Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

priesthood which the company of Korah had so wickedly usurped, had brought down death and destruction upon himself, through his offering of incense; but the divinely appointed priesthood of Aaron averted death and destruction from the whole congregation when

incense was offered by him, and stayed the well-merited judgment, which had broken forth upon it" {Kurtz),

Chap. xvii. 1-13 (or chap. xvii. 16-28). Confirmation of THE High-priesthood of Aaron. — Whilst the Lord had thus given a practical proof to the people, that Aaron was the high priest appointed by Him for His congregation, by allowing the high-priestly incense offered by Aaron to expiate His wrath, and by removing the plague; He also gave them a still further confirmation of His priesthood, by a miracle which was well adapted to put to silence all the murmuring of the congregation. — Vers. 16-20. He commanded Moses to take twelve rods of the tribe-princes of Israel, one for the fathers' house of each of their tribes, and to write upon each the name of the tribe; but upon that of the tribe of Levi he was to write Aaron's name, because each rod was to stand for the head of their fathers' houses, Le. for the existing head of the tribe; and in the case of Levi, the tribe-head was Aaron. As only twelve rods were taken for all the tribes of Israel, and Levi was included among them, Ephraim and Manasseh must have been reckoned as the one tribe of Joseph, as in Deut. xxvii. 12. These rods were to be laid by Moses in the tabernacle before the testimony, or ark of the covenant (Ex. xxv. 21, xxix. 42). And there the rod of the man whom Jehovah chose, i.e. entrusted with the priesthood (see chap. xvi. 5), would put forth shoots, to quiet the murmuring of the people. ^5^? Hiph,^ to cause to sink, to bring to rest, construed with pV^ in a pregsant signification, to quiet in such a way that it will not rise again. — Vers. 6-9. Moses carried out this command. And when he went into the tabernacle the following morning, behold Aaron's rod of the house of Levi had sprouted, and put forth shoots, and had borne blossoms and matured almonds. And Moses brought all the rods out of the sanctuary, and gave every man his own; the rest, as we may gather from the context, being all unchanged, so that the whole nation could satisfy itself that Ood had chosen Aaron. Thus was the word fulfilled which Moses had spoken at the commencement of the rebellion of the company of Korah (chap. xvi. 5), and that in a way which could not fail to accredit him before the whole congregation as sent of God.

So far as the occurrence itself is concerned, there can hardly be any need to remark, that the natural interpretation which has lately been attempted by Ewald, viz. that Moses had laid several almond rods in the holy place, which had just been freshly cut off, that he might see the next day which of them would flower the best during the night, is directly at variance with the words of the text, and also with the fact, that a rod even freshly cut off, when laid in a dry place, would not bear ripe fruit in a single night. The miracle which God wrought here as the Creator of nature, was at the same time a significant symbol of the nature and meaning of the priesthood. The choice of the rods had also a bearing upon the object in question. A man's rod was the sign of his position as ruler in the house and congregation; with a prince the rod becomes a sceptre, the insignia of rule (Gen. xlix. 10). As a severed branch, the rod could not put forth shoots and blossom in a natural way. But God could impart new vital powers even to the dry rod. And so Aaron had naturally no pre-eminence above the heads of the other tribes. But the priesthood was founded not upon natural qualifications and gifts, but upon the power of the Spirit, which God communicates according to the choice of His wisdom, and which He had imparted to Aaron through his consecration with holy anointing oil. It was this which the Lord intended to show to the people, by causing Aaron's rod to put forth branches, blossom, and fruit, through a miracle of His omnipotence; whereas the rods of the other heads of the tribes remained as barren as before. In this way, therefore, it was not without deep significance that Aaron's rod not only put forth shoots, by which the divine election might be recognised, but bore even blossom and ripe fruit. This showed that Aaron was not only qualified for his calling, but administered his office in the full power of the Spirit, and bore the fruit expected of him. The almond rod was especially adapted to exhibit this, as an almond-tree flowers and bears fruit the earliest of all the trees, and has received its name of ^i?.^, "awake," from this ^^ery fact (cf. Jer. i. 11).

God then commanded (vers. 10, 11) that Aaron's rod should be taken back into the sanctuary, and preserved before the testimony, "/or a sign for the rebellious, that thonputtest an end to their murmuring, and they die not" The preservation of the rod before the ark of the covenant, in the immediate presence of the Lord, was a pledge to Aaron of the continuance of his election, and the permanent duration of his priesthood; though we have no need to assume, that through a perpetual miracle the staff continued green and blossoming. In this way the staff became a sign to the rebellious, which could not fail to stop their murmuring. — Vers. 12, 13. This miracle awakened a salutary terror in all the people, so that they cried out to Moses in mortal anguish, ''Behold^ we die, we perish, we all perish I Eveiy one who comes near to the dwelling of Jehovah dies; are we all to die? " Even if this fear of death was no fruit of faith, it was fitted for all that to prevent any fresh outbreaks of rebellion on the part of the rejected generation.

Service and Revenues of the Priests and Levites. — Chap, xviii.

The practical confirmation of the priesthood of Aaron and his family, on the part of God, is very appropriately followed by the legal regulations concerning the official duties of the priests and Levites (vers. 1-7), and the revenues to be assigned them for their services (vers. 8-32), as the laws hitherto given upon this subject, although they contain many isolated stipulations, have not laid down any complete and comprehensive arrangement. The instructions relating to this subject were addressed by Jeho^ ah directly to Aaron (see vers. 1 and 8), up to the law, that out of the tenths which the Levites were to collect from the people, they were to pay a tenth again to the priests; and this was addressed to Moses (ver. 25), as the head of all Israel.

Vers. 1-7. The Official Duties and Eights of the Priests A2^D Levites. — Ver. 1. To impress upon the minds of the priests and Levites the holiness and responsibility of their office, the service of Aaron, of his sons, and of his father's house, i.e. of the family of the Kohathites, is described as " bearing the iniquity of the sanctuary," and the service which was peculiar to the Aaronides, as " bearing the iniquity of their priesthood." " To bear the iniquity of the sanctuary " signifies not only " to have to make expiation for all that offended against the laws of the priests and the holy things, Le. the desecration of these" {KnoheT), but " iniquity or transgression at the sanctuary," i,e. the defilement of it by the sin of those 'who drew near to the sanctuary; not only of the priests and Levites, but of the whole people who defiled the sanctuary in the midst of them with its holy vessels, not only by their sins (Lev. xvi. 6), but even by their holy gifts (Ex. xxviii. 38), and thus brought guilt upon ■the whole congregation, -which the priests were to bear, i.e. to take upon themselves and expunge, by virtue of the hoHness and sanctifying power communicated to their office (see at Ex. xxviii. 38). The " iniquity of the priesthood," however, not only embraced every offence against the priesthood, every neglect of the most scrupulous and conscientious fulfilment of duty in connection with their office, but extended to all the sin which attached to the official acts of the priests, on account of the sinfulness of their nature. It was to wipe out these sins and defilements, that the annual expiation of the holy things on the day of atonement had been appointed (Lev. xvi. 16 sqq.). The father's house of Aaron, i,e, the Levitical family of Kohath, w^as also to join in bearing the iniquity of the sanctuary, because the oversight of the holy vessels of the sanctuary devolved upon it (chap. iv. 4 sqq.). — ^Yers. 2-4. Aaron was also to bring his (other) brethren (sc. to the sanctuary), viz. the tribe of Levi, that is to say, the Gershonites and Merarites, that they might attach themselves to him and serve him, both him (nriNI) and his sons, before the tent of testimony, and discharge the duties that were binding upon them, according to chap. iv. 24 sqq., 31 sqq. (cf. chap. iii. 6, 7, viii. 26). Only they were not to come near to the holy vessels and the altar, for that would bring death both upon them and the priests (see at chap. iv. 15). On ver. 4, cf. chap. i. 53 and iii. 7. — Vers. 5-7. The charge of the sanctuary (Le. the dwelling) and the altar (of burnt-offering) devolved upon Aaron and his sons, that the wrath of God might not come again upon the children of Israel (see chap. viii. 19), — namely, through such illegal acts as Nadab and Abihu (Lev. x. 2), and the company of Korah (chap. xvi. 35), had committed. To this end God had handed over the Levites to them as a gift, to be their assistants (see at chap. iii. 9 and viii. 16, 19). But Aaron and his sons were to attend to the priesthood " with regard to everything of the altar and within the vaiV^ {i.e, of the most holy place, see Lev. xvi. 12). The allusion is to all the priestly duties from the altar of burntoffering to the most holy place, including the holy place which lay between. This office, which brought them into the closest fellowship with the Lord,, was a favour accorded to them by the grace of God. This is expressed in the words, " as a service of gift (a service with which I present you) I give you the priesthood^ The last words in ver. 7 are the same as in chap. i. 51; and " stranger" (zar)f as in Lev. xxii. 10.

Vers. 8-20. The Revenues of the Priests. — These are summed up in ver. 8 in these words, " / give thee the keeping of My heave-offerings in all holy gifts for a portio7t, as an eternal statute," The notion of J^'^^^p, keeping, as in Ex. xii. 6, xvi. 23, 32, is defined in the second parallel clause as "^n^^, a portion (see at Lev. vii. 35).

The priests were to keep all the heave-offerings, as the portion which belonged to them, out of the sacrificial gifts that the children of Israel offered to the Lord, ribl^iri^ heave-offerings (see at Ex. XXV. 2, and Lev. ii. 9), is used here in the broadest sense, as including all the holy gifts (kodashim, see Lev. xxi. 22) which the Israelites lifted off from their possessions and presented to the Lord (as in chap. v. 9). Among these, for example, were, first of all, the most holy gifts in the meat-offerings, sin-offerings, and trespassofferings (vers. 9, 10; see at Lev. ii. 3). The burnt-offerings are not mentioned, because the whole of the flesh of these was burned upon the altar, and the skin alone fell to the portion of the priest (Lev. vii. 8). " From the jire^'' sc. of the altar. ^^, fire, is equivalent to n^'N^ firing (see Lev. i. 9). These gifts they were to eat, as most holy, in a most holy place, i.e. in the court of the tabernacle (see Lev. vi. 9, 19, vii. 6), which is called ''most holy^^ here, to lay a stronger emphasis upon the precept. In the second place, these gifts included also ''the holy gifts;^^ viz. (a) (ver. 11) the heave-offering of their gifts in all wave-offerings (tenuphoth), i.e. the wave-breast and heave-leg of the peace-offerings, and whatever else was waved in connection with the sacrifices (see at Lev. vii. 33): these might be eaten by both the male and female members of the priestly families, provided they were legally clean (Lev. xxii. 3 sqq.); (b) (ver. 12) the gifts of first-fruits: " all the fat (i.e. the best, as in Gen. xlv. 18) of oil, new wine, and corn,^^ viz. Dn^t^•X'^, " the first of them^^ the Dn^33j " the first-grown fruits^' of the land, and that of all the fruit of the ground (Deut. xxvi. 2, 10; Prov. iii. 9; Ezek. xliv. 30), corn, wine, oil, honey, and tree-fruit (Deut. viii. 8, compared with Lev. xix. ^3, 24), which were offered, according to 2 Chron. xxxi. 5, Neh. x. 36, 38, Tob. i. 6, as first-fruits every year (see Mishriah, Bikkur, i. 3, 10, where the first-fruits are specified according to the productions mentioned in Deut. viii. 8; the law prescribed nothing in relation to the quantity of the different first-fruits, but left this entirely to the offerer himself); (c) (ver. 14) everything placed under a ban (see at Lev. xxvii. 28); and (d) (vers. 15-18) the first-born of man and beast. The first-born of men and of unclean beasts were redeemed according to chap. iii. 47, Ex. xiii. 12, 13, and Lev. xxvii. 6, 27; but such as were fit for sacrifice were actually offered, the blood being swung against the altar, and the fat portions burned upon it, whilst the whole of the flesh fell to the portion of the priests. So far as the redemption of human beings was concerned (ver. 1 6), they were

