enemy of Israel. In the streets of Jerusalem, during the final siege, a band of wild Arabs will be seen, dwelling in tents, drinking no wine. They are 'the children of Jehonadab the 'son of Rechab,' 'the Kenites that came of Hemath, the father 'of the house of Rechab.' 1 The difficulties of the Desert. 4. Besides the dangers from the desert tribes, this earlier stage of the wanderings also brings out those natural difficulties of the desert journey, which, through the guidance of Moses, were to be overcome. It is not here intended to enter upon the vexed question of the support of Israel in the wilderness. There are two classes of readers to whom it presents no perplexity-those who are disposed to treat the whole as poetry rather than as history, and those who have no scruple in inventing miraculous interferences which have no foundation in the Sacred narrative.2 It concerns those only who feel the truth and soberness of the narrative too strongly to venture on either of these expedients. They, be they few or many, may be content to withhold a hasty judgment on points which the Scripture has left undetermined, and to which the localities and the phenomena of the desert give no certain clue. We cannot repudiate altogether the existence of natural causes, unless we go so far as to maintain that mountains and palm trees, quails 3 and waters, wind and earthquake, were mere creations of the moment to supply momentary wants; we cannot repudiate altogether the intervention of a Providence, strange, unexpected, and impressive in the highest degree, unless we are prepared to reject the whole story of the stay in the wilderness. In the case of each of the main supports of the Israelites, there have been memorials, preserved down to our own time, of the recollections which the Jewish and the Christian Church retained of those times. the rock has been localised in tions. The isolated rock in the 'Judg. i. 16, iv. 11; Jer. xxxv. 2; 1 Chron. ii. 55. Sinai and Palestine, 24-27. 3 Canon Tristram (Lectures at Dublin, The flowing of the water from various forms by Arab tradivalley of the Leja, near Mount 1808, p. 14) maintains that they were quails actually caught at the moment of their emigration. 1. The water. S. Catherine, with the twelve mouths, or fissures, for the twelve tribes, was pointed out as the monument of the wonder, at least as early as the seventh century. The living streams of Feiran, of Shuk Mûsa, of Wady Mûsa, have each been connected with the event by the names bestowed upon them. The Jewish tradition amplified the simple statement in the Pentateuch to the prodigious extent of supposing a rock or ball of water constantly accompanying them.1 The Apostle took up the tradition in one of his forcible allegorical allusions : 'They drank of the spiritual Rock which followed them, and 'that Rock was Christ.' 2 This again passed on into the Christian imagery of the Roman Catacombs, where Peter, 'the Rock ' of the Church,' under the figure of Moses, strikes the rock, and brings out its living water; and it has found its final and most elevated application in one of the greatest of English hymns,Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 2. The manna. Let me hide myself in Thee. The manna, in like manner, according to the Jewish tradition of Josephus, and the belief of the Arab tribes, and of the Greek Church at the present day, is still found in the droppings from the tamarisk bushes which abound in this part of the desert.3 The more critical spirit of modern times has been led to dwell on the distinction between the existing manna and that described in the Book of Numbers ; and the identification is further rendered precarious by the apparent insufficiency of the present supply 5 in the Desert of Sinai. In the New Testament, and in subsequent Christian writings, the literal meaning of the incident is almost lost in its high spiritual application to the heavenly sustenance of the soul, either in the Eucharist or in our religious life generally. Of all the typical scenes represented in the celebrated Ammergau mystery, none is more natural or touching than that in which the whole multitude of the Israelites, in every variety of age, sex, and character, appear looking up with one ardent ex pectation to the downward flight of the celestial food, fluttering over the hundreds of upturned heads, according to that fanciful and childlike but beautiful conception of the descent of the manna. But, in the Jewish Church, the historical origin of this sacred figure was always carried back beyond Palestine to the desert; a portion of it was laid up as a relic by the Ark for this very purpose, 'that they might see the bread wherewith 'their fathers were fed in the wilderness.' 