Jehovah against His people might be inten- deadly sins, which had already brought tionally put aside; as, on the other hand, it down upon the Ten Tribes a fearful is manifest, that just such a copy as this must also have made a remarkable impression when judgment, and threatened before long a it was found. The only thing, concerning yet more terrible woe upon Judah and which we are left in the dark by the history, Jerusalem. What if the authority of that is specially occupied by the sequel of this occurrence, is the way and manner in which the great Lawgiver should be brought this copy had been lost. This circumstance, to bear upon them? And, since the however, is so little essential, and may so Law-Book, as it then existed, was not easily and naturally be explained from the preceding accounts,-those of the practices of well suited for the present necessity, Manasseh, in particular, that any unpre--with its long details of the lives of judiced writer might suitably enough pass it their forefathers, and of the events missible, to attempt to settle how long that which attended the deliverance out of copy had been missing or unknown; and the Egypt and the march through the main point of the whole narrative must still wilderness, as well as its minute direcbe regarded as this, that a particularly re- tions about artistic and ceremonial markable copy of the Book of the Law' was found in the Temple, the discovery and reading matters,-what if the very spirit of of which produced an exceedingly beneficial the older Law should be summed up impression on the king and the nation, be over. But on that account it is also inad cause it was recognised by all as a sacred obligatory book and as the Mosaic Law.' Ans. It is strange that for eighteen years of Josiah's reign, (not to speak of the penitential years of Manasseh, which rest upon the very doubtful authority of the Chronicler,) the Temple copy should have lain in the Temple all the while, yet never have been found by Hilkiah till now. It is also very strange that the historian should not have given the least hint anywhere, that the Book now found was the identical Temple copy, which had been long mourned as lost. CHAPTER VI. DEUTERONOMY PROBABLY WRITTEN 559. THUS there is nothing in the known facts of the case to negative the supposition, that the Book of the Law' was the Book of Deuteronomy, recently composed, and now for the first time produced, and read in the ears of the people, except, of course, the moral difficulty which we find in attributing such a proceeding as this to good men, as Hilkiah and, perhaps, Jeremiah. But we must not judge of those times by our own; nor must we leave out of consideration the circumstances, which may have justified to their minds such an act as this. The deplorable condition of their people, sunk in the most debasing idolatries, might be thought to require some powerful influence to be brought upon them, beyond even an ordinary prophet's voice. 560. Prophets, in fact, had already spoken, Joel, Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Micah; but their words had not availed to keep back the people from those in a powerful address, adapted to the present circumstances of the timessuch as Moses would have delivered, if now present with his people-and be put into the mouth of the departing Lawgiver? 561. Let it be remembered that in the Book of Deuteronomy it is Moses always, and not Jehovah, who is introduced as speaking, except in xi.14,15, xxix.5,6, where the writer seems unconsciously to have passed from the person of Moses into that of Jehovah, 'I will give you the rain of your land in due season ... and I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle.' 'And I have led you forty years in the wilderness... that ye might know that I am Jehovah your God.' Otherwise, the writer is only ascribing to Moses himself such thoughts as he might naturally be supposed to have, when taking leave of his people. And further, though it cannot be supposed, as we have said, that the old Law-Book was read out at length by the king in the ears of his people, yet it may have been only increased by the portion newly added to it. Thus, when the whole Book was found by Hilkiah, he might have been able to say with truth that he had found the 'Book of the Law.' 562. There is also another point of view from which the matter should be regarded. Supposing (to fix our ideas) that Jeremiah really did write the book, we must not forget that he was a Prophet and, as such, habitually disposed to regard all the special impulses of his mind to religious activity, as direct inspirations from the Divine Source of Truth. To us, with our inductive training and scientific habits of mind, the correct statement of facts appears of the first necessity; and consciously to misstate them, or to state as fact what we do not know or believe from external testimony to be fact, is a crime against Truth. 