" to redeem from the monthly child,'^ i.e, the first-born child as soon as it was a month old. — Ver. 19. ''All the holy heave-offerings^^ are not the thank-offerings {Knobel)^ but, as in ver. 8, all the holy gifts enumerated in vers. 9-18. Jehovah gives these to the priests as an eternal claim. ''An eternal covenant of salt is this before Jehovah,^ for Aaron and his descendants. A " covenant of salt;" equivalent to an indissoluble covenant, or inviolable contract (see at Lev. ii. 13). — Yer. 20. For this reason, Aaron was to receive no inheritance in the land among the children of Israel. Aaron, as the head of the priests, represents the whole priesthood; and with regard to the possession, the whole tribe of Levi is placed, in ver. 23, on an equality with the priests. The Levites were to receive no portion of the land as an inheritance in Canaan (cf. chap. xxvi. 62; Deut. xii. 12, xiv. 27; Josh. xiv. 3). Jehovah was the portion and inheritance, not only of Aaron and his sons, but of the whole tribe of Levi (cf. Deut. x. 9, xviii. 2 5 Josh. xiii. 33); or, as it is expressed in Josh, xviii. 7, " the priesthood of Jehovah was their inheritance," though not in the sense that Knohel supposes, viz. " the priesthood with its revenues,'* which would make the expression " Jehovah, the God of Israel" (Josh. xiii. 33), to be metonymical for " sacrificial gifts, first-fruits, and tenths." The possession of the priests and Levites did not consist in the revenues assigned to them by God, but in the possession of Jehovah, the God of Israel. In the same sense in which the tribe of Levi was the peculiar possession of Jehovah out of the whole of the people of possession, was Jehovah also the peculiar possession of Levi; and just as the other tribes were to live upon what was afforded by the land assigned them as a possession, Levi was to live upon what Jehovah bestowed upon it. And inasmuch as not only the whole land of the twelve tribes, with which Jehovah had enfeoffed them, but the whole earth, belonged to Jehovah (Ex. xix. 5), He was necessarily to be regarded as the greatest possession of all, beyond which nothing greater is conceivable, and in comparison with which every other possession is to be regarded as nothing. Hence it was evidently the greatest privilege and highest honour to have Him for a portion and possession (Bdhr, Symholiky ii. p. 44). " For truly," as Masius writes (Com. on Josh.), " he who possesses God possesses all things; and the worship {cultus) of Him is infinitely fuller of delight, and far more productive, than the cultivation (cultus) of any soil."

Vers. 21-24. Kevenues of the Levites. — For (^l.^n^ instead of, for) their service at the tabernacle God assigns tliom " every tenth in Israel as an inheritance" On the tentli, see at Lev. xxvii. 30-33. The institution and description of their service in vers. 22 and 23 is the same as that in chap. i. 53 and viii. 19. " Lest they bear si)i:" see at Lev. xix. 17.

Vers. 25-32. Appropriation of the Tithe. — Vers. 26 sqq. When the Levites took (received) from the people the tithe assigned them by Jehovah, they were to lift off from it a heave-offering for Jehovah, a tithe of tlie tithe for Aaron the priest (i.e. for the priesthood; see at ver. 20). " Your heave-offering shall he reckoned to you as the corn of the threshingfloor, and the fulness (see Ex. xxii. 28) of the ivine-press," i.e. according to ver. 30, as the revenue of the threshing-floor and wine-press; that is to say, as corn and wine which they had reaped themselves. — Ver. 29. The whole of this heave-offering of Jehovah, i.e. the tithe of the tithe, they were to lift off from all their gifts, from all the tithes of the people which they received; " of all the fat of it,^ i.e. of all the best of the heaveoffering they received, they were to lift off iKni^nTiK^ " its holy^" i.e. the holy part, which was to be dedicated to Jehovah. — Ver. 30. They might eat it (the tithe they had received, after taking off the priests' tithe) in any place with their families, as it was the reward for their service at the tabernacle. — Yer. 32. They would load no sin upon themselves by so doing (see Lev. xix. 17), if they only lifted off the best as tithe (for the priest), and did not desecrate the holy gifts, sc, by eating in all kinds of places, which was not allowed, according to ver. 10, with regard to the most holy gifts.

These regulations concerning the revenues of the priests and Levites were in perfect accordance with the true idea of the Israelitish kingdom of God. Whereas in heathen states, where there was an hereditary priestly caste, that caste was generally a rich one, and held a firm possession in the soil (in Egypt, for example; see at Gen. xlvii. 22), the Levites received no hereditary landed property in the land of Israel, but only towns to dwell in among the other tribes, with pasturage for their cattle (chap, xxxv.), because Jehovah, the God of Israel, would be their inheritance. In this way their earthly existence was based upon the spiritual ground and soil of faith, in accordance with the calling assigned them, to be the guardians and promoters of the commandments, statutes, and rights of Jehovah; and their authority and influence among the people were bound up with their unreserved surrender of themselves to the Lord, and their firm reliance upon the possession of their God ^ow, whilst this position was to be a constant incitement to the Levites to surrender themselves entirely to the Lord and His service, it was also to become to the whole nation a constant admonition, inasmuch as it was a prerogative conferred upon them by the Lord, to seek the highest of all good in the possession of the Lord, as its portion and inheritance.— The revenue itself, however, which the Lord assigned to the Levites and priests, as His servants, consisting of the tenths and first-fruits, as well as certain portions of the different sacrificial gifts that were offered to Him, appears to have been a very considerable one, especially if we adopt the computation of J, D, Michaelis (Mos. Recht i. § 52) with reference to the tithes. " A tribe," he says, " which had only 22,000 males in it (23,000 afterwards), and therefore could hardly have numbered more than 12,000 grown-up men, received the tithes of 600,000 Israelites; consequently one single Levite, without the slightest necessity for sowing, and without any of the expenses of agriculture, reaped or received from the produce of the flocks and herds as much as five of the other Israelites." But this leaves out of sight the fact that tithes are never paid so exactly as this, and that no doubt there was as little conscientiousness in the matter then as there is at the present day, when those who are entitled to receive a tenth often receive even less than a twentieth. Moreover, the revenue of the tribe, which the Lord had chosen as His own peculiar possession, was not intended to be a miserable and beggarly one; but it was hardly equal, at any time, to the revenues which the priestly castes of other nations derived from their endowments. Again, the Levites had to give up the tenth of all the tithes they received to the priests; and the priests were to offer to Jehovah upon the altar a portion of the first-fruits, heave-offerings, and waveofferings that were assigned to them. Consequently, as the whole nation was to make a practical acknowledgment, in the presentation of the tithe and first-fruits, that it had received its hereditary property as a fief from the Lord its God, so the Levites, by their payment of the tenth to the priests, and the priests, by presenting a portion of their revenues upon the altar, were to make a practical confession that they had received all their revenues from the Lord their God, and owed Him praise and adoration in return (see Bdhrj Symbolikj ii. pp. 43 sqq.).

In order that a consciousness of the continuance of the covenant relation mlolit be kept alive during the dying out of the race that had fallen under the judgment of God, after the severe stroke with which the Lord had visited the whole nation in consequence of the rebellion of the company of Korah, lie gave the law concerning purification from the uncleanness of death, in which first of all the preparation of a sprinkling water is commanded for the removal of this uncleanness (vers. 1-lOa); and then, secondly, the use of this purifying water enjoined as an eternal statute (vers. lOZ^-22). The thought that death, and the putrefaction of death, as being the embodiment of sin, defiled and excluded from fellowship with the holy God, was a view of the fall and its consequences which had been handed down from the primeval age (see vol. ii. p. 357), and which was not only shared by the Israelites with many of the nations of antiquity,^ but presupposed by the laws given on Sinai as a truth well kno\. n in Israel; and at the same time confirmed, both in the prohibition of the priests from defiling themselves with the dead, except in the case of their nearest blood-relations (Lev. xxi. 1-6, 10- 12), and in the command, that every one who was defiled by a corpse should be removed out of the camp (chap. v. 2-4). Now, so long as the mortality within the congregation did not exceed the natural limits, the traditional modes of purification would be quite sufficient. But when it prevailed to a hitherto unheard-of extent, in consequence of the sentence pronounced by God, the defilements would necessarily be so crowded together, that the whole congregation would be in danger of being infected with the defilement of death, and of forfeiting its vocation to be the holy nation of Jehovah, unless God provided it with the means of cleansing itself from this uncleanness, without losing the fellowship of His covenant of grace. The law which follows furnished the means. In ver. 2 this law is called i^'y\P\\} rijpn, a " statute of instruction" or law-statute. This combination of the two words commonly used for law and statute, which is only met with again in chap. xxxi. 21, and there, as here, in connection with a rule relating to purification from the uncleanness of death, is probably intended to give emphasis to the design of the law about to be given, to point it out as one of great importance, but not as decreturn absque ulla ratione, sl decree without any reason, as the Rabbins suppose.