1 And a Christian poet has well caught, in 'The Song of the Manna Gatherers,' the freshness, the monotony, and the transitional character of the whole passage through the desert, and at the same time has blended together the natural and the supernatural in that union which is at once most Biblical and most philosophical :— Comrades, haste! the tent's tall shading Lies along the level sand, Freshen the bleak burning land. Haste, or e'er the third hour glowing Comrades-what our sires have told us, Not by manna show'rs at morning Shall our board be then supplied, Year by year our murmurings chide. Rills, that since their first creating In our dreams, with thirsty heart.2 1 Ex. xvi. 32-34; Heb. ix. 4. 2 Keble's Lyra Innocentium. NOTE. THE arithmetical errors which have been pointed out (with greater force and in greater detail than heretofore, but not for the first time, by eminent divines and scholars) in the narrative of the Old Testament, are unquestionably inconsistent with the popular hypothesis of the uniform and undeviating accuracy of the Biblical History, or with the ascription of the whole Pentateuch to a contemporaneous author. But, on the other hand, the recognition of such errors would remove at one stroke some of the main difficulties of the Mosaic narrative, and would give us a clearer insight into the structure of the Sacred books. By such a reduction of the numbers as Laborde, for example, or Kennicott proposes,1 many of the perplexities 2 in the Jewish history at once disappear, and the incredibility of one part of the narrative thus becomes a direct argument in favour of the probability of the rest. And the parallel instance of a like tendency to the amplification of numbers in Josephus's 'Wars of the Jews' is a decisive proof of the compatibility of such amplifications, not, indeed, with an exact or literal, but with a substantially historical, narrative of the series of events in which these errors are imbedded. We should also (as in the case of S. Stephen's speech in the Acts) learn to contrast the literal and mechanical theories of later ages on the subject of Inspiration with the freedom with which the Sacred writers themselves treated their Sacred materials, 'having regard,' as S. Jerome says, 'to the meaning rather than to the words.' No doubt to those who regard the least error in the Sacred History as fatal to the credibility and value of the whole of the Bible, and to the Christian Faith itself, such discoveries are full of alarm. But, if we extend to the narrative of the different parts of the Old Testament the same laws of criticism which we apply to other histories, especially Oriental histories, its very errors and defects may be reckoned amongst its safeguards, and at any rate are guides to the true apprehension of its meaning and its intention. From an honest inquiry, such as that of the Bishop of Natal, which has suggested these remarks, and from a calm discussion of the points which it raises (wherever such a calm discussion can be secured), the cause of Truth and Religion has everything to gain and nothing to lose. 'See Lecture V. and Lecture XVII. 2 See Lecture VI. LECTURE VII. SINAI AND THE LAW. REPHIDIM was but the threshold of Sinai. month they departed from Rephidim, and March from 'In the third pitched in the 'wilderness of Sinai.' Onwards and upwards, after Rephidim. their long halt, exulting in their first victory, they advanced deeper and deeper into the mountain ranges, they knew not whither. They knew only that it was for some great end, for some mighty sacrifice, for some solemn disclosure, such as they had never before witnessed. Onwards they went, and the mountains closed around them; upwards through winding valley, and under high cliff, and over rugged pass, and through gigantic forms, on which the marks of creation even now seem fresh and powerful; and at last, through1 all the different valleys, the whole body of the people were assembled. On their right hand and on their left rose long successions of lofty rocks, forming a vast avenue, like the approaches which they had seen leading to the Egyptian temples between colossal figures of men and of gods. At the end of this broad avenue, rising immediately out of the level plain on which they were encamped, tower the massive cliffs of Sinai, like the huge altar of some natural temple; encircled by peaks of every shape and height, the natural pyramids of the desert. In this sanctuary, secluded from all earthly things, raised high above even the wilderness itself, arrived, as it must have seemed to them, at the very end of the world— 1 With regard to the locality, I have seen no cause to alter the opinion maintained in Sinai and Palestine, 43, 44; but I have purposely left the expressions sufficiently wide to include any spot which may be selected in the neighbourhood of ebe Mûsa. |