Chapter III: The Exodus Out of Egypt (4)

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 the 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 vengeance 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, it 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 Levites 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 the 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 Levites, 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 the 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 by 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.

On 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, whose 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; on 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.

Footnote 153:

See Sayce, _The Higher Criticism and the Monuments_, p. 249.

Footnote 154:

E. Naville, _Goshen and the Shrine of Saft el-Hennah_, Fourth Memoir
of the Egypt Exploration Fund (1887).

Footnote 155:

Brugsch, _Egypt under the Pharaohs_ (Eng. tr.), second edit., ii. p.
133.

Footnote 156:

Flinders Petrie, _Tel el-Amarna_, pp. 40-42.

Footnote 157:

See above, p. 115.

Footnote 158:

For Khar, the Horites of the Old Testament, see Maspero, _Struggle of
the Nations_, p. 121.

Footnote 159:

On the road from Assuan to Shellâl, ‘Messui, the royal son of Kush,
the fan-bearer on the right of the king, the royal scribe,’ has left
his name and titles on a granite rock (Petrie, _A Season in Egypt_,
No. 70). Below the inscription is Meneptah in a chariot, with Messui
holding the fan and bowing before him.

Footnote 160:

For Dr. Neubauer’s suggestion that the name of Aaron, otherwise so
inexplicable, is the Arabic Âron or Âran written in the Minæan
fashion, see above, p. 34, note 1. If the suggestion is right, it was
specially appropriate that Aaron should have met Moses in ‘the Mount
of God,’ on the frontiers of Midian (Exod. iv. 27).

Footnote 161:

A translation of the papyrus has been given by Professor Maspero in
_The Records of the Past_, new series, ii. pp. 11-36.

Footnote 162:

See Preface to Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilisation_, p. v.

Footnote 163:

Reuel, ‘Shepherd of God,’ was a son of Esau, according to Gen. xxxvi.
4. It may have been a title of the high-priest, since _rêu_,
‘shepherd,’ is one of the titles given to the kings and high-priests
of early Babylonia. The high-priest Gudea, for instance, calls himself
‘the shepherd of the god Nin-girsu.’ On the other hand, Hommel (_The
Ancient Hebrew Tradition_, p. 278) compares the name Reuel-Jethro with
the Minæan Ridsvu-il Vitrân.

Footnote 164:

In the word _seneh_ a popular etymology seems to have been found for
the name of Mount Sinai. Hence it is that in Deut. xxxiii. 16, Yahveh
is described as ‘him that dwelt in the _seneh_.’ The _seneh_ was
probably the small prickly _acacia nilotica_.

Footnote 165:

No satisfactory etymology of the name Yahveh has yet been found. This,
however, is not strange, considering that the etymology was unknown to
the Hebrews themselves, as is shown by the explanation of the name in
Exod. iii. 14, where it is derived from the Aramaic _hewâ_, the Hebrew
equivalent being _hâyâh_, with _y_ instead of _w_ (or _v_). The
Babylonians were also ignorant of the original meaning of the word,
since one of the lexical cuneiform tablets gives _Yahu_ or Yahveh as
meaning ‘god’ (in Israelitish), and identifies it with the Assyrian
word _yahu_, ‘myself’ (83, 1-18, 1332 _Obv._; Col. ii. 1). No certain
traces of the name have been found except among the Israelites. It is
a verbal formation like _Jacob_, _Joseph_, etc.

Footnote 166:

Maspero, _Dawn of Civilisation_, pp. 132-134.

Footnote 167:

For ‘strikes’ among the Egyptian artisans, see Spiegelberg, _Arbeiter
und Arbeiterbewegung im Pharaonreich unter den Ramessiden_ (1895).

Footnote 168:

At Tel el-Maskhuta, or Pithom, however, the bricks were not mixed with
straw.

Footnote 169:

See Wiedemann, _Religion der alten Aegypter_, pp. 142 _sq._

Footnote 170:

Exod. vii. 19 contains an exaggeration which could easily be omitted
without any injury to the sense of the narrative. The change of water
in the river would affect the canals and such pools and ponds as were
fed from the Nile, but nothing else. The river-water is not considered
fit for drinking in the early days of the inundation. The green and
slimy vegetation brought from the Equatorial regions renders it quite
poisonous, and it is not until some days after it has become ‘red’
that it is again fit to drink.

