[379] The very name of Phinehas, given to Eli’s son, connects him with the line of Aaron and the long bondage of the Israelites in Egypt. Phinehas is not Hebrew, but the Egyptian Pi-Nehasi ‘the Negro,’ and could have no sense or meaning in the Israel of the age of Samuel except as an old family name.

Samuel was clad in the linen ephod, the sacred vestment and symbol of the priest, and ‘ministered unto Yahveh before Eli.’ One night, before ‘the lamp of God’ had gone out which burned before the ark of the covenant,^[380] ‘the word of the Lord’ came to the boy in his sleep. Three times did it call to him, and then came the revelation of the punishment which Yahveh was about to bring on the house of the high priest.^[381] His sons had been unfaithful to their office; not only 341had they lain ‘with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation,’ they had made men abhor the offering of the Lord, and the weak old man had restrained them not. The law had ordained that the fat of the sacrifice belonged to Yahveh, and that before it was burned upon the altar neither priest nor offerer could receive anything of the victim. Unless the law was complied with, the sacrifice was useless; Yahveh had been robbed of His portion, and no blessing could follow upon the offering. But the sons of Eli persistently set at naught the strict injunctions of the law. Before the fat was burned, their servant came and struck his three-pronged fork into the flesh that had been placed in the caldron, demanding that it should be given to him raw. God’s priests thus mutilated the sacrifices that were made to Him, and compelled His worshippers to defraud Him of His due. The Israelites began to shrink from bringing their yearly offerings to Shiloh, and the downward course of the religion of Israel was hastened by the cynical greed of its priests.^[382]

Eli had already been warned by ‘a man of God’ of the coming vengeance of Yahveh. The prophet destined to play so important a part in the history of Israel now appears almost for the first time upon the scene. Deborah, indeed, had been a prophetess, and a prophet had denounced the idolatry of his countrymen during the period of Midianitish oppression; but the spirit of Yahveh, which, in later days, revealed itself in the 342form of prophecy, had hitherto rather inspired those upon whom it had fallen to become leaders in war and ‘judges’ of their people. Now it assumed a new shape. Out of the misery and confusion produced by the Philistine raids sprang the first great outburst of Hebrew prophecy. Those who still believed Israel was the chosen people of Yahveh, and that He alone was God over all the earth, were profoundly stirred by the triumph of the uncircumcised. There was an outbreak of that religious enthusiasm, degenerating at times into fanaticism, which has occurred again and again in the East. The ‘seer’ took the place of the ‘judge.’ The waking visions which he beheld revealed the future, and declared to him and the people the will of Yahveh. The arms of flesh had failed; all that was left was the ‘open vision,’ where the events of the future were pictured beforehand, and men learned how to escape disaster.

Around the seer there gathered bands of disciples, closely resembling the dervishes of to-day. They, too, received a part of the prophetic spirit, and at times, under the influence of strong emotions, passed, as it were, out of the body into an ecstatic state. Like the modern dervishes, however, they were completely under the control of the seer. At a word from him their ecstasy would cease, and they would once more become ordinary citizens of the world. But the spirit that moved in them was easily communicated to religious or excitable natures. The messengers sent by Saul to arrest David at Ramah were themselves arrested by the spirit of prophecy which permeated the home of Samuel, and when Saul himself followed in his wrath, he, too, was suddenly overcome by the same divine influence. ‘The spirit of God was upon him also; and he went on and prophesied, until he came to Naioth (the convent) in Ramah. And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that night.’

But this ecstatic excitement was not of the essence of Hebrew prophecy, and the latter soon divested itself of it. 343The dervish element, indeed, remained almost to the last; Elijah is a proof of it, and even Hosea and Isaiah still recur at times to symbolic action. But it became subordinate and purely symbolical, while the seer himself became a prophet. The conception that gathered round him was no longer that of a seer of visions, a revealer of the future, but of an interpreter of the will of God to man. Prediction there might be in his prophecies; but it was accidental only, and dependent on conditions which were clearly expressed. If the people repented of their sins, God’s anger would be turned away from them; if, on the contrary, they persisted in their evil ways, disaster and destruction would fall upon them. The message of Yahveh was conditional; it did not contain the revelation of an inevitable future.

In this respect the Hebrew prophet was unique. His name nâbî is found in Babylonian, where it takes the form of nabium or nabu, ‘the speaker.’ It was the name of the prophet-god of Babylon, Nebo, the interpreter of the will of Bel-Merodach, the supreme deity of the city. Nebo declared to mankind the wishes and commands of Merodach; he was, too, the patron of literature, the inventor, it may be, of writing itself. The name of the mountain whereon Moses died is a testimony that the worship of Nebo had been carried to the West in the old days of Babylonian dominion in Canaan, and we need not wonder that the word nâbî, with all that it implied, had been carried to the West at the same time. But it was not until after the age of Samuel that it made its way successfully into the Hebrew language. Samuel was still the roeh or ‘Seer,’^[383] though the Babylonian word in the form of a verb (hithnabbê) was already applied to his ecstatic companions who prophesied around him.^[384] But the word answered to a 344need. As the Hebrew prophet ceased more and more to be a seer, it became necessary to find some new title for him which should express more accurately his true nature, and the word nâbî was already at hand. The ‘seer,’ accordingly, fell into the background; the ‘prophet’ occupied his place.

We can trace the beginning of this great religious movement in the age of Samuel. Samuel has often been called ‘the founder of the prophetic schools,’ and, to a certain extent, this is true. But they were not schools in the sense of establishments where his contemporaries could be educated in the older literature of their country, and be trained to take upon them the prophetic office. Schools of this kind were to come later in the history of Israel. They did not even resemble the early Christian monasteries of Egypt, where bodies of monks lived together under a head, sometimes in a single building, sometimes in a collection of separate cells. The earlier disciples of Samuel were wandering bands of enthusiasts, over whose religious ecstasies he exercised an exciting and a controlling influence. They were men, to use a Biblical expression, who were ‘drunk with the spirit’ of God.^[385]

The loss of the ark and the destruction of Shiloh must have quickened the movement which the Philistine troubles 345had begun. And it should be remembered that the ‘prophets’ among whom Saul was numbered were not all of them of the Dervish type. Among them must have been men like Samuel himself, the true predecessors of the prophets of later Hebrew history. In the generation which followed, we find men like Gad and Nathan, who have ceased to be seers and have become the preachers of Israel, the conscience-keepers of the king himself, and the chroniclers of his reign.^[386] The literary traditions of Shiloh passed to them through the hands of Samuel.

The prophetic movement did something more than keep alive a belief in Yahveh as the God of Israel. It preserved at the same time the feeling of national unity. The ‘prophets’ who surrounded Samuel were drawn from all classes and from all parts of the Israelitish territory. That Samuel was ‘established to be a prophet of Yahveh’ was, we are told, known to ‘all Israel,’ ‘from Dan to Beer-sheba.’ That the statement is not too general is shown by the history of Saul. All Israel demanded a king, and it was over all the Israelitish tribes that he ruled. As he owed his power to Samuel, it is clear that the influence of Samuel also must have extended from one extremity of the Israelitish tribes to another. Wherever the Philistine supremacy allowed it, the authority of the seer was recognised and reverenced.^[387]

But it follows from this that the veneration in which the temple at Shiloh had been held was equally widespread. Theoretically, at least, the Israelite acknowledged a central 346sanctuary, where the sons of Aaron served before Yahveh, and the prescriptions of the Mosaic law were observed. In practice, it is true, the old Canaanitish high places, with their local Baalim and Ashtaroth, had usurped the place of Shiloh; private chapels had been set up in the houses of individuals, and priests ministered in the sacred ephod before a graven image. But all this was the natural fruit of an ‘age of ignorance,’ and later generations recognised that such was the case. The purer worship of Yahveh was no ‘development’ out of an earlier polytheism; it was simply a return to an ideal, the memory of which was kept alive at Shiloh.

And yet a time came when it seemed as if Yahveh had forgotten the sanctuary wherein He had set His ‘name at the first.’ The punishment denounced upon the house of Eli was not slow in coming. Judah was already in Philistine hands, and the enemy were now attacking the Israelitish stronghold in Mount Ephraim. The Philistine camp was pitched at Aphek, not far from Ramah, the birthplace of Samuel.^[388] The last relics of the Hebrew army were encamped opposite them in a spot subsequently named Eben-ezer, ‘the Stone of Help.’ But it proved no help to them on this occasion. The Israelites were defeated with a loss of about four thousand men, and in their despair ‘the elders’ advised that the ark of the covenant should be brought to the camp. Yahveh, it was believed, enthroned Himself above it between the wings of the cherubim, like the Babylonian Bel-Merodach, who on the feast of the New Year similarly enthroned himself above the ‘mercy-seat’ in his temple at Babylon.^[389] He would therefore be actually 347among them, visibly, as it were, leading their troops to victory and blessing them with His presence. In the old days of the conquest of Canaan, the ark had been carried before the camp of Israel; the visible presence of ‘Yahveh of hosts’ had gone with it, and the foe had been scattered before Him like chaff before the wind.

The ark was accordingly fetched from its resting-place at Shiloh, and for the first time since the days of Moses and Joshua the safeguard of Israel was seen by the common eye. Despite the fears and reluctance of Eli^[390] his two sons bore it on their shoulders to the Israelitish camp. Its arrival was greeted by a shout of joy which resounded across the valley to the camp of the foe. Thereby the Philistines knew that the God of the Hebrews had come in person to help his people against their enemies as he had helped them in old days against the Egyptians. But the old days were not to come again. The ark had been carried out of its resting-place by the command of the elders, not of Yahveh. Its sanctity had been profaned, the mystery that surrounded it rudely stripped away. It was only when it stood in its appointed place in the Holy of Holies that the glory of the Lord rested upon it, and Yahveh enthroned Himself between the wings of its golden cherubim. The tabernacle and the ark were inseparable like the casket and the treasure within it; either without the other was forsaken of the Lord.

The presence of the ark in the Israelitish camp availed nothing. The Israelites fought with desperation, but without a leader they were no match for the well-armed and well-trained Philistine troops. Their army was cut to pieces; it was said that thirty thousand of them were left dead on the field. Worst of all, the two sons of Eli were among the slain; the ark of Yahveh was captured by the heathen, and the way lay open to Shiloh.

A Benjamite fled from the slaughter to carry the evil tidings to the high priest. Eli was ninety-eight^[391] years old; his eyes 348were blind, and he was sitting on a bench at the entrance to the temple, full of anxiety for the fate of the ark. The shock of the news was more than he could bear; when he heard that it had been taken by the Philistines he fell backwards, and his neck was broken. A single day had deprived Israel of its ark and of its priests.

Hardly was Eli dead when his daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was prematurely delivered of a child. He was born on an evil day, a day when the light of Israel seemed extinguished for ever. Throughout his life he bore a name which prevented the terrible circumstances of his birth from being forgotten. His mother called him I-chabod, ‘the glory is departed,’ ‘for the ark of God was taken.’^[392]

I-chabod had an elder brother, Ahitub, born in happier times.^[393] Through him the line of Shilonite priests was continued, and the high priesthood still remained in Eli’s house. It was Ahitub’s grandson, Abiathar, who, after being the faithful servant of David in his troubles, was banished and deprived of the priesthood on Solomon’s accession.^[394] But 349Ahitub must still have been young when the Philistines gained the victory which laid all Palestine at their feet.

The destruction of the temple at Shiloh must have been one of the first results of the victory. The Israelites had no longer an army, and the Philistine conquerors could march in safety through the passes of Mount Ephraim. A fort was built by them to command the pass at Michmash, and the old sanctuary of Israel was levelled to the ground. No record of its destruction, indeed, was known to the compiler of the books of Samuel; it would have been strange, if in that hour of distress and national disaster, when the storehouse of Hebrew literature was itself destroyed, a chronicler should have been found to describe the event. But the memory of it was never forgotten, and it is alluded to both by the prophet Jeremiah and by the Psalmist (Jer. vii. 12, xxvi. 6; Ps. lxxviii. 60).

Such of the priests of Shiloh as survived the catastrophe were scattered through Israel. In the time of Saul we find eighty-five of them at Nob, which is accordingly called ‘the city of the priests.’ Samuel himself fled to the home of his fathers at Ramah. There as a seer and prophet, as the representative of the fallen sanctuary of Israel, and as one of the few literary men of the age, he became the centre of all that was left of patriotism and national feeling in Israel. Gradually his influence grew. Ahitub, the grandson of Eli, was young like himself, and the destruction of Shiloh had deprived him of such authority as his service before the ark of the covenant would have conferred.

The ark itself was once more within the confines of Israel. It had been carried to Ashdod, and there placed in triumph in the temple of Dagon. But the triumph was short-lived. In the night, the image of Dagon twice fell from its pedestal and lay on its face before the ark of the mightier God. On the second occasion, it was broken in pieces by its fall; when the priests entered the sanctuary in the morning, they found the head and hands of their god rolled upon the threshold. 350‘Therefore,’ we are told, ‘neither the priests of Dagon nor any that come into Dagon’s house tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this day.’^[395]

Dagon has been supposed to have had the shape partly of a man, partly of a fish. But the supposition has arisen from a false etymology of the name, which connects it with the Hebrew dâg, ‘a fish.’ We now know from the cuneiform inscriptions that Dagon was really one of the primitive deities of Babylonia adored there in days when as yet the Semite had not become master of the land. Dagon was coupled with Anu, the god of the sky, and when the name and worship of Anu were carried to the West, the name and worship of Dagon were carried there too. Sargon ‘inscribed the laws’ of Harran ‘according to the wish of the gods Anu and Dagon,’ and a Phœnician seal in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford has upon it the name of Baal-Dagon as well as representations of an ear of corn, a winged solar disk, a gazelle, and several stars. The ear of corn symbolises the fact that among the Phœnicians Dagon, the brother of El and Beth-el, was the god of agriculture and the inventor of bread-corn and the plough.^[396] But this was because in the language of Canaan dagan signified ‘corn.’ In passing to the West the god thus assumed new attributes, and became an agricultural deity who watched over the growing crops.^[397]

The power of the God of Israel was not shown only in the 351humiliation of the Philistine god. The plague broke out in Ashdod, accompanied by its usual symptom, hæmorrhoidal swellings. The inhabitants of the city were not slow in recognising in it the wrathful hand of Yahveh, and the ark was accordingly sent to their neighbours in Gath. But here, too, the plague followed it, and Ekron, to which it was sent next, fared no better. For seven months the sacred palladium of Israel remained in the hands of its captors. Then ‘the priests and the diviners’ advised that it should be sent back to the people of Yahveh along with offerings to mitigate the anger of the offended God. Five mice and five hæmorrhoids of gold were made and placed in a coffer by the side of the ark. They represented the five Philistine cities, and the mice were symbols of the wrathful Yahveh, the God of hosts and of battle, who had wreaked his vengeance on the worshippers of the peaceful god of agriculture. The mice which devoured the corn were the natural foes of Dagon.

The ark and the coffer were placed on a cart, and two milch-kine were yoked to draw it. A doubt still lingered in the minds of the Philistines whether the God who had allowed his people to be conquered and his dwelling-place to be captured could really, after all, have been the author of the plague, and they watched, therefore, to see whether the kine took the road towards Israelitish territory or back to their own young. But all doubt vanished when the kine marched straight eastward towards Beth-shemesh, lowing as they went. The villagers were in the fields reaping when they saw the cart coming towards them, laden with its precious freight. The kine stood still at last by the side of a great stone—the stone of Abel ‘in the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite.’ Then the Levites came and took the ark and the offerings from the cart and laid them on the stone, which thus became a sanctuary and an altar. The wood of the cart was broken into firewood, and the kine were repaid for the gift they had brought by being sacrificed to the Lord.

But the plague followed the ark even upon Israelitish soil. 352The men of Beth-shemesh believed that it was because they had looked into the sacred shrine of Yahveh, to see, possibly, whether its original contents were still within it, and in their terror they begged the inhabitants of Kirjath-jearim to come and carry it away. To Kirjath-jearim accordingly it was removed and placed in the house of Abinadab, whose son Eleazar was consecrated to look after it. That it was not carried to Shiloh is a sign that the destruction of Shiloh had already taken place.

With the removal of the ark to Kirjath-jearim darkness falls on the history of Israel. There was little for the patriotic historian to record. The people were in servitude to the Philistines, the national sanctuary had been destroyed, the ark itself was hidden away in a private house. When the curtain is again lifted, it is to chronicle a local success over the Philistine foe. Samuel is at Mizpeh, ‘the watch-tower,’ which must have adjoined Ramah, if indeed it was not the name of one of its two quarters.^[398] Here was the last refuge of the few Israelites who still refused to acknowledge the Philistine rule, and the surrounding mountains afforded a home and shelter to the bands of outlaws who still carried on a guerilla warfare with the foreigner. One of the incidents of this warfare was long remembered. While Samuel was sacrificing a lamb as a burnt-offering to Yahveh, the Philistines fell upon the assembled people. But a sudden thunderstorm dismayed the assailants, who fled down the valley towards Beth-car pursued by the inhabitants of Mizpeh. It was in memory of the victory that Eben-ezer, ‘the stone of help,’ was set up by the seer between Mizpeh and Shen.^[399]

353It would seem that no further attack was made upon Mizpeh and its neighbourhood during the lifetime of Samuel. At least such appears to be the conclusion we must draw from the generalising and optimistic language of the Hebrew historian.^[400] For a time, indeed, the whole district was freed from the presence of the foreigner. The villages eastward of Ekron and Gath ceased to pay tribute to the conqueror, though their independence could not have lasted long.^[401] Samuel’s ‘circuit’ did not extend beyond Mizpeh, Gilgal and Beth-el, and his sons judged cases in Beer-sheba.

Ahitub, the high-priest, was doubtless at Nob with the rest of the Levites of Shiloh, almost within sight of Mizpeh. What had been saved out of the wreck of the temple at Shiloh must have been there with him. We know that at Nob the sword of Goliath was subsequently laid up before Yahveh, and at Nob too was probably preserved the brazen serpent that had been set up by Moses in the wilderness.^[402] According to the Chronicler,^[403] however, the tabernacle and the brazen altar which had been made by Bezaleel were at Gibeon; how this came to be the case he does not say.^[404] At any rate, if the 354brazen serpent were preserved, there is no reason why other things should not have been preserved as well. And the books of the Law would have been among the first objects to be carried with them by the fugitive priests. We are told that when the ark was brought into the temple of Solomon it still contained the tables of stone which had been placed in it by Moses (1 Kings viii. 9); if these had been removed from it when it was taken to the Israelitish camp, they too must have formed part of the temple furniture which was saved by the priests.

Here, therefore, in a small district of the tribe of Benjamin, a portion of which was inhabited by the old Gibeonite natives of the land, all that remained of Israelitish independence, whether religious or political, found its last refuge. Here the national spirit of Israel still lingered among the priests and Levites who had fled from Shiloh, or who lived in the mountains of Ephraim. It is not without significance that here, too, was the home of the Gibeonite serfs of the sanctuary;^[405] priests, Levites, and Nethinim were gathered together, as it were, in one spot. Though the temple had fallen, the Mosaic Law and ritual were enshrined in the hearts of those who had served in it.

The destruction of Shiloh had restored to Beth-el its old pre-Israelitish renown. Once more its high-place became thronged with worshippers, and those who had formerly carried their gifts and sacrifices to Yahveh at Shiloh, now brought them instead ‘to God at Beth-el.’^[406] At Beth-el, accordingly, once each year Samuel offered sacrifice and adjudged the cases that were brought before him, or predicted the future to those who consulted him as a seer. It was at a similar gathering at Mizpeh that the Israelites had been attacked by the Philistines, and that the victory of Eben-ezer had been gained.

But the results of the victory were local and momentary, 355and the condition of the Israelites had become intolerable. Samuel, moreover, was growing old; his sons Joel and Abiah were corrupt,^[407] and his own influence was that of the seer rather than that of the leader in war or the administrator in peace. The only hope for Israel lay in its finding a chieftain who could mould its shattered fragments into unity, could organise its forces, and break the Philistine yoke. A new Jerubbaal or Jephthah was required, but one who would lead to victory not a few only of the tribes, but the whole of Israel.

The people demanded a king. Their instinct was right; in no other way could the Israelitish nation be saved. Democracy had been tried, and had failed: the end of the era of the Judges was internal anarchy and decay, the destruction of the central sanctuary, and servitude to the foreigner. Naturally Samuel was reluctant to hand such powers as he still possessed to another. His sons, doubtless, were more reluctant still. Moreover, he had been brought up in the school of the past. His boyhood had been spent at Shiloh under the influence of ideas which saw in a theocracy the divinely-appointed government of Israel.^[408] At first he resisted the demand of the people. But it was in vain that he protested against their rejection of Yahveh and himself, or pointed out to them that the establishment of a kingdom meant the loss of their personal independence. The logic of events was too strong for the seer, and he was compelled to yield. The time had come when the choice lay between a king or national extinction, and a king accordingly had to be found.

Samuel yielded apparently with a good grace. In such a matter the word of the chief seer and prophet of Israel was law, and he knew that the selection was in his own hands. 356And he made it wisely and patriotically. Saul, the son of Kish, the first king of united Israel, justified his election to the crown. He saved Israel from destruction, and for a time succeeded in rolling back the wave of Philistine domination. His military capacities were unquestionable, as well as his courage and devotion to his people.^[409]

But there was another side to his character, which perhaps commended itself to Samuel quite as much as his military abilities. A vein of deep religious fervour ran through his whole nature, which at times degenerated into the gloomy despondency of the fanatic. Rightly handled, he was capable of high religious enthusiasm, and of following his religious guide with the simplicity of a child. But he could not brook opposition; and, like all men of strong emotions, his hate was as intense as his love. He was born to be the leader of his countrymen, whether as a king or as a dervish the future had to decide.

Naturally he was a Benjamite, from that little corner of Palestine which still remained true to the best traditions of Israel. At first it seemed as if he was going to be the obedient disciple of Samuel, a crowned addition to the group of dervish-like prophets who surrounded the seer. More than one 357account of his accession to the throne of Israel has been handed down, and it is not always easy to reconcile them. One thing, however, is clear: Saul did not seek election, and it came upon him as a surprise.

But the tallness of his stature had marked him out from among his companions; it was the outward token of superiority which Yahveh had set upon him. His first meeting with Samuel was accidental. He had been sent by his father^[410] to seek some asses that had strayed or been stolen, and, while vainly engaged on his quest, was advised by his slave to consult a seer who lived in the neighbouring town. The town proved to be Ramah, and the seer to be Samuel, who was that day offering a solemn sacrifice on the high place.^[411] Samuel invited him to the feast which followed the sacrifice, and assigned to him the chiefest position among his guests; then before his departure he secretly anointed his head with oil, and declared that he was chosen to be ‘captain over Yahveh’s inheritance.’ Next the seer told him where the asses were that he sought, and bid him make his way to the sacred circle of stones at Gilgal, and there remain seven days until the prophet himself should come.

Hardly had Saul quitted the presence of Samuel than he was met by ‘a company of prophets’ coming down with music and wild cries from the high-place of Gibeah.^[412] Saul had not yet recovered from the excitement of the strange and unexpected scene in which he had just been an actor, and was in no mood to resist the infection of the religious ecstasy which 358now seized upon him. He, too, like the spectators at a modern zíkr in the East, joined the band of enthusiasts, and added his voice to theirs. It was not until he reached the high-place that his outburst of religious frenzy had spent itself.

Such is one of the versions of the history of the foundation of the Israelitish monarchy. Saul is anointed secretly by Samuel, and at once enrols himself in one of the ‘prophesying’ bands of which Samuel was the spiritual director. According to another version, his election as king took place in public at a great assembly convened by Samuel at Mizpeh. Here the lot fell upon Saul, who had hidden himself ‘among the stuff,’ and Samuel thereupon presented him to the people, who shouted ‘Long live the king!’ Then the seer ‘wrote in a book’ such regulations regarding the election and duties of a. king as we find in the book of Deuteronomy (xvii. 14-20), ‘and laid it up before the Lord.’ As soon as the assembly was dismissed Saul returned ‘to his house at Gibeah.’^[413]

His election, however, was not accepted unanimously, consecrated though it had been by Yahveh. There were some who failed to see in the tall enthusiast anything more than the son of a yeoman at Gibeah. But a sufficient number of his own tribesmen were ready to gather around him as soon as he should summon them to battle. And the occasion was not long in coming. Jabesh-Gilead, the old ally of Benjamin, was beleaguered by Nahash, the Ammonite king. The city was too weak to resist, and its inhabitants, offered to surrender. But with Semitic ferocity Nahash answered that he would spare their lives only on condition that the right eye of each should be torn out. Seven days were granted them in which to determine whether they should accept his terms or fight to the death, and during the period of respite the elders of the 359city sent to Benjamin to beg for help. Saul was ploughing when the messengers arrived, and, fired with indignation, he cut his oxen into pieces, which he sent throughout Israel with the words: ‘Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen.’^[414] The summons still ran in the name of the old seer.

