PREFACE. is the guiding light, the quickening principle, the mystic secret of the long ages of preparation; how history typified, and rite foreshadowed, and prophesy foretold; how, in a word, salvation is the orient light under which all the mysteries of the Old Dispensation become clear and intelligible. Especially is it our hope that some momentous truths in relation to the Old Testament will be found to have been brought out with fresh force and perspicuity, and that not so much by isolated notes or special disquisitions, as by the whole tone and tenour of the Commentary. There was never a time when this was more needed. It is not now merely by outward foes that the Divine authority of the Old Testament is impugned and its teaching invalidated; Christians are now being taught by Christians to regard the history of the Old Testament as no more than the strange annals of an ancient people, that have no more instruction for us than the histories of the nations among whom they dwelt. Nay, more, the very moral scope and bearing of that Law, from which it has been said that "one jot or tittle shall in no wise pass away till all things be accomplished," is boldly called in question in the very precincts of Christian controversy. It is well, then, that the simple and earnest reader should have within reach a Commentary professedly plain, popular, and uncontroversial, which by the very tenour of its interpretation, and the reverent candour of its discussion, should assist in maintaining in the foreground those broad truths relative to the Old Dispensation which it is the especial care of modern criticism to keep out of sight and to ignore. We allude more particularly to these three great truths: First, that the history of the Old Testament is not merely the history of an ancient nation, but the history of a nation that was, as it were, the church of humanity, and in which and through which dawned the true future and true hope of mankind; secondly, that the Divine government of that nation, and the law to which it was to be subordinated, are to be estimated, not by the isolated consideration of individual facts or commands, but by the scope, purpose, and final issues of that law and that government which history incontrovertibly discloses; and lastly, and almost inferentially, that the revelation which God vouchsafed to His chosen people, and partially, through them, to the widespread nations of the earth, was progressive and gradual, and that the Old Testament is the record of the long preparation of mankind for that for which every true heart in every age had dimly longed for-redemption and salvation through Jesus Christ. These three great truths, the first of which was felt, especially in the later days, by the very Jews themselves,* will be presented to the reader in constantly recurring aspects and with every variety of illustration. Though but seldom definitely formulated, though felt rather than enunciated, they will, nevertheless, be found to form the sort of spiritual warp and woof of the Commentary, and to give life and continuity to the interpretation. They will be seen to be what they are not principles previously agreed upon, not personal preconceptions persistently maintained, but great and fundamental truths, which the inspired Word itself discloses, and which become patent through the medium of faithful and appreciative interpretation. Such is our Commentary. It now only remains necessary to make a very few comments on those details of the responsible work which may seem to require it. In regard of the learned and able body of men who have, to the great advantage of the student, consented to take part in this Commentary, the same general remark may be made that was made in the Preface to the Commentary on the New Testament, viz., that each writer is responsible for his own notes and his own interpretation. It has been the care of the Editor to help each writer, so far as he had power to do so, to set forth his interpretation with clearness and precision. No attempt has been made, where similar ground has been passed * See Note on Leviticus, chap. xx. 26. PREFACE. over by two independent writers, to bring about any conventional uniformity of comment or interpretation. The tenour and context of each passage-and it is rare indeed that the tenour and context of two passages are exactly alike—have been regarded as those elements which each writer must be considered utterly free to use as conditioning the details of interpretation. The result may be, here and there, some trivial differences in the subordinate features of the interpretation, yet only such differences as help to bring out what may ultimately be regarded as the closest approximation to the true facts of the case. In many passages it is from this sort of concordia discors that the real meaning is most clearly ascertained. In these and all similar details it has been the especial care