Footnote 171:

The ‘camels’ mentioned along with the cattle in Exod. ix. 3 have been
inserted from an Israelitish point of view. The Egyptians had no
camels; and though the Bedâwin doubtless used them from an early
period, none were employed by the Egyptians themselves until the Roman
or Arab age.

Footnote 172:

The passage is, unfortunately, mutilated. What remains reads thus:
‘... the tents in front of the city of Pi-Bailos, on the canal of
Shakana; ... [the adjoining land] was not cultivated, but had been
left as pasture for cattle for the sake of the foreigners. It had been
abandoned since the time of (our) ancestors. All the kings of Upper
Egypt sat within their entrenchments ... and the kings of Lower Egypt
found themselves in the midst of their cities, surrounded with
earthworks, cut off from everything by the (hostile) warriors, for
they had no mercenaries to oppose to them. Thus had it been [until
Meneptah] ascended the throne of Horus. He was crowned to preserve the
life of mankind.’ The word translated ‘tents’ is _ahilu_, the Hebrew
_ôhêl_, which is used by Ramses III. of the ‘tents’ of the Shasu or
Edomites of Mount Seir. For translations of the text, see E. de Rougé,
_Extrait d’un Mémoire sur les Attaques dirigées contre l’Égypte_, pp.
6-13 (1867); Chabas, _Recherches pour servir à l’histoire de la
^{xix}e Dynastie_, pp. 84-92 (1873); Brugsch, _Egypt under the
Pharaohs_, Eng. tr. (2nd edit.), ii. pp. 116-123; Maspero, _The
Struggle of the Nations_, pp. 433-436.

Footnote 173:

_Cont. Apion._ i. 26.

Footnote 174:

This name, however, varied in different versions of the legend.
Chærêmôn makes it Phritiphantes, which may represent Zaphnath-paaneah,
the dental (_t_) taking the place of _z_, and _pa-Ra_, ‘the sun-god’
of _pa-Ankhu_, ‘the living one.’

Footnote 175:

The papyrus is in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg (Golénischeff,
_Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie
égyptiennes et assyriennes_, xv. pp. 88, 89).

Footnote 176:

Dr. Wilcken has pointed out (_Zur Aegyptisch-hellenistischen
Literatur_ in the _Festschrift für Georg Ebers_, 1897, pp. 146-152)
that two fragments of a Greek papyrus published by Wessely in the
_Denkschriften der Wiener Akademie_, 42, 1893, pp. 3 _sqq._, contain a
legend which closely resembles that of the Egyptian version of the
Exodus. In this, however, a potter takes the place of the seer
Amenôphis, the desire of the king to see the gods is explained by his
wish to know the future, the ‘impure people’ are called the
‘girdle-wearers,’ and the beginning of a Sothic cycle is apparently
combined with the story. Moreover, it would seem that the papyrus does
not yet know of the identification of the ‘impure people’ with the
Jews.

Footnote 177:

_The Threshold Covenant or the Beginning of Religious Rites_ (New
York, 1896).

Footnote 178:

_The Threshold Covenant_, pp. 203, 204.

Footnote 179:

See above, p. 155.

Footnote 180:

_Egypt under the Pharaohs_ (Eng. tr.), second edit., ii. pp. 96-98.

Footnote 181:

_Anastasi_, v. 19. For the translation, see Brugsch, _Egypt under the
Pharaohs_ (Eng. tr.), second edit., ii. p. 132.

Footnote 182:

First pointed out by Goodwin in the Sallier Papyrus, iv. 1, 6.

Footnote 183:

Josh. ii. 10; iv. 23; xxiv. 6-8.

Footnote 184:

Ps. cvi. 7-9, 22; cxxxvi. 13-15; Neh. ix. 9; see also Acts vii. 36.