Men came in from all sides, and Saul found himself at the head of a small army. It is said that when he numbered his troops at Bezek, ‘the children of Israel were three hundred thousand, and the men of Judah thirty thousand.’ Such may have been the full fighting force of Israel before Saul’s reign was ended; it cannot have represented the number of those who were able to flock to his standard during the few days that still remained for the relief of Jabesh. As elsewhere in the Old Testament, the ciphers are largely exaggerated. Indeed when we consider the size of the Assyrian army, as recorded in the inscriptions, at a time when it was the most formidable engine of destruction in Western Asia, it becomes clear that the number of fighting men in the Hebrew army can never have been very great. The three hundred and thirty thousand men in Saul’s army are but an instance of that Oriental exaggeration of numbers and inability to realise what they actually mean, which is as common in the East to-day as it was in the age of Samuel.^[415]

360Jabesh was rescued, and the Ammonites were scattered in flight. The victory was a proof of Saul’s military capacity, and justified his choice as king. The news of it rang from one end of Israel to the other, and the victorious soldiers demanded the death of those who had questioned their leader’s right to reign. But Saul refused the demand; no bloodshed was to mar the glory of the day; from henceforth all true Israelites were to be united in recognising their king. Yahveh had chosen him at Mizpeh; it was now needful that he should go to the sacred enclosure of Gilgal, the first camping-ground of the Israelites in Canaan, and there be solemnly acclaimed by the assembled multitude. As Joshua the Ephraimite had started from Gilgal to conquer Canaan, so Saul the Benjamite, the new ‘captain of the Lord’s inheritance,’ set forth also from Gilgal to restore its fallen fortunes.

A year had to pass before Saul felt himself strong enough to attack the Philistine garrisons. By that time he had collected three thousand Israelites about him, all of them prepared to fight and willing to obey their leader. But they were armed only with implements of agriculture, or such other makeshifts for weapons as they could find. The Philistines had forbidden the wandering blacksmiths to enter Israelitish territory, and Saul and his son Jonathan, we are told, alone possessed sword and spear. Out of the three thousand, one thousand were with Jonathan at Gibeah; the rest were with Saul watching the road that led over the mountains from 361Michmash to Beth-el. There was a Philistine fort on the hill above Gibeah, in the very heart of Saul’s own country; another fort commanded the pass of Michmash and the approaches to Ephraim.

The Philistines seemed to have made a rising among the Israelites impossible. Their forts and garrisons commanded the roads, like the French garrisons in Algeria, and the conquered population was forbidden the use of arms. Saul, nominally the king of Israel, was in reality merely the chief of a band of outlaws, desperately holding their own in the fastnesses of the mountains, and protected by the sympathy of the priests and the peasantry. The victory over Nahash had confirmed Saul’s title to lead them among his own countrymen; it had done nothing towards releasing them from the domination of the Philistines.

Now, however, Jonathan ventured to assail the Philistine outpost at Gibeah. The attack was successful; the fortress was taken and its defenders put to the sword.^[416] It was open revolt against the Philistine supremacy, and the news of it quickly spread. Saul sent messengers throughout Israel, claiming the success for himself and the monarchy, and formed a camp at Gilgal. Meanwhile the Philistine army was on the march to suppress the revolt. The Hebrew chronicler describes it as consisting of ‘thirty thousand chariots and six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the seashore for multitude,’^[417] and it pitched its camp at Michmash, a little to the north of Gibeah. Here it cut Saul off from all 362communication with the north, and threatened his rear. He therefore left Gilgal and joined his son at Gibeah. Only six hundred men remained with him; the rest had fled at the approach of the enemy, who sent out three bands of raiders from their camp, one of which marched in a south-eastward direction towards the Dead Sea, while the other two turned, the one to the north-west, and the other to the north-east.

The mountainous district from which Saul drew his forces was panic-stricken. The peasantry fled from their devastated fields, and the whole country was given up to fire and sword. Pure-blooded Israelites and Hebrews of mixed descent were united in the common disaster. The one hid themselves in the caves and forests, even in cisterns and grain-pits, while the others took refuge in Gad and Gilead, on the eastern side of the Jordan.^[418]

It was again Jonathan who brought deliverance to Israel. Between the Israelites at Gibeah, and the Philistines at Michmash, lay a deep gorge, usually identified with the Wadi Suweinît.^[419] On either side rose a precipitous crag of rock which effectually cut off the hostile forces one from the other. Across this gorge Jonathan determined to make his way, accompanied only by his armour-bearer, and trusting in the help of Yahveh of Israel. In broad daylight the two heroes climbed the opposite cliff, in the face of the Philistines, who believed they were deserters from the Israelitish camp. But once arrived in the Philistine stronghold, they fell suddenly on its unprepared defenders and slew about twenty of them ‘within as it were half a furrow of an acre of land.’ The 363Hebrew camp followers of the Philistines thereupon turned upon their companions, and the camp of the Philistines became a scene of confusion and dismay. Jonathan had said nothing to his father of his intended exploit, but Saul soon observed that fighting was going on in the enemy’s camp.

Among the Israelitish fugitives with Saul was the high-priest Ahimelech,^[420] the great-grandson of Eli, who had joined the king with the sacred ephod. The ark, too, had been carried for safety into the Israelitish camp, and was once more accompanying the army of Israel against its foes. When, therefore, Saul had numbered his men and found that Jonathan was absent, he called for the priest and bade him inquire of Yahveh whether they should go to his help or not. But before the question could be answered the tumult on the opposite side of the valley made hesitation impossible. It was clear that the moment had come for striking a blow at the supremacy of the foreigner. The gorge accordingly was quickly traversed, and the Israelitish king with his six hundred followers threw himself on the enemy’s rear. The Philistines resisted no longer. Attacked in front by the peasants who had followed them, and in the rear by the soldiers of the king, they fled precipitately up the pass to Beth-el.^[421] The victory was complete, and the Philistine forces would have been annihilated had Saul’s religious convictions been less fervent. But when the instinct of the general overcame the zealot, and he had stayed the priest in the very act of consulting Yahveh, he salved his conscience by a vow. None should eat or drink until he had overthrown his enemies, and whoever broke the royal vow should be devoted to death.

The vow was rash and untimely, but it was registered in heaven. The Philistines were pursued as far as Aijalon. The 364Israelites were too weak from want of food to follow them further. Jonathan alone, who had not been in the Israelitish camp when the vow was made, ate a little honey which he saw dropping from a tree. His companions looked at it with longing eyes, but dared not follow his example. All the more fiercely, therefore, did they fall upon the spoil which they afterwards found in the Philistine camp. The sheep and oxen and calves were slaughtered as they stood upon the ground, ‘and the people did eat them with the blood.’ The news of this violation of one of the primary laws of Israelitish religion struck Saul with horror. He caused a great stone to be rolled towards him, and on this improvised altar the animals were slain. It was ‘the first altar,’ we are told, that Saul ‘built unto the Lord.’

But worse was yet to come. Saul proposed to pursue the Philistines in the night, and accordingly the oracle of Yahveh was again appealed to. No answer, however, was returned to the questioners. Neither priest nor ephod availed anything, and it became clear that sin had been committed in Israel. When the lots were cast, they fell upon Jonathan, who then confessed that he had, in ignorance of his father’s vow, eaten a little honey. The religious fanatic was stronger in Saul than the father, and he pronounced sentence that Jonathan must die. Jonathan, in fact, was the firstborn whose sacrifice was demanded by Yahveh as the price of the victory. Fortunately the religious convictions of the Hebrew soldiers were less intense than those of their king. It was Jonathan to whom the victory was due, and in the hour of his triumph they refused to allow him to die. Saul yielded, perhaps willingly; but the Philistines were permitted to disperse to their own homes.^[422]

365Was the sacrifice of Jonathan urged by Ahimelech and the priests? They at any rate did not interfere to prevent it, and the lots were cast under their supervision. What is certain is that from this time forward there was an increasing estrangement between Saul and the priesthood, which ended in the secret anointing of David as king of Israel, and in the massacre of the priests at Nob. We hear no more of Ahimelech and the ark in the camp of Saul.

Samuel, the aged and venerated representative of the Shilonite priesthood, had much to do with this growing estrangement. From the first he had looked upon Saul as a rival who had robbed him of his former power. Even after Saul had proved his fitness to rule by the rescue of Jabesh, and had been publicly acclaimed king by the people at Gilgal, he could not conceal his mortification and hostility. Were not he and his sons still with them? he asked the assembled Israelites; why then had they added this ‘wickedness’ unto ‘all their sins,’ to demand a king? In the thunder which rolled overhead he bade them recognise the anger of Yahveh at their thus rejecting His representative, and he ended with the threat that both they and their king should be ‘consumed.’^[423]

Samuel was not long in embodying his hostility in deeds. According to one of the authorities used by the compiler of the books of Samuel, seven days only had elapsed after Saul’s election when the seer upbraided him in the presence of his army and told him that Yahveh had chosen another king in his place.^[424] Here, however, two occurrences have been confused together—Saul’s confirmation as king by the people at Gilgal, and his subsequent encampment at the same place in the second year of his reign. By this time the breach had grown and widened between the old Judge and the new ‘Captain’ of Israel. Saul, in spite of his religious convictions and excitability, had not shown himself the obedient disciple and tool of Samuel that might have been expected; he 366proved to have a strong and violent will of his own, which he was fully ready to exercise when not under the influence of religious excitement. It was only temporarily that Saul was ‘among the prophets.’ Nor did he possess that tact and pliability which would have enabled David under the same circumstances to avoid an open quarrel with the aged seer. Saul was too earnest, too convinced that what he believed was the truth, to understand a compromise, much less a course of duplicity.

That the incident at Gilgal is historical, there can be no doubt. It is only the time of its occurrence that is misplaced. It belonged to those days of danger and difficulty when the Philistines seemed to have triumphed finally, and the hope of Israel lay in the six hundred desperate men who still followed Saul. Saul had waited vainly for the coming of Samuel, and at length, tired of waiting, had offered the burnt-offering for the safety and success of the army which Samuel had agreed to present. Hardly had it been offered when the seer appeared. Then it was that the king of Israel was told that he had been rejected by the Lord, and that another had been selected in his place. The occasion was indeed well chosen; the Israelites were already sufficiently discouraged and inclined to believe that their king had been even less successful against the Philistines than Samuel and his sons. Under the rule of Samuel, at all events, the territory of Benjamin had not been devastated, and its inhabitants compelled to hide themselves in the holes of the earth.

Samuel returned from Gilgal to ‘Gibeah of Benjamin.’ The victory at Michmash, which disappointed his predictions,^[425] changed the aspect of affairs, and Saul’s throne seemed now to be firmly established. Once more, however, Samuel made an 367effort to shake it, and it was again at Gilgal that the event took place. Saul’s power rested on his soldiery, and the surest way, therefore, of striking at it was through the soldiery in the camp of Gilgal.

It was after an expedition against the Amalekites. The Israelites had marched towards El-Arîsh and smitten the Bedâwin of the desert ‘from Havilah’ in Northern Arabia to the great Wall of Egypt.^[426] They had brought back with them a vast amount of spoil, as well as Agag, the Bedâwin chief, ‘everything that was vile and refuse,’ including the mass of the people, having been ‘destroyed utterly.’ But this was not enough. The Amalekites were to be treated as the Canaanites had been by Joshua; they and all that belonged to them had been laid under the ban and condemned to extermination.^[427] Samuel, therefore, went in haste to the Israelitish camp, and there charged Saul with disobedience to the commands of Yahveh. Saul’s plea that the cattle and herds had been saved by ‘the people’ in order that they might be sacrificed to the Lord, was not accepted, and the fierce old seer himself ‘hewed Agag in pieces before Yahveh.’ At the same time, he told the Israelitish king that the kingdom had been rent from him and given to a neighbour that was better than he. It was the last time that the king and the seer met. Samuel went back to his home at Ramah and Saul returned to Gibeah. Between Saul and the priesthood there was open war.

The attack upon the Amalekites implies that the Philistines had for a time ceased to be formidable. The extract from the state chronicles given in 1 Sam. xiv. 47-52 makes it follow the 368other wars of Saul. Among these wars we hear of one against Moab, of another against Edom (or rather Geshur), and of a third against ‘the kings of Zobah.’^[428] The Aramæans of Zobah, called Tsubitê in the Assyrian texts, and placed northward of the Haurân, were beginning to be powerful, and as we learn from the history of David, were about to establish a kingdom under Hadadezer which extended to the Euphrates and included Damascus. But at present they were still governed by more than one chief.^[429]

The campaign against Zobah makes it clear that Saul’s authority was acknowledged in Gilead as well as on the western side of the Jordan. It is not surprising, therefore, that after his death his son should have resided there, well out of the reach of the Philistines, or that Eshbaal’s kingdom should have comprised all the northern tribes. Little by little, in spite of the opposition of Samuel, Saul worked his way to general acknowledgment and power. The Israelites, for the first time, were welded into a homogeneous state, and their enemies were kept at bay. The organisation of the kingdom went hand in hand with the military successes of its king. Israel at last was not only feared abroad, but at peace and unity within.

With all this, Saul preserved the old simplicity of his life and manners. He never yielded to the usual temptations of the 369Oriental despot; he had no harîm like David or Solomon, no palaces, no gardens, no trains of cooks and idle servants.^[430] The people were not taxed to supply him with luxuries, nor dragged from their homes for his buildings and wars. In some of these royal pleasures doubtless he could not indulge: the conditions under which he reigned prevented it. But it was only by his own free choice that he remained faithful to one wife—Ahinoam, the daughter of Ahimaaz,—and that he held court at Gibeah under the shade of a tamarisk instead of a palace, with a spear in his hand in place of a sceptre.^[431]

Saul was a born soldier, and he had a soldier’s eye for detecting those who could best serve him in war. He added to his bodyguard all who were distinguished by strength or courage, and the border warfare with the Philistines kept them in constant employment. Among the young recruits was David, the youngest of the eight sons of Jesse, a Jew of Beth-lehem. Two different accounts have been preserved of the way in which David was first introduced to the king. It is difficult to reconcile them; the compiler of the books of Samuel was content to set them side by side without attempting to do so, while the Septuagint translators have cut the Gordian knot by omitting large portions of one of them. The difficulty is increased by the fact that the second account makes David the conqueror of Goliath of Gath, who elsewhere (2 Sam. xxi. 19) is said to have been slain during David’s reign by El-hanan the Beth-lehemite.^[432]

According to this second story, the Philistines had invaded Judah and pitched their camp on a mountain-slope between Socoh and Azekah. Saul was encamped on the hill opposite, and between the two armies was the valley of Elah at the 370bottom of which was the dry bed of a mountain stream. The three elder brothers of David were in the Hebrew army, David himself having been left at home to look after his father’s sheep. From time to time, however, he was sent with loaves of home-made bread to his brothers and a present of milk-cheeses to ‘the captain of their thousand.’ On one of these occasions a Philistine giant, Goliath by name, came forth from the camp of the enemy to challenge the Israelites to single combat. He had done so day by day, but none of Saul’s followers had ventured to accept the challenge. For Goliath of Gath was a descendant of the ancient Anakim, and of gigantic stature. His height, it was said, was six cubits and a span, or nearly ten feet,^[433] and the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, while its head weighed six hundred shekels of iron. Like the Greeks, he wore not only a bronze helmet and coat of mail, but also greaves on his legs; a bronze shield was hung between his shoulders and a broad-sword at his side.

David offered to accept the challenge of the uncircumcised giant, and in spite of his brothers’ ridicule his words were repeated to Saul. As a shepherd he had already proved his strength and daring by slaying both a lion and a bear; he was now ready to face the Philistine and redeem the honour of Israel. At first the Israelitish king insisted that he should be armed, and he was accordingly equipped in the usual Hebrew fashion with helmet, cuirass, and sword. But the young shepherd felt restricted and awkward in these unaccustomed accoutrements; nor did he know how to manage the sword. He therefore stripped them from him, and boldly approached the Philistine champion with his shepherd’s sling and five ‘smooth stones.’ These he knew how to wield, and with such effect that one of the stones penetrated the forehead of the Philistine, who fell dead to the ground. Then his conqueror dissevered his head with his own sword, while the 371Israelites shouted and pursued the panic-stricken enemy to the gates of Ekron.^[434] Saul had inquired in vain through Abner, the commander-in-chief of the army, whose son the young champion of Israel was; and it was not until David had presented himself before the king, with the head of the Philistine in his hand, that he learned from his own lips that he was the son of his ‘servant Jesse the Beth-lehemite.’

David’s fortune was made; Saul at once incorporated him in his bodyguard, and a warm friendship began between him and Jonathan, a friendship that ceased only with Jonathan’s death. David was fresh and handsome, with a charm of manner and a ready tact which won the hearts of those he was with. It was not long, therefore, before he became first the favourite, then the general, and eventually the son-in-law of the Israelitish king.

The other account of David’s introduction to Saul brings Samuel once more upon the stage. The ‘neighbour’ better than Saul proves to be David, whom Samuel is accordingly sent to Beth-lehem to anoint secretly. He goes there under the pretence of wishing to offer a sacrifice, to which he invites Jesse and his sons. The elders of the city receive him with fear and trembling, and ask if he has come in peace. He is known to be the enemy of the king, and his arrival in a city of Judah bodes nothing good. The sons of Jesse are passed in review before him; none of them, however, is approved, and the seer asks if there is still no other. Thereupon Jesse tells him that there is yet the youngest, who is in the fields tending the sheep. Samuel bids him be sent for, and in spite of his terror of Saul and the secrecy of his mission, anoints the youth ‘in the midst of his brethren.’ Then the spirit of 372Yahveh comes upon David, and an evil spirit from Yahveh takes possession of Saul. Saul still reigns, indeed, but the mystic power conferred by the consecration, which had given him the right to do so, has henceforth passed to another.

The ‘evil spirit’ shows itself in fits of moody depression, which at times become insanity. Saul’s mind, always excitable, loses its balance; he is oppressed by a settled melancholy, which is now and again broken by outbursts of ungovernable rage. His servants determine that the evil spirit can be charmed away only by music, and one of them recommends David, the Beth-lehemite shepherd, who is not only a valiant ‘man of war,’ but also a skilful player upon the harp. David is hereupon summoned to the court, where his harping cures the king, who makes him his armour-bearer.

Such are the two narratives of David’s introduction to Saul. It is plain that they exclude one another. The king’s handsome armour-bearer, who soothes his mind and banishes his melancholy by music, cannot be the shepherd-lad who brings the loaves of home-made bread to his brothers, and whose very name and parentage are unknown to Saul and Abner. And yet there are points in each narrative which seem to be historical. It is true that in a later passage the death of Goliath is ascribed to a certain El-hanan; but the passage is corrupt, and though the Chronicler must have had an equally corrupt text before him,^[435] it is possible he may be right in making the Philistine slain by El-hanan the brother of Goliath. At all events, the fact that the sword of the giant of Gath was preserved at Nob and was there handed over to David on his flight from Saul, shows that the death of Goliath must have happened while Saul was reigning and that David 373had been the hero of the deed. The priest expressly says that it was ‘the sword of Goliath the Philistine whom thou slewest in the valley of Elah.’ On the other hand, David was famous as a musician, and was even said to have invented instruments of music (Am. vi. 5), while Saul’s fits of depression were also historical; and the description given of David’s appearance (1 Sam. xvi. 12) is that of one who had seen him. Perhaps the harp-playing before the king followed David’s enrolment in Saul’s bodyguard, and was one of the means whereby he gained the heart of his royal master.

Are we to accept the anointing by Samuel as a historical incident, or are the modern critics right in asserting that the story is an invention, the object of which was to claim for the founder of the Judæan monarchy the same consecration at the hands of the great Hebrew seer as that which had been bestowed upon Saul? That David was actually anointed by a messenger of Yahveh admits of little doubt. Apart from Psalm lxxxix. 20, the date of which is questionable, and which may refer to the coronation in Hebron, it is clear from incidental notices in the historical books of the Old Testament that such consecration by a prophet or seer was felt to be a necessary prelude to the usurpation of a throne. It was thus that both Jehu and Hazael were incited to seize the crowns of Samaria and Damascus.^[436] The use of oil in religious ritual went back to the days when Babylonian culture was predominant in Western Asia, and the religious texts of Babylonia contain many references to it. That the prophet was anointed for his office, we know from the history of Elisha.

On the other hand, it is difficult to conceive that David’s 374brother would have treated him with the contempt to which he gave utterance in the valley of Elah (1 Sam. xvii. 28) had he really been a witness to his consecration as king, and David’s future friendship with Jonathan, the heir-apparent to the throne, would have been more than hypocritical. Possibly the period of the consecration has been transferred from a time when David had become the son-in-law of Saul and the friend and guest of Samuel (1 Sam. xix. 18-22) to an earlier time in David’s life to which it is inappropriate.^[437]

Abner, the cousin of Saul, remained the commander-in-chief of the Israelitish army, the Turtannu or Tartan, as the Assyrians would have called him. David, however, was made a general—‘the captain of a thousand’ was the exact title. The desultory war with the Philistines still continued, and the new general soon justified his appointment. But his successes and his popularity with the army aroused the jealousy of the king. Saul began to plot against his life and to hope that he might fall in one of the skirmishes with the enemy. Merab, Saul’s elder daughter, had been promised to him in marriage, but she was given to another, and though her younger sister Michal was offered in her place, Saul stipulated that David should bring him instead of a dowry a hundred foreskins of the Philistines. It was the Egyptian mode of counting the slain, which is still practised in Abyssinia; when Meneptah II. defeated the Libyans and their northern allies, the number of the enemy who had fallen was determined partly by the hands, partly by the foreskins cut off from the slain. The hundred foreskins demanded by Saul were doubled by David, who thereupon received Michal as his wife.

Saul had already, in one of his fits of frenzy, made an attempt on David’s life. The day before he had heard the women welcoming David as he returned from ‘the slaughter 375of the Philistine’^[438] with sounds of music and the refrain: ‘Saul hath slain his thousands and David his ten thousands.’ The king brooded over the words, until in his moments of insanity they overpowered all prudence and restraint. When he recovered they still sounded in his ears, and his feigned friendship towards his son-in-law concealed murder in his heart.

At last he openly avowed his desire to be rid of his supposed enemy; and though in his saner hours he still shrank from murdering him with his own hand, he suggested both to Jonathan and to his retainers that they should do so. David, in truth, was becoming a formidable rival. He was idolised by the army, was popular among the people, and was a member by marriage of the royal house. He was, moreover, a Jew; and the tribe of Judah was now beginning to rise into importance and to realise its own strength. Above all, Samuel and the priests were at bitter feud with Saul, and favourably disposed to David.

Jonathan betrayed his father’s secret to his unsuspecting friend, and bade him await the issue of an appeal to the better nature of Saul. The appeal was successful, and for a time Saul laid aside his suspicions and there was apparent, if not real, harmony once more between him and his son-in-law. But another success against the Philistines revived the evil passions of the king. Again the old depression and gloom came upon him, and David’s harp, instead of dissipating it, transformed it into madness. Suddenly he flung his spear at the player, who slipped aside and fled. The time for mediation and forgiveness was passed. David could no longer be safe in the presence of a madman who was bent on taking his life. Royal guards were even sent to watch David’s house, and he escaped only with the help of his wife. In the night she let him down through the window of his room, and laid on the bed in his place the image of the household 376god covered with a sheet. When the king’s guards arrived to take him she pretended that he was sick, and it was not until they had come a second time that they discovered they had been deceived. Saul reproached his daughter for abetting her husband’s escape; but it was too late, and David had made his way to the house of Samuel at Ramah. Here, however, he was not yet safe from pursuit, and he and the seer accordingly took refuge in the sacred enclosure of the Naioth or monastery. There, surrounded by the prophet-dervishes, they felt that even the king in the madness of disappointed fury would not venture to violate their sanctuary.

That Samuel also should have been compelled to shelter himself from Saul’s anger, and that David on escaping from Gibeah should at once have gone to him, makes it evident that the king at least believed in the complicity of the seer in the plot against his throne. It also raises the presumption that Saul’s belief was justified, and that Samuel had played the same part towards David that Ahijah subsequently played towards Jeroboam, and Elijah towards Jehu. That David and Samuel were acquainted with one another seems clear; indeed, Gibeah and Ramah were so close to each other that it would have been strange if the politic David had not visited the old seer. Had it been on the occasion of one of these visits that the rising rival of Saul was anointed with the consecrated oil?