of the Editor so to place himself in the same point of view with each writer, as to supply most effectively assistance where it might seem to be needed, and, in offering suggestions or proposing alterations, to do so with a due regard to the position deliberately taken up by the writer. Reconsideration has, from time to time, been suggested; but where such reconsideration has seemed to the writer to confirm him in his original view, there that view has never been interfered with. As in the case of the New Testament, an Introduction has been prefixed to each portion, in which the general tenour of the inspired writing, and those details which might help to set it forth most clearly to the reader, are specified with as much fulness as the nature of this Commentary will permit. Where, also, the subject-matter has seemed to require it, an Excursus has been appended to the Notes for the purpose of helping the more critical reader, and supplying a detail that could not be given elsewhere consistently with the general character of the Work. It has never been forgotten that this Commentary is popular in its general aspect, and designed for the English reader rather than for the professed scholar. Modern controversies, therefore, and the subtler criticisms to which portions of Holy Scripture, especially the prophetical portions, have recently been subjected, are treated broadly and generally, and more with reference to the results arrived at than to the procedure by which those results were obtained. Detailed investigations of hypercritical objections, or elaborate confutations of theories which common sense or common honesty seems to predispose us at once to repudiate, would obviously be out of place in this Commentary. Nothing, however, has been kept back from the reader. All opposing statements that seem to be of any weight whatever are candidly set forth, and plainly answered whensoever and wheresoever the material for a conclusive answer has been found to exist. That difficulties will in part still remain may be frankly conceded; but even in regard of them this remark may certainly be made that it is the plain tendency of modern historical discovery to attenuate or remove them. The broad purpose and the structure of the Notes remain the same as in the Commentary on the New Testament. Exegetical details, linguistic discussions, and the refutations of competing interpretations, are, for the most part, if not entirely, avoided; while, on the other hand, all those more general considerations which seem likely to bring home the sacred words more closely to the heart of the reader, are set forth with as much fulness as our limits will allow. Scripture faithfully interpreted is the best evidence for the truth of Scripture, and on that defence no anxious soul has ever rested in vain. We now (for I well know that my dear brethren and associates would desire to be joined with me in this closing paragraph) humbly commit this work to Almighty God, praying earnestly and devoutly that it may be permitted to set forth the truth of the living Oracles of God, and may minister to the deeper adoration of Him who spake through patriarchs and prophets, the Holy and Eternal Spirit, to whom, with the Father and the Son, be all glory for evermore. C. J. GLOUCESTER AND BRISTOL. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. I. The Problem to be Solved.-It is not altogether an easy task to write an Introduction to the Old Testament as a whole which shall not trench on the province of those who have to deal with the several books of which it is composed. Questions as to the date and authorship of those books must obviously be reserved for a later and fuller discussion, or be answered only provisionally. What is now proposed accordingly is to deal with the volume which we know by that name, as containing all that has come down to us from the time of Moses to that of Malachi (or, perhaps, later), of the literature of the Israelites: to trace the growth of that literature in the several stages of its expansion: to note the process by which, after the return of the Jews from Babylon, the work of gathering up the fragments that remained ended, to use a suggestive phrase, in the "survival of the fittest;" and to point out the gradual growth and crystallisation of the idea that the books so collected, the library thus formed, had an authoritative completeness, which was not to be impaired either by addition or diminution, and formed, in the language of a later time, the Canon of the Holy Scriptures. That inquiry being completed, with the subsidiary points which present themselves for discussion as to the order, titles, and classification of the books, there will remain the further question how it came to pass that other books, known as those of the Apocrypha, or as deuterocanonical, came to be added to the list, and to meet with a wide, though not an universal, acceptance. Lastly, there