Footnote 185:

The event was first recorded by Kallisthenes, and Plutarch (_Alex._
17) states that ‘many historians’ had described it. Arrian (i. 27)
alludes to it, and Menander introduced a scoffing reference to the
miracle in one of his plays. The actual facts are given by Strabo
(_Geog._ xiv. 3, 9), who says that near Phasêlis Mount Klimax juts out
into the sea, but that in calm weather a road runs round its base on
the seaward side. If the wind rises, however, the road is submerged by
the waves. Alexander ventured to march along it while still covered by
the sea, and though the water was up to the waists of the soldiers,
passed safely through it, the wind not being very strong. His success
came to be regarded as a miracle, and the miraculous passage of the
sea by his army is narrated with many embellishments in the fragment
of an unknown historian in a lexicon discovered by Papadopoulos in
1892.

Footnote 186:

The narrative is careful to indicate that this was the case (Exod.
xiv. 23, 28). It is only in the Song of Moses (Exod. xv. 19) that
‘Pharaoh’s horses’ are changed into ‘the horse of Pharaoh,’ a change
which, like the confusion between ‘the sea’ and the Yâm Sûph, shows
either that the Song is of later date or that its language has been
modified and interpolated.

Footnote 187:

_Pap. Anastasi_, iv. A translation of it by Dr. Birch will be found in
_Records of the Past_, first series, vol. iv. pp. 49-52. The poet says
of the king: ‘Amon gave thy heart pleasure, he gave thee a good old
age.’ The name of the king, however, is not given, and it is therefore
possible that Seti II. rather than Meneptah is referred to.

Footnote 188:

The last Pharaoh whose monuments have been found in the Sinaitic
peninsula is Ramses VI. of the twentieth dynasty (De Morgan,
_Recherches sur les Origines de l’Égypte_, p. 237).

Footnote 189:

The Amalekites adjoined Edom (Gen. xxxvi. 12) and southern Israel
(Judg. v. 14), and extended from Shur, or the Wall of Egypt, to
Havilah, the ‘sandy’ desert of Northern Arabia (1 Sam. xv. 7; see Gen.
xiv. 7). That these Amalekites were the same as those conquered by
Moses is expressly stated in 1 Sam. xv. 2 (cf. Exod. xvii. 16). The
latter, therefore, lived miles to the north of the Sinaitic peninsula.
The wilderness of Paran lay on the southern side of Moab (Deut. i. 1)
and Judah (Gen. xxi. 14, 20, 21). Kadesh, now ’Ain Qadîs, was situated
in it (Numb. xiii. 26). The geography of the Exodus is treated with
great ability and logical skill in Baker Greene’s _Hebrew Migration
from Egypt_ (1879).

Footnote 190:

Judg. v. 4, 5; Deut. xxxiii. 2; Hab. iii. 3.

Footnote 191:

First pointed out by Baker Greene, _The Hebrew Migration from Egypt_,
p. 170; Elim is the masculine, and Elath the feminine plural. Compare
El-Paran, perhaps ‘El(im) of Paran,’ in Gen. xiv. 6, as well as Elah
in Gen. xxxvi. 41.

Footnote 192:

Exod. xvi. 1 compared with Numb. xxxiii. 11.

Footnote 193:

The name is found in an inscription of Hadramaut (Osiander,
_Inscriptions in the Himyaritic Character_, p. 29), where the god is
called the son of Atthar or Istar instead of her brother, as in
Babylonia, as well as in a Sabæan text from Sirwaḥ.

Footnote 194:

Numb. xiii. 26. The sanctuary had originally been Amalekite (Gen. xiv.
7).

Footnote 195:

Unfortunately, no calculation of distance can be made from the
statement that Elijah was ‘forty days and forty nights’ on his way
from Jezreel to Horeb, since ‘forty’ merely denotes an unknown number.

Footnote 196:

In the early days of the monarchy the armies of both the Israelites
and the Philistines were similarly divided into companies of a hundred
and a thousand (1 Sam. xxii. 7; xxix. 2; 2 Sam. xviii. 1). The system
could not have been derived from Babylonia, where sixty was the unit
of notation.

Footnote 197:

See my _Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments_, pp. 74-77,
and Hibbert Lectures on the _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, pp.
70-77.