David remained safe in sanctuary. The messengers sent by Saul to fetch him from it fell under the influence of the place, and joined the dervishes in their ecstatic exercises; and when Saul himself followed them, he too was infected by the religious excitement around him. One of the sources used by the compiler of the books of Samuel ascribes to this occasion the origin of the saying: ‘Is Saul also among the prophets?’^[439]

But as in the case of the introduction of David to Saul, there is again a double account of his escape. The two narratives are equally worthy of credit from a historical point of view, yet it is difficult to reconcile them together. The 377compiler has endeavoured to do so by supposing that David ‘fled’ from the monastery of Ramah to Jonathan after Saul’s return to Gibeah. But this only makes the difficulty of harmonising the two accounts the greater. If we accept them both, the only way of reconciling them is to suppose that a considerable interval of time elapsed between the events recorded in them, that in the monastery of Ramah peace was once more established between David and his father-in-law, and that David consequently returned to his accustomed place at court. In this case, the statement of the compiler that the second narrative follows immediately upon the first would be a mistaken inference.^[440]

According to the second account, David came to Jonathan and assured him that Saul was determined to take away his life. Jonathan protested that this was impossible, although he had himself previously warned his friend that such was the case,^[441] on the ground that his father concealed nothing from him. It was then agreed that Jonathan should discover Saul’s intentions and reveal them three days later to David, who should meanwhile hide himself in the fields. Jonathan was to shoot three arrows, and send a boy to gather them up. If he told the boy they were on the hither side of David’s hiding-place, it meant that all was well; if, on the contrary, he said they were beyond it, David would know that his life was in danger. The day following was the feast of the New Moon, when David ought to have dined with the king. But his place was empty; only Abner sat by the side of Saul, whose seat was, as usual, ‘by the wall.’ Saul said nothing, thinking that David was absent for ceremonial reasons; but when on the next day the place was again empty, he asked Jonathan what had become of him. Jonathan replied, as had been agreed upon, that he had given David permission to go to Beth-lehem to take part in an annual sacrifice of the family. But the answer did not deceive his father. Saul broke forth into 378reproaches, accusing Jonathan of rebellion and folly in preferring friendship to self-interest, and in saving the life of one who would use it to deprive him of the crown. Jonathan replied; and the king, mad with rage, flung his spear at his own son, who left the table and made his way to the place where David was concealed. There he gave the signal by which David knew that he must flee for his life, and while the lad was picking up the arrows the two friends embraced and parted, perhaps for the last time.

David fled to Nob. The priests of Shiloh had settled in it, and he believed therefore that he would find a shelter there. But Ahimelech was afraid of Saul; he knew that the king bore no goodwill to his son-in-law, and it was strange that David should be alone. David, however, had a ready answer to the question why ‘no man’ was with him. Saul had sent him out in haste on a secret mission, and his servants accordingly had been ordered to wait for him ahead. The haste indeed was such that he had brought with him neither food nor weapons. The priest had only the shewbread to offer, and at first hesitated about giving it to those who were not Levites. But David overcame his scruples, assuring him that his companions had ‘kept themselves from women’ for the past three days, and that the vessels they carried with them were clean. At the same time he took Goliath’s sword which had been dedicated to Yahveh, and lay behind the ephod wrapped in a cloth. Then he continued his flight, and did not rest until he found himself at the court of the old enemy of Israel, Achish the son of Maoch, king of Gath.^[442]

Recent criticism has maintained that this first visit to Achish of Gath is but a duplicate version of David’s second visit to the same prince, like the duplicate accounts of his introduction 379to Saul and flight from the Israelitish court. The two visits, however, clearly belong to different periods of time, and the different treatment experienced by the fugitive at the hands of the king of Gath was due to the wholly different circumstances under which he arrived there on the two occasions. The solitary and defenceless exile, flying for his life from his own countrymen, was a very different person from the leader of a numerous band of reckless and well-armed adventurers who came to offer their services as mercenaries in war. A more serious difficulty is the fact that Achish, the son of Maoch or Maachah, was still reigning over Gath in the third year of Solomon (1 Kings ii. 39). But the long reign of about fifty years, which this presupposes, is no impossibility; Ramses II. of Egypt, for example, was sixty-seven years on the throne.

David did not remain long in Gath. The Philistines could not forget that he had been one of their most formidable adversaries, and there must have been some among them who had blood-feuds to avenge upon him. The fugitive servant of Saul was no longer to be feared, but there were many voices crying for his life. For a while Achish was inclined to protect him in the hope of using him against his countrymen, but how long this protection would last was doubtful. David accordingly feigned himself mad, he scrabbled on the gates, and let the spittle fall on his unshorn beard. The Philistine king gave up all hope of making him his tool, and allowed him to quit the court. David thereupon made his way to the home of his boyhood, and took refuge in the limestone caves of Adullam, a few miles to the south-west of Beth-lehem.

Here at last he was safe. He was among his own tribesmen, in a district well known to him, and in a place of refuge where the outlaw could defy his pursuers. Moreover, the home of his family was not far distant, and it was not long, accordingly, before his brothers and other relatives joined him in his mountain stronghold. The band of outlaws increased rapidly, and soon amounted to four hundred men. David’s abilities as a military leader were known throughout Israel, and 380all the outlaws and adventurers of Judah flocked to his standard; among them was the prophet Gad.

David once more found himself at the head of a considerable force. The quarrel between him and the king was assuming the character of a civil war. It was Judah against Israel, the first revolt of the new power that was rising in the south against the domination of the north. But the power was still in its infancy. Against the trained veterans of the royal army, with the prestige of legal authority and resources behind them, the bandits of the Judæan mountains could hold their own only so long as they remained among the limestone fastnesses of their own land. It was like a struggle between Sicilian brigands and the regular troops; the sympathies of the peasantry were with the brigands, and as long as they acted on the defensive, their lives were safe.

But the mountains of Judah were barren, and it was needful for David and his men to descend at times into the valleys and plains below, and there levy contributions of food. These were the moments of danger. The townsmen and owners of land could not be trusted like the peasantry; they looked with no favourable eyes on the armed outlaws who seized what was not freely given to them, and were ready enough to betray them to Saul. In the towns and plains the king’s troops had the advantage; while, on the other side, it was always possible to fall in with a body of Philistines to whom every Israelite was a foe.

But while David was hidden in the cave of Adullam, Saul committed a deed which shattered his kingdom and transferred the allegiance of the priesthood to his Judæan rival. This was the massacre of the priests at Nob. In reading the story of it we seem to have before us the words of an eye-witness. Saul was seated under the tamarisk on the hill at Gibeah, with his spear in his right hand, and his officers standing around him. Suddenly he broke out into reproaches against them and against his son. ‘Hear now, ye Benjamites; will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards, and make 381you all captains of thousands and captains of hundreds; that all of you have conspired against me, and there is none that sheweth me that my son hath made a league with the son of Jesse, and there is none of you that is sorry for me, or sheweth unto me that my son hath stirred up my servant against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?’ Then the heathen foreigner, ‘Doeg the Edomite which was set over the servants of Saul,’ answered and said that he had seen David come to Ahimelech the priest at Nob, and that there the priest had consulted Yahveh for him, had given him food and Goliath’s sword. At once the infuriated king sent for Ahimelech and his brother priests, and demanded of him why he had conspired with the rebel. Ahimelech’s answer only increased his anger. David, said the priest, was the son-in-law of the king, and his most faithful servant; how then could he have refrained from helping him on his road? Thereupon, Saul ordered the priests to be put to death, but no Israelite could be found to perpetrate such an act of sacrilegious atrocity. The Edomite, however, had no scruples; he fell with a will upon the defenceless priests, and eighty-five of them were massacred. Saul then descended upon Nob, ‘the city of the priests,’ and treated it like a city of the Amalekites, smiting it with the edge of the sword, ‘both men and women, children and sucklings, and oxen and asses and sheep.’ Only Abiathar, the son of Ahimelech, escaped, and fled to David, carrying with him the ephod and the oracles of God. The prophecy of the destruction of Eli’s house was fulfilled, but in fulfilling it Saul destroyed his own. The breach between the king and the priests was complete; he had compelled them, and all who reverenced them, to take the side of his rival.

It was now that David determined to send his father and mother to the protection of the Moabite court. His great-grandmother had been a Moabitess, and it is possible that the war between Saul and Moab, referred to in 1 Sam. xiv. 47, was continuing at this very time. In this case, the Moabite king would have given a ready welcome to the parents of his 382enemy’s enemy. They would be hostages for David himself, and David was a person whom it was desirable to attach to the Moabite cause. Not only was he the son-in-law of Saul, and an able general, but he was now at the head of a devoted body of men who were waging war on the Israelitish king. If war was actually going on at the time between Israel and Moab, alliance with David would divert and weaken the Israelitish attack. Moreover, as long as David’s parents were in his power, the king of Moab could compel the Jewish chieftain to serve and, if need be, to fight for him.

David’s followers had increased to six hundred men, and he now felt himself strong enough to occupy one of the Judæan cities, and make it a centre for his war against Saul. A pretext for doing so was soon found. Keilah was threatened by Philistine raiders, and patriotism demanded its rescue. The city is mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna letters under the name of Keltê; it was already a place of military importance, and was surrounded by walls. David’s followers, however, were reluctant to leave their retreat in the mountains and venture into a town. But the representative of the high priests of Shiloh was now with them, and the oracles of Yahveh, which he consulted through the ephod, admitted of no contradiction. Keilah was accordingly occupied by David, and its Philistine invaders repulsed. The citizens, however, showed little gratitude towards their preservers. Perhaps they thought it was merely an exchange of masters, and that Philistine pillage would not have been worse than the exactions of the outlaws. Perhaps they feared the fate of Nob for harbouring the enemy of Saul. However it might be, they sent word to Saul that David and his men were in the town. The king marched to Keilah without delay; had not God delivered David into his hand by bringing him into a city that had ‘gates and bars’? But once more the ephod was consulted, and the answer was clear. The people of Keilah were traitors, and David’s band must seek a shelter elsewhere. This time they fled to the wooded slopes above the wilderness of Ziph, on the eastern 383side of the Dead Sea. Here David and Jonathan met once more^[443] under the shadow of the forest. But the Ziphites betrayed the hiding-place of the outlaws, and offered to help the king to capture his foe. For a time the hunted fugitives evaded their pursuers; spies brought David intelligence of Saul’s movements, and the desolate wadis of Ziph and Maon, with their deep defiles and precipitous rocks, enabled him to slip out of the toils. But at last the game became desperate; the outlaws were encircled on all sides, and the difficulty of procuring food must have been great. At that moment the Philistines came to their help; a messenger arrived in haste at the royal camp, urging the king to march westward at once, for a Philistine army had invaded the land. David was saved, and he now settled himself in the caves and fastnesses of the mountains about En-gedi.

From the peaks where only the wild goats trod,^[444] David could look across the Dead Sea to the purple hills of Moab. Here, therefore, he was in touch with the Moabites, while his inaccessible position rendered him safe from attack. Below him was the comparatively fertile valley of Carmel of Judah, where large flocks of sheep fed on the scanty grass. It was the northern portion of the wilderness of Paran, and the outlaws exacted from it their supplies of food. The supplies were usually yielded with a good grace, and in return the shepherds and their flocks were protected from the Bedâwin and the wild beasts. But on one occasion the request for food met with a refusal. Nabal, a wealthy farmer at Maon, was shearing his sheep, and refused to give any of them to the messengers of David. Perhaps Saul was still in the neighbourhood, and he was thus emboldened to play the part of the churl. But he was soon taught that David was strong enough to take without asking. Four hundred of the outlaws 384marched down upon Maon, bent upon making him and his family pay with their lives for the niggardly refusal. The tact of a woman, however, saved them, and averted the anger of David. Abigail, the wife of Nabal, met the angry chieftain on the road with presents and honeyed words, and her fair looks and speeches induced him to turn back. That night Nabal was holding a shearing feast in fancied security, but when, the next day, his wife told him of his narrow escape, and of the band of outlaws that was still in the neighbourhood, his heart failed him, and ‘he became as a stone.’ The shock was too great for his strength; a few days later he died. Then Abigail, like a prudent woman, became the wife of the outlaw, and the wealth of Nabal passed into his hands. It was a welcome addition to David’s resources, and made him better able to control his men. Abigail, too, proved a devoted wife, following her husband in his wanderings, and sharing his wild life. She was not his only wife, however, though Michal had been given by her father to a Benjamite named Phaltiel. David, it would seem, had already married a certain Ahinoam of Jezreel.

It was probably before the marriage of Abigail, and while Saul was still chasing the outlaws through the wilderness of Ziph,^[445] that an incident occurred, two versions of which had reached the compiler of the books of Samuel. Saul had with him a force of three thousand men, more than sufficient gradually to close in upon David and cut off all his chances of escape. Abner, the commander-in-chief, was with him, and the king was obstinate in his determination to track his enemy to the death. According to the one version of the story, Saul was alone in a cave; according to the other, he was asleep at night in his camp among the rocky crevices of Mount Hachilah. While he slept, David, with his two companions, Ahimelech the Hittite and Abishai the brother of Joab, crept stealthily towards him, and soon reached the unconscious king. Abishai would have slain him with his spear, but David forbade his 385touching ‘the Lord’s anointed,’ and contented himself with carrying away the spear and cruse of water which stood at his head, or, according to the other version, with cutting off the skirt of the royal robe. Then, standing on the opposite side of the gorge, David reproached Abner for his careless watch over the king. Saul recognised David’s voice, and demanded if it were not he, whereupon David made an appeal to the king’s better nature, asked why he was thus driving him from his country and his God, and pointed to the trophies he had just carried off in proof of his innocence. If he were really aiming at the throne, would he have spared the king when Yahveh had delivered him into his hands? The impulsive Saul yielded for the moment to the voice and words of his former favourite, but they produced no further effect upon him. David could not venture to send back the spear by one of his own men; it had to be fetched by a servant of the king. David had given Saul a lesson in generosity, but the only result of it was that he had to return to his old hiding-place. Saul remained resolutely bent on taking his life.

Meanwhile Samuel had died, and there seemed no longer any power left in Israel to contend against the will of the king. David began to perceive that his cause was hopeless; he had become a mere chief of brigands, and against him were arrayed all the forces of order and authority in the country. It was useless to continue the struggle, and he determined, therefore, to sell the services of himself and his followers to the hereditary enemies of his people. Accordingly he passed over to Achish of Gath, and entered the service of the Philistine.

The use of mercenary soldiers was no new thing. Egypt had long since set the example, and in the age of the nineteenth dynasty the larger part of the Egyptian army already consisted of foreigners. Many of these were kinsfolk of the Philistines from the Greek seas. Such soldiers of fortune were acceptable to the kings who employed them for more reasons than one. Their lives were devoted to fighting, and 386therefore they were better trained and more amenable to discipline than the native recruits, who were levied only as occasion required. Moreover, they had everything to gain and nothing to lose from war, unlike the peasantry, whose fields might be ravaged while they themselves were away in the camp. Above all, the mercenaries were faithful to their employer so long as he supplied them with plunder or pay. They had no party feuds to avenge, no loss of liberty to chafe at, no spirit of independence to cherish. Their swords were at the disposal of the king, and of none else; the tyranny which crushed his subjects found in them a willing instrument. David never forgot the lesson which his service with Achish had taught him. When at last he became the king of Israel, he also surrounded himself with a bodyguard of foreign mercenaries, drawn from much the same countries as those of the Pharaoh.

It was not as a bodyguard, however, that Achish needed the Jews. It was rather as an auxiliary force in future contests with their countrymen. Consequently they were allowed to settle in the country, at some distance from Gath, and Ziklag was given them as a residence. The outlaws had ceased to be brigands, and had become part of the regular army of a foreign prince.

For a year and four months the Hebrew corps dwelt at Ziklag. But they were not idle all the time. Once David led them on a raiding expedition against the Bedâwin Amalekites of the south. Men, women, and children were alike put to the sword, so that none might live to tell the tale. When the Jews returned with their booty, David professed to Achish that the raid had been directed against the Hebrews of Judah and their allies the Kenites and Jerahmeelites. The deception was successful, and the Philistine king rejoiced in the thought that the captain of his mercenaries had thus for ever rendered himself hateful to his countrymen. David had succeeded in disarming the suspicions of his hosts, in providing his retainers with the spoil they coveted, and yet at the same 387time in not alienating from himself the affections of his own people.

But a further trial was in store for the wily exile. The quarrel between Saul and his son-in-law had allowed the Philistines to assert once more their old supremacy in Israel. In David the Israelites had lost one of their chiefest generals, and the troops which should have been employed against the common foe were occupied in hunting him through the wilds of the Judæan mountains. The watchful enemy took speedy advantage of the fact. Israel was again invaded; the Philistines swept the lowlands of Judah, and prepared to march northward. Saul returned from his pursuit of David among the trackless rocks on the shore of the Dead Sea only just in time to prevent their penetrating again into the heart of Mount Ephraim. The territory of Benjamin was saved for a time, and the foreigner did not succeed in reaching the royal residence at Gibeah.

But the respite was not for long. A year and a quarter later the united forces of the Philistine cities marched northward, along the highroad on the coast of the Mediterranean, which had been trodden so often by the former conquerors of Western Asia. They passed Dor, the modern Tantûra, then occupied by their kinsfolk the Zakkal, and, turning the point of Mount Carmel, proceeded eastward through the valley of the Kishon towards the plain of Megiddo. It was the old fighting ground of Palestine; its possession gave the conqueror the command of the whole country west of the Jordan, and cut off the Israelitish king in his rear. With the enemy established at Megiddo, Benjamin and Ephraim would be effectually severed from the northern tribes.

Saul lost no time in proceeding against his foe. The Philistine camp had been pitched, first at Shunem, then at Aphek, on the southern slope of Mount Gilboa;^[446] the Israelites 388now took up their station at a fountain near Jezreel, a few miles to the north-west. But the sight of the huge Philistine army, recruited, doubtless, as it had been by the Zakkal, filled Saul with despair. His own forces were miserably insufficient to meet it; he had lost his old confidence in Yahveh and himself, and the priests and prophets had become his enemies. In vain he sought counsel of Yahveh; such priests as still remained near him refused their help, and ‘Yahveh answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.’ Abiathar and Gad were with David; the prophets who had gathered round Samuel were now the bitter foes of the Israelitish king.

In his despair he turned to the powers of witchcraft and necromancy. In younger and happier days, before the massacre at Nob, when he was still the favourite of the servants of Yahveh, still enthusiastic for the religion of Israel, Saul had driven from his dominions all those who professed to traffic with the powers of the unseen world. The wizards and fortune-tellers, the enchanters and the possessed had been expelled from the land. The fact is a proof of the influence of the Mosaic code and religion in the priestly and royal circle.^[447] Elsewhere in Western Asia the necromancers’ trade was flourishing; Babylonia, which was the home of the culture of Western Asia, was the home also of the arts of magic. Here the magician was held in high honour, and the literature of magic and omens occupied a large place in the libraries of the country. We cannot suppose that beliefs which were held by the most cultivated classes of Babylonia were not also shared by the mass of the population in Canaan and Israel. And it must be remembered that outside the Levitical law there was no suspicion or idea that those who practised magic had dealings with spirits of evil. Heathendom drew no distinction between spirits of good and spirits of evil; the gods themselves were destructive as well as beneficent. The Mosaic condemnation of witchcraft was utterly opposed to the popular 389belief, and Saul’s expulsion of those who practised it proves not only the existence of the Law, but also its recognition as the law of the state by the representatives of the religion of Yahveh. It was a reform analogous to those of Hezekiah and of Isaiah in later days; an attempt to conform to the Law of Yahveh, contrary though it was to the prejudices and the practices of the time.

But the king was now forsaken by the Law and its ministers, and as a last resource he turned to the forbidden arts. In disguise he went by night to a witch at Endor, and begged her to raise the shade of Samuel from the dead. And Samuel came in visible presence to the witch, though his voice only was heard by the king. But it was a voice that pronounced judgment. God had indeed departed from Saul and given his kingdom to another, and the doom was about to be fulfilled. Before the morrow’s sun was set, where Samuel was there should Saul and his sons be also, and the host of Israel should be delivered into the hand of the Philistines. Saul fell to the earth in a swoon; he had fasted all the previous day, and brain and body were alike worn out.

It was an ill-omened beginning for the day of battle which followed. Like the army of Israel, that of the Philistines was divided into companies of a thousand men each, which were further subdivided into companies of a hundred. Along with the native Philistines and their allies, the band of Hebrew mercenaries marched past the five generals. But hardly had they passed when a discussion arose as to their trustworthiness. Achish, indeed, declared his full confidence in the fidelity of David and his followers, but the other Philistine ‘lords’ distrusted them. The risk of employing them against their own countrymen was too great. How could they be trusted not to desert at a critical moment of the battle, and so make their peace with Saul by the sacrifice of the uncircumcised foreigner? The wishes of Achish were overruled, and David was sent back to Ziklag.

What would David have done had the result of the council 390been otherwise? It has generally been assumed that the fears of the Philistine lords were justified, and that he would have betrayed his new masters by going over to his old one. But in that case it is probable that he would have found some excuse for not leaving Ziklag and accompanying Achish on his march. That he followed the Philistine army as far as the field of battle implies that in selling his services to the king of Gath, he accepted all the recognised consequences of the act. As he had told Saul, it was not only from his country that he was driven out, but from the God of his country as well. In leaving Judah for Gath he had transferred his duties from Israel to Philistia, from Saul to Achish, from Yahveh to Dagon. It was the first step that mattered: all else was contained in it. The duties of the mercenary were well understood: he ceased to have a country of his own, and became, as it were, the property of the prince to whom his services were given. In after days, David would have had no scruple in employing his Philistine bodyguard in subjugating their kinsmen, any more than the Egyptians had in employing their Sardinian or Libyan mercenaries in their wars against Libya and the peoples of the Greek seas.

David, indeed, would not have lifted up his hand personally to attack ‘the anointed of Yahveh.’ But there was a good deal of difference between a hand-to-hand fight between himself and Saul and assisting his new masters in overthrowing the power of the northern tribes of Israel. Between the Jews and these northern tribes there was always a certain amount of smothered hostility, which broke out into actual war in the early part of David’s reign, and eventually led to the revolt of the Ten Tribes. It was not the Israelitish king, but the Israelitish kingdom which David and his followers were helping to destroy.

We need not question his sincerity, therefore, when he offered his sword to the lords of the Philistines and protested against their mistrust of himself. Nor would the fact that he had been on the side of the Philistine enemy have been 391prejudicial to his future interests, if he already cherished the hope of being the successor of Saul. It was in Judah, among his own tribesmen, and not in Northern Israel, that the foundations of his kingdom were to be laid; it was only the Jews, consequently, whose good-will it was needful for him to secure. If he already aimed at extending his power over all Israel, a defeated and broken Israel would be more easily won over to him than an Israel proud of its independence and strength, and attached to the house of a sovereign who had led them to victory.^[448] David’s loyalty to Achish, however, was never put to the test. He and his mercenaries were sent back to Ziklag, and their dismissal from the field of battle was in itself an insult which would serve as a pretext for a quarrel with the Philistines should the need or opportunity for one ever arise. But when they reached their homes, they found there only desolation and ruins. The Bedâwin Amalekites had made a raid upon the undefended town, had burned its buildings and carried away the women and the spoil. There was no longer any Saul to repress their attacks, or to exact vengeance for their incursions.

Mutiny broke out among the mercenaries. They accused David of having torn them from their families, thus leaving Ziklag to the mercy of the foe. He was the cause of the disaster, and they began to talk of stoning him to death. The priest Abiathar came, however, to his rescue, and announced through the ephod the word of Yahveh that the robbers should be overtaken and the spoil recovered. At once, therefore, the pursuit commenced. The Bedâwin tracks were followed in such haste that when the desert was reached, only four hundred out of the whole band of six hundred had strength enough to proceed. Then an Egyptian was found who had been a slave among the Amalekites, and having fallen ill on their retreat from Palestine had been left to die 392upon the road. The departure of the Philistine army had exposed the Negeb to the attack of the Bedâwin, and they had not been slow to take advantage of it.^[449] Only three days had elapsed since they had passed the spot where the slave was found, and he offered himself a willing guide to the Hebrews in their quest of his former masters. The Amalekite tents were soon reached, and the nomads were found feasting on the abundant plunder they had gained and dancing in fancied security. Suddenly at twilight the Hebrews fell upon them, and an indiscriminate slaughter took place. The massacre went on for twenty-four hours, and none of the Amalekites escaped except about four hundred young men, who succeeded in mounting their camels and flying beyond pursuit. All the spoil they had carried off fell into the hands of their conquerors, including the two wives of David himself. The flocks and herds were given to David: the rest of the plunder was divided among his followers, the two hundred men who had been left on the road being allowed, after some dispute, to share it equally with their fellows.^[450]

David, with characteristic foresight, sent portions of the spoil that had been allotted to him as a ‘present’ to ‘the elders of Judah’ in the chief towns of the tribe. The Jerahmeelites and Kenites were not forgotten, nor the Calebites of Hebron. Some of the plunder was sent as far south as Hormah and Zephath, as well as to Aroer and Ramoth of the south. Reuben and Simeon had now ceased to exist as separate tribes, Simeon having been absorbed into Judah while such cities of Reuben as still remained Israelite had been occupied by ‘the elders of Judah.’^[451]

393David’s object in sending the presents was cloaked under the pretext that they were made to those who had befriended him in the days of his wandering. But the pretext was more than transparent. His wanderings had never extended to Hormah or Aroer, or even to ‘the cities of the Jerahmeelites.’ A crown was already within measurable distance of the Jewish chieftain: his soldier’s eye had seen that the Israelitish army was no match for that of the Philistines, and the priests who were with him were assured that Yahveh had forsaken Saul, and would work no miracle in his favour. The Philistines were once more dominant in the south, and a victory at Gilboa would make that domination secure. David possessed the confidence of Achish, and as the vassal of the Philistines he could count on their support were he to make himself the king of Judah. All that was needed was the good-will of the Jewish elders, and this his victory over the Amalekites gave him the means of purchasing.

