Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Vers. 1-3. All the rebellions of the people hitherto had arisen from dissatisfaction with the privations of the desert march, and "had been directed ao^ainst Jehovah rather than ao;ainst Moses. And if, in the case of the last one, at Kibroth-hattaavah, even Moses was about to lose heart under the heavy burden of his office; the faithful covenant God had given the whole nation a practical proof, in the manner in which He provided him support in the seventy elders, that He had not only laid the burden of the whole nation upon His servant Moses, but had also communicated to him the power of His Spirit, which was requisite to enable him to carry this burden. Thus not only was his heart filled with new courage when about to despair, but his official position in relation to all the Israelites was greatly exalted. This elevation of Moses excited envy on the part of his brother and sister, whom God had also richly endowed and placed so high, that Miriam was distinguished as a prophetess above all the women of Israel, whilst Aaron had been raised by his investiture with the high-priesthood into the spiritual head of the whole nation. But the pride of the natural heart was not satisfied with this. They would dispute with their brother Moses the pre-eminence of his special calling and his exclusive position, which they might possibly regard themselves as entitled to contest with him not only as his brother and sister, but also as the nearest supporters of his vocation. Miriam was the instigator of the open rebellion, as we may see both from the fact that her name stands before that of Aargn, and also from the use of the feminine verb nsin in ver. 1. Aaron followed her, being no more able to resist the suggestions of his sister, than he had formerly been to resist the desire of the people for a golden idol (Ex. xxxii.). Miriam found an occasion for the manifestation of her discontent in the Cushite wife whom Moses had taken. This wife cannot have been Zipporah the Midianite: for even though Miriam might possibly have called her a Cushite, whether because the Cushite tribes dwelt in Arabia, or in a contemptuous sense as a Moor or Hamite, the author would certainly not have confirmed this at all events inaccurate, if not contemptuous epithet, by adding, "/or he had taken a Cushite wife;^^ to say nothing of the improbability of Miriam having made the marriage which her brother had contracted when he was a fugitive in a foreign land, long before he was called by God, the occasion of reproach so many years afterw^ards. It would be quite different if, a short time before, probably after the death of Zipporah, he had contracted a second marriage with a Cushite woman, who either sprang from the Cushites dwelling in Arabia, or from the foreigners who had come out of Egypt along with the Israelites. This marriage would not have been wrong in itself, as God had merely forbidden the Israelites to marry the daughters of Canaan (Ex. xxxiv. 16), even if Moses had not contracted it " with the deliberate intention of setting forth through this marriage with a Hamite woman the fellowship between Israel and the heathen, so far as it could exist under the law; and thus practically exemplifying in his own person that equality between the foreigners and Israel which the law demanded in various ways" (Baumgarten), or of " prefiguring by this example the future union of Israel with the most remote of the heathen," as 0, v. Gerlach and many of the fathers suppose. In the taunt of the brother and sister, however, we meet with that carnal exaggeration of the Israelitish' nationality which forms so all-pervading a characteristic of this nation, and is the more reprehensible the more it rests upon the ground of nature rather than upon the spiritual calling of Israel (Kurtz). — Yer. 2. Miriam and Aaron said, " Hath Jehovah then spoken only by Moses, and not also by usV^ Are not we — the high priest Aaron, who brings the rights of the congregation before Jehovah in the Urim and Thummim (Ex. xxviii. 30), and the prophetess Miriam (Ex. xv. 20) — also organs and mediators of divine revelation? " They are proud of the prophetic gift, which ought rather to have fostered modesty in them. But such is the depravity of human nature, that they not only abuse the gifts of God towards the brother whom they despise, but by an ungodly and sacrilegious glorification extol the gifts themselves in such a manner as to hide the Author of the gifts" (Calvin). — '^ And Jehovah heardr This is stated for the purpose of preparing the way for the judicial interposition of God. When God hears what is wrong, He must proceed to stop it by punishment. Moses might also have heard what they said, but " tlie man Moses teas very meek (iTpav^^ LXX., mitisjY\i\g.\ not ^plagued,' (7^^0/(2(7^, as Luther renders it), more than all men upon the earth," No one approached Moses in meekness, because no one was raised so high by God as he was. The higher the position which a man occupies among his fellowraen, the harder is it for the natural man to bear attacks upon himself with meekness, especially if they are directed against his official rank and honour. This remark as to the character of Moses serves to bring out to view the position of the person attacked, and points out the reason why Moses not only abstained from all self-defence, but did not even cry to God for vengeance on account of the injury that had been done to him. Because he was the meekest of all men, he could calmly leave this attack upon himself to the all-wise and righteous Judge, who had both called and qualified him for his office. " For this is the idea of the eulogium of his meekness. It is as if Moses had said that he had swallowed the injury in silence, inasmuch as he had imposed a law of patience upon himself because of his meekness" (^Calvin),

The self-praise on the part of Moses, which many have discovered in this description of his character, and on account of which some even of the earlier expositors regarded this verse as a later gloss, whilst more recent critics have used it as an argument against the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, is not an expression of vain self-display, or a glorification of his own gifts and excellences, which he prided himself upon possessing above all others. It is simply a statement, which was indispensable to a full and correct interpretation of all the circumstances, and which was made quite objectively, with reference to the character which Moses had not given to himself but had acquired through the grace of God, and which he never falsified from the very time of his calling until the day of his death, either at the rebellion of the people at Kibroth-hattaavah (chap, xi.), or at the water of strife at Kadesh (chap. xx.). His despondency under the heavy burden of his office in the former case (chap, xi.) speaks rather for than against the meekness of his character; and the sin at Kadesh (chap. XX.) consisted simply in the fact, that he suffered himself to be brought to doubt either the omnipotence of God, or the possibility of divine help, on account of the unbehef of the people.^

^ There is not a word in Num. xx. 10 or Ps. cvi. 32 to the effect, that " his dissatisfaction broke out into evident passion " (Kurtz). And it is quite a mistake to observe, that in the case before us there was nothing at all to pro-

No doubt it was only such a man as Moses who could speak of himself in such a way, — a man who had so entirely sacrificed his own personality to the office assigned him by the Lord, that he was ready at any moment to stake his life for the cause and glory of the Lord (cf. chap. xi. 15, and Ex. xxxii. 32), and of whom Calmet observes with as much truth as force, " As he praises himself here without pride, so he will blame himself elsewhere with humility," — a man of God whose character is not to be measured by the standard of ordinary men (cf. Hengstenherg^ Dissertations, vol. ii. pp. 141 sqq.).

Vers. 4-10. Jehovah summoned the opponents of His servant to come at once before His judgment-seat. He commanded Moses, Aaron, and Miriam suddenly to come out of the camp (see at chap. xi. 30) to the tabernacle. Then He Himself came down in a pillar of cloud to the door of the tabernacle, i.e. to the entrance to the court, not to the dwelling itself, and called Aaron and Miriam out, i.e. commanded them to come out of the court,^ and said to them (vers. 6 sqq.): " If there is a prophet of Jehovah to you {i.e. if you have one), / make- Myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream (in, lit. " hi him,^ inasmuch as a revelation in a dream fell within the inner sphere of the soul-life). Not so My servant Moses: he is approved in My whole house; mouth to mouth I speak to him, and as a7i appearance, and that not in enigmas; and he sees the form, of Jehovah. Why are ye not afraid to speak against My servant, against Moses? " ^?^'^?? - ^?/ ^^?J, the suffix used with the noun instead of the separate pronoun in the dative, as in Gen. xxxix. 21, Lev. xv. 3, etc. The noun Jehovah is in all probability to be taken as a genitive, in connection with the word voke Moses to appeal to his meekness, since it was not his meekness tliat Miriam had disputed, but only his prophetic call. If such grounds as these are interpolated into the words of Moses, and it is to be held that an attack upon the prophetic calling does not involve such an attack upon the person as might have excited anger, it is certainly impossible to maintain the Mosaic authorship of this statement as to the character of Moses; for the vanity of wishing to procure the recognition of his. meekness by praising it, cannot certainly be imputed to Moses the man of God.

^ The discrepancy discovered by Knohel^ in tho fact that, according to the so-called Elohist, no one but Moses, Aaron, and the sons of Aaron were allowed to enter the sanctuary, whereas, according to the Jehovist, others did so, — e.g. Miriam here, and Joshua in Ex. xxxiii. 11, — rests entirely upon a groundless fancy, arising from a misinterpretation, as there is not a word about entering the sanctuary, i.e. the dwelling itself, either in the verse before us or in Ex. xxxiii. 11.

DD^{^3: (" a prophet to you '*), as it is in the LXX. and Vulg., and not to be construed with the words which follow ("/ Jehovah will make Myself knowri'^). The position of Jehovah at the head of the clause without a preceding ^^:^f (I) would be much more remarkable than the separation of the dependent noun from the governing noun by the suffix, which occurs in other cases also {e.g. Lev. vi. 3, xxvi. 42, etc.); moreover, it would be by no means suited to the sense, as no such emphasis is laid upon the fact that it was Jehovah who made Himself known, as to require or even justify such a construction. The ''whole house of Jehovah''^ (ver. 7) is not " primarily His dwelling, the holy tent " (Baumgarten), — for, in that case, the word " whole " would be quite superfluous, — but the whole house of Israel, or the covenant nation regarded as a kingdom, to the administration and government of which Moses had been called: as a matter of fact, therefore, the whole economy of the Old Testament, having its central point in the holy tent, which Jehovah had caused to be built as the dwelling-place of His name. It did not terminatej however, in the service of the sanctuary, as we may see from the fact that God did not make the priests who were entrusted with the duties ol the sanctuary the organs of His saving revelation, but raised up and called prophets after Moses for that purpose. Compare the expression in Heb. iii. 6, " Whose house w^e are." j??!^!! with 3 does not mean to be, or become, entrusted with anything (Baumgarten, Knobel), but simply to be lasting, firm, constant, in a local or temporal sense (Deut. xxviii. 59; 1 Sam. ii. 35; 2 Sam. vii. 16, etc.); in a historical sense, to prove or attest one's self (Gen. xlii. 20); and in an ethical sense, to be found proof, trustworthy, true (Ps. Ixxviii. 8; 1 Sam. iii. 20, xxii. 14: see Delitzsch on Heb. iii. 2). In the participle, therefore, it signifies proved, faithful, itlgto^ (LXX.). ''Mouth to mouth^^ answers to the "face to face" in Ex. xxxiii. 11 (cf. Deut. xxxiv. 10), i.e, without any mediation or reserve, but with the same closeness and freedom with w^hich friends converse together (Ex. xxxiii. 11). This is still further strengthened and elucidated by the words in apposition, "in the form of seeing (appearance), and not in riddles^^ i.e. visibly, and not in a dark, hidden, enigmatical way. nt<")D is an accusative defining the mode, and signifies here not vision, as in ver. 6, but adspectusy view, sight; for it forms an antithesis to n^"i^3 in ver. 6. " The form (Eng. similitude) of Jehovah " was not the essential nature of God, His unveiled gloiy, — for this no mortal man can see (yid. Ex. xxxiii. "• ^ sqq.), — but a form which manifested the invisible God to the eye of man in a clearly discernible mode, and which was essentially different, not only from the visionary sight of God in the form of a man (Ezek. i. 26; Dan. vii. 9 and 13), but also from the appearances of God in the outward world of the senses, in the person and form of the angel of Jehovah, and stood in the same relation to these two forms of revelation, so far as directness and clearness were concerned, as the sight of a person in a dream to that of the actual figure of the person himself. God talked with Moses without figure, in the clear distinctness of a spiritual communication, whereas to the prophets He only revealed Himself through the medium of ecstasy or dream.