will come the inquiry as to the influence of the new revelation which we connect with the name of Christ upon the thoughts and language of mankind in relation to the books that were the authoritative documents of the old revelation. A short notice of the versions in which for long centuries they were chiefly studied, and of the materials which were at hand when the desire to go back to the original sources of knowledge prompted scholars and theologians to study the sacred books of Israel in the Hebrew which was the speech of Israel's noblest days, and lastly of the several attempts which have been made to reproduce them in our English speech, will complete our survey of the subject. II. The Literature of the Patriarchal Age. -Whether there were any written records in the earliest age of that people, in the period commonly known as the patriarchal, is a question on which we cannot speak with certainty. We have no Hebrew inscriptions of that period, and the Moabite Stone, with its records of the reign of Mesha, a contemporary of Ahab, is, perhaps, the earliest record in any cognate alphabet. Egypt, however, had, at that time, its The word means primarily, it may be noted, a reed or measuring rod, and thus passes into the figurative sense of a standard or rule. So we have the canons of art, of ethics, and of grammar. The canons passed by Councils were rules for worship or action. The canons (canonici) of cathedral or collegiate churches were men bound by a fixed rule of life. This word is first applied to Scripture by Amphilochius (A.D. 330) and Jerome. Canonical books are those admitted into the Canon, as the rule or standard of Truth. hieroglyphics, and Assyria its cuneiform characters. Coming as Abraham did from Ur of the Chaldees, and sojourning in Egypt, as the honoured chieftain of a tribe, he may well have appropriated some elements of the culture with which he came in contact. The purchase of the cave of Machpelah (Gen. xxiii. 17—20) implies a documentary contract, and the record of the conveyance bears a strong resemblance to the agreements of like nature which we find in the old inscriptions of Nineveh, and the Hittite capital, Carchemish (Records of the Past, i. 137; ix. 91; xi. 91). The commerce of the Midianites (Gen. xxxvii. 28) would scarcely have been carried on without written accounts. If the name of Kirjath Sepher (City of Scribes, or Book-cityJosh. xv. 15, 16; Judges i. 11, 12) could be traced so far back it would prove that there was a class of scribes, or a city already famous for its library. The episode of the invasion of the cities of the plain by the four kings of the East (Gen. xiv.) has the character of an extract from some older chronicle. The "book of the generations of Adam" (Gen. v.) and other like genealogical documents, tribal, national, or ethnological (Gen. x., xi. 10—32; xxii. 20-24; xxv. 1-4; xxxvi.), indicate a like origin. The Book of Job is, perhaps, too doubtful in its date to furnish conclusive evidence, but if not pre-Mosaic it, at least, represents fairly the culture and the thought of a patriarchal age, outside the direct influences of Mosaic institutions, and there the wish of the sufferer that his words might be "printed in a book" (Job xix. 23); that his adversary had “written a book," i.e., that his accuser had formulated an indictment (Job xxxi. 35), shows the use of writing in judicial proceedings. On the whole, then, it seems probable that when Jacob and his descendants settled in the land of Goshen they had with them at least the elements of a literature, including annals, genealogies, and traditions of tribal history, together with fragments of ancient poems, like the song of Lamech (Gen. iv. 23, 24) and the blessing of Jacob (Gen. xlix.). The Book of Genesis was probably composed largely out of the documents that were thus preserved. III. Literature of Israel at the Time of the Exodus.-At the time of the exodus from Egypt there can be little doubt that Israel had its historiographers and its poets, as well as its framers and transcribers of laws. Without entering into disputed questions as to the authorship or editorship of books, it can scarcely admit of doubt that the song of Moses, in Exod. xv., has the ring of a hymn of victory written at the time; that at least the first section of the Law (Exod. xx-xxiii.) dates from the earliest dawn of Israel's history; that the genealogies and marching orders of Num. i., ii., x., and xxvi., and the record of the offerings of the several tribes in Num. vii. and viii., and of the encampments of the wandering in Num. xxxiii., are contemporary records. Incidental notices indicate the process by which these records were made, and there is no reason to suppose that they are the out-growth of a later age. After the defeat of the GENERAL INTRODUCTION. Amalekites, Moses is commanded to "write it for a memorial in the book" (Heb.), which was to contain the mighty acts of the Lord (Exod. xvii. 14). After the first instalment of legislation, he " wrote all the words of the Law," presumably in the same book, which is now designated as "the Book of the Covenant" (Exod. xxiv. 3-5). Passing over the more explicit statements of Deuteronomy (xvii. 18, 19; xxviii. 