On the other hand, were the Philistines to be defeated, and the Hebrew army, contrary to all probability, to be victorious, David’s position would be in nowise affected. He would still be safe among the Philistines, out of reach of Saul, and at the head of a formidable band of mercenary troops. The pretext for sending the presents could be urged with some show of reason: they were merely a return to the friends who had aided him in the time of his necessity. Now, as ever, David could indignantly disclaim any intention of plotting against the ‘anointed of the Lord.’

While David was thus looking after his own interests, events were fighting for him in the north. The Israelites at Gilboa were utterly defeated, and all Israel lay helpless at the feet of the heathen. Saul was slain along with his three elder sons; only a minor, Esh-Baal, was left, who was carried for safety to the eastern side of the Jordan. Israel was 394without either a king or a leader; even its army was lost. For a time the mercenaries of David were the only armed force that still remained among the tribes of Israel.

Saul had fallen on his own sword. Wounded by an arrow, he had prayed his armour-bearer to slay him lest he should fall still living into the hands of his foes. But his armour-bearer refused to commit the act of sacrilege, and the king slew himself. His body, like those of his sons, was stripped and hung in derision from the walls of Beth-shan. But the inhabitants of Jabesh of Gilead could not forget that Saul had once saved them from the Ammonite, and they went by night and carried away the ghastly trophies of Philistine victory; the bodies were first burnt, then the ashes were buried under a tree at Jabesh, and a fast of seven days was held for the dead.

The Philistines do not seem to have crossed the Jordan. They contented themselves with occupying the country west of it, and garrisoning the cities from which the Israelites had fled. The monarchy had fallen, and the house of Israel appeared to have fallen with it. From Dan to Beersheba the Philistine was supreme.

Deliverance came from the south, from the latest born of the Israelitish tribes. The mixed Israelite, Edomite, and Kenite population, which had there been slowly forming into a united community, now found a common head and leader in the son of Jesse. David, too, was of mixed descent. His great-grandmother had been the Moabitess Ruth, and on his father’s side he was partly of Calebite origin.^[452] Mixed races have always shown themselves the most vigorous and the most fitted to rule, and the history of the Israelitish monarchy is no exception to the general law. A purely Israelitish dynasty had failed, as it was destined to do again after the revolt of the Ten Tribes; it needed the genius and tact of the Jewish 395David to establish the monarchy on a lasting basis and defend it against all enemies.

The news of the death of the king of Israel was brought to David by an Amalekite. He had robbed the corpse of its crown and golden bracelets which he laid at the feet of the Jewish chief. In the hope of a reward he had come in hot haste and pretended that he had dealt the final blow which delivered David from his enemy, and opened to him the way to a throne.^[453] But he met with an unexpected reception. The story of the disaster aroused in David his slumbering patriotism, his affection for Jonathan, and his old reverence for Saul. Now that he had nothing any longer to fear from the Hebrew king, and everything to gain by his death, he could allow his impulse and emotions to have free play. He turned in anger upon the messenger, demanding of him how he—a stranger and an Amalekite—had dared to lift up his hand against the anointed of Yahveh. Then he ordered his followers to cut down the luckless Bedâwi, whose blood, as he told him, was upon his own head. After their recent experience the nomad thief was likely to have but a short shrift at the hands of the mercenaries.

In this act of vengeance there was that mixture of policy and impulse which is the key to so many of David’s actions. On the one hand, David freed himself from all responsibility for the death of Saul. The blood of the king could not be 396required at his hand either in the form of a blood-feud with the family of Saul, or in that of the nemesis which waited on the shedder of blood. On the other hand, it could not be said that he had gained the crown through the murder of the legitimate king. Saul indeed had been slain, and David had reaped the advantage of his death, but he had in no way connived at it. In the eyes of God and man alike he was innocent of the deed.

David found an outlet for his feelings in a dirge which is one of the gems of early Hebrew poetry. Future generations knew it as the Song of the Bow; such was the name under which it was incorporated in the collection of early Hebrew poems called the book of Jasher, and under which David ordered that it should be learned in the schools.

David, however, was too practical to spend his time in useless laments. He had relieved his feelings in a burst of lyric poetry; it was now time to seize the opportunity which the overthrow and death of Saul had given him. The oracle of Yahveh was consulted, and the answer was favourable; let David march to Hebron and there offer himself as king of Judah. The way had already been prepared: he had secured the good-will of the Jewish elders; he was the son-in-law of the late king, and a hero of whom his tribesmen were proud. Above all, he had behind him a body of armed veterans and devoted adherents, the only armed force now left in the country.

Hebron was the natural capital of Judah. It is true it had been a Calebite settlement, but Calebites and Jews were now one. Its ancient sanctuary had been a gathering-place for the population of the south from time immemorial, and there was no other city which could rival its claims to pre-eminence. Here, therefore, the representatives of Judah assembled, and here they anointed David to be their king. The goal of so many years of struggle and hardship, of patient waiting and politic tact, was at length reached. David was king of Judah; it could not be long before he became king of Israel also.

The Philistines offered no difficulties. David was their vassal; he had shown himself loyal to them, and they were well content that he should rule over his countrymen, and 398collect the tribute due from them year by year. The territory of Judah, moreover, was small; it adjoined the cities of the Philistines, and in case of revolt could easily be overrun and reduced to subjection. That a rival prince should reign in the north, thus separating the northern tribes from Judah and putting an end to all joint action, was a further guarantee for Philistine supremacy. The old Egyptian province of Canaan had become Palestine, the land of the Philistines.

For seven and a half years David reigned in Hebron. Meanwhile, the relics of the Israelitish army had found a refuge on the eastern side of the Jordan. Here, under their old commander-in-chief Abner, the son of Ner, they once more formed themselves into a disciplined body, and made Esh-Baal, the surviving son of Saul, their king.^[455] Esh-Baal, we are told, reigned two years. His position was a difficult one. His rule was titular only; all the real power of the State was in the hands of his uncle Abner. Judah refused to acknowledge his authority, and had raised itself into a separate kingdom under a rebel chief; the northern tribes on the west side of the Jordan were in subjection to the heathen conqueror who held possession of the highroad from Asia into Egypt, and therewith of the trade and wealth that passed along it. Cut off from Mount Ephraim, the subjects of Esh-Baal saw David, the Jewish vassal of the Philistines, extending his sway over Benjamin, the ancestral territory of the house of Saul, while they themselves maintained a precarious struggle against their foes behind the fortified walls of Mahanaim. Here they would have been under the protection of the Ammonites, who were threatened by the same enemy as themselves.^[456]

399The Philistines found the task of forcing the fords of the Jordan too dangerous or too unprofitable. Terms were made with the Israelites; Esh-Baal became their vassal, and his nominal rule was allowed to extend over Western Israel as far south as the frontiers of Judah. Here the two vassal kingdoms came into collision with one another, and Israel and Judah were engaged in perpetual war. It was a repetition of what had been the state of Canaan in the closing days of the Egyptian empire when the Tel el-Amarna letters passed to and fro.

Esh-Baal was merely the shadow of a king. Whether he was a minor or an imbecile it is impossible to say with certainty; most probably he was but a child.^[457] Abner, the master of the army, was also the real master of the kingdom. David’s rise to power must have been as distasteful to him as it would have been to Saul, and he seized the first opportunity of endeavouring to overthrow it. The brigand-chief had become a king, and the outlaws who had gathered round him in the cave of Adullam had been rewarded with posts of honour. Joab, the nephew of David,^[458] was made the commander-in-chief of the Jewish army, and the choice was justified by the results. David owed most of his future successes in war to the military skill and generalship of his commander-in-chief. He himself ceased more and more to take part in active warfare; Joab more than supplied his place, and the safety of 400the king was too important to the army and its general to allow of his risking his person in battle. David ruled at home while Joab gained victories for him in the field.

Joab proved a faithful and a loyal servant. No suspicion was ever breathed against him that he sought to steal the hearts of his soldiers away from their master, and to supplant David as David had supplanted Saul. In the evil days of rebellion and disaster that were to overtake David, Joab never deserted him, and his restoration to the throne was the work of his faithful general. The services, however, rendered by Joab had their drawback. He became indispensable to the king; nay more, he became the master of the king. As David grew old, he began to fret under the irksome yoke; gratitude and self-interest alike forbade him to remove his too powerful servant by those Oriental means which had given him a wife, and up to the day of his death Joab’s power was checked only by the influence or the intrigues of Bath-sheba.

Even in the early days when David still reigned at Hebron, there was ill-feeling between the uncle and the nephew. The masterful nature of Joab had asserted itself, and David was made to feel that his throne depended on ‘the sons of Zeruiah.’ War had broken out between Esh-Baal and David. The Jews, it would seem, had advanced northward into the territory of Benjamin, where they were met at Gibeon by the Israelite forces under Abner from Mahanaim. A fierce battle ensued which ended in the defeat of the Israelite troops. Abner fled across the Jordan, the north of Israel being in the hands of the Philistines, and the authority of David was acknowledged as far as Mount Ephraim. The Benjamites were forced to transfer their allegiance from the house of Saul to that of Jesse. Nineteen Jews only had fallen in the fight, while 360 of the enemy were left dead on the field of battle. But among the Jews was Asahel, the younger brother of Joab, who had been slain by Abner during his flight. It was the beginning of a blood-feud which could be extinguished only by Abner’s death.

401Abner’s military genius was no match for that of Joab, and the long war which followed between David and Esh-Baal saw the power of the Jewish king steadily increase. David began to assume the manners and privileges of an Oriental despot, to multiply his wives, and to marry into the families of the neighbouring kinglets. Four more wives were added to his harîm, one of whom was the daughter of Talmai, the Aramaitish king of Geshur. The alliance with Talmai had a political object; Geshur lay on the northern frontier of Esh-Baal’s kingdom, and in Esh-Baal, therefore, David and Talmai had a common enemy.^[459] Absalom was the offspring of the marriage with the Aramaitish princess.^[460]

Enclosed between Geshur and Judah, with Benjamin lost and the north of Israel garrisoned by the Philistines, the dynasty of Saul grew continually weaker. The Ammonites made common cause with David (2 Sam. xi. 2), and in the neighbouring Aramæans found further allies. Abner was not slow in perceiving that his fortunes were linked with those of 402a lost cause, and he determined to betray his nephew and his master. A pretext was quickly found; he entered the royal harîm and spent a night with Rizpah, the concubine of Saul. The act was equivalent to claiming the throne, and Esh-Baal naturally ventured to protest. The protest gave Abner the opportunity he wanted. He fell with angry words on the helpless king, told him that his throne depended on his general’s loyalty, and that that loyalty was at an end. Henceforth Abner’s sword was at the service of David to transfer to him the kingdom from the house of Saul, and to establish the rule of the Jewish prince from Dan to Beer-sheba.

The Israelite general now sent secret messengers to David to arrange the details of the betrayal. Abner undertook to ‘bring over’ all Israel to David, in return for which he was to supplant Joab as the commander of David’s army. The terms were agreed to by the Jewish king, David only stipulating in addition that Michal should be restored to him. We are not told what it was proposed to do with Esh-Baal; Abner’s treason, however, involved putting him out of the way. As long as he lived there would have been a claimant to the Israelite throne.

The plot prospered at first. Abner tampered successfully with the elders of Israel, reminding them that they had once wanted David as their king,^[461] and that Yahveh had declared that through him alone the yoke of the Philistines should be broken. The Benjamites also allowed themselves to be persuaded by one of their own princes, who was at the same time the most prominent member of the house of Saul, and Abner accordingly went to Hebron with a troop of twenty men to announce to David that his part of the compact had been fulfilled. But the secret had already oozed out. Abner had timed his visit so that Joab should be absent on a raid when he had his audience with David. Joab, however, 403returned sooner than was expected, and, pretending to be ignorant of the real object of Abner’s coming, expostulated with the king for allowing an enemy to penetrate to the court and spy out the weak places of the land. Meanwhile he had sent a messenger who brought Abner back to Hebron, where he and his brother Abishai murdered the unsuspecting Israelite, and thus avenged the blood of Asahel.

The blow was felt keenly by David, who saw in it the destruction of his hopes. The acquisition of Israel seemed further off than ever, for the Israelites were not likely to forgive or forget the murder of their chief. Worst of all, perhaps, his chances of getting rid of Joab were at an end. It was clear that the Jewish general had discovered the treachery that had been meditated towards him, and though he was too politic to reproach the king, it gave him a firmer hold upon David than before. From the point of view of the monarchy, indeed, this was fortunate, as Joab had proved himself a better and more loyal general than Abner, and it is probable that had Abner been thrust into his place, the future conquests of David would never have been made.

All that David could do was to disavow the murder of Abner, to protest that though he had been anointed king he had not the power to punish the perpetrators of it, and ostentatiously to abstain from food at the public dinner of the court. Abner, moreover, received a sumptuous burial in Hebron, at which the king was chief mourner. Joab must have recognised the policy of the king’s action, since he seems to have accepted it without a word of protest. He had gained his point; his rival was removed from his path, and his position in the kingdom was more unquestioned than ever.

The death of Abner reduced the adherents of Esh-Baal to despair. The seeds of disaffection which he had sown also began to grow up. If Israel was to be delivered from the Philistines, it was evident that the throne of Esh-Baal must be occupied by another. Time was on the side of David, and it was not long before the end came.

404Esh-Baal was murdered by two of his own tribesmen. Baanah and Rechab, the sons of Rimmon, penetrated into his bed-chamber one summer afternoon while he was taking his siesta, and there murdered the sleeping king. Then they beheaded the corpse, and, taking the head with them, hurried to David at Hebron without once resting on the road.^[462] But David was too prudent to countenance the deed. While securing all the advantages of it, he ordered summary punishment to be inflicted on its perpetrators, and thus cleared himself and his house from the stain of blood. Like the Amalekite who claimed to have killed Saul, the murderers of Esh-Baal were put to death, and the divine law, which exacted blood for blood, was satisfied. The Jewish king could enjoy with an easy conscience the fruits of a murder of which he was innocent. No other rival stood in his path, for Merib-Baal, the son of Jonathan, was a hopeless cripple, with his spine injured by a fall in his childhood. When he was still but five years of age the fatal battle of Gilboa had taken place, and his nurse in the hurry of flight had dropped the child from her arms.^[463]

The death of Esh-Baal made David king of what was left of Northern Israel. Those who had gathered round the son of Saul at Mahanaim now flocked to Hebron, and there anointed the king of Judah king also of Israel. They reminded him that they, too, were of his ‘bone and flesh,’ sprung from a common ancestor and acknowledging the same 405God, that he had once been their leader against the Philistines, and that it had been predicted of him that he should again be the captain of Israel.^[464]

His coronation as king of Israel led to war with the Philistines. From the vassal prince who reigned at Hebron, and whose title was not acknowledged by the majority of his countrymen, there was nothing to fear; it was different when he had become the king of a united Israel, and could once more summon the forces around him with which he had gained the victories of his earlier years. In accepting the crown of Israel, moreover, without the permission of the Philistines, David had been guilty of revolt. The Philistines claimed dominion over the whole of Northern Israel west of the Jordan; if they had condoned his annexation of the territory of Benjamin, it was because he was still their tributary vassal, and the annexation meant war between him and the rival kingdom of Israel. The heathen lords of Palestine were well content that Judah and Israel should waste their strength in contending with one another. But the union of the two kingdoms turned that strength against themselves. The union had been effected without their consent; it was ‘the men of Israel’ who had anointed David without consulting the suzerain power.

At first the war went against the newly crowned king. He was taken by surprise, and the Philistine army had invaded his territories before he had time to gather his forces together. Beth-lehem, the seat of David’s forefathers, was seized by the enemy, and made the base of their attack. Thus cut off from help from the northern and eastern tribes, or even from Benjamin, David was forced to retire from Hebron, and once more to take refuge in the ‘hold’ of Adullam.^[465] It was a country well known to him; it had already saved him from the pursuit of Saul, and the foreign foe did not dare to 406penetrate into its dark caves and narrow gorges. Here for a time he carried on a guerilla warfare with the Philistines until he felt himself strong enough to venture out into the open field. It was while he was thus keeping the enemy at bay that three of his followers performed a deed which placed them among the thirty gibbôrîm, or ‘mighty men,’ in immediate attendance on the king.^[466] David had a sudden longing for the water of the well at the gate of Beth-lehem, of which he had doubtless often drunk in his boyish days. His wish was overheard by Joshebbasshebeth,^[467] Eleazar, and Shammah, who broke through the host of the Philistines, and succeeded in bringing the water to their leader. David, however, refused to drink it. It was, as it were, the price of blood; the three heroes had risked their lives to bring it, and the king accordingly poured it out as a libation to the Lord.

How long this guerilla warfare lasted we do not know. Only a meagre abstract is given us of the wars and conquests of David, and it seems probable that a detailed history of them has been intentionally omitted by the compiler of the 407books of Samuel. A separate work dealing with the history was doubtless in existence at the time he wrote, and there was no room for another by the side of it. It was the lesser known portion of David’s history which he aimed at compiling out of the records of the past. The story, therefore, of the conquest of the Philistines and then of the creation of an Israelitish empire has been lost to us; we know the results, but little more.

When David at length ventured to descend from his mountain fortress, the Philistines were encamped in the plain of Rephaim, or the ‘Giants,’ which stretched to the south-east of Jerusalem.^[468] He was thus cut off from the north, the road being further barred by the Jebusite stronghold of Jerusalem, which appears to have peacefully submitted to the Philistine domination. For a while the two hostile forces watched one another, neither daring to attack the other. Heroes and champions on either side performed individual deeds of valour like that which had first won recognition for David on the part of Saul, but no general engagement took place.^[469] The Philistines were too numerous, the Israelites too securely posted to be assailed.

At last, however, David judged that his opportunity had come. The oracle of Yahveh was consulted; the answer was favourable; and the Israelites descended suddenly on their enemies at a place called Baal-perazim. The Philistines fled precipitately, leaving behind them the images of their gods, which fell into the hands of the conquering army. The defeat at Gilboa was in part avenged.

But the strength of the Philistines was by no means broken, and they still held possession of the country north of Judah. Once more they poured through the valley of Rephaim, and once more they were driven back towards the coast. David had fallen upon them in the rear, the sound of the approaching footsteps of the Israelites being drowned in the rustling 408made by the wind in a grove of mulberry-trees. This time the invaders were utterly shattered; they retreated from the territory of Benjamin, and fled to Gezer, which was still in Canaanite hands. The war was now carried into the country of the enemy. Gath, the most inland of the Philistine cities, was the primary object of attack; but a long and desultory war was needed before either it or its sister cities could be forced to yield. Again opportunities occurred for the display of individual deeds of prowess, and for winning the rewards of valour from the Israelitish king. The three brothers of Goliath were slain by three of the champions of Israel, Jonathan the nephew of David being the victor in one combat, Abishai the brother of Joab in another. Abishai’s victory was gained at Gob, where David narrowly escaped death at the hands of the giant Ishbi-benob.^[470] The narrowness of the escape terrified his subjects, and they determined that he should not again expose his life in the field. The memory of Saul’s death and its disastrous results was too recent to be forgotten. Henceforward, except on rare occasions, David governed his people from the city or the palace; his armies were led by Joab, and the king became to them a name rather than an inspiring presence. The personal affection he had once excited was confined to his bodyguard, and when the evil days of rebellion came upon him, it was the bodyguard alone which remained faithful to their king.

Before the war with the Philistines was finished, an event occurred which had a momentous influence on the future history of Judah. This was the capture of Jerusalem. The Jebusite city had severed Judah from the northern tribes, and the struggle with the Philistines had shown what advantage that gave to an enemy. A united Israel was impossible so long as the Israelitish territory was thus cut in two by a belt of hostile country. While Jerusalem remained in the 409hands of the foreigner, Israel could never be secure from Philistine attacks, or its king be able to hurl against the enemy the full force of his dominions. If the Philistine war was to be brought to a decisive and satisfactory end, if the king of Judah was also to be king of Israel, it was needful that Jerusalem should be his. We have learned from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna how important Jerusalem already was in the days when the Israelites had not as yet quitted Egypt, and when Canaan formed part of the Egyptian empire. Its position made it one of the strongest of Canaanitish fortresses. It was the capital of a larger territory than usually belonged to the cities of Canaan, and it was already venerable for its antiquity. Its ruler was also a priest, ‘without father and without mother,’ and appointed to his office by ‘the Mighty King,’ ‘the Most High God’ of the book of Genesis. Its name testified to the worship of a god of peace: Urusalim, as it is written in the cuneiform characters, signified ‘the City of Salim,’ the god of peace.

The city stood on a hill to which in after days was given the name of Moriah. A low depression, first recognised in our own days by Dr. Guthe, separated it from another hill, which sloped southward till it ended in a point. On one side was the deep limestone valley through which the torrent of the Kidron had forced its way; on the other side, to the west, was another valley known in later times as that of the sons of Hinnom. On the southern hill was a fort which protected the approach to the upper town to the north.^[471]

Its Jebusite defenders believed it to be impregnable. Even the lame and the blind, they said, could repel the assault of an enemy. But they were soon undeceived. The Israelites climbed up the cliff through a drain or aqueduct that had been cut in the rock, and the Jebusite fortress was taken. It may be that its capture was due to treachery, and that the 410way had been shown to the besiegers by one of the garrison; at all events the inhabitants of the city were spared, and henceforward shared it with settlers from Judah and Benjamin. The latter would seem to have been chiefly planted in the new city which David built on the southern hill of Zion where the Jebusite fortress had stood. In contradistinction to Jerusalem it came to be known as the City of David; a strong wall of fortification was built around it, a Millo or citadel was erected on the site of the Jebusite fort, and the king’s palace was founded in its midst. The palace seems to have stood on the western side of the hill, with a flight of steps cut in the rock leading down from it to the valley below, traces of which have apparently been discovered by Dr. Bliss in his recent excavations.^[472]

It was built by Phœnician artificers from Tyre. War and foreign oppression had destroyed most of the culture the Israelites had once possessed, and they no longer had among them skilled artisans like Bezaleel, who could undertake the construction or adornment of buildings which might vie with the palaces of the Philistine or Canaanite cities. Carpenters and stone-masons had to be fetched from Tyre like the beams of cedar that were cut on the slopes of the Lebanon. Jaffa, the port of Jerusalem, must already have fallen by war or treaty into David’s hand.

We are told that the cedar and the workmen were sent by Hiram, the Tyrian king. But if the Israelitish palace had been built in the early part of David’s reign, this can hardly have been the case. Josephus, quoting from the Phœnician historian Menander, tells us that Hiram I., the son of Abibal, reigned thirty-four years (B.C. 969-936),^[473] and since he was still alive in the twentieth year of Solomon’s reign (1 Kings ix. 10), it would have been Abibal rather than Hiram who 411first entered into commercial alliance with David.^[474] Abibal seems, like David, to have been the founder of a dynasty, and his son and successor was the Solomon of Tyre. He constructed the two harbours of the city, restored the temples, and built for himself a sumptuous palace, while his ships traded to the Straits of Gibraltar in the west and to the Persian Gulf in the east.

Jerusalem became the capital of the Israelitish king, and the choice was a sign of his usual sagacity. It was an ideal centre for a kingdom such as his. It lay midway between Judah and the northern tribes, and thus, as it were, bound them together. At the same time it belonged to neither; its associations were Canaanite, not Hebrew, and its choice as a royal residence could excite no jealousies. Moreover, this absence of past associations with the history of Israel enabled David to do with it as he liked; it contained nothing the destruction or alteration of which would offend the prejudices of his countrymen. Situated as it was on the borders of both Judah and Benjamin, it served to unite the houses of Saul and Jesse, and the mixed population which soon filled it—partly Jebusite, partly Jewish, and partly Benjaminite—was a symbol and visible token of that unification of races and interests in Palestine which it was the work of David’s reign to effect. In addition to all this, Jerusalem was a natural fortress, difficult to capture, easy to defend; it had behind it the traditions of a venerable past, and had once been the seat of a priest-king.

The spoils of foreign conquest allowed David to fortify and embellish it. Israel as yet had no trade of its own. The struggle with the Philistines had effectually prevented it from engaging in the commerce which had made the name 412of ‘Canaanite’ synonymous with that of ‘merchant.’ The Philistines had held possession of the highroads that ran through Palestine as well as of the southern line of coast; the coasts and harbours to the north were occupied by the Phœnicians. The capture of Joppa from the Zakkal first opened to Israel and Judah a way to the sea.

The fortifications of Jerusalem were completed and the royal palace built. But the God of Israel to whom David owed his power and his victories had no habitation there. Jerusalem had become the capital of the Israelitish monarchy, yet it was still under the protection of a Canaanitish god. The time had come when Yahveh should take his place and assume the protection of David’s capital and David’s throne.

In Egypt, in Babylonia, in the cities of Canaan itself, the palace of the king and the temple of the deity stood side by side. It was on the temple rather than on the palace that the wealth of the nation was lavished: while the palace might be built of brick and stucco, the temple was constructed of hewn stone. David naturally desired that Yahveh also should have a fitting habitation in the city He had given to His worshippers. But the prophet Nathan, who had at first shared in the plans of David, was commissioned to arrest the design. David had been a man of war who had ‘shed much blood upon the earth’;^[475] until the wars were finished ‘which were about him on every side’^[476] Yahveh would not permit him to build Him a house. All he might do was to prepare the material for his happier and more peaceful son. Jerusalem was ‘the city of the god of peace,’ and it was as a god of peace and not of war that Yahveh would consent to dwell within it.

