Chapter III: The Exodus Out of Egypt (3)

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]

Whether 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 Sakea 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 Roman 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] On 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.

At 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 have 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 and 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 ‘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 and 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.

But 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, it 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 character 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 the 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]

How 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 centre 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 long 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 among 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 Gulf 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 journey 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 tribes 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 from 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 of 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 were 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 and 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 conquest 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 king. 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. ‘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.