Vers. 2- 10a. Preparation of the Purifying Water, — As water is the ordinary means by which all kinds of uncleanness are removed, it was also to be employed in the removal of the unclean ii ess of death. But as this uncleanness was the strongest of all leligious defilements, fresh water alone was not sufficient to remove it; and consequently a certain kind of sprinkling-water was appointed, which was strengthened by the ashes of a sin-offering, and thus formed into a holy alkali. The main point in the law which follows, therefore, was the preparation of the ashes, and these had to be obtained by the sacrifice of a red heifer} — Vers. 2 sqq. The sons of Israel were to bring to Moses a red heifer, entirely without blemish, and to give it to Eleazar the priest, that he might have it slaughtered in his presence outside the camp. niSi is not a cow generally, but a young cow, a heifer, Sayu-aXt? (LXX.), juvenca, between the calf and the full-grown cow. ^'^'J^,, of a red colour, is not to be connected with nD"'pn in the sense of " quite red," as the Kabbins interpret it; but •^9'''?^j integra^ is to be taken by itself, and the words which follow, " wherein is no hlemish^^ to be regarded as defining it still more precisely (see Lev. xxii. 19, 20). The slaying of this heifer is called ^Xi^Hj a sin-offering, in vers. 9 and 17. To remind the concrrecration that death was the wafjes of sin, the antidote to the defilement of death was to be taken from a sin-offering. But as the object was not to remove and wipe away sin as such, but simply to cleanse the congregation from the uncleanness which proceeded from death, the curse of sin, it was necessary that the sin-offering should be modified in a peculiar manner to accord with this special design. The sacrificial animal was not to be a bullock, as in the case of the ordinary sin-offerings of the congregation (Lev. iv. 14), but a female, because the female sex is the bearer of life (Gen. iii. 20), a nna^ i,e, lit. the fruit-bringing; and of a red colour, not because the blood-red colour points to sin (as Hengstenherg follows the Babbins and earlier theologians in supposing), but as the colour of the most " intensive life," which has its seat in the blood, and shows itself in the red colour of the face (the cheeks and lips); and one " upon which no yoke had evet come," i.e. whose vital energy had not yet been crippled by labour under the yoke. Lastly,

^ On this sacrifice, which is so rich in symbolical allusions, but the details of which are so difficult to explain, compare the rabbinical statutes in the talmudical tractate Para {Mishnah, v. Surenh. vi. pp. 269 sqq.); Maimonides de vacca rufa; and Lundius jild. Heiligth. pp. 680 sqq. Among modern treatises on this subject, are Bdlir's Symholik^ ii. pp. 493 sqq.; Hengstenherg^ Egypt and the Books of Moses, pp. 173 sqq.; Leyrer in Ilerzog^s Cycl.; Kurtz in the Theol. Studien und Kritiken^ 1846, pp. 629 sqq. (also Sacrijicial Worship of the Old Testament^ pp. 422 sqq., Eng. transl., Tr.); and my Archdologie, i. p. 58.

like all the sacrificial animals, it was to be uninjured, and free from faults, inasmuch as the idea of representation, which lay at the foundation of all the sacrifices, but more especially of the sin-offerings, demanded natural sinlessness and original purity, quite as much as imputed sin and transferred uncleanness. Whilst the last-mentioned ])rerequisite showed that the victim was well fitted for bearing sin, the other attributes indicated the fulness of life and power in their highest forms, and qualified it to form a powerful antidote to death. As thus appointed to furnish a reagent against death and mortal corruption, the sacrificial animal was to possess throughout, viz. in colour, in sex, and in the character of its body, the fulness of life in its m-eatest freshness and vio;our. — Ver. 3. The sacrifice itself was to be superintended by Eteazar the priest, the eldest son of the high priest, and his presumptive successor in office; because Aaron, or the high priest, whose duty it was to present the sin-offerings for the congregation (Lev. iv. 16), could not, according to his official position, which required him to avoid all uncleanness of death (Lev. xxi. 11, 12), perform such an act as this, which stood in the closest relation to death and the uncleanness of death, and for that very reason had to be performed outside the camp. The subject, to " bring her fortli^ and " slay lier^^ is indefinite; since it was not the duty of the priest to slay the sacrificial animal, but of the offerer himself, or in the case before us, of the congregation, which would appoint one of its own number for the purpose. All that the priest had to do was to sprinkle the blood; at the same time the slaying was to take place ^''^??, before him, i.e. before his eyes. Eleazar was to sprinkle some of the blood seven times " towards the opposite," i.e. towards the front of the tabernacle {seven times, as in Lev. iv. 17). Through this sprinkling of the blood the slaying became a sacrifice, being brought thereby into relation to Jehovah and the sanctuary; whilst the life, which was sacrificed for the sin of the congregation, was given up to the Lord, and offered up in the only way in which a sacrifice, prepared like this, outside the sanctuary, could possibly be offered.

After this (vers. 5, 6), they were to burn the cow, with the skin, flesh, blood, and dung, before his (Eleazar' s) eyes, and he was to throw cedar-wood, hyssop, and scarlet wool into the fire. The burning of the sacrificial annual outside the camp took place in the case of every sin-offering for the whole congregation, for the reasons expounded in vol. ii. p. 307. But in the case before us, the whole of the sacrificial act had to be pe; foi^ned outside the camp, i.e. outside the sphere of the theocracy; because the design of this sin-offering was not that the congregation might thereby be received through the expiation of its sin into the fellowship of the God and Lord who was present at the altar and in the sanctuary, but simply that an antidote to the infection of death might be provided for the congregation, which had become infected through fellowship wdth death; and consequently, the victim was to represent, not the living congregation as still associated with the God who was present in His earthly kingdom, but those members of the congregation who had fallen victims to temporal death as the wages of sin, and, as such, were separated from the earthly theocracy (see my Arcliceology, i. p. 283). In this sacrifice, the blood, which was generally poured out at the foot of the altar, was burned along with the rest, and the ashes to be obtained were impregnated with the substance thereof. But in order still further to increase the strength of these ashes, which were already well fitted to serve as a powerful antidote to the corruption of death, as being the incorruptible residuum of the sin-offering which had not been destroyed by the fire, cedar-wood was thrown into the fire, as the symbol of the incorruptible continuance of life; and hyssop, as the symbol of purification from the corruption of death; and scarlet wool, the deep red of which shadowed forth the strongest vital energy (see at Lev. xiv. 6), — so that the ashes might be regarded " as the quintessence of all that purified and strengthened life, refined and sublimated by the fire " {Leyrer), — Yers. 7-lOa, etc. The persons who took part in this — viz. the priest, the man who attended to the burning, and the clean man who gathered the ashes together, and deposited them in a clean place for subsequent use — became unclean till the evening in consequence; not from the fact that they had officiated for unclean persons, and, in a certain sense, had participated in their un cleanness (KnoheT), but through the uncleanness of sin and death, which had passed over to the sin-offering; just as the man who led into the wilderness the goat which had been rendered unclean through the imposition of sin, became himself unclean in consequence (Lev. xvi. 26). Even the sprinkling water prepared from the ashes defiled every one who touched it (ver. 21). But when the ashes were regarded in relation to their appointment as the means of purification, they were to be treated as clean. Not only were they to be collected together by a clean man; but they were to be kept for use in a clean place, just as the ashes of the sacrifices that were taken away from the altar were to be carried to a clean place outside the camp (T^cv. vi. 4). These defilements, like every other which only lasted till the evening, v^ere to be removed by washing (see vol. ii. pp. 373—4). The ashes thus collected were to serve the congregation ni^ ^pp, i.e. literally as water of uncleanness; in other words, as water by which uncleanness was to be removed. " Water of uncleanness " is analogous to " water of sin " in chap, viii. 7.

Vers. 10^-22. Use of the Water of Purification. — The words in ver. lOby " And it shall be to the children of Israel, and to the stranger in the midst of them, for an everlasting statute^^ relate to the preparation and application of the sprinkling water, and connect the foreiioinfT instructions with those which follow. — Vers. 11-13 contain the general rules for the use of the water; vers. 14-22 a more detailed description of the execution of those rules. — Vers. 11 sqq. Whoever touched a corpse, '^ with regard to all the souls of men^^ i.e. the corpse of a person, of whatever age or sex, was unclean for seven days, and on the third and seventh day he was to cleanse himself (^<l^^^^J as in chap. viii. 21) with the water (13 refers, so far as the sense is concerned, to the water of purification). If he neglected this cleansing, he did not become clean, and he defiled the dwelling of Jehovah (see at Lev. xv. 31). Such a man was to be cut off from Israel {vid. at Gen. xvii. 14). — Vers. 14-16. Special instructions concerning the defilement. If a man died in a tent, every one who entered it, or who was there at the time, became unclean for seven days. So also did every '^ open vessel upon which there was not a covering, a string,^^ i.e. that had not a covering fastened by a string, to prevent the smell of the corpse from penetrating it. ^''^^, a string, is in apposition to "T*^^, a band, or binding (see Ges. § 113; JEwald, § 287, e.). This also applied to any one in the open field, who touched a man vs^ho had either been slain by the sword or had died a natural death, or even a bone (skeleton)^ or a grave. — Vers. 17-19. Ceremony of purification. They were to take for the unclean person some of the dust of the burning of the cow, i.e. some of the ashes obtained by burning the cow, and put living, i.e. fresh water (see Lev. xiv. 5), upon it in a vessel. A clean man was then to take a bunch of hyssop (see Ex. xii. 22), on account of its inherent « purifying power, and dip it in the water, on the third and seventh day after the defilement had taken place, and to sprinkle the tent, with the vessels and persons in it, as well as every one who had touched a corpse, whether a person slain, or one who had died a natural death, or a grave; after

\vhicli the persons were to wash their clothes and bathe, that they might be clean in the evening. As the uncleanness in question is held up as the highest grade of uncleanness, by its duration being fixed at seven days, Le, an entire week, so the appointment of a double purification with the sprinkling water shows the force of the uncleanness to be removed; whilst the selection of the third and seventh days was simply determined by the significance of the numbers themselves. In ver. 20, the threat of punishment for the neglect of purification is repeated from ver. 13, for the purpose of making it most emphatic. — Vers. 21, 22. This also was to be an everlasting statute, that he who sprinkled the water of purification, or even touched it (see at vers. 7 sqq.), and he who was touched by a person defiled (by a corpse), and also the person who touched him, should be unclean till the evening, — a rule which also applied to other forms of uncleanness.

In the first month of the fortieth year, the whole congregation of Israel assembled again at Kadesh, in the desert of Zin, to commence the march to Canaan. In Kadesh, Miriam died (chap. xx. 1), and the people murmured against Moses and Aaron on account of the want of water. The Lord relieved this want, by pouring water from the rock; but Moses sinned on this occasion, so that he was not allowed to enter Canaan (vers. 2-13). From Kadesh, Moses sent messengers to the king of Edom, to ask permission for the Israelites to pass peaceably through his land; but this was refused by the king of Edom (vers. 14-21). In the meantime, the Israelites marched from Kadesh to Mount Hor, on the borders of the land of Edom; and there Aaron died, and Eleazar was invested with the high-priesthood in his stead (vers. 22—29). On this march they were attacked by the Canaanitish king of Arad; but they gained a complete victory, and laid his cities under the ban (chap. xix. 1-3). As the king of Edom opposed their passing through his land, they were compelled to go from Mount Hor to the Red Sea, and round the land of Edom. On the way the murmuring people were bitten by poisonous serpents; but the penitent among them were healed of the bite of the serpent, by looking at the brazen serpent which Moses set up at the command of God (vers. 4-9). After going round the Moabitish mountains, they turned to the north, and went along the eastern side of the Edomitish and Moabitish territory, as far as the Arnon, on the border of the Anioritish kingdom of Silion, with the intention of going through to the Jordan, and so entering Canaan (vers. 10-20). But as Sihon would not allow the Israelites to pass through his land, and made a hostile demonstration against them, they smote him and conquered his land, and also the northern Amoritish kingdom of Og, king of Bashan (vers. 21-35), and forced their way through the Amoritish territory to the heights of Pisgah, for the purpose of going forward thence into the steppes of Moab by the Jordan (chap. xxii. 1). These marches formed the tliird stage in the guidance of Israel through the desert to Canaan.