563. But to a man like Jeremiah, who believed himself to be in immediate communication with the Source of all Truth, this condition must have been reversed. The inner Voice, which he believed to be the Voice of the Divine Teacher, would become all powerfulwould silence at once all doubts and questionings. What it ordered him to do, he would do without hesitation, as by direct command of God: and all considerations as to morality or immorality would either not be entertained at all, or would only take the form of misgivings as to whether, possibly, in any particular case, the command itself was really Divine. 564. Let us imagine, then, that Jeremiah, or any other contemporary Seer, meditating upon the condition of his country, and the means of weaning his people from idolatry, became possessed with the idea of writing to them an address, as in the name of Moses, of the kind which we have just been considering, in which the laws ascribed to him, and handed down from an earlier age, having become in many respects unsuitable, should be adapted anew to the circumstances of the present times, and re-enforced with solemn prophetical utterances. This thought, we may believe, would take in the Prophet's mind the form of a Divine command. All question of deception or fraus pia would vanish. And Huldah, too, in like manner, if she knew of what was being done, would consider, not whether it was right or wrong to speak to the Jews in the name of Moses, but what was surely about to happen, since these threats of coming judgment, thus spoken, were uttered by Divine Inspiration, and, therefore, were certainly true. 565. And this is very much what her words imply, if truly reported. She makes no reference to Moses; she does not even refer, as Josiah is said to have done, to our fathers not having hearkened to the words of this book, 2K.xxii. 13. She says only, v.16,17: Thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants the king of Judah hath read, because they thereof, even all the words of the book which have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other gods,' &c. One might almost say that she studiously avoids asserting anything affirmatory of the notion that the book itself was an old book, the work of Moses, and confines herself to her prophetic function of declaring that the evil threatened would surely come to pass. And this is equally true if this part of the history was written, as some suppose, by Jeremiah, and these words are his words, expressing the tenor, rather than the actual language, of Huldah's reply. 566. Again, the effect upon the king's mind, and the consequent movement among the people, may have been far greater than had been even anticipated. It might have been intended merely to produce this new work, as a 'prophecy in disguise,' in the hope that it might take some strong hold upon the national mind, and confirm the hands of those who were labouring to restore the true Faith in Judah. And, perhaps, at first, it was felt to be difficult or undesirable to say or do anything which might act as a check upon the zeal and energy which the king himself exhibited, and in which, as it seems, he was generally supported by the people, in putting down by force the gross idolatries which abounded in his kingdom. 567. That impulsive effort, in fact, which followed immediately the reading of the 'Book,' might have been arrested, if Josiah had been told at once the true origin of those awful words, which had made so stong an impression on him. They were not less awful, indeed, or less true, because uttered in the name of Moses by such a Prophet as Jeremiah. But still it is obvious that their effect was likely to be greatly intensified under the idea that they were the last utterances of Moses himself. And, as we have said, we seem to have an indication | a later writer was adding freely from (i) The Book of Deuteronomy must have been written chiefly by one writer; (ii) This writer must have been a different person from the writer or writers, by whom the rest of the Pentateuch, speaking generally, was written; (iii) The Deuteronomist, whoever he may have been, must have lived in a later age than either the Elohist or Jehovist, since he takes for granted facts recorded in their narrative; (iv) There are some indications of this book having been written in a very late age of the Hebrew history; (v) There are historical circumstances, which suggest that it may have been composed in the early part of Josiah's reign; (vi) There is a remarkable correspondence between the peculiar expressions of the Deuteronomist and the language of Jeremiah, who did live in that age. (vii) The Deuteronomist must have been either Jeremiah himself, or some other great Prophet of the later times of the Jewish Monarchy, whose language was closely allied to that of Jeremiah. CHAPTER VII. DEUT.1.1-11.37. 569. We shall next proceed to show that this Book contains also many other very distinct signs of such a later origin, in the existence of numerous contradictions to the older narrative, such as might naturally be expected to arise under these circumstances, when his own mind, and from his own point of view, to writings of an older time, and was not careful to preserve strictly the unity of the different parts of the story. This implies, however, that he did not regard the older document as so inexpressibly sacred and so infallibly Divine, as is implied in modern popular views of inspiration. 