Footnote 198:

The text of this is given in the 125th chapter of the Book of the
Dead. A translation of it will be found in Wiedemann’s _Religion der
alten Aegypter_, pp. 132, 133.

Footnote 199:

The conceptions which underlay this were embodied in the mediæval
jurisprudence of Europe, and curious reports exist of the trials of
cocks, rats, flies, dogs, and even ants, which lasted down to the
eighteenth century (see Baring-Gould, _Curiosities of Olden Times_,
second edit., pp. 57-73).

Footnote 200:

The exhortation, together with some of the laws, is given again in a
somewhat changed form in Exod. xxxiv. 10-26.

Footnote 201:

The name belongs to the period when the Philistines were infesting the
sea, before they had settled on the coast of Palestine, and indicates
the early date of the passage in which it occurs. Perhaps the Greek
tradition of the command of the sea by the Kretan Minos is a
reminiscence of the same period.

Footnote 202:

W. A. I. i. 54, Col. ii. 54 _sqq._

Footnote 203:

_Transactions_ of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vii. 1, pp. 53,
54.

Footnote 204:

A contract-tablet dated in the 32nd year of Nebuchadrezzar, and
published by Dr. Strassmaier (_Inschriften von Nabuchodonoser_, No.
217), gives us an insight into the details of Babylonian sacrifices,
though, unfortunately, the signification of many of the technical
words employed in it is doubtful or unknown. The tablet begins as
follows: ‘Izkur-Merodach the son of Imbiya the son of Ilei-Merodach of
his own free will has given for the future to Nebo-balásu-ikbi the son
of Kuddinu the son of Ilei-Merodach the slaughterers of the oxen and
sheep for the sacrifices of the king, the prescribed offerings, the
peace-offerings (?) of the whole year, viz., the caul round the heart,
the chine, the covering of the ribs, the ..., the mouth of the
stomach, and the ..., as well as during the year 7000 sin-offerings
and 100 sheep before Iskhara who dwells in the temple of Sa-turra in
Babylon (not excepting the soft parts of the flesh, the trotters (?),
the juicy meat and the salted (?) flesh), and also the slaughterers of
the oxen, sheep, birds, and lambs due on the 8th day of Nisan, (and)
the heave-offering of an ox and a sheep before Pap-sukal of
Bit-Kidur-Kani, the temple of Nin-ip and the temple of Anu on the
further bank of the New Town in Babylon.’

Footnote 205:

_The Ancient Hebrew Tradition_, pp. 282-284.

Footnote 206:

See the illustration in Erman’s _Life in Ancient Egypt_ (Eng. tr.), p.
298.

Footnote 207:

Mr. G. Buchanan Gray (_Studies in Hebrew Proper Names_, p. 246, note
1) suggests that Aholiab is a foreign name. At all events, while we
find names compounded with _ohel_, ‘tabernacle,’ in Minæan and
Phœnician inscriptions, no other name of the kind is found among the
Israelites.

Footnote 208:

Sir Thomas Browne, in his _Religio Medici_ (Part i.), remarks on this:
‘I would gladly know how Moses, with an actual fire, calcined or burnt
the golden calf into powder; for that mystical metal of gold, whose
solary and celestial nature I admire, exposed unto the violence of
fire, grows only hot and liquefies, but consumeth not.’

Footnote 209:

An interpolation (Exod. xxxiii. 1-5) makes the worship of the golden
calf account for the fact that, as declared in Exod. xxiii. 20, an
angel should lead Israel into Canaan, and not Yahveh Himself. But it
ignores the further fact that Yahveh was really present in the Holy of
Holies as well as in the pillar of fire and cloud.

Footnote 210:

Hadad-sum and his son Anniy (see my _Patriarchal Palestine_, p. 250).
Small stone tablets like those of Balawât, engraved with cuneiform
characters, are in the museums of Europe.

Footnote 211:

Sayce, _Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments_, pp. 79-83.