Death of Miriam. Water out of the Roch Refusal of a Passage through Edom, AarovUs Death. Conquest over the King of Arad. — Chap, xx.— xxi. 3.

The events mentioned in the heading, which took place either in Kadesh or on the march thence to the mountain of Hor are grouped together in chap. xx. 1-xxi. 3, rather in a classified order than in one that is strictly chronological. The death of Miriam took place during the time when the people were collected at Kadesh- Bamea in the desert of Zin (ver. 21). But when the whole nation assembled together in this desert there was a deficiency of water, which caused the people to murmur against Moses, until God relieved the want by a miracle (vers. 2-13). It was from Kadesh that messengers were sent to the king of Edom (vers. 14 sqq.); but instead of waiting at Kadesh till the messengers returned, Moses appears to have proceeded with the people in the meantime into the Arabah. When and where the messengers returned to Moses, we are not informed. So much is certain, however, that the Edomites did not come with an army against the Israelites (vers. 20, 21), until they approached their land with the intention of passing through. For it was in the Arabah, at Mount Hor, that Israel first turned to go round the land of Edom (chap. xxi. 4). The attack of the Canaanites of Arad (chap. xxi. 1-3), who attempted to prevent the Israelites from advancing into the desert of Zin, occurred in the interval between the departure from Kadesh and the arrival in the Arabah at Mount Hor; so that if a chronological arrangement were adopted, this event would be placed in chap. XX. 22, between the first and second clauses of this verse. The words " and came to Mount Hor^* (ver. 22h) are anticipatory.

and introduce the most important event of all that period, viz. the death of Aaron at Mount Hor (vers. 23-29).^

Ver. 1. Assembling of the Congregation at Kadesh. — In the first month the children of Israel came into the desert of Zin, i.e. in the fortieth year of their wanderings, at the commencement of which " the whole congregation" assembled together once more in the very same place where the sentence had been passed thirty-seven years and a half before, that they should remain in the desert for forty years, until the rebellious generation had died out. The year is not mentioned in ver. 1, but, according to chap. xiv. 32 sqq., it can only be the year with which the forty years of the sentence that they should die out in the wilderness came to an end, that is to say, the fortieth year of their wandering. This is put

^ Even Fries (pp. 53, 54) has admitted that the account in Num. xxi. 1, xxxi i. 40, is to be regarded as a rehearsal of an event which took place before the; rrival of the Israelites at Mount Hor, and that the conflict with the king of I rad must have occurred immediately upon the advance of Israel into the d6SK t of Zin; and he correctly observes, that the sacred writer has arranged what stood in practical connection with the sin of Moses and Aaron, and the refusal of Edom, in the closest juxtaposition to those events: whereas, after he had once commenced his account of the tragical occurrences in chap, xx., there was no place throughout the whole of that chapter for mentioning the conflict with Arad; and consequently this battle could only find a place in the second line, after the record of the most memorable events which occurred between the death of Miriam and that of Aaron, and to which it was subordinate in actual significance. On the other hand, Fries objects to the arrangement we have adopted above, and supposes that Israel did not go straight from Kadesh through the "Wady Murreh into the Arabah, and to the border of the (actual) land of Edom, and then turn back to the Red Sea; but that after the failure of the negotiations with the king of Edom, Moses turned at once from the desert of Zin and plain of Kadesh, and went back in a south-westerly direction to the Hebron road; and having followed this road to Jebel Araif, the south-western corner-pillar of the western Edom, turned at right angles and went by the side of Jebel Mukrah to the Arabah, where he was compelled to alter his course again through meeting with Mount Hor, the border-pillar of Edom at that point, and to go southwards to the Red Sea (pp. 88-9). But although this combination steers clear of the difficulty connected with our assumption, — viz. that when Israel advanced into the Arabah to encamp at Mount Hor, they had actually trodden upon the Edomitish territory in that part of the Arabah which connected the mountain land of Azazimeh, of which the Edomites had taken forcible possession, with their hereditary country, the mountains of Seir, — we cannot regard this view as in harmony with the biblical account. For, apart from the improbability of Moses going a second time to Mount Hor on the border of Edom, after he had been compelled to desist from his advance through the desert of Zin (Wady Murreh)^ and take a circuitous route, or rather make a beyond all doubt by wliat follows. For tlie whole confrrefration proceeds from Kadesh in the desert of Zin to Mount Hor, where Aaron died, and that, according to chap, xxxiii. 38, in the fifth month of the fortieth year after the exodus from Egypt, ^iiriam died during the time that the people were staying (2^."'.) in Kadesh, and tliere she was buried.

Vers. 2-13. Sin of Moses and Aaron at the Water of Strife at Kadeso. — In the arid desert the congregation was in want of water, and the people quarrelled with Moses in consequence. In connection with the first stay in Kadesh there is nothing said about any deficiency of water. But as the name Kadesh embraces a large district of the desert of Zin, and is not confined to one particular spot, there might easily be a want of water in this place or retrograde movement, on the western side of the Edomitish territory of the land of Azaziraeh, only to be driven back a second time, the account of the contest with the king of Arad is hard to reconcile with this combination. In that case the king of Arad must have attacked or overtaken the Israelites when they were collected together in the desert of Zin at Kadesh. But this does not tally with the words of chap. xxi. 1, " When the Canaanite heard that Israel came (was approaching) by the way of the spies; " for if Moses turned round in Kadesh to go down the Hebron road as far as Jebel Araif, in consequence of the refusal of Edom, the Israelites did not take the way of the spies at all, for their way went northwards from Kadesh to Canaan. The supposition of Fries (p. 54), that the words in chap. xxi. 1, " came by the way of the spies," are a permutation of those in chap. xx. 1, " came into the desert of Zin," and that the two perfectly coincide as to time, is forced; as the Israelites are described in chap. xx. 1 not only as coming into the desert of Zin in general, but as assembling together there at Kadesh.

Modern critics {Knolel and others) have also mutilated these chapters, and left oiAf chap. xx. 1 (in part), 2, 6, 22-29, xxi. 10, 11, xxii. 1, as parts of the original work, whilst all the rest is described as a Jehovistic addition, partly from ancient sources and partly from the invention of the Jehovist himself. But the supposed contradiction — viz. that whilst the original work describes the Israelites as going through northern Edom, and going round the Moabitish territory in the more restricted sense, the Jehovist represents them as going round the land of Edom upon the west, south, and east (chap. xx. 21, xxi. 4), and also as going round the land of the Arnon in a still larger circle, and past other places as well (chap. xxi. 12, 16, 18) — rests upon a false interpretation of the passages in question. The other arguments adduced — viz. the fact that the Jehovist gives great prominence to the hatred of the Edomites (chap. xx. 18, 20) and interweaves poetical sentences (chap. xxi. 14, 15, 17, 18, 27, 28), the miraculous rod in Moses' hand (chap. xx. 8), and the etymology (chap. xxi. 3) — are all just arguing in a circle, since the supposition that all these things are foreign to the original work, is not a fact demonstrated, but a simple petitio princimu the other. In their faithless discontent^ the people wished that they had died when their brethren died before Jehovah. The allusion is not to Korah's company, as Knohel supposes, and the word V% " to expire," would be altogether inapplicable to their destruction; but the reference is to those who had died one by one during the thirty-seven years. " ^%/' they murmured once more against Moses and Aaron, " ha'ce ye brought the congregation of God into this desert, to perish there ivith their cattle? Why have ye brought it out of Egypt into this evil land, where there is no seed, no fig-trees and pomegranates, no vines, (tnd no water to drink V — Yer. 6. Moses and Aaron then turned to the tabernacle, to ask for the help of the Lord; and the glory of the Lord immediately appeared (see at chap. xvii. 7 and xiv. 10). — Vers. 7, 8. The Lord relieved the want of water. Moses was to take ths staff, and with Aaron to gather together the congregation, and speak to the rock before their eyes, when it would give forth water for the congregation and their cattle to drink. — Vers. 9-11. Moses then took the rod " from before Jehovah," — i.e, the rod with which he had performed miracles in Egypt (Ex. xvii. 5), and which was laid up in the sanctuary, not Aaron's rod which blossomed (chap. xvii. 25), — and collected the congregation together before the rock, and said to them, " Hear, ye rebels, shall we fetch you water out of this rock?" He then smote the rock twice with his rod, whereupon much water came out, so that the congregation and their cattle had water to drink. — Yer. 12. The Lord then said to both of them, both Moses and Aaron, " Because ye have not trusted firmly in Me, to sanctify Me before the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them^ The want of belief or firm confidence in the Lord, through which both of them had sinned, was not actual unbelief or distrust in the omnipotence and grace of God, as if God could not relieve the want of water or extend His help to the murmuring people; for the Lord had promised His help to Moses, and Moses did what the Lord had commanded him. It was simply the want of full believing confidence, a momentary wavering of that immovable assurance, which the two heads of the nation ought to have shown to the congregation, but did not show. Moses did even more than God had commanded him. Instead of speaking to the rock with the rod of God in his hand, as God directed him, he spoke to the congregation, and in these inconsiderate words, " Shall we fetch you water out of the rock?" words which, if they did not express any doubt in the help of the Lord, were certainly fitted to strengthen the people in their unbelief, and are therefore described in Ps. cvi. 33 as prating (speaking unadvisedly) with the lips (cf. Lev. v. 4). He then struck the rock twice with the rod, " as if it depended upon human exertion, and not upon the power of God alone," or as if the promise of God " would not have been fulfilled without all the smitinii on his part" {Kitohel). In the ill-will expressed in these words the weakness of faith was manifested, by which the faithful servant of God, worn out with the numerous temptations, allowed himself to be overcome, so that he stumbled, and did not sanctify the Lord before the eyes of the people, as he ought to have done. Aaron also wavered along with Moses, inasmuch as he did nothing to prevent Moses' fall. But their sin became a grievous one, from the fact that they acted unworthily of their office. God punished them, therefore, by withdrawing their office from them before they had finished the work entrusted to them. They were not to conduct the congregation into the promised land, and therefore were not to enter in themselves (cf. chap, xxvii. 12-14; Deut. xxxii. 48 sqq.). The rock, from which water issued, is distinguished by the article ypBiij not as being already known, or mentioned before, but simply as a particular rock in that neighbourhood; though the situation is not described, so as to render it possible to search for it now.^ — Ver. 13. The account closes with the words, " This is the water of strife, about which the children of Israel strove with Jehovah, and He sanctified Himself on them" This does not imply that the scene of