Through this utterance on the part of Jehovah, Moses is placed above all the prophets, in relation to God and also to the whole nation. The divine revelation to the prophets is thereby restricted to the two forms of inward intuition (vision and dream). It follows from this, that it had always a visionary character, though it might vary in intensity; and therefore that it had always more or less obscurity about it, because the clearness of self-consciousness and the distinct perception of an external world, both receded before the inward intuition, in a dream as well as in a vision. The prophets were consequently simply organs, through whom Jehovah made known His counsel and will at certain times, and in relation to special circumstances and features in the development of His kingdom. It was not so with Moses. Jehovah had placed him over all His house, had called him to be the founder and organizer of the kingdom established in Israel through his mediatorial service, and had found him faithful in His service. With this servant (depdircov, LXX.) of His, He spake mouth to mouth, without a figure or figurative cloak, with the distinctness of a human interchange of thought; so that at any time he could inquire of God and wait for the divine reply. Hence Moses was not a prophet of Jehovah, like many others, not even merely the first and highest prophet, primus inter pares, but stood above all the prophets, as the founder of the theocracy, and mediator of the Old Covenant. Upon this unparalleled relation of Moses to God and the theocracy, so clearly expressed in the verses before us, the Rabbins have justly founded their view as to the higher grade of inspiration In the Thorah. This view is fully confirmed through the history of the Old Testament kingdom of God, and the relation in which the writings of the prophets stand to those of Moses. The prophets subsequent to Moses simply continued to build upon the foundation which Moses laid. And if Moses stood in this unparalleled relation to the Lord, Miriam and Aaron sinned grievously against him, when speaking as they did. Ver. 9. After this address, " the wrath of Jehovah burned against them, and He went^ As a judge, withdrawing from the judgment-seat when he has pronounced his sentence, so Jehovah went, by the cloud in which He had come down withdrawing from the tabernacle, and ascending up on high. And at the same moment, Miriam, the instigator of the rebellion against her brother Moses, was covered with leprosy, and became white as snow.

Vers. 11-16. When Aaron saw his sister smitten in this way, he said to Moses, " Alas I my lord, I beseech thee, lay not this sin upon us, for we have done foolishly;" Le, let us not bear its punishment. " Let her (Miriam) not be as the dead thing, on ivhose coming out of its mother s womb half its flesh is consumed;^ i.e, like a stillborn child, w^hich comes into the w^orld half decomposed. His reason for making this comparison was, that leprosy produces decomposition in the living body. — Ver. 13. Moses, with his mildness, took compassion upon his sister, upon whom this punishment had fallen, and cried to the Lord, " 0 God, I beseech Thee, heal her" The connection of the particle fc^3 with?^ is certainly unusual, but yet it is analogous to the construction with such exclamations as ''ifcc (Jer. iv. 31, xlv. 3) and Hiiri (Gen. xii. 11, xvi. 2, etc.); since?NI in the vocative is to be regarded as equivalent to an exclamation; whereas the alteration into p^, as proposed by J, D, Michaelis and Knobel, does not even give a fitting sense, apart altogether from the fact, that the repetition of ^1 after the verb, with fc<J?^ before it, would be altogether unexampled. — Vers. 14, 15. Jehovah hearkened to His servant's prayer, though not without inflicting deep humiliation upon Miriam. " If her father had but spit in her face, would she not be ashamed seven days?" Le, keep herself hidden from Me out of pure shame. She was to be shut outside the camp, to be excluded from the congregation as a leprous person for seven days, and then to be received in again. Thus restoration and purification from her leprosy were promised to her after the endurance of seven days' punishment. Leprosy was the just punishment for her sin. In her haughty exaggeration of the worth of her own "prophetic gift, she had placed herself on a par with Moses, the divinely appointed head of the whole nation, and exalted herself above the congregation of the Lord. For this she was afflicted with a disease which shut her out of the number of the members of the people of

God, and thus actually excluded from the camp; so that she could only be received back again after she had been healed, and by a formal purification. The latter followed as a matter of course, from Lev. xiii. and xiv., and did not need to be specially referred to here. — Vers. 15^, 16. The people did not proceed any farther till the restoration of Miriam. After this they departed from Hazeroth, and encamped in the desert of Paran, namely at Kadesh, on the southern boundary of Canaan. This is evident from chap, xiii., more especially ver. 2^j as compared with Deut. i. 19 sqq., w^here it is stated not merely that the spies, who were sent out from this place of encampment to Canaan, returned to the congregation at Kadesh, but that they set out from Kadesh-Barnea for Canaan, because there the Israelites had come to the mountains of the Amorites, which God had promised them for an inheritance.

With regard to the situation of Kadesh^ it has already been observed at Gen. xiv. 7, that it is probably to be sought for in the neighbourhood of the fountain of Ain Kades^ which was discovered by Rowland^ to the south of Bir Seba and Khalasa, on the heights of Jebel Helalj i.e. at the north-west corner of the mountain land of Azazimeh, which is more closely described at chap. x. 12 (see pp. 57, 58), where the western slopes of this highland region sink gently down into the undulating surface of the desert, which stretches thence to ElArish, with a breadth of about six hours' journey, and keeps the way open between Arabia Petraea and the south of Palestine. " In the northern third of this western slope, the mountains recede so as to leave a free space for a plain of about an hour's journey in breadth, which comes towards the east, and to which access is obtained through one or more of the larger wadys that are to be seen here (such as Retemat, Kusaimeh, el Ain, Muweileh)." At the north-eastern background of this plain, which forms almost a rectangular figure of nine miles by five, or ten by six, stretching from west to east, large enough to receive the camp of a wandering people, and about twelve miles to the E.S.E. of Muweileh, there rises, like a large solitary mass, at the edge of the mountains which run on towards the north, a bare rock, at the foot of which there is a copious spring, falling in ornamental cascades into the bed of a brook, which is lost in the sand about 300 or 400 yards to the west. This place still bears the ancient name of Kudes. There can be no doubt as to the identity of this Kudes and the biblical Kadesh. The situation agrees with all the statements in the Bible concerning Kadesh: foly example, that Israel had then reached the border of the promised land; also that the spies who were sent out from Kadesh returned thither by coming from Hebron to the wilderness of Paran (chap. xiii. 26); and lastly, according to the assertions of the Bedouins, as quoted by Rowland^ this Kudes was ten or eleven days' journey from Sinai (in perfect harmony with Deut. i. 2), and was connected by passable wadys with Mount Ilor. The Israelites proceeded, no doubt, through the wady Retemai, i.e, Rithmah (see at chap, xxxiii. 18), into the plain of Kadesh. (On the town of Kadesh, see at chap. xx. 16.)^

SPIES SENT OUT. MURMURING OF THE PEOPLE, AND THEIR PUNISHMENT. — CHAP. XIII. AND XIV.

When they had arrived at Kadesh, in the desert of Paran (chap, xiii. 26), Moses sent out spies by the command of God, and according to the wishes of the people, to explore the way by which they could enter into Canaan, and also the nature of the land, of its cities, and of its population (chap. xiii. 1-20). The men who were sent out passed through the land, from the south to the northern frontier, and on their return reported that the land was no doubt one of pre-eminent goodness, but that it was inhabited by a strong people, who had giants among them, and were in possession of very large fortified towns (vers. 21-29); whereupon Caleb declared that it was quite possible to conquer it, whilst the others despaired of over coming the Canaanites, ancj spread an evil report among the people concerning the land (vers. 30-33). The congregation then raised a loud lamentation, and went so far in their murmuring against Moses and Aaron, as to speak without reserve or secrecy of deposing Moses, and returning to Egypt under another leader: they even wanted to stone Joshua and Caleb, who tried to cahn the excited multitude, and urged them to trt«ct in the Lord. But suddenly the glory of the Lord interposed with a special manifestation of judgment (chap. xiv. 1-10). Jehovah made known to Moses His resolution to destroy the rebellious nation, but suffered Himself to be moved by the intercession of Moses so far as to promise that He would preserve the nation, though He would exclude the murmuring multitude from the promised land (vers. 11-25). He then directed Moses and Aaron to proclaim to the people the following

^ See Kurtz^ History of the Old Covenent, vol. iii. p. 225, where the current notion, that Kadesh was situated on the western border of the Arabah, below the Dead Sea, by either Ain Hash or Ain el Weibeh, is successfully refuted.

punishment for their repeated rebellion: that they should bear their iniquity for forty years in the wilderness; that the whole nation that had come out of Egypt should die there, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua; and that only their children should enter the promised land (vers. 26-39). The people were shocked at this announcement, and resolved to force a way into Canaan; but, as Moses predicted, they were beaten by the Canaanites and Amalekites, and driven back to Hormah (vers. 40-45).^

These events form a grand turning-point in the history of Israel, in which the whole of the future history of the covenant nation is typically reflected. The constantly repeated unfaithfulness of the nation could not destroy the faithfulness of God, or alter His purposes of salvation. In wrath Jehovah remembered mercy; through judgment He carried out His plan of salvation, that all the world might know that no flesh was righteous before Him, and that the unbelief and unfaithfulness of men could not overturn the truth of God.