58-61; xxix. 19, 20, 27; xxx. 10), as not wishing to discuss here the questions which have been raised as to the authorship and date of that book, we have incidentally in Josh. xxiv. 26 a notice of a "Book of the Law of God," which was kept in the sanctuary, and had a blank space in which additions might be made from time to time as occasion might require. In addition to these traces of records, partly historical and partly legislative, we have extracts from other books now lost, which indicate the existence of a wider literature, the well-digging song of Num. xxi. 17, 18, the hymn of victory over the Amorites, commemorating their early victories over Moab (Num. xxi. 27, 28), both probably taken from the "Book of the Wars of the Lord" (Num. xxi. 14), which seems to have been the lyric record of the achievements which the historians narrated in prose. On the whole, then, there would seem to be ample grounds for believing that on their entry into the land of Canaan the Israelites brought with them, not indeed the whole Pentateuch in its present form, but many documents that are now incorporated with it, and which served as a nucleus for the work of future compilers. IV. Hebrew Literature under the Judges. -The period that followed the settlement of the Israelites in Canaan was not favourable to the growth of what we call literature. A population half-pastoral and half-agricultural, with few cities of any size, and struggling for existence under repeated invasions, had not the leisure out of which literary culture grows. In the list of conquered kings, however (Josh. xii.), and in the record of the division of the lands, which forms, as it were, the Doomsday Book of Israel (Josh. xiii.—xxi.), we have documents that bear every trace of contemporary origin, and show that the work of the annalist had not ceased. The Book of the Wars of the Lord apparently found a successor in a collection of heroic sagas known as the Book of Jasher (the just or upright), from which extracts are given in Josh. x. 13 and 2 Sam. i. 18, and may have been the unrecognised source of many of the more poetical elements of history that now appear in the Pentateuch. The mention of those who "handle the pen of the writer in the song of Deborah (Judges v. 14) might suggest at first, like the name of Kirjath-Sepher, the thought of a recognised class of scribes, but scholars are agreed that the words should be translated as 'those that wield the rod of the ruler;" and it is obvious that, except as registering the muster-rolls or chronicling achievements, such a class could have found no place in Deborah's song of triumph. That song itself, with the stamp of originality and contemporaneousness impressed on every line, shows that among the women of Israel the genius that had shown itself in Miriam, the part taken by female singers in triumphal processions (Judges xi. 34; 1 Sam. xviii. 7) and in funeral lamentations (2 Sam. i. 24; Jer. xxii. 18), each of which called for words appropriate to the occasion, naturally tended to the development of this form of culture, and in the song of Hannah (1 Sam. ii. 1-10) we may probably trace its influence, intermingled with that of the higher inspiration of the moment. 66 66 V. The Schools of the Prophets.-With the institution of the schools of the prophets traditionally ascribed to Samuel, the culture of Israel advanced as by leaps and strides. They were to its civilisation, besides all that was peculiar to their vocation, what the Orphic brotherhoods and the Homerida were to that of Greece-what universities and cathedrals and monasteries were to that of medieval Europe. Their work of worship, uniting as it did both song and music, developed into the Book of Psalms which we retain, and into the lost art of Hebrew music of which the titles to the psalms (e.g., Neginoth, Nehiloth, Sheminith, Gittith, Muthlabben, &c.) present so many traces. The language of unpremeditated praise in which their work apparently began, though even then not without a certain order (1 Sam. x. 5; xix. 20), passed before long first into the more deliberate work of the reporter, and afterwards into that of a man who sits down to compose a hymn. A like process, we cannot doubt, went on with the preaching which formed another part of the prophet's work. In the earlier days the prophet comes and goes and speaks his message, and leaves but the scantiest records, as probably in the record of the work of the angel" (better" messenger") of the Lord in Judges ii. 1; v. 23; and in the words of Jehovah, which must have come from some human lips, in x. 11. In the second stage, in that of the schools of the prophets, he utters, as throughout the history of Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha, what he has to say in the presence of his disciples, and they take down his words, but the prophet himself is a preacher rather than a writer. In the third the prophet is himself the author, either writing with his own hand (Isa. viii. 1) or employing still the help of an amanuensis (Jer. xxxvi. 