^ Moses Nachmanides has given a correct interpretation of the words, *' Speak to the rock before their eyes " (ver. 8): viz. " to the first rock in front of them, and standing in their sight." The fable attributed to the Rabbins, viz. that the rock of Rephidim followed the Israelites all about in the desert, and suppUed them with water, cannot be proved from the tahnudical and rabbinical passages given by Buxtorf (historia Petrse in desertd) in his exercitatt. c. v.^ but is simply founded upon a literal interpretation of certain rabbinical statements concerning the identity of the well at Rephidim with that at,Kadesh, which were evidently intended to be figurative, as Abarhanel expressly affirms {Buxtorf^ l. c. pp. 422 seq.). " Their true meaning,", he says, "was, that those waters which flowed out in Horeb were the gift of God granted to the Israelites, and continued all through the desert, just Uke the manna. For wherever they went, fountains of living waters were opened to them as the occasion required. And for this reason, the rock in Kadesh was the same rock as that in Horeb. Still less ground is there for supposing that the Apostle Paul alluded to any such rabbinical fable when he said, " They drank of that spirituaLrock that followed them" (1 Cor. X. 4), and gave it a spiritual interpretation in the words, " and that rock was Christ."

this occurrence received the name of "strife-water," but simply that the water which Go4 brought out of the rock for the Israelites received that name. But God sanctified Himself on them, by the fact, that, on the one hand, He put their unbelief to shame by the miraculous gift of water, and on the other hand punished Moses and Aaron for the weakness of their faith.-^

Vers. 14-21. Message of the Israelites to the King of Edom. — As Israel was about to start from Kadesh upon its march to Canaan, but wished to enter it from the* east across the Jordan, and not from the south, where the steep and lofty mountain ranges presented obstacles which would have been difficult to overcome, if not quite insuperable, Moses sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom, to solicit from the kindred nation a friendly and unimpeded passage through their land. He reminded the king of the relationship of Israel, of their being brought down to Egypt, of the oppression they had endured there, and their deliverance out of the land, and promised him that they would not pass through fields and vineyards, nor drink the water of their wells, but keep to the king's way, without turning to the right hand or the left, and thus would do no injury whatever to the land (vers. 14-16).^ By the " angel " who led Israel out of Egypt w^e are naturally to understand not the pillar of cloud and fire (Knobel), but the angel of the Lord, the visible revealer of the invisible God, whom the messengers

^ The assumption of neological critics, that this occurrence is identical with the similar one at Rephidim (Ex. xvii.), and that this is only another saga based upon the same event, has no firm ground whatever. The want of water in the arid desert is a fact so constantly attested by travellers, that it would be a matter of great surprise if Israel had only experienced this want, and quarrelled with its God and its leaders, once in the course of forty years. As early as Ex. XV. 22 sqq. the people murmured because of the want of drinkable water, and the bitter water was turned into sweet; and immediately after the event before us, it gave utterance to the complaint again, " We have no bread and no water" (chap. xxi. 4, 5). But if the want remained the same, the relief of that want would necessarily be repeated in the same or a similar manner. Moreover, the occurrences at Rephidim (or Massah-Meribah) and at Kadesh are altogether different from each other. In Rephidim, God gave the people water out of the rock, and the murmuring of the people was stayed. In Kadesh, God no doubt relieved the distress in the same way; but the mediators of His mercy, Moses and Aaron, sinned at the time, so that God sanctified Himself upon them by a judgment, because they had not sanctified Him before the congregation. (See Hengsteiiberg^ Dissertations, vol. ii.)

2 We learn from Judg. xi. 17, that Israel sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Moab also, and with a similar commission, and that he also refused describe indefinitely as " an angel," when addressing the Edomites. Kade.^h is represented in ver. IG as a city on the border of the Edoniitisb territory. The reference is to Kadesh-Barnea (chap, xxxii. 8, xxxiv. 4; Dent. i. 2, 19, ii. 14, ix. 23; Josh. x. 41, xiv. G, 7, XV. o). This city was no doubt situated quite in the neighbourhood of A'ui Kiidesj the well of Kadesh, discovered by Rowland, This well was called En-Mishpat, the fountain of judgment, in Abraham's time (Gen. xiv. 7); and the name Kadesh occurs first of all on the first arrival of the Israelites in that region, in the account of the events which took place there, as being the central point of the place of encampment, the " desert of Paran," or " desert of Zin" (cf. chap. xiii. 2G w^ith ver. 21, and chap. xii. IG). And even on the second arrival of the congregation in that locality, it is not mentioned till after the desert of Zin (chap. xx. 1); whilst the full name Kadesh-Barnea is used by Moses for the first time in chap, xxxii. 8, when reminding the people of those mournful occurrences in Kadesh in chap.:xiii. and xiv. The conjecture is therefore a very natural one, that the place in question received the name of Kadesh first of all from that tragical occurrence (chap, xiv.), or possibly from the murmuring of the congregation on account of the want of water, which led Moses and Aaron to sin, so that the Lord sanctified (^P";) Himself upon them by a judgment, because they had not sanctified Him before the children of Israel (vers. 12 and 13); that Barnea was the older or original name of the town, which was situated in the neighbourhood of the " water of strife," and that this name was afterwards united w^ith Kadesh^ and formed into a composite noun. If this conjecture is a correct one, the name Kadesh is used proleptically, not only in Gen. xiv. 7, as a more precise definition of En-Mishpat^ but also in Gen. xvi. 14, xx. 1; and Num. xiii. 2G, and xx. 1; and there is no lack of analogies for this. It is. in this too that we are probably to seek for an explanation of the fact, that in the list of stations in chap, xxxiii. the name Kadesh does not occur in connection with the first arrival of the congregation in the desert of Zin, but only in connection with their second arrival (ver. 36), and that the place of encampment on their first arrival is called Rithmahy and not Barnea, because to grant the request for an unimpeded passage through his land. This message is passed over in silence here, because the refusal of the Moabites had no influence upon the further progress of the Israelites. " For if they could not pass through Edom, the permission of the Moabites would not help them at all. It was only eventualiter that they sought this permission." — Hengsten^erg^ Diss.

the headquarters of the camp were in the Wady Eetemath, not at the town of Barnea, which was farther on in the desert of Zin. The expression " tow7i of the end of thy territory " is not to be understood as signifying thai the town belongsd to the Edomites, but simply affirms that it was situated on the border of the Edomitish territory. The supposition that Barnea was an Edomitish town is opposed by the circumstance that, in chap, xxxiv. 4, and Josh xv. 3, it is reckoned as part of the land of Canaan; that in Josh. x. 41 it is mentioned as the southernmost town, where Joshua smote the Canaanites and conquered their land; and lastly, that in Josh. xv. 23 it is probably classed among the towns allotted to the tribe of Judah, from which it seems to follow that it must have belonged to the Amorites. " The end of the territory" of the king of Edom is to be distinguished from " the territory of the land of Edom " in ver. 23. The land of Edom extended westwards only as far as the Arabah, the low-lying plain, which runs from the southern point of the Dead Sea to the head of the Elanitic Gulf. At that time, however, the Edomites had spread out beyond the Arabah, and taken possession of a portion of the desert of Paran belonging to the peninsula of Sinai, which was bounded on the north by the desert of Zin (see at chap, xxxiv. 3). By their not drinking of the water of the wells (ver. 17), we are to understand, according to ver. 19, their not making use of the wells of the Edomites either by violence or without compensation. The " king's way" is the public high road, which was probably made at the cost of the state, and kept up for the king and his armies to travel upon, and is synonymous with the " sultan-road " {Derh es Sultaii) or " emperor road," as the open, broad, old military roads are still called in the East (cf. Robinson^ Pal. ii. 340; Seetzeriy i. pp. 61, 132, ii. pp. 336, etc.).

This military road led, no doubt, as Leake has conjectured {Burckhardty Syr. pp. 21, 22), through the broad Wady^^ Ghuweir, which not only forms a direct and easy passage to the level country through the very steep mountains that fall down into the Arabah, but also a convenient road through the land of Edom {Rohinsoriy ii. pp. 552, 583, 610), and is celebrated for its splendid meadows, which are traceable to its many springs {Burckhardtj pp. 688, 689); for the broad Wady Murreh runs from the northern border of the mountain-land of Azazimeh, not only as far as the mountain of Moddera (Madurah), where it is divided, but in its southern half as far as the Arabah (see p. 59). This is very likely the " great route through broad wadys," which the Bedouins who accompanied Rowland assured him " was very good, and led direct to Mount Ilor, but with which no European traveller was acquainted " {IRitters Erdk. xiv. p. 1088). It probably opens into the Arabah at the Wady el Weibeh, opposite to the Wady Ghuweir, — Vers. 18, 19. The Edomites refused the visit of the Israelites in a most unbrotherly manner, and threatened to come out agamst theixi with the sword, without paying the least attention to the repeated assurance of the Israel itish messengers, that they w^ould only march upon the high road, and would pay for water for themselves and their cattle, "ij^^/r^ PI, lit. " it is riotliing at all; I will go through tvith 1711/ feet:^^ i.e. we want no great thing; we will only make use of the high road. — Ver. 20. To give emphasis to his refusal, Edom went against Israel " with much people and with a strong hand,^^ sc. when they approached its borders. This statement, as well as the one in ver. 21, that Israel turned away before Edom, anticipates the historical order; for, as a matter of course, the Edomites cannot have come at once with an army on the track of the messengers, for the purpose of blocking up the road through the Wady Murreh, which runs along the border of its territory to the west of the Arabah.

Vers. 22-29. Death of Aaron at Mount Hor. — The Israelites left Kadesh, and passed along the road just mentioned to Mount Hor. This mountain, which was situated, according to chap, xxxiii. 37, on the border of the land of Edom, is placed by Josephus (Ant. iv. 4, 7) in the neighbourhood of Petra; so also by Eusehius and Jerome: " Or mons, in quo mortuus est Aaron, juxta civitatem Petram.^^ According to modern travellers, it is Mount Harun, on the north-western side of Wady Musa (Petra), which is described by Robinson (vol. ii. p. 508) as '^ a cone irregularly truncated, having three ragged points or peaks, of which that upon the north-east is the highest, and has upon it the Muhammedan Wely, or tomb of Aaron," from which the mountain has received its name " Ilarun,^ i.e. Aaron (yid. Burckhardt, Syr. pp. 715, 716; V. Schubert, Reise, ii. pp. 419 sqq.; Ritter, Erdkunde, xiv. pp. 1127 sqq.). There can be no doubt as to the general correctness of this tradition; ^ for even if the Mohammedan tradition concerning Aaron's grave is not well accredited, the situation of this mountain