Chap. xiii. 1-20. Despatch of the Spies to Canaan. — Vers. 1 sqq. The command of Jehovah, to send out men to spy out the land of Canaan, was occasioned, according to the account given by Moses in Deut. i. 22 sqq., by a proposal of the congregation, which pleased Moses, so that he laid the matter before the Lord, who then commanded him to send out for this purpose, " of every tribe of their fathers a man^ every one a ruler among them, Le, none

^ According to Knohel, the account of these events arose from two or three documents interwoven with one another in the following manner: chap. xiii. l-17a, 21, 25, 26, 32, and xiv. 2a, 5-7, 10&, 36-38, was written by the Elohist, the remainder by the Jehovist, — chap. xiii. 22-24, 27-31, xiv. 1&, 11-25, 39-45, being taken from his first document, and chap. xiii. 176-20, xiv. 26-4^ 8-lOa, 26-33, 35, from his second; whilst, lastly, chap. xiii. 33, and the commencement of chap. xiv. 1, were added from his own resources, because it contains contradictory statements. " According to the Elohist," says this critic,

" the spies went through the whole land (chap. xiii. 32, xiv. 7), and penetrated even to the north of the country (chap. xiii. 21): they took forty days to this (chap. xiii. 25, xiv. 34); they had among them Joshua, whose name was altered at that time (chap. xiii. 16), and who behaved as bravely as Caleb (chap. xiii. 8, xiv. 6, 38). According to the Jehovistic completion, the spies did not go through the whole land, but only entered into it (chap. xiii. 27), merely going into the neighbourhood of Hebron, in the south country (chap. xiii. 22, 23); there they saw the gigantic Anakites (chap. xiii. 22, 28, 33), cut off the large bunch of grapes in the valley of Eshcol (chap. xiii. 23, 24), and then came back to Closes. Caleb was the only one who showed himself courageous, and Joshua was not with them at all (chap. xiii. 30, xiv. 24)." But these discre-

but men who were princes in their tribes, who held the prominent position of princes, i.e. distinguished persons of rank; or, as it is stated in ver. 3, " heads of the children of Israel,^ i.e. not the tribeprinces of the twelve tribes, but those men, out of the total number of the heads of the tribes and families of Israel, who were the most suitable for such a mission, though the selection was to be made in such a manner that every tribe should be represented by one of its own chiefs. That there were none of the twelve tribe-princes among them is apparent from a comparison of their names (vers. 4-15) with the (totally different) names of the tribe-princes (chap, i. 3 sqq., vii. 12 sqq.). Caleb and Joshua are the only spies that are known. The order, in which the tribes are placed in the list of the names in vers. 4-15, differs from that in chap. i. 5-15 only in the fact that in ver. 10 Zebulun is separated from the other sons of Leah, and in ver. 11 Manasseh is separated from Ephraim. The expression " o/ the tribe of Joseph" in ver. 11, stands for "of the children of Joseph," in chap. i. 10, xxxiv. 23. At the close of the list it is still further stated, that Moses called Hoshea (i.e. help), the son of Nun, Jehoshua, contracted into Joshua (i.e. Jehovah-help, equivalent to, whose help is Jehovah). This statement does not present any such discrepancy, when compared with Ex. xvii. 9, 13, xxiv. 13, xxxii. 17, xxxiii. 11, and Num. xi. 28, where Joshua bears this name as the servant of Moses at a still earlier period, as to point to any diversity of authorship. As there is nothing of a genea- pancies do not exist in the biblical narrative; on the contrary, they have been introduced by the critic himself, by the forcible separation of passages from their context, and by arbitrary interpolations. The words of the spies in chap, xiii. 27, "We came into the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey," do not imply that they only came into the southern portion of the land, any more than the fact that they brought a bunch of grapes from the neighbourhood of Hebron is a proof that they did not go beyond the valley of Eshcol. Moreover, it is not stated in chap. xiii. 30 that Joshua was not found among the tribes. Again, the circumstance that in chap, xiv. 11-25 and 26-35 the same thing is said twice over, — the special instructions as to the survey of the land in chap. xiii. 176-20, which were quite unnecessary for intelligent leaders, — the swearing of God (chap. xiv. IG, 21, 23), — the forced explanation of the name Eshcol, in chap. xiii. 24, and other things of the same kind, — are said to furnish further proofs of the interpolation of Jehovistic clauses into the Elohistic narrative; and lastly, a number of the words employed are supposed to place this beyond all doubt. Of these proofs, however, the first rests upon a simple misinterpretation of the passage in question, and a disregard of the peculiarities of Hebrew history; whilst the rest are either subjective conclusions, dictated by the taste of vulgar rationalism, or inferences and assumptions, of which the tenability and force need first of all to be established.

logical character in any of these passages, so as to warrant us in expecting to find the family name of Joshua in them, the name Joshua, by which Hosea had become best known in history, could be used proleptically in them all. On the other hand, however, it is not distinctly stated in the verse before us, that this was the occasion on which Moses gave Hosea the new name of Joshua, As the Vav consec, frequently points out merely the order of thought, the words may be understood without hesitation in the following sense: These are the names borne by the heads of the tribes to be sent out as spies, as they stand in the family registers according to their descent; Hosea, however, w^as named Joshua by Moses; which would not by any means imply that the alteration in the name had not been made till then. It is very probable that Moses may have given him the new name either before or after the defeat of the Amalekites (Ex. xvii. 9 sqq.), or when he took him into his service, though it has not been mentioned before; whilst here the circumstances themselves required that it should be stated that Hosea, as he wes called in the list prepared and entered in the documentary record according to the genealogical tables of the tribes, had received from Moses the name of Joshua. In vers. 17-20 Moses gives them the necessary instructions, defining more clearly the motive which the congregation had assigned for sending them out, namely, that they might search out the way into the land and to its towns (Deut. i. 22). " Get you up theie (HT) in the south country, and go up to the mountain,^* Negeb, i.e. south country, lit. dryness, aridity, from 3JJ, to be dry or arid (in Syr., Chald., and Samar.). Hence the dry, parched land, in contrast to the well-watered country (Josh. XV. 19; Judg. i. 15), was the name given to the southern district of Canaan, which forms the transition from the desert to the strictly cultivated land, and bears for the most part the character of a steppe, in which tracts of sand and heath are intermixed with shrubs, grass, and vegetables, whilst here and there corn is also cultivated; a district therefore which was better fitted for grazing than for agriculture, though it contained a number of towns and villages (see at Josh. xv. 21-32). " The mountain^ is the mountainous part of Palestine, which was inhabited by Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites (ver. 29), and was called the mountains of the Amorites, on account of their being the strongest of the Canaanitish tribes (Deut. i. 7, 19 sqq.). It is not to be restricted, as Knohel supposes, to the limits of the so-called mountains of Judah (Josh. XV. 48-62), but Included the mountains of Israel or Ephraim also

(Josh. xl. 21, XX. 7), and formed, according to Dcut. i. 7, the backbone of the whole hind of Canaan up to Lebanon. — Vcr. 18. They were to see the land, " what it was," i.e. what was its character, and the people that dwelt in it, whether they were strong, i.e. courageous and brave, or weak, i.e. spiritless and timid, and whether they were little or great, i.e. numerically; (ver. 19) what the land was, whether good qr bad, sc. with regard to climate and cultivation, and whether tlie towns were camps, i.e. open villages and hamlets, or fortified places; also (ver. 20) whether the land was fat or lean, i.e. whether it had a fertile soil or not, and whether there were trees in it or not. All this they were to search out courageously (P?nrin^ to show one's self courageous in any occupation), and to fetch (some) of the fruits of the land, as it was the time of the first-ripe grapes. In Palestine the first grapes ripen as early as August, and sometimes even in July (vld. Bobinson, ii. 100, ii. 611), whilst the vintage takes place in September and October.

Vers. 21-33. Journey of the Spies; their Keturn, and Report. — Yer. 21. In accordance with the instructions they had received, the men who had been sent out passed through the land, from the desert of Zin to Rehob, in the neighbourhood of Hamath, i.e. in its entire extent from south to north. The " Desert of Zin^^ (which occurs not only here, but in chap. xx. 1, xxvii. 14, xxxiii. 36, xxxiv. 3, 4; Deut. xxxii. 51, and Josh. xv. 1, 3) was the name given to the northern edge of the great desert of Paran, viz. the broad ravine of Wady Murreh (see p. 59), which separates the lofty and precipitous northern border of the table-land of the Azazimeh from the southern border of the Rakhma plateau, i.e. of the southernmost plateau of the mountains of the Amorites (or the mountains of Judah), and runs from Jebel Madarah (Moddera) on the east, to the plain of Kadesh, which forms part of the desert of Zin (cf. chap, xxvii. 14, xxxiii. 36; Deut. xxxii. 51), on the west. The south frontier of Canaan passed through this from the southern end of the Dead Sea, along the Wady el Murreh to the Wady el Arish (chap, xxxiv. 3). — '^ Rehob, to come (coming) to Ilamath^^ i.e. where you enter the province of Hamath, on the northern boundary of Canaan, is hardly one of the two Rehobs in the tribe of Asher (Josh. xix. 28 and 30), but most likely Beth-Eehob in the tribe of Naphtali, which was in the neighbourhood of Dan Lais, the modern Tell el Kadhy (Judg. xviii. 28), and which Robinson imagined that he had identified in the ruins of the castle of Hunin or Ilonin, in the village of the same name, to the south-west of Tell el Kadhy, on the range of mountains which bound the plain towards the west above Lake Huleh (Bibl. Researches, p. 371). In support of this conjecture, he laid the principal stress upon the fact that the direct road to Hamath through the Wady et Teim and the Bekaa commences here. The only circumstance which it is hard to reconcile with this conjecture is, that Beth-Rehob is never mentioned in the Old Testament, with the exception of Judg. xviii. 28, either among the fortified towns of the Canaanites or in the wars of the Israelites with the Syrians and Assyrians, and therefore does not appear to have been a place of such importance as we should naturally be led to suppose from the character of this castle, the very situation of wdiich points to a bold, commanding fortress (see Lynch's Expedition), and where there are still remains of its original foundations built of large square stones, hewn and grooved, and reminding one of the antique and ornamental edifices of Solomon's times (cf. Hitter, Erdkunde, xv. pp. 242 sqq.). — Hamath is Epipliania on the Orontes, now Hamali (see at Gen. x. 18).

After the general statement, that the spies went through the w^hole land from the southern to the northern frontier, two facts are mentioned in vers. 22-24, which occurred in connection with their mission, and were of great importance to the whole congregation. These single incidents are linked on, however, in a truly Hebrew style, to what precedes, viz. by an imperfect with Vav consec., just in the same manner in which, in 1 Kings vi. 9, 15, the detailed account of the building of the temple is linked on to the previous statement, that Solomon built the temple and finished it; ^ so that the true rendering would be, " now they ascended in the south country and came to Hebron (^*^*'!. is apparently an error in writing for ^^*^*1), and there were P^VJ^ ''7.?'!, the children of Anak," three of whom are mentioned by name. These three, who were afterwards expelled by Caleb, when the land was divided and the city of Hebron was given to him for an inheritance (Josh. xv. 14;

^ A comparison of 1 Kings vi., ■where we cannot possibly suppose that two accounts have been linked together or interwoven, is specially adapted to give us a clear view of the peculiar custom adopted by the Hebrew historians, of J, lacing the end and ultimate result of the events they narrate as much as possible at the head of their narrative, and then proceeding with a minute account of the more important of the attendant circumstances, without paying any regard to the chronological order of the different incidents, or being at all afraid of repetitions, and so to prove how unwarrantable.and false are the conclusions of those critics who press such passages into the support of their