Nevertheless, though the building of a temple was forbidden, the new capital of the kingdom was not deprived of the presence of Yahveh. The ark of the covenant was brought from the Gibeah or ‘Hill’ of Kirjath-jearim,^[477] where it had 413lain so long. Placed in ‘a new cart,’ it was led along by oxen, while David and the Israelites accompanied it with music and singing. On the road, the oxen stumbled and shook the sacred palladium of Israel; Uzzah, one of the two drivers, put forth his hand to steady it, and immediately afterwards fell back dead. His death was regarded as the punishment of one who, though not a Levite, had ventured to touch the shrine of Yahveh, and David in terror and dismay broke up the festal procession, and left the ark in the nearest house, which happened to belong to a Philistine of Gath named Obed-Edom.^[478] Here it remained three months. Then, David finding that the household of the Philistine had been blessed and not cursed by its presence, caused it to be again removed and taken to Jerusalem. Sacrifices were offered as it passed along, music once more accompanied it, and David, as anointed king, clad in the priestly ephod, danced sacred dances before it. But his wife, Michal, who had seen him from a window thus acting like one of the inferior priests, ‘despised him in her heart,’ and on his return to the palace upbraided him with his unseemly conduct. David answered taunt with taunt; the king could not degrade himself by any service, however mean, that he might perform in honour of his God, but Michal herself should be degraded by living the rest of her life a childless wife. Meanwhile the assembled multitude was feasted with bread, meat, and wine, and the ark was reverently placed in ‘the tent’ set up for the purpose in the midst of Jerusalem. Was this the famous ‘tabernacle of the 414congregation’ which had accompanied the Israelites in their wanderings in the desert, and had afterwards formed part of the temple-buildings at Shiloh? The fact that it is called ‘the tent’ would seem to imply that such was the case. On the other hand, the Chronicler evidently thought otherwise,^[479] and we are not told that ‘the tent’ had been brought from elsewhere.

It would seem that the war with the Philistines was over when the ark was brought to Jerusalem. During its continuance it is not probable that a native of Gath would be living peaceably in Israelitish territory, or giving hospitality to the sacred safeguard of Israel. The Philistines must have already been incorporated into David’s kingdom, like the Jebusites of Jerusalem or the Kenites of the south, and his bodyguard have been recruited from among them. Unfortunately we do not know how long the war had lasted. A time came, however, when they acknowledged themselves the servants of the Israelitish king, and became the vassals of Judah. They never again were formidable to their neighbours, nor did they ever seriously dispute the suzerainty of Judah. It is true that they might now and then take advantage of a foreign invasion, like that of the Assyrians, to shake off the yoke of their suzerain, but their independence never lasted long, and the five cities did not always take the same side. Even when the very existence of Jerusalem was threatened by Sennacherib, we find Ekron faithfully supporting Hezekiah against the Assyrian conqueror. David broke the spirit as well as the power of the Philistines, and took for ever the supremacy they had wielded out of their hands.^[480]

415The ‘lords’ or kings of the five Philistine cities were left undisturbed. But their position towards David was reversed. Instead of his being their vassal, they became vassals to him, paying him tribute, and providing him with military service when it was required. David was well acquainted with the excellence of the Philistines as soldiers in war. Accordingly he followed the example of the Egyptian Pharaohs who had transformed their Libyan and Sardinian enemies into mercenary troops, and of the king of Gath in his own case. He surrounded himself with a bodyguard of Philistines and Kretans, to whom were afterwards added Karian adventurers from the south-western coast of Asia Minor. Already in the age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets Lycians from the same part of the world had served as mercenaries in Syria, and in the time of Ramses II. the Hittite army contained troops from Lycia, from Ionia, and from the Troad. Not only could the foreigners be used against David’s own countrymen in case of disaffection or rebellion; their employment about the king’s person in an office of trust made them feel that they were as much his subjects as the Israelites themselves, and forget also that they had been conquered. It was a means of cementing together the monarchy which the Israelitish king had created.

The war with the Philistines was followed by one with Moab. Here, too, David was successful. The Moabites were vanquished, and the captives massacred in accordance with the cruel fashion of the day. Forced to lie along the ground, two-thirds of the row were measured off with a line and pitilessly put to death. The result was the almost complete destruction of the fighting force of the country; and a century had to pass before Moab recovered its strength, 416and once more regained its independence. It was during the war with Moab that Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, who was sprung from the mixed Jewish and Edomite population of Kabzeel, first came into notice, and was rewarded with a place among the thirty ‘heroes.’ He slew, we are told, two ariels of Moab.^[481] The word seems to have specially belonged to the language of the Moabites. Mesha, on the Moabite Stone, states that after the conquest of Ataroth and Nebo, he took from them the arels (or ariels) of Dodah and Yahveh, and tore them in pieces before Chemosh,^[482] and in the Egyptian Travels of the Mohar the same word is found, having been borrowed from the Canaanites in the sense of a ‘hero.’^[483] The ariels slain by Benaiah must therefore have been Moabite champions like the Philistine Goliath of Gath.

Their overthrow was not the only achievement of Benaiah which qualified him for a place among the gibbôrîm. He had found a lion at the bottom of a cistern in the winter-time when the ground was covered with snow, and had boldly descended into the pit and killed it. He had, moreover, slain an Egyptian in single combat, though armed only with a staff, while his opponent wielded a spear. These and similar deeds raised him to the rank of captain of the foreign mercenaries, an office which he retained throughout the reign of David. Between him and Joab, the commander of the native army, feelings of rivalry and ill-will grew up, as perhaps was natural. The native troops naturally looked askance at the mercenaries, who formed, as it were, a check upon themselves, and were favoured by the king with a confidence which they did not themselves enjoy. The feelings of the troops they commanded were reflected back upon the two generals, whose jealousies and counter intrigues ended, finally, in the destruction of one of them. Benaiah survived, while Joab perished at the foot of the altar.

417Moab was conquered; it was now the turn of Ammon. The Ammonites had looked on while their neighbours on the eastern side of the Jordan were being annexed to the kingdom of Israel. Nahash, however, the Ammonite king, had long been the ally of David. A common hostility to Esh-Baal had brought them together, and the league against the son of Saul had included Ammon, Judah, and the Aramæans. It was this alliance which had largely contributed to the success of David in his war against the northern tribes; left to himself it is doubtful whether the Jewish prince would have succeeded in overcoming his rival.

While Nahash lived, the old friendship continued between him and the king of Israel. But with his death came a change. The ambassadors sent by David to congratulate his son Khanun on his accession were grossly insulted, and driven back across the Jordan with their beards half-shorn and their robes cut off in the middle. Khanun, it was clear, was bent upon provoking war. He had the Aramæans at his back to support him; the fate of Moab had alarmed him, and he determined, while he still possessed allies, to anticipate the war which he foresaw.

The challenge was promptly taken up. Joab and his brother Abishai marched across the Jordan at the head of a large army of veterans. A battle took place before ‘the City of Waters,’ Rabbath-Ammon, ‘the capital of Ammon.’ The Aramæan forces had already come to the help of their confederates. Hadad-ezer of Zobah had furnished 20,000 men; 12,000 had come from the land of Tob, and 1000 from Maacah.^[484] Joab found himself enclosed between the Aramæans on one side and the Ammonites on the other. But the Israelitish general was equal to the danger. Leaving Abishai to resist the Ammonite attack, he put himself at the head of a picked body of troops and fell upon the Syrians, whom he succeeded in utterly routing. The Ammonites, seeing the flight of their 418allies, retreated behind the walls of their city, and Joab remained master of the field.

But the battle had been sharply contested, and the Hebrew army had suffered too severely to be able to pursue its advantage. Joab retired to Jerusalem, there to recruit his army and prepare for another campaign. Meantime, the enemy also had not been idle. Hadad-ezer summoned the vassal princes of Syria from either side of the Euphrates, and placed the army under the command of a general named Shobach. The struggle had passed from a mere war with Ammon to a contest for the supremacy in Western Asia. The time had come for David himself once more to take the field; the issue at stake was too important to be decided by an inferior commander, however able and experienced.

The two great powers on the Euphrates and the Nile, which had controlled the destinies of the Oriental world in earlier days, were now in a state of decadence. Egypt was the shadow of its former self. Its empire in Asia had long since fallen, and it was now divided into two hostile and equally impotent kingdoms. The Tanite Pharaohs reigned in the north, and though their supremacy was theoretically acknowledged as far as the First Cataract, Upper Egypt was really governed by the high priests of Ammon at Thebes, who had blocked the navigation of the Nile by a strong fortress at El-Hîba, near Feshn, which successfully prevented the rulers of the Delta from advancing to the south.^[485] Babylonia was similarly powerless. A younger rival had grown up in Assyria, and about B.C. 1290 the Assyrian king Tiglath-Ninip had even captured Babylon and held possession of it for seven years. Like Egypt, Babylonia had renounced its claim to rule in Western Asia, not to renew it till the age of Nebuchadrezzar.

419The kingdom of Mitanni or Aram-Naharaim, moreover, had passed away; when Tiglath-pileser I. of Assyria swept over Western Asia, in B.C. 1100, it had already become a thing of the past. Perhaps its overthrow was due to the irruption of the Hittites from the mountains of Cappadocia, but if so it was soon avenged, for the Hittites too had ceased to be formidable. Their empire had dissolved into a number of small states: one of these was Carchemish, which commanded the chief ford across the Euphrates; another was Kadesh, on the Orontes, which had once more sunk into obscurity.

In place of Mitanni and the Hittites the Semitic Aramæans of Syria had risen into prominence. They had been the older inhabitants of the country, and the decay of the intrusive powers of Mitanni and the Hittites had enabled them to shake off the foreign yoke, and establish kingdoms of their own. Among these, Zobah, called Zubitê in the Assyrian inscriptions, acquired the leading place.

In the closing days of the Assyrian empire, the capital of Zobah lay to the north-east of Moab—perhaps, as Professor Friedrich Delitzsch thinks, in the neighbourhood of the modern Homs.^[486] It was essentially an Arab state, but had been founded by those Ishmaelite Arabs of Northern Arabia, who, like the Nabatheans, had by intercourse with a Canaanite population developed a dialect which we term Aramaic. Saul, as we have seen, had been already brought into hostile collision with them. At that time the tribes of Zobah were still disunited, and it was with the ‘kings’ or chieftains of 420Zobah that the war of the Israelitish ruler had been carried on. As in Israel, however, so in Zobah, the necessity of defending themselves against the enemy had led to union, and when David reigned at Jerusalem they were under the sway of a single sovereign, Hadad-ezer, ‘the son of Rehob.’ Rehob had given his name to a district a little to the north of Palestine, of which Hadad-ezer must have been the hereditary prince.^[487]

Hadad-ezer had attempted to establish his empire on the ruins of that of the Hittites. He had not only unified Zobah, but had reduced the neighbouring Aramæan princes to subjection. All northern Syria was tributary to him except the kingdom of Hamath, and Hamath also was threatened by the rising power. He had erected a stela commemorating his victories on the banks of the Euphrates, in imitation of the ancient Pharaohs of Egypt, and his alliance was courted by the Aramæans on the eastern side of the river.

His career of conquest was suddenly arrested. The Ammonites, threatened by David, sought his assistance, and in return for his help offered to acknowledge his suzerainty. The offer was accepted, and the Syrian king found himself face to face with the upstart power of Israel. The war which followed must have been a long one, but it ended in the complete victory of David. In the brief 421annalistic summary of David’s reign given in 2 Sam. viii., we hear only of one or two of the later incidents in the campaign. David, it is said, smote Hadad-ezer ‘as he was marching to restore his stela on the banks of the river’ Euphrates (v. 3). This implies that the memorial of former conquests had been destroyed either by the Israelitish king or by the revolted subjects of Hadad-ezer himself.

The account of the war against Ammon (2 Sam. x.) shows that the Israelitish victory must have been subsequent to the overthrow of the Ammonites. The defeat of Hadad-ezer was complete. The Israelites captured 1000 chariots, 7000 horsemen,^[488] and 20,000 foot-soldiers, besides a large number of horses. The Syrian power, however, was not yet broken. Damascus rose in defence of its suzerain, and David found himself once more confronted by a formidable enemy. But fortune again smiled on the veterans of Israel, and 22,000 Syrians from Damascus were left dead on the field. Israelitish garrisons were placed in Damascus and the neighbouring cities, and the rule of David was acknowledged as far as the frontiers of Hamath.^[489] Nevertheless, Hadad-ezer was still unsubdued. His communications with Mesopotamia were still open across the desert, and it would seem that the last scene in the war was enacted as far north as Aleppo.

A final effort to save Hadad-ezer was made by the Aramæan states on the eastern side of the Euphrates, who were either his vassals or his allies. Troops poured across the river, under the command of Shobach, called Shophach by the Chronicler. Once more David made a levy of the Israelitish 422forces and led them in person against the foe. He crossed the Jordan to the south of Mount Hermon, traversed the territories of Damascus and Homs, and after leaving Hamath on the left found himself at Helam, where the Aramæan host had pitched their camp. Josephus in his account of the campaign transforms Helam, which he reads Khalaman, into the name of the Aramæan king beyond the Euphrates; we may accept his reading without following him in changing a place into a man. Khalaman would correspond exactly with Khalman, the Assyrian name of Aleppo, which lay on the high road from the fords of the Euphrates to the west. It seems probable, therefore, that in Helam or Khalaman, we must see Aleppo.

According to Josephus, who appears to have derived his account from some Midrash or Commentary on the books of Samuel, the army of Shobach consisted of 80,000 infantry and 1000 horse. At all events, in the battle which followed, and which resulted in the complete victory of the Israelites, 7000 of the Syrian cavalry and 40,000 of their foot-soldiers are said to have been slain.^[490] The power of Zobah was utterly destroyed. All Syria on the western side of the Euphrates hastened to make peace with the conqueror, and to offer him homage or alliance. The states on the eastern bank were separated from their Aramæan kinsfolk to the west, and as long as David lived took good care not again to cross the river. The old dream of the Israelitish patriot was fulfilled, and the dominion of Israel extended northwards to the borders of Hamath. Even the desert tribes to the east of Hamath, who had owned obedience to Hadad-ezer, passed under the sway of David, and for a time at all events the Jewish king could boast that his rule was acknowledged as far as the Euphrates.^[491]

423The immediate result of the victory was a sudden influx of wealth into the Jewish capital. Not only were the golden shields carried by the bodyguard of Hadad-ezer brought to Jerusalem, to be borne on state occasions by the foreign guards of the conqueror, but immense stores of bronze were found in two of the cities of northern Syria, Tibhath and Berothai.^[492] It was out of this bronze that the fittings of the temple were afterwards made by Solomon.^[493]

Another result of the war was an embassy from Toi or Tou of Hamath. The powerful Hebrew prince who had so unexpectedly appeared on the horizon of northern Syria was a neighbour whose goodwill it was necessary to purchase at all costs. The embassy sent by Toi to David was accordingly headed by the Hamathite king’s own son. This was Hadoram, whose name was changed into the corresponding Hebrew Joram. The change of name was a delicate way of acknowledging the supremacy of the God of Israel and the sovereign who worshipped Him, and of declaring that henceforth Hadad of Syria was to become Yahveh of Israel. As the Assyrian kings professed to make war in order that they might spread the name and worship of Assur, so it might be 424presumed that the campaigns of David were carried on in order to glorify Yahveh, who had given him the victory.^[494]

The ambassadors brought with them various costly gifts, which Israelitish vanity might, if it chose, interpret as tribute, and which would certainly have been so interpreted by an Egyptian or Assyrian scribe. Vessels of gold, silver, and bronze were laid at the feet of David, and a treaty of alliance formed between him and the ruler of Hamath. That Hadad-ezer had been the common enemy of both was a sufficient pretext both for the embassy and for the alliance. The memory of the alliance lasted down to a late date. Even when Azariah reigned over Judah in the time of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III., Hamath could still look to Jerusalem for help; and in the age of Sargon, Yahu-bihdi, whose name contains that of the national God of Israel, led the people of Hamath to revolt.

All this while the siege of ‘the City of Waters,’ the Rabbah or ‘Capital’ of Ammon, still dragged on. Joab was encamped before it, while David was leading a life of ease and luxury in his palace at Jerusalem. This neglect of his kingly duties finds little favour in the eyes of the Hebrew historian. At the season of the year when David sent Joab and ‘his servants’ to do his work, other ‘kings’ were accustomed to ‘go forth to battle,’ and special emphasis is laid upon the words of Uriah: ‘The ark and Israel and Judah abide in tents; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open fields; shall I then go into mine house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife?’ With a king who had thus delegated his proper work to others, and had already forgotten that the very reason for his existence was that he should lead the people of Yahveh against their enemies, a catastrophe could not be far distant. First came the act of adultery with Bath-sheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, next the treacherous murder of a faithful guardsman 425and brave officer. Uriah was made to carry to Joab the letter which contained his own death-warrant, as well as that of other servants of David, equally innocent and equally valorous. A special messenger brought the king the news of his death, and Bath-sheba was at once added to the royal harîm. One man only could be found with courage enough to protest against the deed; this was Nathan the prophet, a successor of the Samuel who had placed the crown on David’s head. The king professed his penitence, though he did not offer to put away Bath-sheba, and the death of the child he had had by her was accepted in expiation of his guilt. It was an example of that vicarious punishment, that substitution of ‘the fruit of the body for the sin of the soul,’ a belief in which was as strong among the Canaanites as it was in Babylonia. The second son borne by Bath-sheba received the double name of Jedidiah from Nathan, and Shelomoh or Solomon from his father. Shelomoh, ‘the peaceful,’ was, in fact, the Hebrew equivalent of Salamanu or Solomon, the name of a king of Moab in the days of Tiglath-pileser III.^[495]

David’s submission gave him a claim upon Nathan which the prophet never forgot. The death of the first-born of Bath-sheba, moreover, seemed to indicate that Yahveh had accepted the sacrifice of the child that had been, as it were, offered for the sin of the father, and that the guilt of the Israelitish monarch had been atoned. Henceforward Nathan took a peculiar interest in the new queen and her offspring. One of the four sons of Bath-sheba was named after him (1 Chron. iii. 5), and it was to him that Solomon owed in part his succession to the throne. It may be that Solomon’s training was intrusted to the prophet; such at any rate may be the significance of the words in 2 Sam. xii. 25.

426It was after the birth of Solomon that Rabbah was at length starved into a surrender. Joab, ever jealous of his master’s fame, sent to tell David of the fact, and to bid him come at once and occupy the city lest the glory of its capture should be credited to the general who had besieged it rather than to the king who had remained at home. David accordingly proceeded to the camp, and entered the Ammonite capital at the head of his troops. The crown of gold, inlaid with gems, which had adorned the image of Malcham, the Ammonite god, was placed over the head of his human conqueror; the city itself was sacked, and its population treated with merciless rigour. In the euphemistic language of the historian they were put ‘under saws and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made to pass through the brickkiln.’^[496]

The war with Ammon was followed by one with Edom. The Amalekites or Bedâwin had already been taught that a strong power had arisen in Palestine, thoroughly able to protect its inhabitants from the raids of the desert robbers (2 Sam. viii. 12); the turn of the Edomites was to come next. David himself seems to have led the Israelitish army,^[497] and in a decisive battle in a wadi south of the Dead Sea, utterly crushed the forces of Edom.^[498] Eighteen thousand of the enemy were slain, and all further resistance on the part of 427disciplined troops was at an end. For six months longer the inhabitants of Mount Seir carried on a guerilla warfare with Joab; they were, however, mercilessly hunted out and massacred, hardly a male being left alive (1 Kings xi. 15). The child Hadad, the son, it may be, of the last Edomite king Hadar, was carried by ‘his father’s servants’ to Egypt, where they found shelter in the court of the Pharaohs, and David took possession of the depopulated country. Its possession opened up for Israel a new era of wealth and commercial prosperity. The high road along which the spices of southern Arabia were carried ran through it, and at its southern extremity were the two ports of Elath and Ezion-geber on the Sea of Suph, which connected Western Asia with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. David now commanded the caravan-trade from the north of Syria to the Gulf of Aqaba; on the one side he was in contact with Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, on the other with Egypt and Arabia. Apart from the trade which passed through Palestine, leaving riches on its way, the tolls levied on merchandise must have brought a goodly income to the royal exchequer. David, indeed, had too much in him of the peasant and the warrior to realise the full extent of his good fortune; it needed a Solomon to perceive all the advantages of his position, to fit out merchant vessels in the Gulf of Aqaba, and to secure a monopoly of the carrying trade. For the present, David was occupied in fortifying the conquests he had made. Aramæans from Ammon and Zobah were drafted into his bodyguard,^[499] and Edom was so effectively garrisoned as to make revolt impossible for more than a century. A firm hold was kept upon the kinglets of the small Aramæan states to the north who had formerly owned Hadad-ezer as their suzerain; the king of Geshur was already connected by marriage with the royal house of Israel. A new and formidable power had grown up at the entrance to Egypt, effectually cutting off the monarchy of the Nile from Western Asia, and the commander-in-chief 428of the Israelitish army had proved himself the ablest and most irresistible general of his time.

David appeared to be securely fixed not only on the throne of Israel, but also on that of an Israelitish empire. But his power after all was wanting in stability. It depended in great measure upon Joab; Joab alone commanded the confidence of the veteran soldiery, and was dreaded by the foreign foe.^[500] Moreover, there was as yet but little real adhesion between the Israelitish tribes. Ephraim could not forget its old position of pre-eminence, or cease to resent the domination of the new-born and half-foreign tribe of Judah. The blood-tax demanded by the wars of David added to the discontent. The wars were wars of aggression rather than of defence, and were to the advantage of a Jewish dynasty, not of the people as a whole. Military service became as unpopular in Israel as it has been of recent years in Egypt: when David proposed to number his subjects and thereby ascertain what fighting force he possessed, Joab vainly endeavoured to dissuade him from his intention, and the people subsequently saw in the plague that followed the punishment of a royal crime. The bodyguard of Philistines and Kretans, with its officers of various nationalities and creeds, protected the person of the king and prevented any open signs of disaffection; but discontent smouldered beneath the surface, ready to break into flame whenever a favourable opportunity occurred. The Israelites had too recently submitted themselves to the rule of a single sovereign to be as yet amenable to discipline, or to have lost the democratic instincts of the armed peasant and his guerilla methods of carrying on war.

There was yet another, and a still more potent cause for the instability of David’s throne. This was to be found in the royal family itself. Polygamy has been the fatal cancer which has eaten away the strength and prosperity of the most powerful dynasties of the Oriental world; and the history of the Israelitish empire proved no exception to the rule. David 429had none of the stern and ascetic fanaticism which distinguished Saul; he enjoyed life to the fullest, and when success came, policy alone set bounds to his enjoyment of it. Self-indulgent as most other Oriental despots, he multiplied to himself wives and children, not shrinking even from the murder of the trustiest of his followers in his determination to add yet another beauty to his well-stocked harîm. Polygamy brought with it its usual curse. In the dull and idle seclusion of the palace, the wives of the king quarrelled one with another for his favour and love, and the quarrel of the mother was adopted by her children. Maachah, the daughter of the king of Geshur, claimed precedence for herself and her son Absalom in virtue of their royal blood; Amnon, as the first-born of his father, regarded himself as rightful heir to the throne, and as therefore placed above the ordinary laws of men; while Bath-sheba, whose unscrupulous ambition had betrayed a husband to destruction, never ceased intriguing in the interests of Solomon whom she had destined from the outset for the crown.

The latter years of David’s life were clouded with the crimes and rebellions of his family. Amnon outraged his half-sister Tamar, and was murdered by her brother Absalom, and Absalom, his father’s favourite, fled to Talmai, king of Geshur. Thanks to Joab, the blood-feud was eventually appeased, and after an exile of three years Absalom was allowed to return to Jerusalem. Two years later, David consented to forget the past. Absalom was again received at court, and his beauty and grace of manner resumed their former sway over the hearts of both king and people.

But David was growing old; discontent was gathering even among his own tribesmen, and Absalom was impatient to seize the crown which he conceived to be his by right. He obtained leave to go to Hebron, there to offer sacrifice in the ancient sanctuary and capital of Judah. The place was well chosen: the religious traditions of a venerable past were associated with the city, and its inhabitants could have 430looked with little favour on the rise of Jerusalem. They gave ready ear to the prince who promised to restore Hebron to its ancient importance, and make it once more a capital. The cry of Hebron and Judah as against Jerusalem and a dynastic empire was eagerly responded to.

David was taken by surprise. Even Joab does not seem to have been aware of the conspiracy which was being formed. There were no troops in Jerusalem sufficient to defend it against attack, even if its defenders could be trusted, and of this David was no longer sure. He seemed deserted by all the world, and his only safety lay in flight. Even his counsellor Ahitophel had gone over to the rebel son.

The royal household and harîm fled eastwards across the Jordan to those outlying districts of Israelitish territory in which Esh-Baal had so long maintained himself. David was accompanied by his bodyguard: the priests who wished to accompany him with the ark were sent back. So, too, was Hushai, the fellow-councillor of Ahitophel, in the hope that he might counteract the schemes of Absalom’s adviser.