1-4). In this way we may trace to the schools of the prophets, as to a fountainhead, a large portion of the Psalms and of the prophetic books of the Old Testament. It was natural under the conditions in which they lived that their influence should spread to the hereditary caste of the tribe of Levi, who had been set apart for the ministries of worship. The founder of the prophetic schools, himself a Levite, formed a link between the two, and from the days of Heman, Asaph, and Jeduthun (1 Chron. vi. 33; xv. 16 -22, 41; xxv. 1-3) under David, to those of the sons of Korah under Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah (2 Chron. XX. 19), the Levites appear to have furnished their full quota to the minstrelsy of Israel, that minstrelsy being described in one memorable passage as belonging to the functions of a prophet (1 Chron. xxv. 3). The fact that David himself had been trained in those schools-that from earliest youth (1 Sam. xvi. 17-23) to extreme old age (2 Sam. xxiii. 1-7) his life was illumined with the stars at once of prophecy and of verse, made his advent to the throne the golden time of Hebrew literature. The king was known not only as the conqueror and the ruler, but as the "sweet psalmist of Israel," and every form of composition found in him at once a master and a patron. The consciousness of national life which was thus developed, found expression, as it has always done in the analogous stages of the growth of other nations, in the form of history. Men felt that they had at once a future and a past. One man felt drawn to search out the origines of his people, and another to record the events in which he and his fathers had actually been sharers. There were the formal official annals, the Books of the "Chronicles," the work, probably, for the most part of the priests, and therefore dwelling largely on the organisation of the Temple, and the changes made during periods of religious reformation under the kings of Judah and Israel. And besides these we have traces of a copious literature, GENERAL INTRODUCTION. chiefly the work of prophets, and therefore viewing the history of the people from the prophet's standpoint of faith in a righteous order working through the history of the nation, such as has been described above, in the books of Nathan the prophet and Gad the seer (1 Chron. xxix. 29); the book of the Acts of Solomon (1 Kings xi. 41); the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite (2 Chron. ix. 29); the visions of Iddo the seer (ibid.); the prophecy of Jonah, not found in the book that bears his name (2 Kings xiv. 25); the book of Shemaiah the prophet (2 Chron. xii. 15); of Iddo the seer, concerning genealogies (ibid.), and a third book by the same writer (2 Chron. xiii. 22); the book of Jehu the son of Hanani (2 Chron. xx. 34); the acts of Uzziah and Hezekiah, by Isaiah, the son of Amoz (2 Chron. xxvi. 22; xxxii. 32); and the lamentations of Jeremiah for Josiah (2 Chron. xxxv. 28). Working side by side with each other, and taking each a wider range than the mere register of events which was the work of the "recorder" of the king's court (2 Sam. viii. 16; Isaiah xxxvi. 22), the priests and the prophets, the same man often uniting both characters, laid the foundations of the historical literature of Israel, as the monks did of the history of me. dieval Europe. In addition to their work as preaching the word of Jehovah they left their impress on the music and psalmody of the people, on its battle-songs and lamentations, and delighted to trace out the sequence of events in the history of the people as indicating the conditions of true greatness and the fulfilment, more or less complete, of the laws of a righteous government. VI. The Wisdom-literature of Israel.-The accession of Solomon opened yet another region of culture. The world of nature-from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall (1 Kings iv. 33), the apes and peacocks from the far East, the gold and precious stones from Ophir, the tin that came from Tarshish (Spain) -presented objects for a natural, almost for a scientific, curiosity, which led to registering phenomena, and inquiring into their causes. Contact with nations of other races and creeds, a wider experience of the chances and changes of human life, led to the growth of an ethical wisdom which, after the manner of the East, embodied itself in the form of proverbial maxims. Here also we have traces of a far wider literature than that which now remains with us. But a comparatively small portion of the "three thousand" proverbs of Solomon survives in the book which bears that title (1 Kings iv. 33), that book including also (1) a collection of maxims that was made in the reign of Hezekiah (Prov. xxv.