^ There is no force whatever in the arguments by which Knobel has endeavoured to prove that it is incorrect. The Jirst objection, viz. that the Hebrews reached Mount Hor from ICadesh in a single march, has no foundation is in perfect harmony with the statement in ver. 23 and chap, xxxiii. 37, viz. that the Israelites had then reached the border of the land of Edom. The place where the people encamped is called Mosera in Deut. x. 6, and Moseroth in the list of stations in chap, xxxiii. 30, and is at all events to be sought for in the Arabah, in the neighbourhood of Mount Hor, though it is altogether unknown to us. The camp of 600,000 men, with their wives, children, and flocks, would certainly require a space miles wide, and might therefore easily stretch from the mouths of the Wady el Weibeh and Wady Ghuweir, in the Arabah, to the neighbourhood of Mount Harun. The place of encampment is called after this mountain, //or, both here and in chap, xxxiii. 37 sqq., because it was there that Aaron died and was buried. The Lord foretold his death to Moses, and directed him to take oif Aaron's priestly robes, and put them upon Eleazar his son, as Aaron was not to enter the promised land, because they (Aaron and Moses) had opposed the command of Jehovah at the water of strife (see at ver. 12). "Gathered to his people," like the patriarchs (Gen. xxv. 8, 17, XXXV. 29, xlix. 33). — Vers. 27, 28. Moses executed this command, and Aaron died upon the top of the mountain, according to chap, xxxiii. 37, 38, on the first day of the fifth month, in the fortieth year after the exodus from Egypt, at the age of 123 years (which agrees with Ex. vii. 7), and was mourned by all Israel for thirty days.

in the biblical text, and cannot be inferred from the circumstance that there is no place of encampment mentioned between Kadesh and Mount Hor; for, on the one hand, we may clearly see, not only from chap. xxi. 10, but even from Ex. xvii. 1, as compared with Num. xxxiii. 41 sqq. and 12 sqq., that only those places of encampment are mentioned in the historical account where events occurred that were worthy of narrating; and, on the other hand, it is evident from chap. x. 33, that the Israelites sometimes continued marching for several days before they formed an encampment again. The second objection — viz. that if Hor was near Petra, it is impossible to see how the advance of the Hebrews from Kadesh to Hor could be regarded by the king of Arad, who lived more than thirty hours' journey to the north, as coming (chap, xxxiii. 40), not to mention " coming by the way of the spies " (chap. xxi. 1), and how this king could come into conflict with the Hebrews when posted at Petra — rests upon the errorleous assumption, that the attack of the king of Arad did not* take place. till after the death of Aaron, because it is not mentioned till afterwards. Lastly, the third objection — viz. that a march from Kadesh in a southwesterly direction to Wady Musa, and then northwards past Zalmona to Phunon (chap, xxxiii. 41), is much too adventurous — is overthrown by chap, xxi. 4, where the Israelites are said to have gone from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea. (See the notes on chap. xxi. 10.)

Chap. xxi. 1-3. Victory of Israel over the Canaanitish King of Arad. — When this Canaanitish king, who dwelt in the Negeb, i.e. the south of Palestine (vld. chap. xiii. 17), heard that Israel was coming the way of the spies, he made war upon the IsraeUtes, and took some of them prisoners. Arad is mentioned both liere and in the parallel passage, chap, xxxiii. 40, and also by the side of Ilormah^ in Josh. xii. 14, as the seat of a Canaanitish king (cf. Judg. i. 16, 17). According to Eusehius and Jerome in the Onomast., it was twenty Roman miles to the south of Hebron, and has been preserved in the ruins of Tell Arad, which v. Schuhert (ii. pp. 457 sqq.) and Robinson (ii. pp. 473, 620, and 624) saw in the distance; and, according to Roth in Petermann^s geographische Mittheilungen (1858, p. 269), it was situated to the south-east of Kurmul (Carmel), in an undulating plain, without trees or shrubs, with isolated hills and ranges of hills in all directions, among which was Tell Arad. The meanino; of D^"insn "J]"!! is uncertain. The LXX., Saad., and others, take the word Atharim as the proper name of a place not mentioned again; but the Chaldee, Samar., and S(/r. render it with much greater probability as an appellative noun formed from "i^n with x prosthet., and synonymous with I3''"innj the spies (chap. xiv. 6). The way of the spies was the way through the desert of Zin, which the Israel itish spies had previously taken to Canaan (chap. xiii. 21). The territory of the king of Arad extended to the southern frontier of Canaan, to the desert of Zin, through which the Israelites went from Kadesh to Mount Hor. The Canaanites attacked them when upon their march, and made some of them prisoners. — Vers. 2, 3. The Israelites then vowed to the Lord, that if He would give this people into their hands, they wonld^ " ban " their cities; and the Lord hearkened to the request, and delivered up the Canaanites, so that they put them and their cities under the ban. (On the ban, see at Lev. xxvii. 28.) " And tliey called the place Hormah^^ i.e. banning, ban-place. " The place " can only mean the spot where the Canaanites were defeated by the Israelites. If the town of Zephath, or the capital of Arad, had been specially intended, it would no doubt have been also mentioned, as in Judg. i. 17. As it was not the intention of Moses to press into Canaan from the south, across the steep and difficult mountains, for the purpose of effecting its conquest, the Israelites could very well content themselves for the present with the defeat inflicted upon the Canaanites, and defer the complete execution of their vow until the time when they had gained a firm footing in

Canaan. The banning of the Canaanltes of Arad and its cities necessarily presupposed the immediate conquest of the whole territory, and the laying of all its cities in ashes. And so, again, the introduction of a king of Hormahj i.e. Zephathj among the kings defeated by Joshua (Josh. xii. 14), is no proof that Zephath was conquered and called Hormah in the time of Moses. Zephath may be called Hormah proleptically both there and in Josh. xix. 4, as being the southernmost border town of the kingdom of Arad, in consequence of the ban suspended by Moses over the territory of the king of Arad, and may not have received this name till after its conquest by the Judseans and Simeonites. At the same time, it is quite conceivable that Zephath may have been captured in the time of Joshua, along with the other towns of the south, and called Hormah at that time, but that the Israelites could not hold it then; and therefore, after the departure of the Israelitish army, the old name was restored by the Canaanites, or rather only retained, until the city was retaken and permanently held by the Israelites after Joshua's death (Judg. i. 16, 17), and received the new name once for all. The allusion to Hormah here, and in chap. xiv. 45, does not warrant the opinion in any case, that it was subsequently to the death of Moses and the conquest of Canaan under Joshua that the war with the Canaanites of Arad and their overthrow occurred.

March round the land of Edom and Moah. Conquest of Sihon and Og, kings of the Amorites. — Chap. xxi. 4-35.

Vers. 4-9. March of Israel through the Arab ah. Plague of Serpents, and Brazen Serpent. — Yer. 4. As the Edomites refused a passage through their land when the Israelites left Mount Hor, they were obliged to take the way to the Red Sea, in order to go round the land of Edom, that is to say, to go down the Arabah to the head of the Elanitic Gulf. — Vers. 5, 6. As they went along this road the people became impatient (" the soul of the people was much discouraged," see Ex. vi. 9), and they began once more to murmur against God and Moses, because they had neither bread nor water (cf. chap. xx. 4 sqq.), and were tired of the loose, i.e. poor, food of manna y>\P\> from ^/ij). The low-lying plain of the Arabah, which runs between steep mountain walls from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea, would be most likely to furnish the Israelites with very little food, except the manna which God gave them; for although it is not altogether destitute of vegetation, especially at the mouths of the wadys and winter torrents from the hills, yet on the wliole it is a hornble desert, with a loose sandy soil, and drifts of granite and other stones, where terrible sandstorms sometimes arise from the neighbourhood of the Ked Sea (see V. Schuberty R. ii. pp. 396 sqq., and Rltter,Erdh. xiv. pp. 1013 sqq.); and the want of food might very frequently be accompanied by the absence of drinkable water. The people rebelled in consequence, and w^ere punished by the Lord with fiery serpents, the bite of which caused many to die. ^"P'JV^ '^''^'^^j If^t. bdrning snakes, so called from their burning, i.e, inflammatory bite, which filled with heat and poison, just as many of the snakes were called by the Greeks, e.g. the hi^d^j TrpTjaTPjpe^;, and Kavacov€<; (^Dioscor. vii. 13: Aellaii, naL anim. vi. 51), not from the skin of these snakes with fiery red spots, which are frequently found in the Arabah, and are very poisonous.^- — Yer. 7. This punishment brought the people to reflection. They confessed their sin to Moses, and entreated him to deliver them from the plague through his intercession with the Lord. And the Lord helped them; in such a way, however, that the reception of help was made to depend upon the faith of the people. — Vers. 8, 9. At the command of God, Moses made a brazen serpent^ and put it upon a standard.^ Whoever then of the persons bitten by the poisonous serpents looked at the brazen serpent with faith in the promise of God, lived, i.e. recovered from the serpent's bite. The serpent w^as to be made of brass or copper, because the colour of this metal, when the sun was shining upon it, was most like the appearance of the fiery serpents; and thus the symbol would be more like the thing itself.

Even in the book of Wisdom (chap. xvi. 6, 7), the brazen serpent is called " a symbol of salvation; for he that turned himself tow^ard it was not saved by the thing that he saw, but by Thee,

^ This is the account given by v. Schubert^ R. ii. p. 406: "In the afternoon

they brought us a very mottled snake of a large size, marked with fiery red spots and wavy stripes, which belonged to the most poisonous species, as the formation of its teeth clearly showed. According to the assertion of the Bedouins, these snakes, which they greatly dreaded, were very common in that neighbourhood. ' '

that art the Saviour of all." It was not merely intended, however, as Eiuaid supposes {Gescli. ii. p. 228), as a "sign that just as this serpent hung suspended in the air, bound and rendered harmless by the command of Jehovah, so every one who looked at this with faith in the redeeming power of Jehovah, was secured against the evil, — a figurative sign, therefore,- like that of St George and the Dragon among ourselves;" for, according to this, there would be no internal causal link between the fiery serpents and the brazen image of a serpent. It was rather intended as a figurative representation of the poisonous serpents, rendered harmless by the mercy of God. For God did not cause a real serpent to be taken, but the image of a serpent, in which the fiery serpent was stiffened, as it were, into dead brass, as a sign that the deadly poison of the fiery serpents was overcome in this brazen serpent. This is not to be regarded as a symbol of the divine healing power; nor is the selection of such a symbol to be deduced and explained, as it is by Wirier^ Kurtz, knobel, and others, from the symbolical view that was common to all the heathen religions of antiquity, that the serpent was a beneficent and health-bringing power, which led to its being exalted into a symbol of the healing pov/er, and a representation of the gods of healing. This heathen view is not only foreign to the Old Testament, and without any foundation in the fact that, in the time of Hezekiah, the people paid a superstitious worship to the brazen serpent erected by Moses (2 Kings xviii. 4); but it is irreconcilably opposed to the biblical view of the serpent, as the representative of evil, which was founded upon Gen. iii. 15, and is only traceable to the magical art of serpent-charming, which the Old Testament abhorred as an idolatrous abomination. To this we may add, that the thought which lies at the foundation of this explanation, viz. that poison is to be cured by poison, has no support in Hos. xiii. 4, but is altogether foreign to the Scriptures. God punishes sin, it is true, by sin; but He neither cures sin by sin, nor death by death. On the contrary, to conquer sin it was necessary that the Kedeemer should be without sin; and to take away its power fxom death, it was requisite that Christ, the Prince of life, who had life in Himself, should rise again from death and the grave (John v. 26, xi. 25; Acts iii. 15; 2 Tim. i. 10).