The revolt showed David that he had been living in merely fancied security. His tribesmen had fallen away from him at the first summons of his more popular son; his old comrades, indeed, still stood by him, and he could count on the swords and fidelity of his foreign bodyguard. But what were they against a revolted nation? Even in the days of outlawry, when he was hunted from cave to cave by Saul, he could reckon on popular sympathy and help; now the popular sympathy was transferred to another, and the flood-gates of disaffection and hatred were opened upon him. In spite of his guards, Shimei of the house of Saul ventured to stone him as he passed along, and to call him the man of blood who had unrighteously seized the crown. It was a sign that the fall of Saul’s dynasty had not been forgotten, and that there were still those in Benjamin who submitted with reluctance to the rule of his supplanter.

David was saved by the loyalty of Joab. Had that 431invincible general gone over to the enemy a new king would have sat on the throne of Israel. The commander-in-chief would have taken his veterans with him and led them, as ever, to victory. Fortunately for David, his old friend refused to forsake the fortunes of the fallen king. Perhaps family jealousies may have had some influence on his resolution. Absalom conferred the office of commander-in-chief on Amasa, the son of Joab’s cousin, who had married a man of Israel.^[501] The appointment may indeed have been made because Joab had already thrown in his lot with that of the king; more probably it had been promised to Amasa before the beginning of the revolt.

But the priests and prophets remained faithful to the king of their choice. Zadok and Abiathar, the chief priests, had returned to Jerusalem with the sacred symbol of Yahveh’s presence in Israel, but their sons Ahimaaz and Johanan undertook to keep David informed of the plans of his enemies in the capital. Fortunately for him, the advice of Ahitophel was only partially acted upon. Absalom possessed himself of his father’s concubines, and thereby, in accordance with Hebrew ideas, published to the world his usurpation of the throne, but the further advice of the wily counsellor was disregarded. Instead of despatching a body of twelve thousand men, who should fall upon the fugitives before they could reach the fords of the Jordan, Absalom and his youthful friends preferred the counsel of Hushai, and determined first to raise a levy of all Israel. The idea of marching in person at the head of a great army appealed to the vanity of the young usurper; and to the inexperience of youth the possibility of David and his guards hiding in ambush, and thence descending upon their unwary pursuers, seemed a very real danger. Ahitophel, the single representative of age and 432experience among the conspirators, knew only too well what the rejection of his advice must mean. The rebellion was self-condemned; it was doomed to failure, and the return of David would be the destruction of himself. Even at the council-board of Absalom his rival Hushai had been preferred to himself; all that was left him was to crawl back to his home in bitter disappointment, and there hang himself. The conspiracy had lost the brain which alone could have conducted it to success.

The news of Ahitophel’s advice was brought to David by the young priests. They had escaped with difficulty from their hiding-place at the Fuller’s Spring below the southern extremity of the wall of Jerusalem, and subsequently owed their preservation to a woman’s wit. The priests were known to be hostile to the new movement; they had therefore been watched and closely pursued. They reached David while he was still on the western side of the Jordan, and no time was lost in putting the river between himself and his enemies. The fugitives, however, did not consider themselves safe until they found themselves at Mahanaim, where they were in the midst of a friendly population. Ammonites as well as Gileadites hastened to do honour to David, and to furnish him with everything that he and his companions required.^[502]

He was soon joined by Joab and his brother Abishai, with the veteran troops under their command. A third division of the army was placed under Ittai of Gath, a captain in the royal bodyguard, and the approach of the rebel army was awaited without anxiety. Amasa made the fatal mistake of attacking the royal troops in their own territory, on ground 433they had chosen for themselves. Not only was it on the further side of the Jordan, it was also among the trees and dense undergrowth of the forest of Ephraim.^[503] The issue could not be doubtful. David, indeed, had not been allowed by his followers to enter the field himself. He was now too old for active service, and his death would involve all the horrors of a disputed succession and civil war. That Absalom, however, would be defeated seems to have been taken for granted, and David accordingly impressed upon his generals that they should spare his son’s life.

But Joab judged more wisely than the king. He knew that as long as Absalom lived there would be constant trouble and insecurity, and that for those who had fought against him on his father’s side there would be but short shrift. As Absalom, therefore, hung suspended by his hair from the branches of a tree which had caught him in his flight, he pierced him with three darts, while his ten armour-bearers despoiled the corpse. Twenty thousand of the enemy were said to have been slain, partly by the sword, partly from the nature of the place in which the battle was fought, and the slaughter would have been greater had not Joab recalled his men from their pursuit of the foe as soon as Absalom was dead. With the fall of the usurper all further danger was at an end.

Ahimaaz, the Levite, famous for his fleetness of foot, ran with news of the victory to the king. But Joab knew how fondly David had doted on his handsome and selfish son; he knew also that he was weakened in both mind and body, and that the day was past when his emotions could be kept under control. Joab, therefore, refused to let Ahimaaz carry the tidings of his son’s death to the king, and an ‘Ethiopian’ slave was sent with the news instead. In the end, however, Ahimaaz outran the Ethiopian, and announced at Mahanaim 434the victory that had been won. Then came the foreigner with the message that Absalom was dead.

The conduct of David which followed on the message was indefensible. He forgot that he was a king, that he had duties towards his people and those who had risked their lives on his behalf, that the prince who had fallen in open fight had been the murderer of his brother, a rebel against his father, and a would-be parricide. All was forgotten and absorbed in a father’s grief for his dead son. David allowed the passion of his emotion to sweep him away, and he wept as a woman and not as a man. It was an outburst of Oriental exaggeration of feeling, unrestrained and untempered by the reason or the will.

His followers regarded the spectacle with amazement and dismay. Had it been worth their while to fight for such a king? One by one they slunk away, and it seemed as if he would soon be left alone to the company of himself and his harîm. But once more Joab came to the rescue of his old master and companion in arms. It was indeed with the rough speech of the soldier, but plain speech was needed even though it was rough and rude. ‘Thou hast shamed this day,’ he said, ‘the faces of all thy servants, which this day have saved thy life, and the lives of thy sons and of thy daughters, and the lives of thy wives, and the lives of thy concubines; in that thou lovest thine enemies, and hatest thy friends. For thou regardest neither princes nor servants: for this day I perceive, that if Absalom had lived, and all we had died this day, then it had pleased thee well. Now therefore arise, go forth, and speak comfortably unto thy servants: for I swear by the Lord, if thou go not forth, there will not tarry one with thee this night: and that will be worse unto thee than all the evil that befell thee from thy youth until now.’

David was roused from his selfish and unworthy grief; weak and self-indulgent as he had become, the words of Joab nevertheless forced him to recognise the dangers he had provoked. But he never forgave his monitor. He soon 435found an opportunity of punishing Joab for his loyalty, and his dying orders to his successor were to put his grey-haired servant to death.

Secret word was sent to the priests at Jerusalem that they should shame the elders of Judah into demanding the return of the king, seeing that he was their own tribesman, and that the rest of Israel had already acknowledged his sovereignty. At the same time Amasa was appointed commander-in-chief in place of Joab. David thus revenged himself upon his too outspoken general, and also made a bid for popularity among the Jewish forces who had followed Amasa.

The act was as foolish as it was unjust, and it soon brought its penalty with it. The elders of Judah indeed begged the king to return, and he was led across the Jordan in a sort of triumphal procession by the delegates of that tribe. But the other tribes resented this appropriation of the royal person. It was the Jews rather than the rest of Israel who had revolted and made Absalom their king, while the veterans of Joab who had remained loyal represented the whole nation. For the first time since the death of Esh-Baal, the men of Israel and of Judah stood over against one another with antagonistic interests and angry rivalry; Israel claimed to have ten parts in the king, whereas Judah had but one, and yet David’s action had implied that Judah alone was his rightful heritage. Hardly was he again in Jerusalem before a new and more dangerous revolt broke out against his rule. Sheba, a Benjamite, raised the standard of rebellion, and his cry, ‘We have no part in David,’ found an echo in the hearts of the northern tribes. ‘Every man of Israel,’ we are told, deserted ‘the son of Jesse’; Judah alone adhered to him. But the strong arm and able brain that had so long fought for David were no longer there to help him; Joab had been superseded by Amasa; and the raw levies of Judah who had escaped from the forest of Ephraim were but a poor substitute for the disciplined forces which had created an empire. David at last awoke to the fact that in a moment of weak 436passion he had done his best to throw away a crown; Abishai was summoned in haste and sent with the bodyguard and ‘Joab’s men’ against the new foe.

It would seem that Sheba’s camp had been at Gibeon, not far to the north of Jerusalem. On the advance of the Jewish army he retreated northward. Joab had accompanied his brother, and at ‘the great stone’ of Gibeon the Jewish forces were overtaken by their new commander-in-chief. Amasa placed himself at the head of them, clad in the robe of office which Joab had worn for so many years. The provocation was great, and the murder of Abner with which Joab had begun his career was repeated in the murder of Amasa at the close of it. Abner, however, had been a general of considerable ability and influence; and Joab had not yet accumulated so many claims upon the gratitude of the king. The army took Joab’s side in the matter: Amasa’s body was thrown into a field with a common cloth above it, and the Jewish soldiers hurried on along the high-road in pursuit of the foe. They would have no other commander but Joab, and his degradation by the king was tacitly set aside.

With Joab once more at their head, the insurrection soon came to an end. Sheba fled to the northern extremity of Israelitish territory and flung himself into the city of Abel of Beth-Maachah.^[504] Here he was closely besieged until ‘a wise woman’ persuaded her fellow-citizens to cut off his head and throw it to Joab. The rebellion was over, and Joab returned in triumph to Jerusalem.

The last ten years of David’s life were passed in tranquillity. His bodily and mental powers grew enfeebled, and he sank slowly into the grave. The hardships of his youth and the self-indulgence and polygamy of his later years had weakened his constitution prematurely. While his early companions 437Joab and Abiathar still retained their vigour, the king became old and worn-out. The intrigues of the harîm, it is true, still continued, but there was no Absalom to steal away the hearts of the people by his beauty and winsomeness of manner; no Amnon to assert in deeds the rights of a crown-prince.

Israel was at peace with her neighbours. Edom and Zobah had been utterly crushed; Moab and Ammon feared to move while Joab was alive. The petty kings of Northern Syria paid intermittently their tribute; Tyre and Sidon courted their powerful neighbour, whose friendship was preferable to his hostility. Egypt was divided against herself; more than one dynasty ruled in the country, and the Tanite sovereigns of the Delta had neither wealth nor men. Like Egypt, Babylonia had fallen into decay, and the defeat of the Assyrian king Assur-irbi by the Aramæans had cut off Assyria from the nations of the West. The Philistines had been compelled to become the servants of David; and the pirate-hordes who had flocked to their aid from Krete and the Ægean now passed into the service of the Israelitish king, or else transferred their attention to other parts of the Mediterranean Sea. According to Greek legend, Thrace, Rhodes, and Phrygia occupied the waters of which they had once been the masters. Phœnician trading-ships could at last sail peaceably across them, and Tyre accordingly, under Abibal and Hiram, became a centre of maritime trade.

In the north, the Hittite empire had long since passed away. Kadesh, on the Orontes, had become the capital of a small district, formidable to no one, and on good terms with its Israelitish neighbours.^[505] Hamath, also, was in alliance with the Israelitish king. Among the wadis of the Lebanon, near Damascus, Rezon, indeed, led the life of a bandit-chief, and robbed the caravans which passed his way; 438but it was not until after David’s death that he succeeded in establishing himself at Damascus, and there founding a dynasty of kings.

At home, however, though outwardly all seemed calm, the seeds of disunion and discontent were lying thick below the surface. The rebellion of Absalom in Judah, of Sheba in Northern Israel, had shown how fragile were the bonds of union that bound the tribes to one another and to their king. The affections of Judah were not yet entwined around the house of David; the feeling that they were a single nation had not yet penetrated very deeply into the hearts of the other tribes. The Davidic dynasty itself was not yet secure. It depended for its support rather on the sword than on the loyalty of the people. The fallen dynasty still had its followers and secret supporters, and now and then an event occurred which showed how dangerous they might become. Shimei the Benjamite doubtless represented the feeling of his tribe when he cursed David in the hour of his humiliation; and David’s conduct after his restoration to the throne shows that he could not trust even Merib-Baal or Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, whom he had treated as his own son.^[506] An incident which had happened in an earlier part of his reign is another proof of his readiness to root out as far as possible the family of Saul. Three years in succession Palestine had suffered from want of rain and consequent famine, and the oracle of Yahveh declared that the cause of the visitation was Saul’s slaughter of the Gibeonites. The massacre of the priests at Nob had indeed been avenged by the death of the 439Israelitish king and his sons, and by the fall of his throne, but other temple-servants besides the priests had suffered from Saul’s outburst of mad anger, and their blood was still crying out for revenge. Blood demanded blood, and the sacrifice of Saul’s descendants could alone atone for the guilt of their forefather.

Mephibosheth was spared, partly because of his father Jonathan’s friendship towards David, whose life he had once saved, partly because little was to be feared from a lame man. But the five sons of Michal (?) by Adriel of Meholah were handed over to the executioner.^[507] They stood too near the throne; apart from Mephibosheth they were, in fact, the only direct descendants of the late king, and David was doubtless glad of the opportunity of removing them from his path. His dying injunctions to Solomon proved how merciless he could be when the safety of his dynasty was at stake.

Two other descendants of Saul still remained, who might possibly be a source of trouble. These were the sons of his concubine Rizpah, and they also were condemned to die. The sacred number of seven victims was thus made up, and David satisfied at once the religious scruples of the Gibeonites and the political exigencies of his own position. Shimei had some reason for calling him a ‘man of blood’ who had shed ‘the blood of the house of Saul.’

The human victims were hanged on the sacred hill of Gibeah ‘before the Lord,’ and none was allowed to take the bodies down until at last the rain fell. Then they were buried solemnly in the ancestral tomb of Saul’s family at Zelah, along with the ashes of Saul and Jonathan, which David had brought from Jabesh-gilead. The great 440atonement had been made and accepted by Yahveh, and at the same time David had cleared himself from all charges of impiety towards the dead. The fallen dynasty had ceased to be formidable.

Hence it was that when the northern tribes under Sheba broke away from the house of David, they could find no representative of the family of Saul to lead them. Sheba, it is true, was a Benjamite, but he came from Mount Ephraim, and was not related to Saul. He was rather one of those military generals who in after days played so large a part in the history of the northern kingdom in dethroning and founding dynasties.

Nevertheless, the yoke of the royal supremacy was borne with impatience. In spite of the support of the priesthood and the swords of Joab and the foreign bodyguard, David’s reign was troubled by rebellion. As long, indeed, as it was signalised by victories over a foreign foe, by the conquest of neighbouring states, by the influx of captive slaves and the acquisition of spoil, his subjects were well content with their successful leader in war. His influence over those who were brought into personal contact with him had always been great, and there were few who could resist his charm of manner. But when the era of conquests was past, when David had delegated his military duties to others, and had retired more and more into the privacy of an Oriental palace, the seeds of discontent began to grow and spread. Even in Judah there were complaints that justice was neglected (2 Sam. xiv. 2-6); further off the complaints must have been loud and deep. The unpopularity of the conscription by which the ranks of the army were filled was patent even to Joab (2 Sam. xxiv. 3), and the census on which it depended was regarded as hateful to God as well as to man.

Even David himself half repented of his determination to number the people (2 Sam. xxiv. 10), and the general feeling was expressed by the seer Gad when he declared that the punishment of heaven would be visited for the deed, not 441indeed upon the guilty king, but upon his innocent subjects (2 Sam. xxiv. 13, 17). In the plague that devastated Palestine they saw the anger of Yahveh, and the conscience-stricken king at once assented to the common view.

The cessation of the plague was connected with the foundation of the temple. At the very spot where David had seen the angel of death standing with his sword unsheathed, the altar was built and the sacrifice offered which appeased the wrath of the Lord. It was the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, on the level summit of Mount Moriah, where the old Jebusite population of Jerusalem still dwelt. It may even be that Araunah was the last Jebusite king whose life and freedom were spared when Jerusalem was surrendered to David.^[508]

The threshing-floor was bought by David, and became the great ‘high-place’ of the new capital of the kingdom. Everything marked it out as the site of that temple which in the Eastern world was a necessary supplement of the royal palace. It was the highest part of the city; it was, moreover, a smooth and sunny rock, and the place which it occupied was open and unconfined. It had been the scene of a special revelation of Yahveh to the king, and the altar erected on it had been the means of preserving the people of Israel from death. It is possible, too, that the spot was already sacred. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets, Ebed-Tob, king of Jerusalem, speaks of the Temple of Nin-ip as standing on ‘the mountain of Uru-salim,’ and of all the mountains of Jerusalem the future temple-mount was the most prominent and commanding.

We do not know when the pestilence occurred which thus had such momentous consequences for the later religion of Judah. The empire of David already extended as far as 442‘Kadesh of the Hittites,’^[509] but Edom does not as yet seem to have become a province of Israel. The census was taken in order to ascertain the number of fighting men in Israel, not with a view to the levying of taxes. In the latter case the conquered provinces would have been included in the registration. We may gather, therefore, that the event happened about the middle of David’s reign, probably at the time when the struggle with Zobah was still going on.

It was at a later period, when ‘the Lord had given him rest round about from all his enemies’ (2 Sam. vii. 1), that he announced to Nathan his purpose of building a temple. Nathan had taken Gad’s place as the seer and confidant of the king, and the palace of David had already been erected. But Yahveh would not allow him to carry out his plan. His hands were stained too deeply with blood; the work was destined for the son whose name signified ‘the peaceful one,’ and in whose birth and training the seer had taken so profound an interest.^[510] All that David could do was to prepare the way for his successor, to collect the materials for the work, and to determine the place whereon the temple of God should stand.

Two lists have come down to us of David’s chief officers, extracted from the State annals. The first list is given at the end of the annalistic summary of the events of his reign (2 Sam. viii. 16-18), and belongs to the earlier portion of it; the second must have been drawn up not long before his death. From the outset, it is clear, the kingdom was as thoroughly organised as that of the surrounding states. There was the ‘recorder’ or ‘chronicler’ whose duty it was to hand down the memory of all that happened to future generations; 443the scribe or chief secretary who wrote and answered official letters, and superintended the copying and re-editing of older documents in the record office; the commander-in-chief of the army, who corresponded to the turtannu or tartan of the Assyrians, and the commander of the foreign troops. The administration, in fact, seems to have closely resembled that of Assyria, excepting only that there was no Vizier or Prime Minister who acted as the representative of the king. It presupposes a long-established use of writing and all the machinery of a civilised Oriental state. The scribe and the chronicler make their appearance in Israel simultaneously with the establishment of an organised government. A knowledge of the art of writing could have been no new thing.

Jehoshaphat, the son of Ahilud, we are told, was the recorder, Seraiah was the secretary,^[511] Benaiah the commander of the Kretan and Philistine bodyguard. By the side of the civil functionaries were the two high priests Zadok and Abiathar, while the office of royal chaplains was filled by the sons of David himself. Their duties were probably to offer such sacrifices as were not public in the absence or in place of their father. That there should have been two high priests is difficult to explain. Zadok was the son of Ahitub, whom the Chronicler makes the son of Amariah, and a descendant of Phinehas the son of Eleazar (1 Chron. vi. 7), while Abiathar was the son of Ahimelech or Ahiah, the grandson of Ahitub, and great-grandson of Phinehas the son of Eli.^[512] Abiathar appears to have represented the family of Ithamar the younger brother of Eleazar 444the son of Aaron; at any rate, it was to his family that the safe keeping of the ark had been intrusted as well as the high priesthood at the sanctuary of Shiloh. The destruction of Shiloh dealt a blow at its influence and prestige, the massacre of the priests at Nob almost annihilated it. Room was thus given for another line of priests who claimed descent from the elder branch of Aaron’s family, and who had probably preserved the Mosaic tradition in another part of Israel. Is it possible that Zadok had followed the fortunes of Esh-Baal, while Abiathar attached himself to David? At all events, the unification of the kingdom brought with it the unification of the high-priestly families; throughout the greater part of David’s reign the ark at Jerusalem was served by both Zadok and Abiathar, with numerous Levites under them (2 Sam. xv. 24-29). That Zadok is always named first, though Abiathar had been the early friend and priest of David, implies that his claim to represent the elder branch of the high priest’s family was recognised.

When the second list of David’s officials was compiled certain important changes had taken place. Seraiah, the secretary, had been succeeded by Sheva or Shisha (2 Sam. xx. 25; 1 Kings iv. 3); ‘Ira, the Jairite,’ had become the chaplain of David, and the growth of the empire had necessitated the creation of a new office. This was the imperial treasurership which was held by a certain Hadoram, who seems to have been of Syrian origin, and whose duty it was to collect the tribute of the conquered provinces.^[513] 445Possibly he had already gained experience of the office under one of the Syrian kings.

Other officers of David are enumerated by the Chronicler (1 Chron. xxvii. 25-34). They had their analogues in Assyria and Egypt, and show how thoroughly the court of Israel was modelled after those of the neighbouring states. Among them we read of Azmaveth, the son of Adiel, who presided over the exchequer; of Jonathan, the son of Uzziah, who superintended the public granaries, which must therefore have been established in imitation of those of Egypt and Babylonia;^[514] of Ezri, the superintendent of the peasants who worked on the crown lands; of Shimei and Zabdi, who had charge of the royal vineyards and wine-cellars; of Baal-hanan and Joash, to whom were intrusted the olive plantations and storehouses of oil; of Obil, the Ishmaelite, the chief of the camel-drivers; of Jehdeiah, the head of the ass-drivers; and of Jaziz, the Hagarene, who superintended the shepherds of the king.^[515]

David sank slowly into the grave, old in mind as well as in years. A young maiden, Abishag the Shunammite, was brought to lie beside the king, and so keep up the warmth of his body. But it was all in vain, and it became clear that he could not last long. The bed of the dying king was surrounded by intrigue. Adonijah, the eldest of his surviving sons, naturally looked upon himself as the rightful heir. He could count upon two powerful supporters. One was the priest Abiathar, who had first given David’s title to the crown a religious sanction; the other was Joab, who had created his empire. But Bath-sheba had long since determined that she should be queen-mother, and that her son Solomon should wear the crown. Behind her stood Nathan, the spiritual director both of herself and of her son. The adhesion of Abiathar and Joab to Adonijah, moreover, drove their rivals 446Zadok and Benaiah into the opposite camp, and Benaiah took with him the foreign bodyguard of which he was commander, and which, as in other countries, thus showed itself ready from the outset to make and unmake kings. Above all, Bath-sheba still exercised her old influence over the half-conscious monarch, and it did not need the incitements of Nathan to induce her to exert it once more on behalf of Solomon. Backed as she was by the prophet, the issue was not doubtful, and David did as he was bid. Bath-sheba reminded him of his old promise to herself, Nathan craftily represented that Adonijah was already seizing the crown before his father’s life was extinct.

Zadok and Benaiah were accordingly summoned, and ordered to escort the young prince on David’s own mule to the spring of Gihon, and there, just outside the eastern wall of Jerusalem, where the Spring of the Virgin now gushes from the ground, to anoint him with the oil of consecration, and proclaim his accession by the sound of trumpet. The presence of the priests and the bodyguard was a visible sign that the kingship and the power had been transferred from David to Solomon.

Meanwhile Adonijah was holding a feast at the stone of Zoheleth, near En-Rogel, the Fuller’s Spring, the modern Well of Job south of the Pool of Siloam. Abiathar and Joab were with him; so also were his brothers, who seem to have had but little affection for the favourite of Nathan, as well as those representatives of Judah who had been the mainstay of Absalom’s rebellion. Solomon appears to have been regarded as tainted by foreign blood; at all events, Judah followed Adonijah as it had followed Absalom.^[516] But Nathan and Bath-sheba had taken their measures in time. In the midst 447of the feast news was brought to the conspirators by Johanan, the son of Abiathar, that Solomon had been proclaimed king, and that his person was already protected by the royal bodyguard. The guests fled in dismay, and Adonijah took refuge at the altar. There the sovereign-elect promised him that he would spare his life.

Solomon next received the last commands of the dying king. David’s last thought was for the maintenance of the kingdom and the dynasty. Solomon was to follow in the footsteps of his father, to obey the law of Yahveh and His priests. More especially he was to seek an early opportunity of ridding himself of possible rivals or antagonists whom the weakness or policy of David himself had hitherto spared. Joab was to be put to death; he was too powerful a subject to be allowed to live, aged though he now was, and his complicity with Adonijah made him dangerous to the new king. Shimei, too, was to be slain; as long as he lived the fallen dynasty had a leader around whom the disaffected might rally. On the other hand, the kindness of Barzillai, the Gileadite, was not to be forgotten; favour to him would win the hearts of the men of Gilead.^[517]

David died, leaving behind him a name which his countrymen never forgot. He became the ideal of a patriot king. He had founded a dynasty and an empire; and though the empire soon fell to pieces, the dynasty survived and exercised a momentous influence upon the religious history of the 448world. He had established once for all the principle of monarchy in Israel; never again could the Israelites return to the anarchic days of the Judges, or forget the lessons of unity which they had been taught.