570. In order to set these contradictions plainly before the reader, it will be desirable to pass under review the whole Book of Deuteronomy, taking notice only of those passages, which affect in any way the questions now under consideration, and carefully watching for any signs of time, which may betray themselves in the writer's expressions. We may assume that we now know that he lived in a later day than the other writers of the Pentateuch. But we are further seeking to ascertain, if possible, from the internal evidence of the book itself, in what later day he lived. We shall prefix an asterisk (*) to those passages, which appear most important in this last respect, as involving 'signs of time.' 571. D.i.1. "These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on the other [E.V.this] side Jor dan, in the wilderness, in the Arabah over against Zuph, between Paran, and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Dizahab.' The above words are, of course, perfectly intelligible, if we are not obliged to believe that the Book of Deuteronomy is historically true, or, rather, if we are allowed to suppose (what is, doubtless, the true state of the case) that it is merely the product of a devout writer's imagination, -a poem, in short, in which he puts such words into the mouth of Moses as he deemed appropriate to the occasion. The writer, in such a case, would not have realised to himself the full meaning of his own words, Moses spake unto all Israel.' 572. Doubtless, the expression 'all Israel' may sometimes be used for the elders,' &c. by whom an order might be communicated to the whole host. But, that it means certainly in this passage the assembled host, and is intended to mean it, (and not the 'elders' or 'headmen' only, as some have suggested), if the narrative is to be regarded as literally and historically true, cannot, as it appears to me, be reasonably denied. And surely the words in D.xxix.19,11, are enough to decide the question : 'Ye stand this day all of you before Jehovah your God, your captains of your tribes your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, -your little ones, your wives, and the stranger that is in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water.' 573. The writer, however, I repeat, was not guilty of any such absurdity as the words, understood in their natural and proper meaning, would imply. For he never realised to himself the thing stated as an historical fact, any more than TACITUS would have imagined that the words, which he has put into the mouth of the barbarian chief, Galgacus, would be supposed by any intelligent reader to have been actually uttered by him. SCOTT, of course, takes the literal view of the matter, and explains it as follows: The words,' as here mentioned, seem to Moses delivered to the principal persons in Israel, that they might make them known in their several tribes and families. Perhaps he spake some of the principal passages many times over to the people in general, assembled in large companies for that purpose. But there is no ground to suppose that his voice was miraculously rendered audible to the whole nation at once, as some have asserted. mean the subsequent exhortations, which 574. KNOBEL observes, Deut. p.207: It is not easy to perceive for what reason the author has denoted this locality in an extraordinary and unnecessary way with six names, especially as it has been so often named already, N.xxii.1, xxvi.3,63, xxxi, 12, xxxiii. 48, 49,50,xxxv.1,xxxvi.13, and must have been well known to the reader. This circumstance is most naturally to be accounted for by the fact of a later-rather, a much later-writer wishing to define more accurately in his own age a locality, which he found distinguished so remarkably in the older records, —especially as it lay within reach, as it were, of everyone who cared to see it, not far away in the Arabian waste, and he designed to take it as the scene of the farewell addresses of Moses. And this is confirmed by his adding in a parenthesis, -- by the way of Mount Seir unto KadeshBarnea,' v.2, words, which surely could never have been inserted in this way by Moses or any contemporary writer. 575. D.i.6-18. The account of the appointment of officers, as here given, involves more than one inconsistency. First, the Deuteronomist loses sight of the fact that, according to the story, N.xxvi.64, the whole generation was dead which received the Law at Horeb; and so he makes Moses say, v.6, Jehovah our God spake unto us in Horeb,' and still more distinctly, v.9, 'I spake unto you at that time, saying, I am not able to bear you myself alone,' and v.14, ' Ye answered me, and said.' 576. But a more remarkable discrepancy exists in v.15, where the statement is wholly at variance with that in E.xviii.25,26. In this latter passage, the appointment of the officers takes place before the giving of the Law at Sinai; here it takes place nearly twelve months afterwards, when they are just about to leave Horeb, v.6. If it be said that we must extend the meaning of the phrase ' at that time' in v.9,18, to include the whole twelve months, and must suppose that the fact stated in v.6-8 occurred at a point of time subsequently to that in v. 9-18, yet both these accounts are contradictory to that in N.xi.14-17. For here, after they have left Horeb, Moses complains of the burden of the people, (though, according to either of the other two statements, he had a multitude of officers to help him,) and he is commanded then to appoint seventy elders, 'and they shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that thou bear it not thyself alone.' 