Judg. i. 20), were descendants of Arbah, the lord of Hebron, from whom the city received its name of Kirjatli-Arhah, or city of Arbah, and who is described in Josh. xiv. 15 as " the great {i.e, the greatest) man among the Anakim," and in Josh. xv. 13 as the " father of Anak," i.e. the founder of the Anakite family there. For it is evident enough that \>y^J^ (^Anak) is not the proper name of a man in these passages, but the name of a family or tribe, from the fact that in ver. 33, where Anak's sons are spoken of in a general and indefinite manner, \>^V '^^^ has not the article; also from the fact that the three Anakites who lived in Hebron are almost always called \>m n;^!, Anak's born (vers. 22, 28), and that pJVn '•pa (sons of Anak), in Josh. xv. 14, is still further defined by the phrase P^^Vn ^^y\ (children of Anak); and lastly, from the fact that in the place of " sons of Anak," we find " sons of the Anakim " in Deut. i. 28 and ix. 2, and the "Anakim" in Deut. ii. 10, xi. 21; Josh. xiv. 12, etc. Anah is supposed to signify long-necked; but this does not preclude the possibility of the founder of the tribe having borne this name. The origin of the Anakites is involved in obscurity. In Deut. ii. 10, 11, they are classed with the JEmim and Bephaim on account of their gigantic stature, and probably reckoned as belonging to the pre-Canaanitish inhabitants of the land, of whom it is impossible to decide whether they were of Semitic origin or descendants of Ham (see vol. i. p. 203). It is also doubtful, whether the names found here in vers. 21, 28, and in Josh. XV. 14, are the names of individuals, i.e. of chiefs of the Anakites, or the names of Anakite tribes. The latter supposition is favoured by the circumstance, that the same names occur even after the capture of Hebron by Caleb, or at least fifty years after the event referred to here. With regard to Hebron, it is still further observed in ver. 226, that it was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt. Zoan — the Tanis of the Greeks and Romans, the San of the Arabs, which is called Jard, Jane in Coptic writings — was situated upon the eastern side of the Tanitic arm of the Nile, not hypotheses. We have a similar passage in Josh. iv. 11 sqq., where, after relating that when all the people had gone through the Jordan the priests also passed through with the ark of the covenant (ver. 11), the historian proceeds in vers. 12, 13, to describe the crossing of the two tribes and a half; and another in Judg. XX., where, at the very commencement (ver. 35), the issue of the whole is related, viz. the defeat of the Benjamites; and then after that there is a minute description in vers. 36-46 of the manner in which it was effected. This style of narrative is also common in the historical works of the Arabs.

far from Its mouth (see Ges, Thes. p. 1177), and was the residence of Pharaoh in the time of Moses (see vol. ii. p. 27). The date of its erection is unknown; but Hebron was in existence as early as Abraham's time (Gen. xlii. 18, xxiii. 2 sqq.). — Ver. 23. The spies also came into the valley of Eshcol, where they gathered pomegranates and figs, and also cut down a vine-branch with grapes upon it, which two person?! carried upon a pole, most likely on account of its extraordinary size. Bunches of grapes are still met with in Palestine, weighing as much as eight, ten, or twelve pounds, the grapes themselves being as large as our smaller plums (cf. Tohler DenkhldtteVj pp. Ill, 112). The grapes of Hebron are especially celebrated. To the north of this city, on the way to Jerusalem, you pass through a valley with vineyards on the hills on both sides, containing the largest and finest grapes in the land, and with pomegranates, figs, and other fruits in great profusion (Rohinsorij Palestine, i. 316, compared with i. 314 and ii. 442). This valley is supposed, and not without good ground, to be the JEshcol of this chapter, which received its name of JEshcol (cluster of grapes), according to ver. 24, from the bunch of grapes which was cut down there by the spies. This statement, of course, applies to the Israelites, and would therefore still hold good, even if the conjecture were a well-founded one, that this valley received its name originally from the JEshcol mentioned in Gen. -x'lv. 13, 24, as the terebinth grove did from Idamre the brother of Eshcol.

Vers. 25 sqq. In forty days the spies returned to the camp at Kadesh (see at chap. xvi. 6), and reported the great fertility of the land {^' it floweth with milk and honey ^^ see at Ex. iii. 8), pointing, at the same time, to the fruit they had brought with them; " nevertheless^^ they added (^3 DDK^ " only that "), " the people he strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are foriijiedy very large: andy moreover, we saw the children of Anak there^ Amalekites dwelt in the south (see at Gen. xxxvi. 12); Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites in the mountains (see at Gen. x. 15, 16); and Canaanites by the (Mediterranean) Sea and on the side of the Jordan, i.e, in the Arabah or Ghor (see at Gen. xiii. 7 and x. 15—18). — Ver. 30. As these tidings respecting the towns and inhabitants of Canaan were of a character to excite the people, Caleb calmed them before Moses by saying, " We will go up and take it; for ive shall overcome itP The fact that Caleb only is mentioned, though, according to chap. xiv. 6, Joshua also stood by his side, may be explained on the simple ground, that at first Caleb was the only one to speak and maintain the possibility of conquering Canaan. — Ver. 31. But his companions were of an opposite opinion, and declared that the people in Canaan were stronger than the Israelites, and therefore it was impossible to go up to it. — Ver. 32. Thus they spread an evil report of the land among the Israelites, by exaggerating the difficulties of the conquest in their unbelieving despair, and describing Canaan as a land which " ate up its inhabitants,^^ Their meaning certainly was not " that the wretched inhabitants were worn out by the laborious task of cultivating it, or that the laud was pestilential on account of the inclemency of the weather, or that the cultivation of the land was difficult, and attended with many evils," as Calvin maintains. Their only wish was to lay stress upon the difficulties and dangers connected with the conquest and maintenance of the land, on account of the tribes inhabiting and surrounding it: the land was an apple of discord, because of its fruitfulness and situation; and as the different nations strove for its possession, its inhabitants wasted away (Cler., JRos.y 0. v. Gerlach), The people, they added, are riiip ''^p^, " men of measures,^* i.e, of tall stature (cf. Isa. xlv. 14), " and there ive saw the Nephilim, i.e. primeval tyrants (see at Gen. vi. 4), Anak^s sons, giants of Nephilimy and we seemed to ourselves and to them as small as grasshoppers^

Chap. xiv. 1-10. Uproar among the People. — Vers. 1-4. This appalling description of Canaan had so depressing an influence upon the whole congregation (cf. Deut. i. 28: they " made their heart melt," i.e. threw them into utter despair), that they raised a loud cry, and wept in the night in consequence. The whole nation murmured against Moses and Aaron their two leaders, saying " Would that we had died in Egypt or in this wilderness! Why will Jehovah bring us into this land, to fall by the sword, that our tvives and our children should become a prey (be made slaves by the enemy; cf. Deut. i. 27, 28)*? Let us rather return into Egypt I We will appoint a captain, they said one to another, and go back to Egypt r — Vers. 5-9. At this murmuring, which was growing into open rebellion, Moses and Aaron fell upon their faces before the whole of the assembled congregation, namely, to pour out their distress before the Lord, and move Him to interpose; that is to say, after they had made an unsuccessful attempt, as we may supply from Deut. i. 29-31, to cheer up the people, by pointing them to the help they had thus far received from God. " In such distress, nothing remained but to pour out Iheir desires before God; offering their prayer in public, however, and in the sight of all the people, in the hope of turning their minds" (Calvin), Joshua and Caleb, who had gone with the others to explore the land, also rent their clothes, as a sign of their deep distress at the rebellious attitude of the people {see at Lev. x. 6), and tried to convince them of the goodness and glory of the land they had travelled through, and to incite them to trust in the Lord. '^ If Jehovah take pleasure in ws,'' they said, '^ He will bring us irito this land. Only rebel not ye against Jehovah^ neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are our food;^^ i,e. we can and shall swallow them up, or easily destroy them (cf. chap. xxii. 4, xxiv. 8; Deut. vii. 16; Ps. xiv. 4). " Their shadow is departed from them, and Jehovah is with us: fear them not! " " Their shadow " is the shelter and protection of God (cf. Ps. xci., cxxi. 5). The shadow, which defends from the burning heat of the sun, was a very natural figure in the sultry East, to describe defence from injury, a refuge from danger and destruction (Isa. xxx. 2). The protection of God had departed from the Can'aanites, because God had determined to destroy them when the measure of their iniquity was full (Gen. XV. 16; cf. Ex. xxxiv. 24; Lev. xviii. 25, xx. 23). But the excited people resolved to stone them, when Jehovah interposed with His judgment, and His glory appeared in the tabernacle to all the Israelites; that is to say, the majesty of God flashed out before the eyes of the people in a light which suddenly burst forth from the tabernacle (see at Ex. xvi. 10).

Vers. 11-25. Intercession of Moses. — Vers. 11, 12. Jehovah resented the conduct of the people as base contempt of His deity, and as utter mistrust of Him, notwithstanding all the signs which He had wrought m the midst of the nation; and declared that He would smite the rebellious people with pestilence, and destroy them, and make of Moses a greater and still mightier people. This was just what He had done before, when the rebellion took place at Sinai (Ex. xxxii. 10). But Moses, as a servant who was faithful over the whole house of God, and therefore sought not his own honour, but the honour of his God alone, stood in the breach on this occasion also (Ps. cvi. 23), with a similar intercessory prayer to that which he had presented at Horeb, except that on this occasion he pleaded the honour of God among the heathen, and the glorious revelation of the divine nature with which he had been favoured at Sinai, as a motive for sparing the rebellious nation (vers. 13-19;

cf. Ex. xxxii. 11-13, and xxxiv. 6, 7). The first he expressed in these words (vers. 13 sqq.): "Not only have the Egyptians heard that Thou hast brought out this people from among them with Thy might; they have also told it to the inhabitants of this land. They (the Egyptians and the other nations) have heard that ThoUy Jehovah^ art in the midst of this people; that Thou, Jehovah, appearest eye to eye, and Thy cloud stands over them, and Thou goest before them, in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Now, if Thou shouldst slay this people as one man, the nations which have heard the tidings of Thee woidd say. Because Jehovah was not able to bring this people into the land which He sware to them. He has slain them in the desert.^^ In that case God would be regarded by the heathen as powerless, and His honour would be impaired (cf. Deut. xxxii. 27; Josh. vii. 9). It w^as for the sake of His own honour that God, at a later time, did not allow the Israelites to perish in exile (cf. Isa. xlviii. 9, 11, lii. 5; Ezek. xxxvi. 22, 23). — nD8<1... ^yp^l (vers. 13, 14), et audierunt et dixerunt; \ — \=^et — et, both — and. The inhabitants of this land (ver. 13) were not merely the Arabians, but, according to Ex. xv. 14 sqq., the tribes dwelling in and round Arabia, the Philistines, Edomites, Moabites, and Canaanites, to whom the tidings had been brought of the miracles of God in Egypt and at the Dead Sea. ^5^P^, in ver. 14, can neither stand for ^Vp^ ""S (dixerunt) se audivisse, nor for '^^^^. '^V'O^^ qui audierunt. They are neither of them grammatically admissible, as the relative pronoun cannot be readily omitted in prose; and neither of them would give a really suitable meaning. It is rather a rhetorical resumption of the ^^p^^ in ver. 13, and the subject of the verb is not only " the Egyptians^^ but also " the inhabitants of this land" wdio held communication with the Egyptians, or " the nations'^ who had heard the report of Jehovah (ver. 15), i.e. all that God had hitherto done for and among the Israelites in Egypt, and on the journey through the desert. " Eye to eye;" i.e. Thou hast appeared to them in the closest proximity. On the pillar of cloud and fire, see at Ex. xiii. 21, 22. "As one man," equivalent to " with a stroke" (Judg. vi. 16). — In vers. 17, 18, Moses adduces a second argument, viz. the word in which God Himself had revealed His inmost being to him at Sinai (Ex. xxxiv. 6, 7). The words, " Let the power be great," equivalent to " show Thyself great in power," are not to be connected with what precedes, but with what follows; viz. "show Thyself mighty by verifying Thy word, ' Jehovah, long-suffering and great in mercy ^ etc,; forgive^ I beseech