In character he was generous and kind-hearted, though in his later years his kindheartedness degenerated into weakness. He was, moreover, brave and skilful, with a personal charm of manner and readiness of speech which those about him found it impossible to withstand. Alone of his sons, Absalom seems to have inherited these gifts of his father, which may perhaps account for the blind love David had for him. But along with these gifts went a rich fund of Oriental selfishness, which made him never lose an opportunity of securing his own advantage or promotion. It was a selfishness so deep as to be wholly unconscious; whatever made for his interests was necessarily right. It was combined with clearness of head and definiteness of aim, which ensured success in whatever he undertook. A good judge of men, he first attached them to himself by his gifts of manner, and then knew how to trust and employ them.

With the strong and healthy mind of the peasant there was, however, combined a depth of passionate emotion which doubtless had much to do with the influence he possessed over others. David was a man of strong impulses, and we cannot understand his character unless we remember the fact. The impulses, it is true, were controlled and regulated by the cool judgment and politic self-restraint which distinguished more especially his earlier life; but they swayed him to the end, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil. Above all, he was a religious man, deeply attached to the faith into which he had been born, full of trust in priests and prophets and oracles, and convinced that Yahveh would protect and befriend him as long as he obeyed the divine law. But there was neither asceticism nor fanaticism in his religion; it was the firm faith and religious conviction of a healthy mind.

David was not cruel by nature; if he showed himself 449merciless at times, it was either for reasons of policy, or because the action was in accordance with the public opinion of the age. The Assyrian kings gloat over the barbarities they practised towards their conquered enemies, and the Hebrew Semite similarly prayed that Yahveh might dip His foot in the blood of His foes. David might indeed be a man of blood, but by the side of the rulers of Nineveh he was mercy itself; and the very fact that the blood he had shed prevented him from building a temple to his God shows how different the conception of Yahveh must have been from that which prevailed among the neighbouring nations of their own deities.

Such, then, was David’s character, with all its apparent anomalies. Brave and active, clear-headed and politic, generous and kind-hearted, he was at the same time selfish and impulsive, at times unforgiving and merciless. He had nevertheless a genuine and fervid trust in Yahveh, and a fixed belief that Yahveh demanded an upright life and ‘clean hands.’ Up to the last he remained at heart the Oriental peasant, who takes a healthy view of life, whose shrewdness is crossed and chequered by the impulses of the moment, and whose religion is deep and unquestioning. But, like the peasant, he failed to be proof against success and prosperity. The bold and hardy warrior degenerated into the self-indulgent and even sensual despot. It is true that he repented of the crimes to which his self-indulgence had led, and which to most other Oriental despots would have soon become a second nature; the self-indulgence, however, remained, and a weak will and infirmity of purpose marred the latter years of his life.

Future generations saw in him the ‘sweet psalmist of Israel.’ As far back as we can trace it, tradition averred that a large part of the psalter owed its origin to him. It has been left for the nineteenth century to be wiser than the past, and to deny to David the authorship of even a single psalm. But there are some of them which seem to bear 450their Davidic authorship on their face,^[518] and if there are many which belong to a later date, while others are pieced together from earlier fragments,^[519] this is only what we should expect when once the nucleus of a collection had been formed, and the psalms embodied in it employed liturgically. Assyrian discovery has shown that penitential psalms, similar in spirit and form to those of David, had been composed in Babylonia centuries before his time, and there collected together for liturgical purposes.^[520] In Egypt, what we should call ‘Messianic psalms’ had been written before the age of the Exodus.^[521] There is, therefore, no reason why a part of the Hebrew psalter should not belong to the Davidic period, and be the work of David himself. There is nothing in it inconsistent with the character of David or the ideas of his time. It is only the false theory of ‘the development of Hebrew religion’ which finds in it the religious conceptions of a later era. Those indeed who maintain that in the age of David the law of Moses was as yet unknown, and that faith in Yahveh was 451hardly to be distinguished from that in Baal or Chemosh, may be compelled to deny that any of the psalms, with their high spiritual level, can belong to the king who was ‘after God’s own heart’; but history cannot take note of theories which are built upon assumptions and not facts. Even in the northern kingdom of Israel, where the memory of the founder of the Davidic dynasty was naturally held in little esteem, tradition was obliged to confess that he had been the inventor of ‘instruments of music’ (Am. vi. 5).

The exact date of David’s death is doubtful. The chronology of the books of Kings, so long the despair of chronologists, has at length been corrected by the synchronisms that have been established between the history of Israel and Judah and that of Assyria. Thanks to the so-called Lists of Eponyms or Officers from whom the years of the state calendar took their name, we now possess an exact chronology of Assyria from B.C. 911. In B.C. 854 Ahab took part in the battle of Qarqar, which was fought by the princes of the west against their Assyrian invaders, and his death, therefore, could not have happened till after that date. In B.C. 842 Jehu offered homage to the Assyrian monarch, and Hazael of Damascus was defeated in a battle on Mount Shenir. Four years previously the Syrian opponent of the Assyrians was Hadad-idri or Ben-Hadad. Lastly, Menahem of Israel paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser III. in B.C. 738, Pekah and Rezin were overthrown in B.C. 734, and Damascus was taken and destroyed by the Assyrian king in B.C. 732. It is only after the capture of Samaria by Sargon in B.C. 722, when the kingdom of Judah stands alone, that the Biblical dates harmonise with the Assyrian evidence, or indeed with one another. It is evident, therefore, that the Biblical chronology is more than forty years in excess. Ahab, instead of dying in B.C. 898, as Archbishop Usher’s chronology makes him do, cannot have died till some forty-five years later. We have no means of checking the earlier chronology of the divided kingdom, but assuming its correctness, the 452revolt of the Ten Tribes would have taken place about B.C. 930.

Solomon, like Saul, is said to have reigned forty years. But this merely means that the precise length of his reign was unknown to the compiler. It could not have exceeded thirty years. Hadoram, who was ‘over the tribute’ in the latter part of David’s life (2 Sam. xx. 24), still occupied the same office in the first year of Rehoboam’s reign (1 Kings xii. 18), and Rezon, who had fled from Zobah when David conquered the country, was ‘an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon’ (1 Kings xi. 24, 25). No clue is given by the statement of Rehoboam’s age in 1 Kings xiv. 21, since when it is said that he was ‘forty and one years’ at the time of his accession this is merely equivalent to ‘x + 1.’

The length of David’s reign is more accurately fixed. Seven years and a half did he reign in Hebron, and thirty-three years over Israel and Judah (2 Sam. iv. 5), or forty and a half years in all. Approximately, therefore, we may date his reign from B.C. 1000 to 960. Saul’s accession may have been ten or fifteen years earlier.

David’s palace at Jerusalem, it is stated in 2 Sam. v. 11, was built by the artisans of Hiram of Tyre, who also furnished him with cedar wood. The fragment of Tyrian annals quoted by Josephus from Menander^[522] throws some light on the chronology of the time. Hiram, we are told, was the son of Abibal, and the names of his successors are recorded one after the other, together with the length of their reigns. But unfortunately the sum of the reigns does not agree with their total as twice given by Josephus, nor indeed are our authorities agreed among themselves in regard to the length of certain of them. The fact, however, that Josephus twice gives the same total raises a presumption in its favour, more especially when we find that it is possible by a little manipulation to make the sum of the several reigns harmonise with it.^[523] This total is 453one hundred and forty-three years and eight months, which, it is said, elapsed from the building of Solomon’s temple in the twelfth year of Hiram down to the foundation of Carthage in the seventh year of Pygmalion. But the date of the foundation of Carthage is itself not a wholly certain quantity, though B.C. 826 is probably that which was assigned to it by the native historians.^[524] A hundred and forty-three years and eight months reckoned back from 826 would bring us to B.C. 969 or 970. As the temple was begun in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign (1 Kings vi. 1), this would give B.C. 973 for the accession of Solomon, and B.C. 1013 for that of David. The palace constructed for David at Jerusalem by the workmen of Hiram must have been erected at the very end of David’s life, after the suppression of the revolt of Absalom, unless, indeed, the author of the books of Samuel has mistaken the name of the Tyrian king, and written Hiram instead of Abibal.

There is yet another synchronism between Hebrew and profane history which must not be overlooked. Jerusalem was captured in the fifth year of Rehoboam by Shishak I., the founder of the twenty-second Egyptian dynasty. But Egyptian chronology is more disputable even than that of Israel, and we do not know in what year of the Pharaoh’s reign the invasion of Palestine took place. Boeckh, on the authority of Manetho, places the commencement of his reign 454in B.C. 934; Unger, on the same authority, in B.C. 930; while Lepsius pushes it back to B.C. 961.

On the whole, then, we must be content with approximate dates for the founders of the Hebrew monarchy. The revolt of the Ten Tribes will have taken place somewhere between B.C. 940 and 930; the accession of David somewhere between B.C. 1010 and 1000. It coincided with the period when the older kingdoms of the Oriental world—Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt—were in their lowest stage of weakness and decay.

Solomon succeeded to a brilliant heritage. The nations which surrounded him had been conquered or forced into alliance with Israel; there was none among them adventurous or strong enough to attack the newly risen power. The caravan-roads which brought the merchandise of both north and south to the wealthy states of Western Asia passed through Israelitish territory; Edom, which communicated with the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, was in Jewish hands, as well as Zobah, which commanded the road to the Euphrates. The tolls levied on the trade which thus passed through the empire filled the treasury at Jerusalem with abundant riches, while the products and luxuries of the whole eastern world flowed into the Hebrew market. The alliance with the Tyrians gave Solomon a port in the Mediterranean; the possession of Edom gave him ports of his own in the Gulf of Aqaba. In return for the use of the Edomite harbours by the ships of Phœnicia, he was allowed to send forth merchantmen of his own from the havens of Hiram on the Phœnician coast. The ships themselves were manned with Phœnician sailors; like the Assyrian kings in later days he had to turn to the experienced mariners of Phœnicia to work his fleet.

At home the kingdom had been fully organised. There were an army of veterans, a foreign bodyguard, who had no interests beyond those of the master who paid them, a well-selected capital, and a fiscal administration. The revolts which had disturbed the later years of David had been 455suppressed with a heavy hand, and such murmurs as may have been raised against the enfeebled government and neglected justice of the late reign were hushed in presence of a young and well-educated prince, the protégé of priests and prophets, whose very name promised his people the blessings of peace. The wars of David, with their tax of blood and treasure, were at an end. Those who had conspired against the elevation of Solomon to the throne had been put to death at the outset of his reign: the grey hairs of Joab were stained with his own blood as he clung to the unavailing altar; Adonijah was executed on the ground that he had asked to have Abishag for a wife, and it was not long before a pretext was found for removing Shimei out of the way. Benjamin and Judah had alike lost their leaders, and Solomon henceforth did his utmost to win them to himself.

Abiathar was banished to the priests’ city of Anathoth, and the glory of the high priesthood was left to Zadok and his descendants alone. They alone were allowed to serve before the ark of the covenant, and the doom pronounced upon the house of Eli was thus fulfilled. The act placed the religion of Israel for many generations to come under the domination of the king. Solomon declared by it his supremacy in the church as well as in the state. It meant that the king claimed the power and the right to appoint and dismiss the ministers of the Mosaic law. The central sanctuary became the royal chapel rather than the temple of the national God, and its priests were the paid officials of the sovereign rather than the administrators and interpreters to the people of the divine law. The democratic element passed out of Hebrew religion, and the king more than the high priest came to stand at the head of it. The erection of the temple completed the work which the deposition of Abiathar had begun; sanctuary, services, and priesthood were all alike under the royal control. The family of Eli had preserved the tradition of the days when the priests of Shiloh exercised independent authority, and interpreted the law which all were called upon to obey. 456With the banishment of Abiathar came a break with the past; no venerable memories were connected with the rival house of Zadok, no recollection of a time when the word of the priest of Shiloh had been a teacher in Israel. Under Zadok and his successors the old meaning of the high priesthood gradually faded out of sight; as in Assyria or Southern Arabia the priests of an earlier age were supplanted by kings, so too in Israel the place and influence of the high priest were absorbed by the Davidic dynasty. Even a Jeroboam could assert his right to establish sanctuaries and appoint the priests who should serve them.

Solomon had been brought up under the eye and instruction of Nathan, and to Nathan, therefore, we must probably trace his religious policy. There was much to be said in favour of it. It prevented friction between the priesthood and the monarchy; it guaranteed the stability of the dynasty of David by extending to it the sanction of religion; above all, it secured the maintenance of the religion itself. It gave it as it were a local habitation in a costly sanctuary built and endowed out of the royal revenues, and attached to the royal palace. The ark ceased to be national, and became instead the sacred treasure of the chapel of the king. While the monarchy lasted, the religion of the monarchy would last also, and Nathan and Zadok might be pardoned if they believed that the Davidic monarchy would last for ever.

The administration of the country next claimed the attention of the new king. It was organised on an Assyrian model, Palestine being divided into districts, each of which was placed under a governor who was responsible for the taxes as well as for the civil and judicial government of it. Hitherto, it would appear, the old system of tribal government had been preserved, the tribes owning allegiance to hereditary chieftains or ‘princes,’ who, like the chieftains of a Highland clan, represented the tribe, and led its members to war. David seems to have modified this system for military purposes, if we may judge from the list of ‘captains’ given in 4571 Chron. xxvii., but no attempt was made to carry out a general system of taxation, or appoint governors with fiscal powers. The conquered provinces alone were required to furnish an annual tribute to the treasury, and for this a single officer, Hadoram, was found sufficient.

The territory of the Israelites themselves was now formed into fiscal districts. Twelve officers were appointed, who were required to provide in turn for the necessary expenses of the royal household during the twelve months of the year. A list of them, extracted from some official document, is given in 1 Kings iv. 8-19. In the earlier part of the list the names of the officers have been lost, those only of their fathers having been preserved. Two of them were married to daughters of Solomon, indicating that the list must have been drawn up towards the end of Solomon’s life. One of the king’s sons-in-law was the governor of Naphtali; the other presided over the Phœnician coast-land south of Tyre. Here, at Dor, in a country occupied by the Zakkal kinsmen of the Philistines, and in proximity to Tyre, it was needful that the prefect should be connected with the king by closer ties than those of officialism. The direction of the Mediterranean trade was mainly in his hands, and the resources which were thus at his disposal, as well as the neighbourhood of Hiram, might have tried the loyalty of any but a relative of the king. The plateau of Bashan was under the jurisdiction of one governor who had his residence at Ramoth-gilead; Gilead was under a second, while a third governor had Mahanaim. We may, therefore, gather that Ammon and Moab, as well as Geshur, had been absorbed into Israelitish territory. This may in part explain why at the revolt of the Ten Tribes Moab went with Israel rather than with Judah.

It is noticeable that there was no governor in Judah. Here, in fact, the king himself ruled in person. It would seem that Judah was exempt from the taxes levied on the rest of Palestine. This was in accordance with the policy which 458made Solomon court the goodwill of his father’s tribe, and identify with its interests those of himself and his house. So far as the continuance of the Davidic dynasty was concerned, the policy succeeded. Judah identified itself with the house of David, and rallied faithfully round its king. There was no longer any talk of rebellion, or of transporting the capital to Hebron; from henceforth Judah and its kings were one. But the fact only made the breach between Judah and the rest of Israel wider and more visible, and alienated the other tribes from the reigning house. They were treated like the conquered Gentiles; the place of their old hereditary princes and leaders was taken by governors appointed by the crown, and fixed taxes were rigorously exacted from them for the support of the royal treasury. They derived no benefit, however, from the royal expenditure; it was lavished upon Jerusalem and the Jewish towns which lay near to it. They were too far off to see even a reflection of that royal glory of which they may have heard, and for which they certainly had to pay. The same causes which strengthened the ties of allegiance of Judah to the reigning dynasty weakened those of Israel.

Throughout the reign of Solomon, Hadoram remained ‘over the tribute,’ and his duties were enlarged by the supervision of the home taxation and corvée being added to that of the foreign tribute.^[525] Jehoshaphat still continued ‘recorder,’ but the secretary Shisha had been succeeded by his two sons. The literary correspondence of the empire was increasing, and one chief secretary was no longer sufficient for it. The family of Nathan, as might have been expected, was well provided for. One son was made Vizier; the other became the royal chaplain as well as ‘the king’s friend.’ The latter title, which had been given to Hushai in the time of David (1 Chron. xxvii. 33), had been borrowed from Egypt; the title of the Vizier, or ‘head of the officers,’ corresponded 459with the Assyrian Rab-saki or Rabshakeh, ‘the chief of the princes.’ Another office which may have been borrowed from Assyria was that of royal steward, which was held by Ahishar; along with him the Septuagint associates a second steward Eliak, and a captain of the bodyguard called Eliab, the son of Saph or Shaphat.^[526] Like the list of governors, the list of officials must have been drawn up at the end of Solomon’s reign, since Azariah has already taken the place of his grandfather Zadok as high priest (see 1 Chron. vi. 9, 10, where a confusion has been made between Ahimaaz the son of Zadok and Johanan or Jonathan the son of Abiathar). It is significant that the list begins with the ‘priest,’ not with the general of the army as in the warlike days of David.

The fame of Solomon’s wealth and magnificence was spread through the Oriental world. Foreign sovereigns sought his alliance or courted his favour. Even the Queen of Sheba came to visit him. Modern criticism has long since banished the Queen to the realm of fiction, but archæological discovery has again restored her to history. Sheba or Saba was already a flourishing kingdom in the time of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III.; its territories extended from the spice-bearing coasts of Southern Arabia to the borders of Babylonia and Palestine. If Glaser and Hommel are right in their interpretation of the south Arabian inscriptions, it had entered on the older heritage of the kingdom of Ma’ân. The Minæan kings of Ma’ân had ruled not only in the south but in the north as well; their records are found near Teima, and 460they had command of the great highroad of commerce which led from the Indian Ocean to Egypt and Gaza. Egypt and Gaza, indeed, are mentioned in Minæan inscriptions.^[527] From an early period the kingdoms of Southern Arabia had been in commercial contact with Canaan.

The conquest of Edom by David and the Hebrew fleets which sailed from the Gulf of Aqaba must soon have acquainted the merchant princes of Ma’ân and Saba with the fact that a new power had risen in Western Asia, and a new market been opened for their goods. The road to Palestine was well-known and frequently travelled, and Minæan or Sabæan settlements existed upon it almost as far as the frontiers of Edom. What more natural, therefore, than that a Sabæan queen should visit her wealthy neighbour whose patronage had become important for Sabæan trade? That queens might rule in the Arabian peninsula we know from the annals of Tiglath-pileser III., which refer to Zabibê and her successor Samsê, each of whom is called a ‘queen of the land of the Arabs.’

Even the Pharaoh of Egypt condescended to mingle the blood of the solar race with that of the grandson of a Hebrew fellah. Solomon married the daughter of the Egyptian monarch. But it was a monarch of the twenty-first dynasty, who, though acknowledged as the sole legitimate representative of the line of the Sun-god Ra, had nevertheless been sadly shorn of his ancient rights and authority. His power was confined to the Delta, where he held his court in the old Hyksos capital of Tanis or Zoan, close to the Asiatic frontier, and as far removed as possible from the rival dynasty which ruled in Upper Egypt. He was doubtless glad to secure a son-in-law who could defend him from his enemies at home in case of need, and whose friendship was preferable to his hostility.

The Egyptian princess had brought with her as dowry the Canaanitish city of Gezer. That it should have been in the 461power of the Pharaoh to give it is at first sight surprising. It shows that Egypt had never relinquished in theory her old claims to be mistress of Canaan. Like the title of ‘king of France,’ which so long lingered in the royal style of England, they were never abandoned, but were ready to be revived whenever an opportunity occurred. Towards the close of the period of the Judges, but before the Philistines had become formidable, Assyria and Egypt had met on friendly terms on the coast of Palestine. The Assyrian conqueror, Tiglath-pileser I. (in B.C. 1100), had found his way to the Phœnician city of Arvad, and there received from the Egyptian Pharaoh various presents which included a crocodile and a hippopotamus. The campaign of the Assyrian king had brought him to the edge of the territory which the Egyptian rulers of the twenty-first dynasty still regarded as their own, and they hastened accordingly to propitiate the invader, and thus to stay his further advance. The embassy and gifts further show that the occupation of the coast by the Philistines did not prevent the Egyptians from maintaining their old relations with Phœnicia, though they may have done so by sea rather than by land. At all events an expedition sent to Gebal by Hir-Hor, the high priest of Thebes, at the beginning of the twenty-first dynasty, was despatched in ships.^[528] Had the coast-road been free from danger, the Egyptians would doubtless have asserted their right to march along it. They seized the first occasion to do so, when the Philistines had been conquered by David, and the successor of David was the Pharaoh’s ally.

Solomon engaged in no wars of his own. He was no general himself, and it may be that he feared to intrust a subject with an army. Joab had taught him how easily the commander-in-chief might defy his master, Abner how readily 462he might betray him. In the list of officials given in the Hebrew text, Benaiah indeed is stated to have been ‘over the host’ (1 Kings iv. 4), but Benaiah was actually the commander of the bodyguard, so that his command of the army must have been merely nominal. Practically the army which had played so large a part in the history of David had ceased to exist. Hence it was that Rezon was able to establish an independent kingdom in Damascus, and that when the Ten Tribes revolted there was no army at hand with which to suppress the rebellion. Hence, too, the curious fact that just as Solomon sought the help of Hiram in fitting out his merchant fleet in the Gulf of Aqaba, so also he sought the help of the Egyptian king in subduing the one Canaanitish city of importance which still preserved its freedom. Gezer had maintained its Canaanitish continuity from the days when as yet the Israelites had not entered Canaan, and the mounds of Tel Jezer which mark its site must still conceal beneath them the records of its early history. Doubtless the Egyptian court was gratified at the arrangement with the Hebrew king. It admitted the Egyptian claim of suzerainty over Palestine, and admitted the right of its armies to march along its roads. But the substantial advantages remained with Solomon. He gained Gezer without either expense or trouble, and at the same time he allied himself by marriage with the oldest and most exclusive royal race in the Oriental world. Like the kings of Mitanni in the age of the eighteenth dynasty, the son-in-law of the Pharaoh was on a footing of equality with the proudest princes of Asia.

The alliance with Hiram was no less advantageous. Hiram had done for Tyre what Solomon was doing for Jerusalem. It has been conjectured that his father Abibal, or Abi-Baal, was the founder of a dynasty; at all events the accession of Hiram ushered in a new era for the Tyrian state. He succeeded to the throne at the age of nineteen years, and during his long reign of thirty-four years he raised Tyre to an unprecedented height of prosperity and power, and rebuilt 463the city itself. The ancient ‘rock’ from which it had derived its name was connected by an embankment with another rocky islet close to it, and a new and splendid city was erected upon the space thus won from the sea. Excellent harbours were constructed, massive walls built round the city, and the venerable temple of Melkarth restored from its foundations, and decorated with all the sumptuous splendour of Phœnician art.

Tyre had always been famous for its sailors and its ships, and its wealth is celebrated even in the letters of Tel el-Amarna. But under Hiram its maritime trade underwent an enormous development. The conquest of the Philistines by David, and the consequent disappearance of piracy from the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, were the immediate causes of this. Tyrian ships could now venture into the bays and havens of the Greek seas in quest of slaves, or the precious purple-fish, and their merchants could make voyages in safety as far as Tarshish. Riches poured into ‘the merchant-city,’ and Hiram had resources in abundance for his public works.

The Hebrew king was eager to follow the example of his Tyrian neighbour. It was true that his subjects were neither sailors nor traders; it was true, also, that the harbours on the Mediterranean coast which the conquest of the Philistines had added to his dominions were few and poor. But the conquest of Edom had given him the entrance to the spice-lands of Southern Arabia, and the gold-mines which recent discovery has found in Central Africa.^[529] An agreement was therefore come to with Hiram which was to the profit of both. Hiram gave Solomon sailors and boat-builders, as 464well as the use of his Mediterranean ports; in return he received from Solomon the right of using the harbours of the Red Sea. While the products of Europe made their way to Solomon through Tyre, the products of the south passed to Hiram from the Edomite havens of Elath and Ezion-geber.

Hiram was useful to Solomon in yet another way. The age of empire-building was over; the time had come to create a capital which should be worthy of the empire. Like Ramses II. of Egypt, Solomon made himself an imperishable name as a builder. Jerusalem was strongly fortified; royal palaces were erected; above all, a temple was raised to Yahveh that vied in splendour with those of Phœnicia and the Nile. But the architects and artisans had to be brought from the dominions of the Tyrian king; the Israelites had been too much barbarised by the long struggle for existence they had had to wage for another Bezaleel to be born among them, as in the days when they had but just quitted the cultured land of the Delta. It is true that the master-artificer in bronze, who designed the bronze-work of the temple, was a Hebrew on his mother’s side, but he bore the Tyrian name of Hiram, and his father was ‘a man of Tyre.’ Even for his carpenters and masons Solomon was indebted to his Tyrian ally; it was only the gangs of labourers driven to their forced work among the forests and quarries of Lebanon that were levied by Hadoram out of ‘Israel.’ The Israelites had become hewers of wood and drawers of water for their king, and, as in the old days of Egyptian bondage, 3300 taskmasters were employed in keeping them to their work.^[530] Like the architects, the skilled artificers were lent by Hiram; from Hiram came also the 465logs of cedar and fir that were needed for the buildings at Jerusalem.