Footnote 212:

The contrast between such cases, where the names and details are as
circumstantially stated as in the legal tablets of early Babylonia,
and cases which rest merely upon the memory of tradition, will be
clear at once from a reference to Numb. xv. 32-36. Here we have to do
with tradition only, and accordingly no name is given, and the story
is introduced with the vague statement that it happened at some time
or other when the Israelites ‘were in the wilderness.’ The whole of
the chapter is an interpolation which is singularly out of place in
the narrative, and seems to have been substituted for a description of
the disasters which followed on the abortive attempt of the Israelites
to invade Canaan.

Footnote 213:

Sayce, _Babylonian Literature_, pp. 79, 80; Knudtzon, _Assyrische
Gebete an den Sonnengott_, pp. 73 _sqq._

Footnote 214:

Athenæus, _Deipn._ xiv. 639 c.

Footnote 215:

Amiaud’s translation of the Inscriptions of Telloh in the _Records of
the Past_, new ser., ii. pp. 83, 84.

Footnote 216:

This was clearly shown by Colenso, _The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua
critically examined_, Pt. i.

Footnote 217:

The _soss_ was 60, the _ner_ 600.

Footnote 218:

Erman, _Life in Ancient Egypt_ (Eng. tr.), p. 475.

Footnote 219:

So in Josephus, _Antiq._ ii. 10.

Footnote 220:

Trumbull, _Kadesh-barnea_ (1884).

Footnote 221:

Numb. xiii. 21 seems to be a later exaggeration when compared with the
following verse. No argument, however, can be drawn from the statement
that the spies were absent only ‘forty days,’ since here, as
elsewhere, ‘forty’ merely means an unknown length of time.

Footnote 222:

Eshcol, however, was already the name of an Amorite chieftain of Mamre
in the time of Abraham (Gen. xiv. 13).

Footnote 223:

Numb. xxi. 1-3 is a combination of this abortive attempt and the
subsequent conquest of Arad and Zephath by Judah and Simeon (Judg. i.
16, 17), and is intended to resume the thread of the history which had
been broken by the insertion of chapter xv.

Footnote 224:

In Numb. xx. 1-13 a tradition about the waters of Meribah takes the
place of a history of the long period that elapsed between the first
and the second arrival at Kadesh, during which the numerous series of
stations mentioned in Numb. xxxiii. 19-36 was passed. A comparison
with Exod. xvii. 1-7 and Deut. xxxiii. 8 seems to show that the story
of ‘the water of Meribah’ has been transferred from Rephidim to
Kadesh. At Kadesh, indeed, there would have been no want of water (see
Gen. xiv. 7), and it may be that the meaning of the word Meribah,
‘contention,’ has been the cause of the transference. En-Mishpat, ‘the
Spring of Judgment,’ where contentions were decided, had been for
centuries the name of the spring at Kadesh-barnea. As for the name of
Zin, it possibly signifies ‘the dry place.’

Footnote 225:

Gen. xxxvi. 27; 1 Chron. i. 42.

Footnote 226:

In Deut. x. 6, 7 (which has been interpolated in the middle of the
narrative of the legislation at Mount Sinai), the order of events is:
(1) Departure from Beeroth of Beni-Yaakan to Mosera, (2) death of
Aaron at Mosera, (3) departure to Gudgodah, (4) departure to Yotbath.
In Numb. xx., xxxiii. 30-39 it is, on the contrary: (1) Departure from
Hashmonah to Moseroth, (2) departure to Beni-Yaakan, (3) departure to
Hor-hagidgad, the Gudgodah of Deuteronomy, (4) departure to Yotbathah,
(5) departure to Ebronah, (6) departure to Ezion-geber, (7) departure
to Kadesh, (8) departure to Mount Hor, (9) death of Aaron on Mount
Hor.

Footnote 227:

The passage was already corrupt in the time of the Septuagint
translators. But instead of _eth-wâhab_, their text reads _eth-zâhâb_.
If this was correct, the reference would probably be to Dhi-Zahab,
‘(the mines) of gold’ which, according to Deut. i. 1, was not far from
Sûph.

Footnote 228:

_Zeitschrift des Palästina Vereins_, xiv. pp. 142 _sq._ Tell ’Ashtereh
is the Ashteroth-Karnaim of Gen. xiv. 5.