Thee, this people according to the greatness of Thy mercy, and as Thou hast forgiven this people from Egypt even until now^ fc<^3 (ver. 19) = py \^m (ver. 18). — Ver. 20. In answer to this importunate prayer, the Lord promised forgiveness, namely, the preservation of the nation, but not the remission of the well-merited punishment. At the rebellion at Sinai, He had postponed the punisliment " till the day of His visitation" (Ex. xxxii. 34). And that day had now arrived, as the people had carried their continued rebellion against the Lord to the furthest extreme, even to an open declaration of their intention to depose Moses, and return to Egypt under another leader, and thus had filled up the measure of their sins^ *' Nevertheless^^ added the Lord (vers. 21, 22), " as truly as I live, and the glory of Jehovah will fill the whole earth, all the men who have seen My glory and My miracles... shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers J^ The clause, " all the earth," etc., forms an apposition to " as I live." Jehovah proves Himself to be living, by the fact that His glory fills the whole earth. But this was to take place, not, as Knohel, who mistakes the true connection of the different clauses, erroneously supposes, by the destruction of the whole of that generation, which would be talked of by all the world, but rather by th^^ fact that, notwithstanding the sin and opposition of these men. He would still carry out His work of salvation to a glorious victory. The ""S in ver. 22 introduces the substance of the oath, as in Isa. xlix. 18; 1 Sam. xiv. 39, xx. 3; and according to the ordinary form of an oath, DK in ver. 23 signifies " not^ — " They have tempted Me now ten times." Ten is used as the number of completeness and full measure; and this answered to the actual fact, if we follow the Rabbins, and add to the murmuring (1) at the Red Sea, Ex. xiv. 11, 12; (2) at Marah, Ex. xv. 23; (3) in the wilderness of Sin, Ex. xvi. 2; (4) at Rephidim, Ex. xvii. 1; (5) at Horeb, Ex. xxxii.; (6) at Tabeerah, Num. xi. 1; (7) at the graves of lust. Num. xi. 4 sqq.; and (8) here again at Kadesh, the tvQofold rebellion of certain individuals against the commandments of God at the giving of the manna (Ex. xvi. 20 and 27). The despisers of G®d should none of them see the promised land. — Yer. 24. But because there was another spirit in Caleb, — Le, not the unbelieving, despairing, yet proud and rebellious spirit of the great mass of the people, but the spirit of obedience and believing trust, so that " he followed Jehovah fully" {lit, "fulfilled to walk behind Jehovah"), followed Him with unwavering fidelity, — God would bring him into the land into which he had gone, and his seed should possess it. (^ICl^ ^^P here, and at chap, xxxii. 11, 12; Deut. i. 36; Josh. xiv. 8, 9; 1 Kings xi. 6, is a constructio prcegnans for fc<?D nnx n^77; cf. 2 Chron. xxxiv. 31.) According to the context, the reference is not to Hebron particularly, but to Canaan generally, which God had sworn unto the fathers (ver. 23, and Deut. i. 36, comp. with ver. 35); although, when the land was divided, Caleb received Hebron for his possession, because, according to his own statement in Josh. xiv. 6 sqq., Moses had sworn that he would give it to him. But this is not mentioned here; just as Joshua also is not mentioned in this place, as he is at vers. 30 and 28, but Caleb only, who opposed the exaggerated accounts of the oilier spies at the very first, and endeavoured to quiet the excitement of the people by declaring that they were well able to overcome the Canaanites (chap. xiii. 30). This first revelation of God to Moses is restricted to the main fact; the particulars are given afterwards in the sentence of God, as intended for communication tc the people (vers. 26-38). — Yer. 25. The divine reply to the intercession of Moses terminated with a command to the people to turn or the morrow, and go to the wilderness to the Red Sea, as the Amalekites and Canaanites dwelt in the valley. " The Amalelcites" etc.: this clause furnishes the reason for the command which follows. On the Amalekites, see at Gen. xxxvi. 12, and Ex. xvii. 8 sqq. The term Canaanite is a general epithet applied to all the inhabitants of Canaan, instead of the Amorites mentioned in Deut. i. 44, who held the southern mountains of Canaan. "The valley" is no doubt the broad Wady Murreli (see at chap. xiii. 21), including a portion of the Negeh^ in which the Amalekites led a nomad life, whilst the Canaanites really dwelt upon the mountains (ver. 45), close up to the Wady Murreh,

Vers. 26-38. Sentence upon the murmuring Congregation.— After the Lord had thus declared to Moses in general terms His resolution to punish the incorrigible people, and not suffer them to come to Canaan, He proceeded to tell him what announcement he was to make to the people. — Ver. 27. This announcement commences in a tone of anger, with an aposiope, is, " How long this evil congregation^ (sc. " shall I forgive it," the simplest plan being to supply ^'f^y as RosenmUller suggests, from ver. 18), " that they murmur against Me V — Vers. 28-31. Jehovah swore that it should happen to the murmurers as they had spoken. Their corpses should fall in the desert, even all who had been numbered, from twenty years old and upwards: they should not see the land into which Jehovah had lifted up His hand (see at Ex. vi. 8) to lead them, with the sole exception of Caleb and Joshua. But their children, who, as they said, w^ould be a prey (ver. 3), them Jehovah would bring, and they should learn to know the land which the others had despised. — Vers. 32, 33. " As for you^ your carcases will fall in this wilderness. But your sons will he pasturing (i.e. will lead a restless shepherd life) in the desert forty years, and bear your whoredom, (i,e. endure the consequences of your faithless apostasy; see Ex. xxxiv. 16), until your corpses are finished in the desert,^' i.e. till you have all passed away. — Ver. 34. " After the number of the forty days that ye have searched the land, shall ye bear your iniquity, (reckoning) a day for a year, and know My turning away from you^^ or ns^irij abalienatio, from &?iJ (chap, xxxii. 7). — Ver. 35. As surely as Jehovah had spoken this, would He do it to that evil congregation, to those who had lUied themselves against Him i^V^'^, to bind themselves together, to C( nspire; chap. xvi. 11, xxvii. 3). There is no ground w^hatever for ( uestioning the correctness of the statement, that the spies had trav( lied through Canaan for forty days, or regarding this as a socalled round number — that is to say, as unhistorical. And if this number is firmly established, there is also no ground for disputing the forty years' sojourn of the people in the wilderness, although the period during which the rebellious generation, consisting of those who were numbered at Sinai, died out, was actually thirtyeight years, reaching from the autumn of the second year after their departure from Egypt to the middle of the fortieth year of their wanderings, and terminating with the fresh numbering (chap, xxyi.) that was undertaken after the death of Aaron, and took place on the first of the fifth month of the fortieth year (chap. xx. 23 sqq., compared with chap, xxxiii. 38). Instead of these thirty-eight years, the forty years of the sojourn in the desert are placed in connection with the forty days of the spies, because the people had frequently fallen away from God, and been punished in consequence, even during the year and a half before their rejection; and in this respect the year and a half could be combined with the thirty-eight years which followed into one continuous period, during which they bore their iniquity, to set distinctly before the minds of the disobedient people the contrast between that peaceful dwelling in the promised land which they had forfeited, and the restless wandering in the desert, which had been imposed upon them as a punishment, and to impress upon them the causal connection between sin and suffering. " Every year that passed, and was deducted from the forty years of punishment, was a new and solemn exhortation to repent, as it called to mind the occasion of their rejection" {Kurtz). When Knohel observes, on the other hand, that " it is utterly improbable that all who came out of Egypt (that is to say, all who were twenty years old and upward when they came out) should have fallen in the desert, with the exception of two, and that there should have been no men found among the Israelites when they entered Canaan who were more than sixty years of age," the express statement, that on the second numbering there was not a man among those that were numbered who had been included in the numbering at Sinai, except Joshua and Caleb (chap. xxvi. 64 sqq.), is amply sufficient to overthrow this " improbability" as an unfounded fancy. Nor is this statement rendered at all questionable by the fact, that " Aaron's son Eleazar, who entered Canaan with Joshua" (Josh. xiv. 1, etc.), was most likely more than twenty years old at the time of his consecration at Sinai, as the Levites were not qualified for service till their thirtieth or twenty-fifth year. For, in the first place, the regulation concerning the Levites' age of service is not to be applied without reserve to the priests also, so that we could infer from this that the sons of Aaron must have been at least twenty-five or thirty years old when they were consecrated; and besides this, the priests do not enter into the question at all, for the tribe of Levi was excepted from the numbering in chap, i., and therefore Aaron's sons were not included among the persons numbered, who were sentenced to die in the wilderness. Still less does it follow from Josh. xxiv. 7 and Judg. ii. 7, where it is stated that, after the conquest of Canaan, there wepe many still alive who had been eye-witnesses of the wonders of God in Egypt, that they must have been more than twenty years old when they came out of Egypt; for youths from ten to nineteen years of age would certainly have been able to remember such miracles as these, even after the lapse of forty or fifty years. — Vers. 36—38. But for the purpose of giving to the whole congregation a practical proof of the solemnity of the divine threatening of punishment, the spies who had induced the congregation to revolt, through their evil report concerning the inhabitants of Canaan, were smitten by a " stroke before Jehovah," i.e, by a sudden death, which proceeded in a visible manner from Jehovah Himself, whilst Joshua and Caleb remained alive.