The brazen serpent became a symbol of salvation on the three grounds which Luther pointed out. In the first place, the serpent which Moses was to make by the command of God was to be of brass or copper, that is to say, of a reddish colour, and (although

^^ithout poison) altogether like tlie persons who were red and burning with heat because of the bite of the fiery serpents. In the second place, the brazen serpent was to be set uj) upon a pole for a sign. And in the third place, those who desired to recover from the fiery serpent's bite and live, were to look at the brazen serpent upon the pole, otherwise they could not recover or live {Luther s Sermon on John iii. 1-15). It was in these three points, as Luther has also clearly shown, that the ty|)ical character of this symbol lay, to which Christ referred in His conversation with Nicodemus (John iii. 14). The brazen serpent had the form of a real serpent, but was " without poison, and altogether harmless." So God sent His Son in the form of sinful fiesh, and yet without sin (Rom. viii. 3; 2 Cor. v. 21; 1 Pet. ii. 22-24).— 2. In the lifting up of the serpent as a standard. This was a Beiy/iaTL^eLv iv irapprja-la, a OpLafijBeveLv (a " showing openly," or " triumphing"), a triumphal exhibition of the poisonous serpents as put to death in the brazen image, just as the lifting up of Christ upon the cross was a public triumph over the evil principalities and powers below the sky (Col. ii. 14, 15). — 3. In the cure effected through looking at the image of the serpent. Just as the Israelites had to turn their eyes to the brazen serpent in believing obedience to the word of the Lord, in order to be cured of the bite of the poisonous serpents, so must we look with faith at the Son of man lifted up upon the cross, if we would be delivered from the bite of the old serpent, from sin, death, the devil, and hell. " Christ is the antitype of the serpent, inasmuch as He took upon Himself the most pernicious of all pernicious potencies, viz. sin, and made a vicarious atonement for it" {Hengstenherg on John iii. 14). The brazen image of the serpent was taken by the Israelites to Canaan, and preserved till the time of Hezekiah, who had it broken in pieces, because the idolatrous people had presented incense-offerings to this holy relic (2 Kings xviii. 4).

Vers. 10-20. March of Israel round Edom and Moab, TO THE Heights of Pisgah in the Field of Moab (cf. chap, xxxiii. 41-47). — Yer. 10. From the camp in the Arabah, which is not more particularly described, where the murmuring people were punished by fiery serpents, Israel removed to Oboth. According to the list of stations in chap, xxxiii. 41 sqq., they went from Hor to Zalmonahy the situation of which has not been determined; for C. v, Raumer^s coDJecture {der Zug der Israeliteuj p. 45), that it was the same place a^ the modern Maan, has no firm basis in the fact that Maan is a station of the Syrian pilgrim caravans. From Zalmonah they went to Phunouy and only then to Oboth, The name Phunon is no doubt the same as PJiinoriy a tribe-seat of the Edomitish Phylarch (Gen. xxxvi. 41); and according to Jerome (OnOm. s. v, Fenon), it was " a little village in the desert, where copper was dug up by condemned criminals (see at Gen. xxxvi. 41), between Petra and Zoar." This statement suits very well, provided we imagine the situation of Phunon to have been not in a straight line between Petra and Zoar, but more to the east, between the mountains on the edge of the desert. For the Israelites unquestionably went from the southern end of the Arabah to the eastern side of Idumgea, through the Wady el Ithm (^Getum), which opens into the Arabah from the east, a few hours to the north of Akaba and the ancient Ezion-geber. They had then gone round the mountains of Edom, and begun to " turn to the north" (Deut. ii. 3), so that they now proceeded farther northwards, on the eastern side of the mountains of Edom, " through the territory of the sons of Esau," no doubt by the same road which is taken in the present day by the caravans which go from Gaza to Maan, through the Ghor. " This runs upon a grassy ridge, forming the western border of the coast of Arabia, and the eastern border of the cultivated land, which stretches from the land of Edom to the sources of the Jordan, on the eastern side of the Ghor" (v, Paumer, 2ug, p. 45). On the western side of their mountains the Edomites had refused permission to the Israelites to pass through their land (chap; xx. 18 sqq.), as the mountains of Seir terminate towards the Ghor (the Arabah) in steep and lofty precipices, and there are only two or three narrow wadys which intersect them from west to east; and of these the Wady Ghuweir is the only one which is practicable for an army, and even this could be held so securely by a moderate army, that no enemy could force its way into the heart of the country (see Leake in Burc/chardt, pp. 21, 22; and Pobinson, ii. p. 583). It was different on the eastern side, where the mountains slope off into a wide extent of table-land, which is only slightly elevated above the desert of Arabia. Here, on the weaker side of their frontier, the Edomites lost the heart to make any attack upon the Israelites, who would now have been able to requite their hostilities. But the Lord had commanded Israel not to make war upon the sons of Esau; but when passing through their territory, to purchase food and water from them for money (Deut. ii. 4-6). The Edomites submitted to the necessity, and endeavoured to take advantage of it, by selling provisions, " in the same way in which, at the present day, the caravan from Mecca is supplied with provisions by the inhabitants of the mountains along the pilgrim road" (Leake in Burckhardtj p. 24). The situation of Ohoth cannot be determined.

Yer. 11. The next encampment was " Ije-Abarim in the desert, which lies before Moab towards the sun-rising," i.e. on the eastern border of Moabitis (chap, xxxiii. 44). As the Wady el Ahsy, which runs into the Dead Sea, in a deep and narrow rocky bed, from the south-east, and is called el Kerahy in its lower part {Burckhardt, Syr. pp. 673-4), separates Iduma^a from Moabitis; Ije-Abarim (i.e. ruins of the crossings over) must be sought for on the border of Moab to the north of this wady, but is hardly to be found, as Knohel supposes, on the range of hills called el Tarfuye, which is known by the name of Orokaraye^ still farther to the south, and terminates on the south-west of Kerek, whilst towards the north it is continued in the range of hills called el Ghoweitlie and the mountain range of el Zohle; even supposing that the term Abarim, " the passages or sides," is to be understood as referring to these ranges of hills and mountains which skirt the land of the Amorites and Moabites, and form the enclosing sides. For the boundary line between the hills of el-Tarfuye and those of el-Ghoweithe is so near to the Arnon, that there is not the necessary space between it and the Arnon for the encampment at the brook Zared (ver. 12). Jje" Abarim or Jim cannot have been far from the northern shore of the el Ahsy, and was probably in the neighbourhood of Kalaat el Hassa (Ahsa), the source of the A hsy^ and a station for the pilgrim caravans (Burckhardt, p. 1035). As the Moabites were also not to be attacked by the Israelites (Deut. ii. 9 sqq.), they passed along the eastern border of Moabitis as far as the brook Zared (ver. 12)- This can hardly have been the Wady el-Ahsy {Robinson, ii. p. 555; Ewald, Gesch. ii. p. 259; Bitter^ Erdk. xv. p. 689); for that must already have been crossed when they came to the border of Moab (ver. 11). Nor can it well have been "the brook Zaide, which runs from the south-east, passes between the mountain ranges of Ghoweithe and Tarfuye, and enters the Arnon, of which it forms the leading source," — the view adopted by Knobel, on the very questionable ground that the name is a corruption of Zared. In all probability it was the Wady Kerek, in the upper part of its course, not far from Katrane, on the pilgrim road (v. JRaumer, Zug, p. 47; Kurtz, and others). — Ver. 13. The next e;icampment was " beyond

(i.e, by tlie. side of) the Arnon, ivJiich is in the desert^ and that cometh out of the territory of the AmoritesP The Arnon^ i.e. the present Wady Mojeh, is formed by the union of the Seyl (i.e. brook or river) Saidcy which comes from the south-east, not far from Katrane, on the pilgrim road, and the Lejum from the north-east, which receives the small rivers el Mekhreys and Balua, the latter flowing from the pilgrim station Kalaat Balua, and then continues its course to the Dead Sea, through a deep and narrow valley, shut in by very steep and lofty cliffs, and covered with blocks of stone, that have been brought down from the loftier ground (Burckhardt^ pp. 633 sqq.), so that there are onjy a few places where it is passable; and consequei^tly a wandering people like the Israelites could not have crossed the Mojeb itself to force an entrance into the territory of the hostile Amorites.^ For the Arnon formed the boundary between Moab and the country of the Amorites. The spot where Israel encamped on the Arnon must be sought for in the upper part of its course, where it is still flowing " in the desert;" not at Wady Zaide, however, although Burckhardt calls this the main source of the Mojeb, but at the Balua, which flows into the Lejum. In all probability these streams, of which the Lejum came from the north, already bore the name of Arnon-; as we may gather. from the expression, " that cometh out of the coasts of the Amorites." The place of Israel's encampment, " beyond the Arnon in the desert^' ^ is to be sought for, therefore, in the neighbourhood of Kalaat Balua, and on the south side of the Arnon {Balua), This is evident enough from Deut. ii. 24, 26 sqq., where the Israelites are represented as entering the territory of the Amoritish king Sihon, when they crossed the Arnon, having first of all sent a deputation, with a peaceable request for permission to pass through his land (cf. vers. 21 sqq.). Although this took place, according to Deut. ii. 2{\ " out of the wilderness of Kedemothj^ an Amoritish town, it by no means follows that the Israelites had already crossed the Arnon and entered the territory of the Amorites, but only that they were standing on the border of it, and in the desert which took its name from Kedemoth, and ran up to this, the most easterly town, as the name seems to imply, of the country of the Amorites. After the conquest of the country, Kedemoth was

^ It is utterly inconceivable that a whole people, travelling with all their possessions as well as with their flocks, should have been exposed without necessity to the dangers and enormous difficulties that would attend the crossing of so dreadfully wild and so deep a valley, and that merely for the purpose of forcing an entrance into an enemy's country. — Ritter, Erdk. xv. p. 1207.