Footnote 229:

Professor Erman reads them Akna-Zapn, perhaps Yakin-Zephon, ‘Jachin of
the North.’ Above the figures is the winged solar disk (Erman, _Der
Hiobstein_ in the _Zeitschrift des Palästina Vereins_, xiv. pp. 210,
211).

Footnote 230:

On the left side of the base of the second statue in front of the
pylon, where it follows the name of Assar, the Asshurim of Gen. xxv.
3; see Daressy, _Notice explicative des Ruines du Temple de Louxor_,
p. 19.

Footnote 231:

Bela’s city is stated to have been Dinhabah (Gen. xxxvi. 32), which
Dr. Neubauer has identified with Dunip, now Tennib, north-west of
Aleppo, which played an important part in the history of Western Asia
during the fifteenth century B.C.

Footnote 232:

W. A. I. i. 46; Col. iii. 29, 30. In another passage Esar-haddon
describes them as ‘serpents with two heads’ (Budge, _History of
Esar-haddon_, p. 120).

Footnote 233:

Bronze serpents were regarded in Babylonia as divine protectors of a
building, and were accordingly ‘set up’ at its entrance. Thus
Nebuchadrezzar says of the walls of Babylon, ‘On the thresholds of the
gates I set up mighty bulls of bronze and huge serpents that stood
erect’ (W. A. I. i. 65, i. 19-21).

Footnote 234:

It is called simply Iyîm in the official itinerary (Numb. xxxiii. 45).
Punon is the Pinon of Gen. xxxvi. 41, where it is coupled with Elah,
the El-Paran of Gen. xiv. 6.

Footnote 235:

Those who wish to see what can be done by ingenious philological
conjectures which satisfy none but their authors may turn to a paper
by Professor Budde in the _Actes du Dixième Congrès Internationale des
Orientalistes_, iii. pp. 13-18, where they will find a ‘revised’
version of Numb. xxi. 17, 18. The two last lines are changed into
‘With the sceptre, with their staves: From the desert a gift!’

Footnote 236:

Numb. xxxii. 41, 42; Deut. iii. 14. We learn from Judg. x. 3, 4, that
Jair was one of the judges, so that the conquest of Havoth-Jair must
have taken place long after the death of Moses.

Footnote 237:

Now Dar’at (pronounced Azr’ât by the Bedâwin) and Tell-Ashtereh.

Footnote 238:

Zippor of Gaza was the name of the father of a certain Baal- ... whose
servant carried letters in the third year of Meneptah II. from Egypt
to Khai, the Egyptian governor of the fellahin or Perizzites of
Palestine, and the king of Tyre (Brugsch, _Egypt under the Pharaohs_,
Eng. tr., second edit., ii., p. 126).

Footnote 239:

Ammiya is said to have been seized by Ebed-Asherah the Amorite (_The
Tel el-Amarna Tablets in the British Museum_, 12. 25., 15. 27). It is
also called Amma (_ib._ 17. 7., 37. 58, where it is associated with
Ubi, the Aup of the Egyptian inscriptions) and Ammi (W. and A. 89.
13).

Footnote 240:

If the two Balaams, ‘son of Beor,’ are really the same person, Edomite
and Israelitish history will have handed down two different
conceptions of him. The Israelitish chronology, moreover, would make
it impossible for him to have been the _first_ Edomite king (see Numb.
xx. 14).

Footnote 241:

Sheth are the Sutu of the Assyrian inscriptions, the Sittiu or
‘Archers’ of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Bedâwin of modern
geography. The Beni-Sheth will be the Midianite Bedâwin who are
associated with the Moabites in the Pentateuch (Numb. xxii. 4, 7; xxv.
1-18; xxxi. 8).

Footnote 242:

_Records of the Past_, new ser., iii. pp. 61-65.