sentence plunged the people into deep mourning. But instead of bending penitentially under the judgment of God, they resolved to atone for their error, by preparing the next morning to go to the top of the mountain and press forward into Canaan. And they would not even suffer themselves to be dissuaded from their enterprise by the entreaties of Moses, who denounced it as a transgi'ession of the word of God which could not succeed, and predicted their overthrow before their enemies, but went presumptuously (nipyp vsy^) up without the ark of the covenant and without Moses, who did not depart out of the midst of the camp, and were smitten by the Amalekites and Canaanites, who drove them back as far as Hormah. Whereas at first they had refused to enter upon the conflict with the Canaanites, through their unbelief in the might of the promise of God, now, through unbelief in the severity of the judgment of God, they resolved to engage in this conflict by their own power, and without the help of God, and to cancel the old sin of unbelieving despair through the new sin of presumptuous selfconfidence, — an attempt which could never succeed, but was sure to plunge deeper and deeper into misery. Where " the top (or height) of the mountain^ to which the Israelites advanced was, cannot be precisely determined, as we have no minute information concerning the nature of the ground in the neighbourhood of Kadesh. No doubt the allusion is to some plateau on the northern border of the valley mentioned in ver. 25, viz. the Wady Murreh^ which formed the southernmost spur of the mountains of the Amorites, from which the Canaanites and Amalekites came against them, and drove them back. In Deut. i. 44, Moses mentions the Amorites instead of the Amalekites and Canaanites, using the name in a broader sense for all the Canaanites, and contenting himself with naming the leading foes with whom the Amalekites who wandered about in the Negeh had allied themselves, as Bedouins thirsting for booty. These tribes came down (ver. 45) from the height of the mountain to the lower plateau or saddle, which the Israelites had ascended, and smote them and D^n3^ (from nna^ with the reduplication of the second radical anticipated in the first: see Ewald^ § 193, c), " discomfited them, as far as Hormah," or as Moses expresses it in Deut. i. 44, They " chased you, as bees do" (which pursue with great ferocity any one who attacks or disturbs them), "and destroyed you in Seir, even unto Hormah." There is not sufficient ground for altering " in Seir" into " from Seir," as the LXX., Syriac, and Vulgate have done. But "i''Vb'3 might signify " into Seir, as far as Hormah." As the

Edomites had extended their territory at that time across the Arabah towards the west, and taken possession of a portion of the mountainous country which bounded the desert of Paran towards the north (see at chap, xxxiv. 3), the Israelites, when driven back by them, might easily be chased into the territory of the Edomites. Hormah (i,e. the ban-place) is used here proleptically (see at chap. xxi. 3).

After the unhappy issue of the attempt to penetrate into Canaan, in opposition to the will of God and the advice of Moses, the Israelites remained " many days" in Kadesh, as the Lord did not hearken to their lamentations concerning the defeat which they had suffered at the hands of the Canaanites and Amalekites. Then they turned, and took their journey, as the Lord had commanded (chap. xiv. 25), into the wilderness, in the direction towards the Red Sea (Deut. i. 45, ii. 1); and in the first month of the fortieth year they came again into the desert of Zin, to Kadesh (chap. xx. 1). All that we know respecting this journeying from Kadesh into the wilderness in the direction towards the Red Sea, and up to the time of their return to the desert of Zin, is limited to a number of names of places of encampment given in the list of journeying stages in chap, xxxiii. 19—30, out of which, as the situation of the majority of them is altogether unknown, or at all events has not yet been determined, no connected account of the journeys of Israel during this interval of thirty-seven years can possibly be drawn. The most important event related in connection with this period is the rebellion of the company of Korah against Moses and Aaron, and the re-establishment of the Aaronic priesthood and confirmation of their rights, which this occasioned (chaps, xvi.-xviii.). This rebellion probably occurred in the first portion of the period in question. In addition to this there are only a few^ laws recorded, which were issued during this long time of punishment, and furnished a practical proof of the continuance of the covenant which the Lord had made with the nation of Israel at Sinai. There was nothing moi'fe to record in connection with these thirty-seven years, which formed the second stage in the guidance of Israel through the desert. For, as Baumgarten has well observed, " the fighting men of Israel had fallen under the judgment of Jehovah, and the sacred history, therefore, was liO longer concerned with them; whilst the youth, in whom the life and hope of Israel were preserved, had as yet no history at all." Consequently we have no reason to complain, as Ewald does {Gesch. ii. pp. 241^ 242), that "the great interval of forty years remains a perfect void;" and still less occasion to dispose of the gap, as this scholar has done, by supposing that the last historian left out a great deal from the history of the forty years' wanderings. The supposed "void" was completely filled up by the gradual dying out of the generation which had been rejected by God.

Various Laws of Sacrifice. Punishment of a Sahbath-hreaker. Command to wear Tassels upon the Clothes. — Chap. xv.

Vers. 1-31. Kegulations concerning Sacrifices. — Vers. 1-16. For the purpose of reviving the hopes of the new generation that was growing up, and directing their minds to the promised land, during the mournful and barren time when judgment was being executed upon the race that had been condemned, Jehovah communicated various laws through Moses concerning the presentatiqn of sacrifices in the land that He would give them (vers. 1 and 2), whereby the former laws of sacrifice were supplemented and completed. The first of these laws had reference to the connection between meat-offerings and drink-offerings on the one hapd, and burnt-offerings, and slain-offerings on the other. — Yers. 3 sqq. In the land of Canaan, every burnt and slain-offering, whether prepared in fulfilment of a vow, or spontaneously, or on feast-days (cf. Lev. vii. 16, xxii. 18, and xxiii. 38), was to be associated with a meatoffering of fine flour mixed with oil, and a drink-offering of wine, — the quantity to be regulated according to the kind of animal that was slain in sacrifice. (See Lev. xxiii. 18, where this connection is already mentioned in the case of the festal sacrifices.) For a lamb (ti^;i3, i.e. either sheep or goat, cf. ver. 11), they were to take the tenth of an ephah of fine flour, mixed with the quarter of a hin of oil and the quarter of a hin of wine, as a drink-offering. In ver. 5, the construction changes from the third to the second person. ^^V, to prepare, as in Ex. xxix. 38.— Yers. 6, 7. For a ram, they were to take two tenths of fine flour, with the third of a hin of oil and the third of a hin of wine.— Yers. 8 sqq. For an ox, three tenths of fine flour, with half a hin of oil and half a hin of wine. The nnipn (3d person) in ver. 9, between nbi;Fi in ver. 8,. and ^'Ipn in ver. 10, is certainly striking and unusual, but not so offensive as to render it necessary to alter it into ^"li^n"!. — Vers. 11, 12. The quantities mentioned were to be offered with every ox, or ram, or lamb, of either sheep or goat, and therefore the number of the appointed quantities of meat and drink-offerings was to correspond to the number of saorificial animals Vers. 13-lG. These rules were to apply not only to the sacrifices of those that were born in Israel, but also to those of the strangers living among them. By " these things," in ver. 13, we are to understand the meat and drinkofferings already appointed. — Ver. 15. ''As for tlye assembly, tliere shall he one law for the Israelite and the stranger^,,, an eternal ordinance... before Jehovah^ '''7^'], which is construed absolutely, refers to the assembling of the nation before Jehovah, or to the congregation viewed in its attitude with regard to God.

A second law (vers. 17-21) appoints, on the ground of the general regulations in Ex. xxii. 28 and xxiii. 19, the presentation of a heave-offering from the bread which they would eat in the land of Canaan, viz. a first-fruit of groat-meal (^0^*?^ ^l''t^'^<"]) baked as cake ("^^'G)* Arisoth, which is only used in connection with the gift of first-fruits, in Ezek. xliv^ 30, Neh. x. 38, and the passage before us, signifies most probably groats, or meal coarsely bruised, like the talmudical \P']V, contusum^ mola^ far^ and indeed far hordei. This cake of the groats of first-fruits they were to offer " as a heaveoffering of the threshing-floor^^ i.e. as a heave-offering of the bruised corn, in the same manner as this (therefore, in addition to it, and along with it); and that '' according to your generations " (see Ex. xii. 14), that is to say, for all time, to consecrate a gift of firstfruits to the Lord, not only of the grains of corn, but also of the bread made from the corn, and " to cause a blessing to rest upon his house^^ (Ezek. xliv. 30). Like all the gifts of first-fruits, this cake also fell to the portion of the priests (see Ezek. and Neh. ut sup.).

To these there are added, in vers. 22, 31, laws relating to sinofferings, the first of which, in vers. 22-26, is distinguished from the case referred to in Lev. iv. 13-21, by the fact that the sin is not described here, as it is tliere, as " doing one of the commandments of Jehovah which ought not to be done," but as " not doing all that Jehovah had spoken through Moses." Consequently, the allusion here is not to sins of commission, but to sins of omission, not following the law of God, " even (as is afterwards explained in ver. 23) all that the Lord hath commanded you by the hand of Moses from the day that the Lord hath commanded, and thenceforward according to your generations,^ i.e, since the first beginning of the giving of the law, and during the whole of the time following {Knohel). These words apparently point to a complete falling away of the congregation from the whole of the law. Only the further stipulation in ver. 24, " if it occur away from the eyes of the congregation through error " (in oversight), cannot be easily reconciled with this, as it seems hardly conceivable that an apostasy from the entire law should have remained hidden from the congregation. This " not doing all the 9ommandments of Jehovah," of which the congregation is supposed to incur the guilt without perceiving it, might consist either in the fact that, in particular instances, whether from oversight or negligence, the whole congregation omitted to fulfil the commandments of God, i.e. certain precepts of the law, sc. in the fact that they neglected the true and proper fulfilment of the whole law, either, as Outram supposes, " by retaining to a certain extent the national rites, and following the worship of the true God, and yet at the same time acting unconsciously in opposition to the law, through having been led astray by some common errors; " or by allowing the evil example of godless rulers to seduce them to neglect their religious duties, or to adopt and join in certain customs and usages of the heathen, which appeared to be reconcilable with the law of Jehovah, though they really led to conteyipt and neglect of the commandments of the Lord.^ But as a disregard or neglect of the commandments of God had to be expiated, a burnt-offering was to be added to the sin-offering, that the separation of the congregation from the Lord, which had arisen from the sin of omission, might be entirely removed. The apodosis commences with n^ni in ver. 24, but is interrupted by ''^V^ D^, and resumed again with ^^V], " it shall be, if,... th^ whole congregation shall prepare,^ etc. The burnt-offering, being the principal sacrifice, is mentioned as usual before the sin-offering, although, when presented, it followed the latter, on account of its being necessary that

' Maimonides (see Outram^ ex veterum sententid) understands this law as relating to extraneous worship; and Outram himself refers to the times of the wicked kings, " when the people neglected their hereditary rites, and, forgetting the sacred laws, fell by a common sin into the observance of the religious rites of other nations." Undoubtedly, we have historical ground in 2 Chron. xxix. 21 sqq., and Ezra viii. 35, for this interpretation of our law, but further allusions are not excluded in consequence. We cannot agree with Baumgarten, therefore, in restricting the difference between Lev. iv. 13 sqq. and the passage before us to the fact, that the former supposes the transgression of one particular commandment on the part of the whole congregation, whilst the latter (vers. 22, 23) refers to a continued lawless condition on the part of Israel.

the sin should be expiated before the congregation could sanctify its life and efforts afresh to the Lord in the burnt-offering. " One kid of the goats: " see Lev. iv. 23. I0Q^'p3 (as in Lev. v. 10, ix. 16, etc.) refers to the right established in vers. 8, 9, concerning the combination of the meat and drink-offering with the burnt-offering. The sin-offering was to be treated according to the rule laid down in Lev. iv. 14 sqq. — Ver. 26. This law was to apply not only to the children of Israel, but also to the stranger among them, "/or (sc. it has happened) to the whole nation in mistake.^^ As the sin extended to the whole nation, in which the foreigners were also included, the atonement was also to apply to the whole. — Vers. 27—31. In the same way, again, there was one law for the native and the stranger, in relation to sins of omission on the part of single individuals. The law laid down in Lev. v. 6 (cf. Lev. iv. 27 sqq.) for the Israelites, is repeated here in vers. 27, 28, and in ver. 2S it is raised into general validity for foreigners also. In ver. 29, nnTXn is written absolutely for ^y.^^* — Vers. 30, 31. But it was only sins committed by mistake (see at Lev. iv. 2) that could be expiated by sin-offerings. Whoever, on the other hand, whether a native or a foreigner, committed a sin " with a high hand,^ — i.e. so that he raised his hand, as it were, against Jehovah, or acted in open rebellion against Him, — blasphemed God, and was to be cut off (see Gen. xvii. 14); for he had despised the word of Jehovah, and broken His commandment, and was to atone for it with his life. ni nyi^j " {^6' crime upon it; " i.e, it shall come upon such a soul in the punishment which it shall endure.