The Israelites now received instructions from the Lord, to cross the river Arnon, and make war upon the Amoritish king Sihon of Heshbon, and take possession of his land, with the assurance that the Lord had given Sihon into the hand of Israel, and would fill all nations before them with fear and trembling (Deut. ii. 24, 25). This summons, with its attendant promises, not only filled the Israelites with courage and strength to enter upon the conflict with the mightiest of all the tribes of the Canaanites, but inspired poets in the midst of them to commemorate in odes the wars of Jehovah, and His victories over His foes. A few verses are given here out of one of these odes (vers. 14 sqq.), not for the purpose of verifying the geographical statement, that the Arnon touches the border of Moabitis, or that the Israelites had only arrived at the border of the Moabite and Amorite territory, but as an evidence that there, on the borders of Moab, the Israelites had been inspired through the divine promises with the firm assurance that they should be able to conquer the land of the Amorites which lay before them. — Vers. 14, 15. " Therefore" sc, because the Lord had thus given king Sihon, with all his land, into the hand of Israel, " it is written in the hook of the wars of the Lord: Vaheb (Jehovah takes) in storm, and the brooks of Arnon and the valley of the brooks, which turns to the dwelling of Ar^ and leans upon the border ofMoabP The book of the wars of Jehovah is neither an Amoritish book of the conflicts of Baal, in which the warlike feats performed by Sihon and other Amoritish heroes with the help of Baal w^ere celebrated in verse, as G. Unruh fabulously asserts in his Zug der Isr. aus ^g. nach Canaan (p. 130), nor a work " dating from the time of Jehoshaphat, containing the early history of the Israelites, from the Hebrew patriarchs till past the time of Joshua, with the law interwoven," which is the character that KnobeVs critical fancy would stamp upon it, but a collection of odes of the time of Moses himself, in celebration of the glorious acts of the Lord to and for the Israelites; and " the quotation bears the same relation to the history itself, as the verses of Korner would bear to the writings of any historian of the wars of freedom, who had himself taken part in these wars, and introduced the verses into his ovm historical work" {Hengstenberg)} The strophe;selected

^ " That such a book should arise in the last days of Moses, when the youthful generation began for the first time to regard and manifest itself, both vigorously and generally, as the army of Jehovah, is so far from being a surprising fact,

from the ode has neither subject nor verb in it, as the ode was well known to the contemporaries, and what had to be supphed could easily be gathered from the title, " Wars of Jehovah." Vaheh is no doubt the proper name of an Amoritish fortress; and ns^DB^ " in storm," is to be explained according to Nah. i. 3, " The Lord, in the storm is His way." " Advancing in storm. He took Vaheb and the brooks of Arnon," i.e. the different wadys, valleys cut by brooks, which open into the Arnon. 0 vnan li^'x^ lit. pouring of the brooks, from *lt^i^, effusio, the pouring, then the place where brooks pour down, the slope of mountains or hills, for which the term n"lK^j^ is generally used in the plural, particularly to denote the slopes of the mountains of Pisgah (Deut. iii. 17, iv. 49; Josh. xii. 3, xiii. 20), and the hilly region of Palestine, which formed the transition from the mountains to the plain (Josh. x. 40 and xii. 8). rint^'^ the dwelling, used poetically for the dwelling-place, as in 2 Sam. xxiii. 7 and Obad. 3. "i^ {Ar), the antiquated form for "^''V, a city, is the same as Ar Moah in ver. 28 and Isa. xv. 1, " the city of Moab, on the border of the Arnon, which is at the end of the (Moabitish) territory" (chap. xxii. 36). It was called Areopolis by the Greeks, and was near to Aroer (Deut. ii. 36 and Josh. xiii. 9), probably standing at the confluence of the Lejum and Mojeb, in the " fine green pasture land, in the midst of which there is a hill with some ruins," and not far away the ruin of a small castle, with a heap of broken columns {Burckhardt^ Syr. p. 636). This Ar is not to be identified with the modern Habba, in the midst of the land of the Moabites, six hours to the south of Lejum, to which the name Areopolis was transferred in the patristic age, probably after the destruction of Ar, the ancient Areopolis, by an earthquake, of which Jerome gives an account in connection with his own childhood (see his Com. on Isa. xv.), possibly the earthquake which occurred in the year a.d. 342, and by which many cities of the East were destroyed, and among others Nicomedia (cf. Hengstenherg, Balaam, pp. 525-528; Bitter, Erdkunde, xv. pp. 1212 sqq.; and v. Baumer, Baldstina, pp. 270, 271, Ed. 4).

that we can scarcely imagine a more suitable time for tlie commencement of

such a work" {Baumgarten). And if this is the case, the allusion to this collection of odes cannot be adduced as an argument against the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, since Moses certainly did not write out the history of the journey from Kadesh Xo the Arboth Moab until after the two kings of the Araorites had been defeated, and the land to the east of the Jordan conquered, or till the Israelites had encamped in the steppes of Moab, opposite to Jericho.

Vers. 16-18. They proceeded thence to Beer (a well), a place of encampment which received its name from the fact that here God gave the people water, not as before by a miraculous supply from a rock, but by commanding wells to be dug. This is evident from the ode with which the congregation commemorated this divine gift of grace. " Then Israel sang this song: Spring up, 0 well! Sing ye to it I Well which princes dug, which the nobles of the people hollowed out, with the sceptre, with their stavesT nJV, as in Ex. xv. 21 and xxxii. 18. Pp.i^P, ruler s staff, cf. Gen. xlix. 10. Beer, probably the same as Beer Elim (Isa. xv. 8), on the north-east of Moab, was in the desert; for the Israelites proceeded thence ''from the desert to Mattanah^^ (ver. 18), thence to Nahaliel, and thence to Bamoth. According to Eusehius (cf. Reland, Pal, ill. p. 495), Mattanah (MaOdave^) was by the valley of the Arnon, twelve Roman miles to the east (or more properly south-east or south) of Medahah, and is probably to be seen in Tedun, a place now lying in ruins, near the source of the Lejum {Barchhardt, pp. 635, 636; Hengstenherg, Balaam, p. 530; Knohel, and others). The name of Nahaliel is still retained in the form Encheileh, This is the name given to the Lejum, after it has been joined by the Balua, until its junction with the Saide {Burckhardt, p. 635). Consequently the Israelites went from Beer in the desert, in a north-westerly direction to Tedun, then westwards to the northern bank of the Encheileh, and then still farther in a north-westerly and northerly direction to Bamoth, There can be no doubt that Bamoth is identical with Bamoth Baal, i,e. heights of Baal (chap, xxii. 4). According to Josh. xiii. 17 (cf. Isa.. xv. 2), Bamoth was near to Dibon (JDibdn), between the Wady Wale and Wady Mojeb, and also to Beth-Baal Meon, i.e, Myun, half a German mile (2J English) to the south of Heshbon; and, according to chap. xxii. 41, you could see Bamoth Baal from the extremity of the Israelitisli camp in the steppes of Moab. Consequently Bamoth cannot be the mountain to the south of Wady Wale, upon the top of which Burckhardt says there is a very beautiful plain (p. 632; see Hengstenberg, Balaam, p. 532); because the steppes of Moab cannot be seen at all from this plain, as they are covered by the Jebel Attarus. It is rather a height upon the long mountain Attarus, which runs along the southern shore of the Zerka Maein, and may possibly be a spot upon the summit of the Jebel Attarus, " the highest point in the neighbourhood," upon which, according to Burckhardt (p. 630), there is " a heap of stones overshadowed by a very large pistachio-tree." A little farther down to the south-west of this lies the fallen town Kereijat (called Korriat by Seetzen, ii. p. 342), i,e. Kerioth, Jer. xiviii. 24; Amos ii. 2. — Ver. 20. From Bamoth they proceeded '' to the valley, which (is) in the field of Moab, upon the top of Pisgahy and looks across the face of the desertJ^ •^5^?'] ^^"i, head, or height of the Pisgah, is in apposition to the field of Moab. The ''field of Moab^' was a portion of the table-land which stretches from Rabbath Amman to the Arnon, which " is perfectly treeless for an immense distance in one part (viz. the neighbourhood of Eleale), but covered over with the ruins of towns that have been destroyed," and which " extends to the desert of Arabia towards the east, and slopes off to the Jordan and the Dead Sea towards the west" (y, Raumer, Pal. p. 71). It is identical with "the whole plain from Medeha to Dihoii*^ (Josh. xiii. 9), and " the whole plain by Medeha*^ (ver. 16), in which Heshbon and its cities were situated (ver. 17; cf. ver. 21 and Deut. iii. 10). The valley in this tableland was upon the height of Fisgah, i.e. the northern part of the mountains of Abarim, and looked across the surface of the desert. Jeshimon, the desert, is the plain of Ghor el Belka, i.e. the valley of desolation on the north-eastern border of the Dead Sea, which stretches from the Wady Menshalla or Wady Ghuweir (el Guer) to the small brook el Szueme (Wady es Suweimeh on Van de Veldes map) at the Dead Sea, and narrows it more and more at the northem extremity on this side. " Ghor el Belka consists in part of a barren, salt, and stony soil; though there are some portions which can be cultivated. To the north of the brook el Szueme^ the great plain of the Jordan begins, which is utterly without fertility till you reach the Nahr Hesbdn, about two hours distant, and produces nothing but bitter, salt herbs for camels" (^Seetzen, ii. pp. 373, 374), and which was probably reckoned as part of Jeshimon, since Beth- Jeshimoth was situated within it (see at chap, xxiii. 28). The valley in which the Israelites were encamped in the field of Moab upon the top of Pisgah, is therefore to be sought for to the west of Heshbon, on the mountain range of Abarim, which slopes off into the Ghor el Belka. From this the Israelites advanced into the Arboth Moab (see chap. xxii. 1).

If we compare the places of encampment named in vers. 11-20 with the list of stations in chap, xxxiii. 41-49, we find, instead of the seven places mentioned here between Ijje Abarim and the Arboth Moab, — viz. Brook Zared, on the other side of the Amon in the desert, Beer, Mattana, Nahaliel, Bamoth, and the valley in the field of

Moab upon the top of Plsgah,— only three places given, viz. Dihon of Gad, Abnon Dtblathaim, and Mount Aharim before Neho, That the last of these is only another name for the valley in the field of Moab upon the top of Pisgah, is undoubtedly proved by the fact that, according to Deut. xxxiv. 1 (cf. chap. iii. 27), Mount Nebo was a peak of Pisgah, and that it was situated, according to Deut. xxxii. 49, upon the mountains of Aharim, from which it is evident at once that the Pisgah was a portion of the mountains of Aharim, and in fact the northern portion opposite to Jericho (see at chap. xxvii. 12). The two other differences in the names may be explained from the circumstance that the space occupied by the encampment of the Israelites, an army of 600,000 men, with their wives, children, and cattle, when once they reached the inhabited country with its towns and villages, where every spot had its own fixed name, must have extended over several places, so that the ver}' same encampment might be called by one or other of the places upon which it touched. If Dihon Gad (chap, xxxiii. 45) was the Dibon built {i.e. rebuilt or fortified) by the Gadites after the conquest of the land (chap, xxxii. 3, 34), and allotted to the Reubenites (Josh. xiii. 9, 17), which is still traceable in the ruins of Dihdn, an hour to the north of the Arnon {v. Eaumer, Pal p. 261), (and there is no reason to doubt it), then the place of encampment, Nahaliel {Encheile), was identical with Dihon of Gad, and was placed after this town in chap, xxxiii. 45, because the camp of the Israelites extended as far as Dihon along the northern bank of that river. Almon Dihiatliaim also stands in the same relation to Bamoth, The two places do not appear to have been far from one another; for Almon Dihiatliaim is probably identical with Beth Dihlathaim, which is mentioned in Jer. xlviii. 22 along with Dihon, Neho, and other Moabite towns, and is to be sought for to the north or north-west of Dibon. For, according to Jerome (Onom. s. v, Jassa), Jahza was between Medaha and Dehlatai, for which Eusehius has written Jrj^oix; by mistake for AijBoiv; Eusehius having determined the relative position of Jahza according to a more southerly place, Jerome according to one farther north. The camp of the Israelites therefore may easily have extended from Almon or Beth-Diblathaim to Bamoth, and might very well take its name from either place.^