In return Solomon provided his ally with wheat and oil. The island-city was dependent on others for its corn; on the rock of Tyre and on the barren crags of the opposite mainland no wheat could be grown. Twenty cities of Galilee, moreover, were ceded to Hiram. But for these Hiram had to pay one hundred and twenty talents of gold; and in the end, the wily Hebrew, like his forefather Jacob, had the best of the bargain. When the Tyrian king came to inspect his new territory, it ‘pleased him not.’ Solomon, in fact, had given him what it was not worth his own while to keep.

The royal palace was thirteen years in building. Attached to it was the armoury, or House of the Forest of Lebanon as it was called from the cedar used in its construction. Here the three hundred shields and two hundred targets of gold were stored, which were made for the bodyguard, and served also as a reserve fund in case of need. The architecture of the palace itself culminated, as in Persia, in the audience-chamber with its throne of ivory overlaid with gold, and approached by six steps which were guarded on either side by the images of lions. Another palace was erected for the Egyptian queen; like the palace of the king it was in the Upper City, close to the spot on which the temple was destined to stand.

The old palace of David, in the lower town or ‘City of David,’ was deserted; as soon as the new buildings were completed on Moriah, the king moved to them with his harîm and court. The palace which had satisfied the simple tastes of the father was no longer sufficient for the luxury and display of the more cultured son. The ‘City of David’ was left to the Jews and Benjamites; the court and the priesthood settled above them by the side of the old Jebusite population, which had been reduced to serfdom (1 Kings ix. 20). None but slaves and serfs might dwell where the monarch lived surrounded by his armed bodyguard; the free Israelite was confined to another quarter of the town.

466The palace was protected by a huge fortress called the Millo, which was connected with the new walls of Jerusalem, and begun as soon as the palace of the Egyptian princess had been finished. Whether it stood on the eastern or western side of the city is doubtful; the topography of pre-exilic Jerusalem is unfortunately still involved in obscurity. The pool of Siloam, and the identification of the Upper Gihon or ‘Spring’ with the Virgin’s Fountain, the only natural spring of water in the immediate neighbourhood of the city, are almost the only two points which can be fixed with certainty. If the subterranean tunnel which conveys the water of the Virgin’s Fountain to the pool of Siloam is the conduit made by Hezekiah when he ‘stopped the upper water-course of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David’ (2 Chron. xxxii. 30), the west side will be that which overlooks the Tyropœon valley, where the tunnel ends. In this case the city of David, which is stated in 2 Sam. v. 7 to have been on Mount Zion, will be the so-called southern hill or ‘Ophel,’ which lies south of the Mosque of Omar, and the Tyropœon valley will be the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom so often referred to in the Old Testament. The Jerusalem of the kings will thus have been, like most of the cities of the ancient Oriental world, of no great size according to our modern conceptions; its population will have been as closely packed together as it is to-day in the native quarters of Cairo, and the fortifications which surrounded it would not have occupied too wide a circumference for a Jewish army to defend. The Tyropœon valley is choked with the rubbish of ancient Jerusalem to a depth of more than seventy feet; but under it must lie the tombs of the kings of Judah. The recent excavations of Dr. Bliss have thrown but little light on the question, since the walls he has found seem mostly of a late date; but if the rock-cut steps he has discovered north of the pool of Siloam are really ‘the stairs that go down from the city of David’ (Neh. iii. 16), a striking verification will have been given of the theory which sees in the southern hill the 467Zion of Scripture, and in the valley of ‘the Cheesemakers’ the gorge of the sons of Hinnom.^[531]

The crown of all the building activity of Solomon was the temple, even though it did not take so long to construct as his own palace. Materials for it had already been accumulated by David, and the architects and workmen came from Tyre. It was built of large blocks of square stone, the edges of which were probably bevelled as in early Phœnician work, and the walls inside were covered with panels of cedar. Walls and doors alike were profusely decorated with the designs of Phœnician art. Cherubs and palms, lotus flowers and pomegranates were depicted on them in the forms that have been made familiar to us by the relics of ancient Phœnician workmanship. The temple itself was of rectangular shape, not unlike the chapel of King’s College at Cambridge, and in front of it were two large courts, one of which—the ‘inner’ or ‘upper’ court—stood on a higher level than the other. The whole design, in fact, was purely Phœnician; in form and ornamentation the building exactly resembled the temples of Phœnicia. Like them, it must have looked externally like a huge rectangular box, which was further disfigured by chambers, in sets of three, being built one over the other against the walls. The great temple of Melkarth, which Hiram had just completed at Tyre, probably served as the model for the temple of Jerusalem.

The entrance was approached by steps, and consisted of a porch, on either side of which were two lofty columns of bronze, called Jachin and Boaz.^[532] Similar columns were 468planted before the entrance of a Phœnician temple where they symbolised the fertilising power of the Sun-god, and Herodotos (ii. 44) states that the two which stood in front of the temple at Tyre were made of gold and emerald glass. Two similar columns of stone, though of small size, have been found in the Temple of the Giants in the island of Gozo, one of which still remains in its original place. In the outer court was a bronze ‘sea’ or basin, thirty cubits in circumference, and supported on twelve oxen. The ‘sea’ had been imported into the West from Babylonia, where it similarly stood in the court of a temple, and represented the apsu or ‘watery abyss,’ out of which Chaldæan philosophy taught that all things had been evolved. A Babylonian hymn which describes the casting of a copper ‘sea’ for the temple of Chaos tells us that, like the ‘sea’ at Jerusalem, it rested on the heads of twelve bulls.^[533] Along with the ‘sea’ bronze lavers and basins were provided for the ablutions of the priests and the vessels of the sanctuary.

The temple was but a shell for enclosing the innermost shrine or Holy of Holies where, as in a casket, the ark of the covenant was placed under the protecting wings of two gilded cherubim. What they were like we may gather from the Assyrian sculptures, in which the two winged cherubs are depicted on either side of the sacred tree.^[534] The over-shadowing wings formed a ‘mercy-seat,’ the parakku of the Babylonian texts, whereon, according to Nebuchadrezzar, Bel seated himself on the festival of the new year, while the other gods humbly ranged themselves around him bowing to the ground.^[535] At Babylon, moreover, the table of shewbread which stood before Bel was of solid gold, like the table which 469Solomon made for the service of Yahveh.^[536] Indeed, the description of the lavish use of gold in the temple of Jerusalem finds its echo in the description given by Nebuchadrezzar of the temples he reared in Babylon. The altar of Yahveh, it is said, was of gold, so too were the candlesticks and lamps and vessels; even the hinges of the doors that opened into the Holy of Holies were of the same precious metal, while the cedar work was richly gilded, and the floor itself was overlaid with golden plates. In similar terms Nebuchadrezzar describes his decoration of Ê-Sagila, the temple of Bel, at Babylon. Here too, the beams and panels of cedar were overlaid with gold, the gates were gilded, and the vessels for the service of the sanctuary were of solid gold.^[537] There was one point, however, in which the temples of Jerusalem and Babylon differed from one another; in the shrine of Ê-Sagila was the image of Bel: the Hebrew shrine contained no likeness of a god. The only graven figures within it were the cherubim whose wings overshadowed the ark.

The temple was finished in seven (or more exactly seven and a half) years. Perhaps an effort was made to restrict the years of building to the sacred number. At all events, it was in the seventh month of the Hebrew year, the Ethanim of the Phœnicians, that the feast of the dedication was kept.^[538] It coincided with the ancient festival of the Ingathering of the Harvest, a fitting season for commemorating the completion of the work.

The dedication of Solomon’s temple is the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the Jewish state and of Hebrew religion. It became the visible centre round which the elements of the Israelitish faith gathered and cohered together until the terrible day came when the enemy stormed 470the walls of the capital and laid its temple in the dust. But it had already exercised a profound influence upon the history of Judah. It had helped to unify the kingdom; to bind the population of southern Palestine, mixed in blood though it were, into a single whole. Unlike the northern tribes with their two great sanctuaries at Dan and Bethel, Judah and Benjamin had a common centre in the one sanctuary of Jerusalem. Around it, moreover, were grouped all the traditions and memories of a venerable past. It alone was connected with the traditions of the Mosaic Law and the priesthood of Shiloh, with the rites and ceremonies that had come down from the primeval days of the Israelitish people, and with the foundation of the monarchy itself. It was the dwelling-place on earth of Yahveh of Israel; here was the sacred ark of the covenant which had once been carried before the invaders of Canaan, and was still the outward sign and symbol of God’s presence among His people. With the preservation of the temple the preservation of the Jewish religion itself seemed to be bound up, as well as of the Jewish state.

But the temple did something more than help to unify the southern monarchy and preserve the traditions of the Mosaic law. It served also to strengthen and perpetuate the Davidic dynasty, and to keep alive in the hearts of the people their allegiance to the line of Solomon. The temple, as we have seen, was not only a national sanctuary, it was also a royal chapel. It formed, as it were, part of the royal palace, in which the king overshadowed the high priest himself. The halo of veneration which surrounded the temple was thus communicated to the royal line. The temple and the descendants of David became parts of the same national conception; the one necessarily implied the other. When the throne of David fell, the temple also fell with it. While the temple lasted, Judah remained a homogeneous state, yielding willing obedience to its theocratic monarchy, and gradually gaining a clearer idea of the meaning and practice 471of the Mosaic Law. The temple of Solomon made Jewish religion conservative, but it was a conservatism which, as time went on, evolved the consequences of its own principles, and sought how best to carry them out in ritual and practice.

Jerusalem had become one of the great capitals of the world. Its public buildings were worthy of the empire which had been created by David, of the wealth that had poured into the coffers of Solomon from the trade of the whole Orient, of the culture and art which the young king had done his best to introduce. But the necessities of defence were not forgotten. The fortifications of the city were pushed on—though, it would seem, not with sufficient rapidity to allow them to be finished before the king’s death—and horses and chariots were imported from Egypt and the land of the Hittites in the north. With these Solomon equipped a standing force of 1400 chariots and 12,000 horsemen, who served as garrisons in Jerusalem and the other fortresses of the country.

Nor were the other cities of the empire neglected in favour of Jerusalem. Gezer was rebuilt and fortified; so too were ‘Beth-horon the nether and Baalath’ in Judah, and ‘Tadmor in the wilderness,’ the Palmyra of later days.^[539] It is true that modern criticism would see in Tadmor the Tamar of the southern desert of Judah which is referred to by Ezekiel (xlvii. 19, xlviii. 28) as a future border of the Holy Land. But, though the Kethîbh or text of the Hebrew Scriptures has Tamar, the reading is corrupt, and has been corrected by the 472Massoretic scribes themselves.^[540] The Chronicler (2 Chron. viii. 4) shows that Tadmor was the reading of the text in his time, and he shows further that it was known to be the desert-city which afterwards became the seat of empire of the merchant prince Odenathus and his queen, Zenobia. We learn from him that Solomon had put down a rising in that part of Zobah which adjoined Hamath, that he had founded ‘store-cities’ in Hamath, and had built Tadmor in the wilderness beyond. It is strange only that no allusion is made to building operations in Israel: perhaps Solomon was disinclined to establish fortresses among the northern tribes which might be used against his own authority, perhaps David had already put the cities of northern Israel in a thorough state of defence. At all events, little danger from abroad was to be apprehended in this part of the Israelitish dominions; Solomon was in alliance with Tyre, and presumably also with Hamath, and Zobah was included in his empire.

We gather from the Assyrian inscriptions that Zobah extended from the neighbourhood of Hamath and Damascus eastward across the desert towards the Euphrates. Midway stood Palmyra, approached by roads from both Damascus and Homs, which there united and then led to the ford across the Euphrates at Thapsacus or Tiphsakh. It was the shortest route from Palestine to Mesopotamia, and avoided the tolls and possible hostility of the Hittites in their strong fortress of Carchemish. The conquest of Zobah would necessarily have laid Palmyra and the roads that passed through it at the feet of David, and the importance of the place for commercial purposes could not have failed to strike the mind of Solomon ever ready to discover fresh channels of trade. Its fortification would naturally have been one of his first cares; even if there had been no mention of the fact in the Old Testament, 473the historian would have been almost compelled to assume it. It opened to him the merchandise of Mesopotamia, of Babylonia, and Assyria, and brought him into touch with the old monarchies of the Asiatic world. For the trade of the east, Palmyra was to Solomon what the ports of Edom were for the trade of the south.

To the north his dominions touched on those of the Hittites, who were still settled in Kadesh on the Orontes, even if Hamath had long since passed out of their possession. Lenormant was the first to point out that in 1 Kings x. 28 there is an allusion to the importation of horses into Judah, not only from Egypt, but also from the Hittite regions on the Gulf of Antioch. Here lived the Quê of the Assyrian monuments, who are named in the Hebrew text, though it needed the revelations of Oriental archæology to discover the fact. Solomon, it is there said, ‘had horses brought out of Egypt and out of Quê; the royal merchants received it from Quê at a price.’ In the later days of the Assyrian empire Nineveh obtained its supply of horses and stallions from the same part of the world, and there are numerous letters to the king which relate to their importation. The chariots came from Egypt, the value of each being as much as 600 shekels of silver, or £90; it was only the horses that were brought from ‘the kings of the Hittites’ and ‘the kings of Aram.’ The trade in both horses and chariots was a monopoly which Solomon kept jealously in his own hands; the merchants were those ‘of the king,’ and none of his subjects was allowed to import materials of war which might be employed against himself.

It was the trade with the south which introduced into Jerusalem the greatest novelties and the most costly articles of luxury. In imitation of the kings of Egypt and Assyria, Solomon established zoological and botanical gardens where the strange animals and plants that had been brought from abroad were kept. Such collections had been made by Thothmes III. at Thebes, and on the foundations of a ruined 474chamber in his temple at Karnak we may still see pictures of the trees and plants and birds which he sent home from his campaigns in Syria and the Soudan. In Assyria a botanical garden had been similarly planted by Tiglath-pileser I. (B.C. 1100), and stocked with foreign plants.^[541] Solomon’s collections were therefore no new thing in the Oriental world, though they were a novelty in Palestine; and his subjects went to gaze and wonder, like the Cairenes of to-day, at the apes which had come from the far south, or the peacocks whose name (thukîyîm) betrayed their Indian origin. It is even said that he composed books on the animal and vegetable collections he had made.^[542]

Gold and silver and ivory were also brought, with the apes and peacocks, by the merchant vessels whose voyages of three years’ duration carried them along the Somali coast, and even, it may be, to the mouths of the Indus. The gold probably came, for the most part, from the mines of the Zambesi region, where foreign mining settlements are now known to have been established at an early date, and where objects have been found, such as birds carved out of stone, which remind us of the civilisation of southern Arabia. But the greater part of the silver, which we are told became as plentiful as ‘stones,’ must have been derived from Asia Minor. Here were the mines from which the Hittites extracted the metal for which they seem to have had a special fancy, and it was through them that it probably made its way to Jerusalem. Copper would have come from Cyprus, and been brought in the ships which trafficked in the Mediterranean. It was the Mediterranean trade, moreover, which supplied the tin needed for the vast quantities of bronze that was used in the Solomonic age. We know of no source of it equal to such a demand except the peninsula of Cornwall; but if it really was Cornish tin that found its way to the eastern basin 475of the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age it must have travelled like amber across Europe until it reached the Adriatic or the Gulf of Lyons. The amber found by Dr. Schliemann in the prehistoric tombs of Mykenæ is of Baltic origin, and amber beads have been discovered by Dr. Bliss at Lachish, belonging to the century before the Exodus; if amber could travel thus far from northern Europe, the tin might have done the same.

Future generations looked back upon the reign of Solomon as the golden age of Israel. But there was a reverse side to the picture. The combination of culture and arbitrary power produced in him the selfish luxury of an Oriental despot, which is bent on satisfying its own sensuous desires at the expense of all around it. Solomon’s extravagance was like that of the Khedive Ismail in our own day, and it led to the same amount of misery and impoverishment in the nation. He found on his accession a treasury well filled by the thrifty government of his father; and his trading monopolies and alliances brought him an apparently inexhaustible supply of wealth. But a time came when even this supply began to fail, and to cease to suffice for his reckless expenditure. Heavier taxes were laid on the subject populations; the free men of Israel were compelled to work as unpaid serfs under the lash of the taskmaster, and the older population of the land, who were still numerous, were turned into veritable bond-slaves. To the Gibeonites, who had long been the serfs of the Levitical sanctuary, were now added the Nethinim, a part of whom went under the name of ‘Solomon’s slaves’ (Ezra ii. 55, 58). The building of the temple had cost the people dear: the Israelites had been robbed of their freedom to provide for it stone and wood; the Canaanites had been given to it as actual slaves.

Doubtless the policy of Solomon was partly determined by the same considerations as those which had moved the Pharaoh of the Oppression. He mistrusted the Canaanites, he was afraid of the northern tribes. In either case he endeavoured to break their spirit, and render them powerless 476to revolt. But in the case of the Hebrew tribesmen he did not succeed. Discontent was smothered for awhile, but it was none the less dangerous on that account. And towards the end of Solomon’s life an incident occurred which led eventually to the division of the kingdom. Jeroboam the son of Nebat—in whom Dr. Neubauer has seen the name of a ‘Nabathean’—and whose mother belonged to the tribe of Ephraim, had distinguished himself by his activity and abilities. Solomon had finished the Millo or Fort, and was now at work on the other fortifications of Jerusalem. His notice was drawn to Jeroboam, and he made the young man the ‘taskmaster’ or overseer of the corvée of Ephraimites employed upon the walls. Like Moses in old days, Jeroboam’s sympathy was aroused by the sufferings of his fellow-tribesmen, which found a mouthpiece in Ahijah the prophet of Shiloh. Ahijah was himself one of the dispossessed. The glory of Shiloh had passed away from it; Jerusalem had taken its place. The tabernacle of Shiloh had been rejected in favour of the temple of the Jewish king. The centre of Hebrew religion and power had departed from the house of Joseph, and been transferred to the mixed parvenus of Judah.

In Jeroboam the prophet recognised the leader who should restore the lost fortunes of Ephraim and revenge its injuries. Jeroboam listened to the counsels of revolt, but the time for making use of them had not yet come. His plans and plotting became known to Solomon, and, once more like Moses, he had to fly for his life. He made his way to the Egyptian court, where a ready welcome awaited him.

A new dynasty had arisen there. The Libyan mercenaries had dethroned their feeble masters, and seated Shishak or Sheshanq, their general, upon the throne of the Pharaohs. The Tanitic dynasty which ruled the Delta was swept away; so also was the rival dynasty of high-priests who reigned at Thebes and held possession of Upper Egypt. With the rise of the twenty-second dynasty at Bubastis, a new and unaccustomed vigour was infused into the government of Egypt. Shishak proved himself an able and energetic king. 477His earlier years were occupied in putting down opposition at home, and restoring order and unity throughout the country. When once the task was accomplished, he began to turn his attention elsewhere. Egypt had never relinquished its theoretical claims to sovereignty in Canaan; and the new power that had arisen there menaced the safety of the Asiatic frontier. Solomon, it is true, had allied himself by marriage with the Pharaohs; but it was with a Pharaoh of the fallen dynasty, and this in itself made him all the more dangerous a neighbour. At present Israel was too powerful to be attacked; but a time might come when the Egyptian monarch might venture to march again along the roads that had once conducted the armies of Egypt to the conquest of Syria. Meanwhile Shishak could stir up disaffection and rebellion in the Israelitish empire, and could harbour pretenders to the throne who might hereafter undermine the very existence of the new power.

As long as Solomon lived Jeroboam did not dare to stir. But he was not the only ‘adversary’ of the Jewish king. Hadad, the representative of the old kings of Edom, had also found a refuge in the Egyptian court, and had there married the sister-in-law of the Pharaoh. In spite of the Pharaoh’s remonstrances he had returned to the mountains of Edom when David and Joab were dead, and had there carried on a guerilla warfare with the Israelitish garrisons. Throughout the lifetime of Solomon he had maintained himself in the fastnesses of Seir, and had been, as it were, a thorn in the side of the conquerors of his country. But he never succeeded in seriously injuring the caravan trade that passed through Edom, or in shaking off the Israelitish yoke. The male population of Edom had been too mercilessly exterminated for this to be possible, and all that he could do was to molest the trade with the Red Sea. But even in this he does not seem to have been successful.

A more formidable opponent of Israel was Rezon of Zobah. He, it would seem, had established himself at Damascus even before the death of David, and all the efforts to dislodge him 478were of no avail. It is possible that the insurrection in Zobah, which led to the construction of fortified posts on the borders of Hamath (2 Chron. viii. 3), was connected with his revolt. At any rate, Rezon founded a kingdom and a dynasty in the old Syrian capital, which in years to come was to shake the monarchy of northern Israel to its base. ‘He abhorred Israel,’ we are told, ‘and reigned over Aram.’

The Jewish historian traces the misfortunes of Solomon to the religious indifferentism of his later years. His wives were many, his concubines innumerable. They had been added to his harîm from all parts of the known world; and they brought with them the worship of their native deities. Solomon had none of that intense belief in the national God which had distinguished Saul and David, or which made the Assyrian kings conquer and slay the unbelievers who would not acknowledge the supremacy of Assur.^[543] He was a cultured and selfish epicure, catholic in his tastes and sympathies, and doubtless inclined to stigmatise as narrow-minded fanaticism the objections of those who would have forbidden him to indulge his wives in their religious beliefs. On the hill opposite Jerusalem they were allowed to worship in the chapels of their own divinities, and the king himself did not refuse to bow himself with them in the house of Rimmon. Shrines were erected and altars blazed to Ashtoreth of the Sidonians, to Milcom of Ammon, and to Chemosh of Moab.

Modern criticism has averred that all this was only in accordance with the general ideas and practice of the time, and that not Solomon alone but the rest of his people saw little or no difference between Yahveh and Baal. The Song of Deborah, which reflects the feelings of so much earlier an epoch, is a sufficient answer to such an assertion. The whole history of Saul and David points unmistakably to the 479contrary, and the temple bears witness that there was a time when Solomon also shared the belief that Yahveh alone was God in Israel, and that He would brook the presence of no other god beside Himself. The character of Solomon, his habits and alliances,—above all, the seductions of the harîm, are quite enough to account for a gradual change in his views. It is probable, moreover, that the death of his old guide and instructor Nathan may have had much to do with what an undogmatic theology might call emancipation from the narrow and exclusive circle of Hebrew religious ideas; we know that such was the case with Jehoash after the death of Jehoiada the priest. The king who began by sending to Phœnicia for the architects and builders of the temple, ended not unnaturally with the erection of sanctuaries to a Phœnician goddess.

In fact, the artistic tastes of Solomon ran counter to the puritanical tendencies and restrictions of the Mosaic Law. It had been made for the wanderers in the desert, for hardy warriors intent on the conquest of a foreign land, for the simple peasantry of Palestine. It was directed against the cultured vices and artistic idolatries of Egypt and Canaan: on its forefront was the command: ‘Thou shalt not make the likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the water that is under the earth.’ The temple at Jerusalem, with its costly decoration and graven images, was in itself a violation of the letter of the Law. Solomon was called indeed to be king over Israel, but his heart and his sympathies were with Phœnicia.

He had been carefully educated, and, like our own Henry VIII., was a learned as well as a cultivated prince. His wisdom was celebrated above that of the wisest men of his day (1 Kings iv. 30, 31), and he left behind him a large collection of proverbs. Some of these were re-edited by the scribes of Hezekiah’s library (Prov. xxv. 1), the foundation of which may possibly go back to him. Indeed, he showed himself so anxious to imitate the civilised monarchs of his day that it is hard to believe he established no library at Jerusalem. The library had been for untold centuries as 480essential to the royal dignity in Western Asia or Egypt as the temple or palace, and the annals of Menander imply that one existed at Tyre in the age of Hiram. Archæology has vindicated the authenticity of the letters that passed between Solomon and the Tyrian king (2 Chron. ii. 3, 11); similar letters were written in Babylonia in the age of Abraham, and the tablets of Tel el-Amarna have demonstrated how frequent they were in the ancient East. As in Babylonia and Assyria, so, too, in Palestine, they would have been preserved among the archives of the royal library.

Hiram was nineteen years old when he ascended the throne, and he died at the age of fifty-three. Solomon was probably of about the same age as his friend both at his accession and at his death. He died, worn out by excessive self-indulgence, leaving behind him an impoverished treasury, a discontented people, and a tottering empire. But he had achieved one great result. Jerusalem had become the capital of a united Judah and Benjamin, Hebrew religion had obtained a local habitation round which henceforward it could live and grow, and the dynasty of David was planted firmly on the Jewish throne. When the disruption of the kingdom came after Solomon’s death, it did no more than give outward form to the estrangement that had so long been maturing between Judah and the northern tribes; the temple, the line of David, and the fortress-capital of Jerusalem remained unshaken. The work of David and Solomon was accomplished, though in a way of which they had not dreamed; and a nation was called into existence whom neither defeat nor exile, persecution nor contempt, has ever been able to destroy.

INDEX.