—xxix.), and proverbs, apparently from the wisdom of other countries, that bear the names of Agur and of Lemuel (Prov. xxx. 1; xxxi. 1). To this period and these influences we may probably assign also, if not the authorship, yet the appearance in the literature of Israel of the grand drama which we know as the Book of Job,* dealing with the problem of man's life and the moral government of God from another standpoint than that of the Mosaic Law, and the poem, also dramatic in form, and portraying, at least in its outer framework, the working of human love and its triumph over many obstacles, which we know as the Song of Solomon.† VII. The Law Forgotten.-So far the literature that thus grew up was in harmony with the faith in See essay on 64 The Authorship of the Book of Job," in Biblical Studies, by the present writer. + Ecclesiastes, though purporting to be the work of Solomon, belongs, in the judgment of most recent critics, to a later date, and is therefore not mentioned in the text as belonging to the Salmonic literature. Israel, but its wider and more cosmopolitan character tended to a greater laxity; and it would seem that in course of time there came to be a natural conflict between the new literature and the old, as there was between the worship of Jehovah, as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, and that of Moloch and Chemosh, of Baal and Ashtaroth, which formed one of the perils of this wider culture, and to which kings like Solomon, Ahaz, and Manasseh gave a wrongful preference. The Book of the Law of the Lord, in whatever form it then existed, fell into comparative oblivion. The reformation under Jehoshaphat brought it again into a temporary prominence (2 Chron. xvii. 9), and it is natural to assume that a devout king like Hezekiah cultivating as he did both the psalmody and the sapiential literature which were identified with the faith of Israel (Prov. xxv. 1), and guided by a teacher like Isaiah, would not be neglectful of the older book (or books) which was the groundwork of both. The long reign of Manasseh, however, did its work alike of destruction and suppression, and when the Book of the Law of the Lord was discovered in some secret recess in the Temple during the progress of Josiah's reformation (2 Kings xxii. 8; 2 Chron. xxxiv. 14), it burst upon the people, with its warnings and its woes, with the startling terrors of an unknown portent. What that book was, is one of the problems which must be reserved for discussion in its proper place in the course of this Commentary. It may have been the whole Pentateuch as we now have it, or, as the prominence given to its prophecies of evil might indicate, the Book of Deuteronomy, as the work of Moses, or, as the bolder criticism of our time has suggested, the work of a contemporary who, confident that he was reproducing the mind of Moses, that the spirit of the lawgiver was speaking through him, did not hesitate to assume his character and speak as in his name, as at a later date, certainly in the Book of Wisdom, and possibly also in Ecclesiastes, the teachers of wisdom spoke with no fraudulent animus in the name of Solomon. VIII. The Literature of the Northern Kingdom.-It lies in the nature of the case that we have fuller materials for tracing the history of Hebrew literature in the kingdom of Judah than in that of Israel. The culture of the northern kingdom was of a lower type. The apostasy of Jeroboam alienated from the outset the priests and Levites, who supplied the chief materials of a learned class, and the "lowest of the people" (1 Kings xii. 31), who were made priests of the high places, and of the calves of Bethel and of Dan, were not likely to supply its place. But here also, it must be remembered, there were official historiographers attached to the royal court, schools of the prophets which, under the guidance of Elijah and Elisha, maintained the worship of Jehovah as hymnwriters and as preachers, writers of songs for the feasts of princes and of nobles of a far other character than that of the songs of Zion (Amos vi. 5; viii. 10), probably even a literature as profligate and as sceptical as that of the European Renaissance (Hosea viii. 12; ix. 9, 10). The conquest of the kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, the events which we sum up as the captivity of the Ten Tribes, swept off alike the good and the evil elements of that literature. If, as in the case of some of the Psalms (probably, e.g., Ps. lxxx.) and the writings of prophets like Hosea and Amos, whose lives and work were cast in the northern kingdom, some of it has survived, it was probably because the remnant of Ephraim that was left took refuge in |