577. SCOTT attempts to reconcile the difficulty as follows: The counsel, here referred to, seems to have the Law. Moses, in consequence, proposed been suggested by Jethro before the giving of it to the Lord, who approved it, and then with the concurrence of the people it at length took place, about the time when they from that of the appointment of the seventy departed from Horeb, and at no great distance elders. That is to say, according to SCOTT, 'There are eleven days' journey from Horeb though Moses was wearing away' with the labour of judging the people, | words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard he delayed twelve months to carry out a voice,' iv. 11, 12. his father-in-law's advice! But the See also the passages quoted in words in E.xviii. 24,25, plainly imply that he acted at once on Jethro's advice; and they state also that Moses chose able men out of all Israel' for these offices, v.25, whereas in D.i.13 we readTake you wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you.' 578. D.i.22,23. 'And ye came near unto me, every one of you, and said, We will send men before us, and they shall search us out the land, and bring us word again by what way we must go up, and into what cities we shall come. And the saying pleased me well; and I took twelve men of you, one of a tribe, &c.' But in N.xiii.1,2, the sending of the spies is ascribed, not to a suggestion from the people, but to an express command of Almighty God: And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, Send thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of ye send a man, every one a ruler among Israel; of every tribe of their fathers shall them.' SCOTT says on this point: We find elsewhere that the people first proposed to Moses this design of searching the land, who, not suspecting the distrust and unbelief which had suggested it, approved the proposal and asked counsel of the Lord. He, having been provoked by their former rebellions, permitted it, and gave directions accordingly, in order to a further discovery of their wickedness, the display of His own glory, and for the instruction of His Church in all ages. 579. But here again the writer seems to have forgotten that these things took place, according to the story, forty years before, when most of those, whom he was now addressing, were not even born, and none of them, except Caleb and Joshua, were of age to be numbered. Yet he makes Moses say, 'Ye came near unto me, every one of you, &c.,' v.22, and the spies brought us word again,' v.25, and 'ye would not go up,' v.26, and 'ye murmured in your tents,' v.27. So we have in v.29, 'Then I said unto you, Dread not, neither be afraid of them,' and v.32, 'Yet in this thing ye did not believe Jehovah your God,' with many more like instances, and ye came near, and stood under the mountain, and Jehovah spake unto you out of the midst of the fire; ye heard the voice of the (604). Again, in D.i.21, Moses is made to exhort the people to go up and possess the land,' before sending the spies; whereas the whole account in N.xiii implies, though it does not exactly state, the contrary. 580. D.i.37-40. Also Jehovah was angry with me for your sakes, saying, Thou also shalt not go in thither. But Joshua, the son of Nun, which standeth before thee, he shall go in thither; encourage him, for he shall cause Israel to inherit it. Moreover, your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, and your children which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess journey into the wilderness by the way of the But as for you, turn you, and take your Red Sea.' it. Here, again, the Deuteronomist, though thoroughly imbued with a general notion of the story, seems to have lost sight of the particular fact that Moses was sentenced to die, and Joshua appointed to succeed him, not at the time which is here referred to, in the days of the former generation, but after an interval of thirty-seven years, at the end of the wanderings, N.xxvii.15-23, only just before this address is supposed to be delivered. 581. It should be noticed also that three times in Deuteronomy, viz. i.37, iii.26, iv.21, it is stated that Jehovah 'was angry' with Moses on account of the perverse behaviour of the people. Whereas, in N.xx.12, xxvii. 12-14, God's displeasure is ascribed to the unbelief or the impatience of Moses himself. If this discourse in Deuteronomy had really been delivered by Moses it would be strange that he should omit to make any reference whatever to the fact of his own misconduct, and should throw all the blame here upon the people. |