Vers. 32-36. The history of the Sabbath-breaker is no doubt inserted here as a practical illustration of sinning " with a high hand.'' It shows, too, at the same time, how the nation, as a whole, was impressed with the inviolable sanctity of the Lord's day. From the words with which it is introduced, " and the children of Israel were in the wilderness^^ all that can be gathered is, that the occurrence took place at the time when Israel was condemned to wander about in the wilderness for forty years. They found a man gathering sticks in the desert on the Sabbath, and brought him as an open transgressor of the law of the Sabbath before Moses and Aaron and the whole congregation, i.e. the college of elders, as the judicial authorities of the congregation (Ex. xviii. 25 sqq.). They kept him in custody, like the blasphemer in Lev. xxiv. 12, because it had not yet been determined what was to be done to him. It is true that it had already been laid down in E^^. xxxi. 14, 15, and XXXV. 2, that any breach of the law of the Sabbath should be punished by death and extermination, but the mode had not yet been prescribed. This was done now, and Jehovah commanded stoning (see Lev. xx. 2), which was executed upon the criminal without delay.

been occasioned by the incident just described. The Israelites were to wear ^1^"'^, tassels, on the wings of their upper garments, or, according to Deut. xxii. 12, at the four corners of the upper garment. n^D2j the covering in which a man wraps himself, synonymous with "TJ3, was the upper garment, consisting of a four-cornered cloth or piece of stuff, which was thrown over the body-coat (see my Bihl. ArchdoL ii. pp. 36, 37), and is not to be referred, as Schultz supposes, to the bed-coverings also, although this garment was actually used as a counterpane by the poor (see Ex. xxii. 2b^ 2&), " And upon the tassel of the wing they shall put a string of hyacinth-blue" namely, to fasten the tassel to the edge of the garment, n^''^ (fi^'y from ^''V, the glittering, the bloom or flower) signifies something flowery or bloom-like, and is used in Ezek. viii. 3 for a lock of hair; here it is applied to a tassel, as being made of twisted threads: LXX. KpaaireSa; Matt, xxiii. 5, " borders." The size of these tassels is not prescribed. The Pharisees liked to make them large, to exhibit openly their punctilious fulfilment of the law. For the Rabbinical directions how to make them, see Carpzov, apparat. pp. 197 sqq.; and Bodenschatz, kirchliche Verfassung der heutigen Juden, iv. pp. 11 sqq. — Yer. 39. ''And it shall be to you for a tassel," i.e. the fastening of the tassel with the dark blue thread to the corners of your garments shall be to you a tassel, " that ye, when ye see it, may remember all the commandments of Jehovah, and do them; and ye si tail not stray after your hearts and your eyes, after which ye go a vjhoring." The zizith on the sky-blue thread was to serve as a memorial sign to the Israelites, to remind them of the commandments of God, that they might have them constantly before their eyes and follow them, and not direct their heart and eyes to the things of this world, which turn away from the word of God, and lead astray to idolatry (cf. Pro v. iv. 25, 26). Another reason for these instructions, as is afterwards added in ver. 40, was to remind Israel of all the commandments of the Lord, that they might do them and be holy to their God, and sanctify their daily life to Ilim who had brought them out of Egypt, to be their God, i.e. to show Himself as God to them.

The sedition of Korali and his company, with the renewed sanction of the Aaronic priesthood on the part of God which it occasioned, is the only important occurrence recorded in connection with the thirty-seven years' wandering in the wilderness. The time and place are not recorded. The fact that the departure from Kadesh is not mentioned in chap, xiv., whilst, according to Deut. i. 4G, Israel remained there many days, is not sufficient to warrant the conclusion that it took place in Kadesh. The departure from Kadesh is not mentioned even after the rebellion of Korah; and yet we read, in chap. xx. 1, that the whole congregation came again into the desert of Zin to Kadesh at the beginning of the fortieth year, and therefore must previously have gone away. All that can be laid down as probable is, that it occurred in one of the earliest of the thirty-seven years of punishment, though we have no firm ground even for this conjecture.

Vers. 1—3. The authors of the rebellion were Korali the Levite, a descendant of the Kohathite Izhar, who was a brother of Amram, an ancestor (not the father) of Aaron and Moses (see at Ex. vi. 18), and three Reubenites, viz. DatJian and Abiram, sons of Eliab, of the Reubenitish family of Pallu (chap. xxvi. 8, 9), and On, the son of Peleth, a Reubenite, not mentioned again. The last of these (On) is not referred to again in the further course of this event, either because he played altogether a subordinate part in the affair, or because he had drawn back before the conspiracy came to a head. The persons named took {^\^]), i.e. gained over to their plan, or persuaded to join them, 250 distinguished men of the other tribes, and rose up with them against Moses and Aaron. On the construction 1)0^P*1_... njp*! (vers. 1 and 2), Gesenius correctly observes in his Thesaurus (p. 760), " There is an anaholoutlion rather than an ellipsis, and not merely a copyist's error, in these words, ' and Korali,... and Dathan and A birarn, took and rose up against Moses with 250 m^n,' for they took 250 men, and rose up with them against Moses," etc. He also points to the analogous construction in 2 Sam. xviii. 18. Consequently there is no necessity either to force a meaning upon ^\>_?, which is altogether foreign to it, or to attempt an emendation of the text. " The^ rose up before Moses: " this does not mean, " they stood up in front of his tent," as Knohel explains it, for the purpose of bringing ver. 2 into contradiction with ver. 3, but they created an uproar before his eyes; and with this the expression in ver. 3, " and they gathered themselves together against Moses and Aaron^^ may be very simply and easily combined. The 250 men of the children of Israel who joined the rebels no doubt belonged to the other tribes, as is indirectly implied in the statement in chap, xxvii. 3, that Zelophehad the Manassite was not in the company of Korah. These men were '^ princes of the congregation,^'' i.e. heads of the tribes, or of large divisions of the tribes, " called men of the congregation^^ i.e. members of the council of the nation which administered the affairs of the congregation (cf. i. 16), "men of name^^ (D^ ''^^^j see Gen. vi. 4). The leader was Korah; and the rebels are called in consequence " Koralis company^^ (vers. 5, 6, chap. xxvi. 9, xxvii. 3). He laid claim to the high-priesthood, or at least to an equality with Aaron (ver. 17). Among his associates were the Reubenites, Dathan and Abiram, who, no doubt, were unable to get over the fact that the birthright had been taken away from their ancestor, and with it the headship of the house of Israel {i.e. of the whole nation). Apparently their present intention was to seize upon the government of the nation under a self-elected high priest, and to force Moses and Aaron out of the post assigned to them by God, — that is to say, to overthrow the constitution which God had given to His people. — V^er. 3. 1^5, "!? " enough for you /" (^l, as in Gen. xlv. 28), they said to Moses and Aaron, i.e. " let the past suffice you" (Knohel); ye have held the priesthood and the government quite long enough. It must now come to an end; "for the whole congregation, all of them (i.e. all the members of the nation), are holy, and Jehovah is in the midst of them^ Wherefore lift ye yourselves above the congregation of Jehovah V The distinction between niy and Sij^ is the following: nij; signifies conventus, the congregation according to its natural organization; bT]\) signifies convocatio, the congregation according to its divine calling and theocratic purpose. The use of the two words in the same verse upsets the theory that nin^ rnv belongs to the style of the original work, and nin) pnp to that of the Jehovist. TKe rebels appeal to the calling of all Israel to be the holy nation of Jehovah (Ex. xix. 5, 6), and infer from this the equal right of all to hold the priesthood, " leaving entirely out of sight, as blind selfishness is accustomed to do, the transition of the universal priesthood into the special mediatorial office and priesthood of Moses and Aaron, which had their foundation in fact" (Baumgarten); or altogether overlooking the fact that God Himself had chosen Moses and Aaron, and appointed them as mediators between Himself and the congregation, to educate the sinful nation into a holy nation, and train it to the fulfilment of its proper vocation. The rebels, on the contrary, thought that they were holy already, because God had called them to be a holy nation, and in their carnal self-righteousness forgot the condition attached to their calHng, " If ye will obey My voice indeeij, and keep My covenant" (Ex. xix. 5).