Footnote 243:

Tiglath-pileser I. (B.C. 1100) boasts of having sailed upon the
Mediterranean in a ship of Arvad, and of there killing a dolphin,
while his son, Assur-bil-kala, erected statues in the cities of ‘the
land of the Amorites’ (W. A. I. i. 6, No. vi.). A little later
Assur-irbi carved an image of himself on Mount Amanus, near the Gulf
of Antioch, but the capture by the king of Aram of Mutkina, which
guarded the ford over the Euphrates, subsequently cut him off from the
west. Palestine is already called Ebir-nâri, ‘the land beyond the
river,’ in an Assyrian inscription which Professor Hommel would refer
to the age of Assur-bil-kala, the son of Tiglath-pileser I. (_The
Ancient Hebrew Tradition_, p. 196). Professor D. H. Müller (_Die
Propheten_, p. 215) conjecturally emends the Hebrew text of Numb.
xxiii. 23, 24, and sees in it a reference to the kingdom of Samalla,
to the north-east of the Gulf of Antioch. The two verses become in his
translation, ‘[And he saw Samalla], and began his speech, and said,
Alas, who will survive of Samalla? And ships [shall come] from the
coast of Chittim, and Asshur shall oppress him, and Eber shall oppress
him, and he himself is destined to destruction.’ Samalla, however, was
only the Assyrian name of a district called by natives of Northern
Syria Ya’di and Gurgum; nor is it easy to understand how Balaam could
have ‘seen’ the north of Syria from Moab. Professor Hommel is more
probably right in his view that Asshur here does not signify the
Assyrians, but the Asshurim to the south of Palestine (Gen. xxv. 3,
18).

Footnote 244:

For the Messianic prophecy of Ameni, see above, p. 175.

Footnote 245:

Similar cities of refuge, called _puhonua_, existed in Hawaii. ‘A
thief or a murderer might be pursued to the very gateway of one of
those cities; but as soon as he crossed the threshold of that gate,
even though the gate were open and no barrier hindered pursuit, he was
safe as at the city altar. When once within the sacred city, the
fugitive’s first duty was to present himself before the idol and
return thanks for his protection’ (Trumbull, _The Threshold Covenant_,
p. 151, quoting Ellis, _Through Hawaii_, pp. 155 _sq._, and Bird, _Six
Months in the Sandwich Islands_, pp. 135 _sq._). For the _asyla_ of
Asia Minor see Barth, _De Asylis Græcis_ (1888); Daremberg et Saglio,
_Dictionnaire des Antiquités, Grecques et Romaines_, i. pp. 505
_sqq._; Pauly’s _Real-Encyclopädie_ (ed. Wissowa), iv. pp. 1884-5.

Footnote 246:

Erman, _Life in Ancient Egypt_ (Eng. tr.), p. 299.

Footnote 247:

Cornelius Nepos, _Them._ ii. 10.

Footnote 248:

Mahaffy, _The Empire of the Ptolemies_, pp. 144, 156-158. For the
_hiera_ or priestly cities of Asia Minor, see Ramsay, _The Cities and
Bishoprics of Phrygia_, pp. 101 _sqq._; their constitution resembled
very closely that of the Levitical cities in Israel. Examples of such
cities in the history of Israel are Nob in the time of Saul and
Anathoth in the age of Jeremiah.

Footnote 249:

The order of events is in many places confused, which probably points
to later insertions in the text. See, for example, Deut. x. 6-9, which
interrupts the context, and has nothing to do either with what
precedes or with what follows.

Footnote 250:

_E.g._ Deut. xiv. 21, compared with Lev. xvii. 14-16.

Footnote 251:

In this respect it resembles the ‘Negative Confession’ of the Egyptian
Book of the Dead, which the soul of the dead man was required to make
before the judges of the other world (Wiedemann, _Religion der alten
Aegypter_, pp. 132, 133).

Footnote 252:

Levi is included among the six tribes which stood on Mount Gerizim to
bless. This is an inadvertency, as the Levites were placed on both
mountains, it being their duty to utter the curses as well as the
blessings.

Footnote 253:

If it did so, xxxiii. 4 can hardly be original. Perhaps Yahveh rather
than Moses was described as ‘king in Jeshurun’ (cf. _v._ 26). A very
ingenious attempt has been made by Dr. Hayman to explain the
corruptions of the text in the song by the theory that it was
originally written on a clay tablet, a fracture of which has caused
some of the words at the ends of the lines to be lost.

Footnote 254:

Cf. 1 Chron. iv. 22.