Vers. 4-17. When Mooes heard these words of the rebels, he fell upon his face, to complain of the matter to the Lord, as in chap. xiv. 5. He then said to Korah and his company, " To-morrow Jehovah will shoiv who is His and holy^ and will let him come near to HirUy and he whom He chooseth will draw near to Him^ The meaning of Sh -)^« is evident from i^ nnn; nK^*«. He is Jehovah's, whom He chooses, so that He belongs to Him with his whole life. The reference is to the priestly rank, to which God had chosen Aaron and his sons out of the whole nation, and sanctified them by a special consecration (Ex. xxviii. 1, xxix. 1; Lev. viii. 12, 30), and by which they became the persons " standing near to Him" (Lev. X. 3), and were qualified to appear before Him in the sanctuary, and present to Him the sacrifices of the nation. — Yer. 6. To leave the decision of this to the Lord, Korah and his company, who laid claim to this prerogative, were to take censers, and bring lighted incense before Jehovah. He whom the Lord should choose was to be the sanctified one. This was to satisfy them. With the expression ^?^"^1 in ver. 7, Moses gives the rebels back their own words in ver. 3. The divine decision was connected with the offering of incense, because this was the holiest function of the priestly service, which brought the priest into the immediate presence of God, and in connection with which Jehovah had already shown to the whole congregation how He sanctified Himself, by a penal judgment on those who took this office upon themselves without a divine call (Lev. x. 1—3). Vers. 8 sqq. He then set before them the wickedness of their enterprise, to lead them to search themselves, and avert the judgment which threatened them. In doing this, he made a distinction between Korah the Levite, and Dathan and Abiram the Reubenites, according tQ the difference in the motives which prompted their rebellion, and the claims which they asserted. He first of all (vers. 8-11) reminded Korah the Levite of the way in which God had distinguished his tribe, by separating the Levites from the rest of the congregation, to attend to the service of the sanctuary (chap. iii. 5 sqq., viii. 6 sqq.), and asked him, " Is this too little for you? The God of Israel (this epithet is used emphatically for Jehovah) has brought thee near to Himself and all thy brethren the sons of Levi with thee, and ye strive after the priesthood also. Therefore... thou and thy company, who have leagued themselves against Jehovah:... and Aaron, what is he, that ye murmur against him V These last words, as an expression of wrath, are elliptical, or rather an aposiopesis, and are to be filled up in the following manner: " Therefore,... as Jehovah has distinguished you^ in this manner,... what do ye want? Ye rebel against Jehovah! why do ye murmur against Aaron? He has not seized upon the priesthood of his own accord, but Jehovah has called him to it, and he is only a feeble servant of God" (cf. Ex. xvi. 7). Moses then (vers. 12-14) sent for Dathan and Abiram, who, as is tacitly assumed, had gone back to their tents during the warning given to Korah. But they replied, " We shall not come upP ^^V, to go up, is used either with reference to the tabernacle, as being in a spiritual sense the culminating point of the entire camp, or with reference to appearance before Moses, the head and ruler of the nation. ^' Is it too little that thou hast brought us out of a land flowing vjith milk and honey (they apply this expression in bitter irony to Egypt), to kill us in the wilderness (deliver us up to death), that thou wilt be always playing the lord over usV The idea of continuance, which is implied in the inf, abs., "''?.^^'?, from "i*!^, to exalt one's self as ruler (Ges. § 131, 36), is here still further intensified by Da. ''Moreover, thou hast not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey, or given us fields and vineyards for an inheritance (i.e. thou hast not kept thy promise, Ex. iv. 30 compared with chap. iii. 7 sqq.). Wilt thou put out the eyes of these people T' i.e. wilt thou blind them as to thy doings and designs? — Yer. 15. Moses was so disturbed by these scornful reproaches, that he entreated the Lord, with an asertion of his own unselfishness, not to have respect to their gift, i.e. not to accept the sacrifice which they should bring (cf. Gen. iv. 4). " I have not taken one ass from them, nor done harm to one of 'them^^ i.e. I have not treated them as a ruler, who demands tribute of his subjects, and oppresses them (cf. 1 Sam. xii. 3). — Vers. 16, 17. In conclusion, he summoned Korah and his associates once more, to present themselves the following day before Jehovah with censers and incense.

Vers. 18-35. The next day the rebels presented tliemselves with censers before the tabernacle, along with Moses and Aaron; and the whole congregation also assembled there at the instigation of Korah. The Lord then interposed in judgment. Appearing in His glory to the whole congregation (just as in chap. xiv. 10), He said to Moses and Aaron, " Separate yourselves from this congregation; I will destroy them in a moment^ By assembling in front of the tabernacle, the whole congregation had made common cause with the rebels. God threatened them, therefore, with sudden destruction. But the two men of God, who were so despised by the rebellious faction, fell on their faces, interceding with God, and praying, " God, Thou God of the spirits of all flesh! this one man (i.e. Korah, the author of the conspiracy) hath sinned, and wilt Thou be wrathful with all the congregation?" i.e. let Thine anger fall upon the whole congregation. The Creator and Preserver of all beings, who has given and still gives life and breath to all flesh, is God of the spirits of all flesh. As the author of the spirit of life in all perishable flesh, God cannot destroy His own creatures in wrath; this would be opposed to His own paternal love and mercy. In this epithet, as applied to God, therefore, Moses appeals " to the universal blessing of creation. It is of little consequence whether these words are to be understood as relating to all the animal kingdom, or to the human race alone; because Moses simply prayed, that as God was the creator and architect of the world. He would not destroy the men whom He had created, but rather have mercy upon the works of His own hands" (Calvin). The intercession of the prophet Isaiah, in Isa. Ixiv. 8, is similar to this, though that is founded upon the special relation in which God stood to Israel. — Vers. 23 sqq. Jehovah then instructed Moses, that the congregation was to remove away (n^y, to get up and away) from about the dwelling-place of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; and, as we may supply from the context, the congregation fell back from Korah's tent, whilst Dathan and Abiram, possibly at the very first appearance of the divine glory, drew back into their tents. Moses therefore betook.himself to the tents of Dathan and Abiram, with the elders following him, and there also commanded the congregation to depart from the tents of these wicked men, and not touch anything they possessed, that they might not be swept away in all their sins. — Ver. 27. The congregation obeyed; but Dathan and Abiram came and placed themselves in front of the tents, along with their wives and children, to see what Moses would do. Moses then announced the sentence: " By this shall ye know that Jehovah hath sent me to do all these works, that not out of my own heart (i.e. that I do not act of my own accord). If these men die like all men (i.e. if these wicked men die a natural death like other men), and the oversight of all men take place over them (i.e. if the same providence watches over them as over all other men, and preserves them from sudden death), Jehovah hath not sent me. But if Jehovah create 2 creation ("^^f^"!? ^"^3, i.e. work an extraordinary miracle), and the earth open its mouth and swallow them up, with all that belongs to them, so that they go down alive into hell, ye shall perceive that these men have despised Jehovgh^^ — Vers. 31—33. And immediately the earth clave asunder, and swallowed them up, with their families and all their possessions, and closed above them, so that they perished without a trace from the congregation, orik refers to the three ringleaders. " Their houses;" i.e. their families, not their tents, as in chap, xviii. 31, Ex. xii. 3. " All the men belonging to KoraK^ were his servants; for, according to chap. xxvi. 11, his sons did not perish with him, but perpetuated his family (chap. xxvi. 58), to which the celebrated Korahite singers of David's time belonged (1 Chron. vi. 18-22, ix. 19). — Yer. 34. This fearful destruction of the ringleaders, through which Jehovah glorified Moses afresh as His servant in a miraculous way, filled all the Israelites round about with such terror, that they fled n)7p7, " at their noise^^ i.e. at the commotion with which the wicked men went down into the abyss which opened beneath their feet, lest, as they said, the earth should swallow them up also, — Ver. 35. The other 250 rebels, who were probably still in front of the tabernacle, were then destroyed by fire which proceeded fro' ii Jehovah, as Nadab and Abihu had been before (Lev. x. 2).

Vers. 36—40 (or xvii. 1-5). After the destruction of the sinners, the Lord commanded that Eleazar should take up the censers '^ from between the burning,''^ i.e. from the midst of the men that had been burned, and scatter the fire (th^ burning coals in the pans) far away, that it might not be used any more. " For they (the censers) are holy;" that is to say, they had become holy through being brought before Jehovah (ver. 39); and therefore, when the men who brought them were slain, they fell as banned articles to the Lord (Lev. xxvii. 28). " The censers of these sinners against their souls" (i.e. the men who have forfeited their lives through their sin: cf. Prov. xx. 2, Hab. ii. 10), " let them make into broad plates for a covering to the altar" (of burnt-offering). Through this application of them they became a sign, or, according to ver. 39, a memorial 'to all wlio drew near to the sanctuary, which was to remind them continually of this judgment of God, and warn the congregation of grasping at the priestly prerogatives. The words, •T.'?! ^''\ in ver. 40, introduce the predicate in the form of an apodosis to the subject, which is written absolutely, and consists of an entire sentence. n\'i with 3 signifies, " to experience the same fate as" another.

Vers. 41-50. Punishment of the murmuring Congregation.— The judgment upon the company of Korah had filled the people round about with terror and dismay, but it had produced no change of heart in the congregation that had risen up against its leaders. The next morning the whole congregation began to murmur against Moses and Aaron, and to charge them with having slain the people of Jehovah. They referred to Korah and his company, but especially to the 250 chiefs of renown, whom they regarded as the kernel of the nation, and called " the people of Jehovah." They would have made Moses and Aaron responsible for their death, because in their opinion it was they who had brought the judgment upon their leaders; whereas it was through the intercession of Moses (chap. xvi. 22) that the whole congregation was saved from the destruction which threatened it. To such an extent does the folly of the proud heart of man proceed, and the obduracy of a race already exposed to the judgment of God. — Yer. 7. When the congregation assembled together, Moses and Aaron turned to the tabernacle, and saw how the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord appeared. As the cloud rested continually above the tabernacle during the time of encampment (chap, ix. 18 sqq.; Ex. xl. 38), we must suppose that at this time the cloud covered it in a fuller and much more conspicuous sense, just as it had done when the tabernacle was first erected (chap. ix. 15; Ex. xl. 34), and that at the same time the glory of God burst forth from the dark cloud in a miraculous splendour. — Vers. 8 sqq. Thereupon they both went into the court of (\^3?^^ as in Lev. ix. 5) the tabernacle, and God commanded them to rise up (l^'^?}, Niphal of DD'^ = UVi; see Ges, § 65, Anm, 5) out of this congregation, which He would immediately destroy. But they fell upon their faces in prayer, as in chap. xvi. 21, 22. This time, however, they could not avert the bursting forth of the wrathful judgment, as they had done the day before (chap. xvi. 22). The plague had already commenced, when Moses told Aaron to take the censer quickly into the midst of the congregation, with coals and incense ('H.'?^'^? imper. HipJi.), to make expiation for it with an incense-offering. And when this was done, and Aaron placed himself between the dead and the living, the plague, which had already destroyed 14,700 men, was stayed. The plague consisted apparently of a sudden death, as in the case of a pestilence raging with extreme violence, though we cannot regard it as an actual pestilence.

The means resorted to by Moses to stay the plague showed afresh how the faithful servant of God bore the rescue of his people upon his heart. All the motives which he had hitherto pleaded, in his repeated intercession that this evil congregation might be spared, were now exhausted. He could not stake his life for the nation, as at Horeb (Ex. xxxii. 32), for the nation had rejected him. He could no longer appeal to the honour of Jehovah among the heathen, seeing that the Lord, even when sentencing the rebellious race to fall in the desert, had assured him that the whole earth should be filled with His glory (chap. xiv. 20 sqq.). Still less could he pray to God that He would not be wrathful with all for the sake of one or a few sinners, as in chap. xvi. 22, seeing that the whole congregation had laken part with the rebels. In this condition of things there was but one way left of averting the threatened destruction of the whole nation, namely, to adopt the means which the Lord Himself had given to His congregation, in the high-priestly office, to wipe away their sins, and recover the divine grace which they had forfeited through sin, — viz. the offering of incense which embodied the high-priestly prayer, and the strength and operation of which were not dependent upon the sincerity and earnestness of subjective faith, but had a firm and immovable foundation in the objective force of the divine appointment. This was the means adopted by the faithful servant of the Lord, and the judgment of wrath was averted in its course; the plague was averted. — The effectual operation of the incense-offering of the high priest also served to furnish the people with a practical proof of the power and operation of the true and divinely appointed priesthood. " The