YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE LIBRARY OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL WORKS BT THE REV. CUNNINGHAM GEIKIE, D.D. HOUES WITH THE BIBLE. New and Revised Edition. 6 Vols., 3000 Pages $7.50 NEW TESTAMENT HOURS. 4 Vols., 2000 Pages . . 6.00 Sold separately at (per volume) 1.50 HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. 2 Vols. New Edition. Illustrated 5.00 LANDMARKS OP OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY . . 1.50 NEW LIFE OP CHRIST 1.50 Published by JAMES POTT & CO., Fourth Avenue and 22d Street, New York. OLD TESTAMENT CHARACTERS. BT CUNNINGHAM GEIKIE, D.D., AUTHOR OF " THE LIFE AND WORDS OP CHK1ST J " " HOURS WITH THE BIBLE 1 ETC., ETC. WITH SEVENTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS, CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES, AND AN INDEX. Mi-: " JAMES POTT & CO., Fourth AVENUE AND $3d Street, 1897. I INTENDED THIS VOLUME TO HAVE BEEN Urtifcateti TO MT DAELING DAUGHTEB, JEANIE, EOVED THAT IN SADLY TELLING ME SHE WOULD NEVEE LIVE TO SEE IT, I NOW, WITH INFINITE SOBEOW, DEDICATE IT TO HEE MEMOEY. Forgive, West shade, the tributary tear, That mourns thy exit from a world like this ; Forgive the wish that would have kept thee here, And stayed thy entrance to a world of bliss 1 PEEFACE. THIS took may be regarded as a condensed epitome of some prominent portions of the six volumes of " Hours with the Bible," which refer to Old Testament history. Those who wish to study the whole course of God's ways with His ancient people more fully will naturally turn to the larger work. At the same time it is hoped that this volume, which is complete in it self, will be acceptable to many who already have the " Hoars," no less than to others who are contented with a glance at the leading points and characters of the Bible story in a single volume. The numerous illustrations, moreover, will, it is hoped, make it additionally interesting to old and young. Nor can I put aside the pleasant thought that it may be found suited for an attractive Reading Book of Scripture History in the senior classes of our higher educational institutions. I may add that this book is not a mere abstract of the "Hours with the Bible," but is an entirely inde pendent composition. January, 1885. yii CONTENTS. Ti-BV Noah > .....1 Abraham -. • • • • • • • • • ... 12 Isaac 2S ISHMAEL . . . . • • • • • • ..32 Jacob 40 Leah and Eachel 47 Esau 55 JUDAH 61 Joseph 68 (Pharaoh ' Pharaoh's Daughter 86 Moses 93 Aaron 102 Balaam m Miriam 119 Joshua ™ t „. ........ 134 JiBL X41 Deborah "* Gideon *"°159 Jephthah * ~ Samson and Delilah lb7 BUTH ™ Eli ***""¦ iq» Davdj the Shepherd Ix X CONTENTS. PACE Goliath 221 David the Psalmist • • 228 Absalom • 237 Joab 244 Ahitiiophel . • 252 Solomon • 2C0 The; Queen of Sheba 2G8 Bishoboam ........... 276 Jj-HOSHAPHAT ., 284 Athaliah . 295 Aiiab • 305 Jezebel - 315 Elijah 323 Elisha 331 Naaman the Syrian 341 Jehu 3£0 Jonah . 360 Jl-'ROBOAM II. 366 Isaiah 376 Josiah 387 Jehoiakim . 397 Job 406 Job's Friends . .......... 416 Jlkkmiah • 427 EZEKIEL 437 Daniel . •• 448 . Esther 456 Nkhemiah 467 Chronological Tables 477 ILLUSTRATIONS. FAGl Ancient Altars 11 Babylonian Brice, with Inscription IS Egyptian Physicians and Patients ...... 22 Arab Sheiks .....24 E \stern Woman in Full Dress . . . . . . .31 Counting the Slain by their Cut-off Hands .... 39 Egyptian Bed ...........54 Mourners at a Grave 60 Beards of various Nations . 67 Ectptian Bakers and Cooks ........ 70 Investiture of an Egyptian Dignitary with high Office . . 72 Egyptian Priestess 75 Embalming of the Dead (Wilkinson) 76 Bvmeses II. (I.epsius) .81 Woksiiippkr of the Sun (Birch) .85 A Lady with Her Attendants in the Bath. . . ... 92 Ancient Egyptian Gauden l'Ol Menkphtah . 103 Ancient Egyptian Brickmaktng, under Taskmasters . . . 104 The "Dugong," from which the so-called " Bahger Skin " was obtained for the covering of the Tabernacle . . .110 TnE Top of Sinai (Labordt) 125 Punic Idol with a Votive Tablet 154 Treamng the Wine-Puess ;. and also the Wine Cellar, with the Wine in Jars ......... 1^8 Saroinhn-Phenician Idol with Neo-Phenician Inscription . . 160 Tueading Enemies under Foot 166 Harvest Scene 1S1 Threshing Machine of Modern Egypt 1S3 E\stern Harrow • • 184 Assyrian Baalte (Luyard) 108 An Egyptian Worshipping Isis 202 Costumes of Moslem Peasantry, near Shechem (Captain Conder). 211 XII ILLUSTBATIONS. VAGI Case for a Book Boll 236 Book Eolls and Writing Apparatus ...... 236 Ancient Impalement or " Hanging up " • . . • • 251 Solomon's Pools 2G7 Apes, from an Assyrian Tablet ....... 274 Egyptian Standards (Wilkinson) 287 The Ark of the Covenant and the Mercy Seat ... 290 Catapult for Throwing Stones . 291 An Egyptian Scribe (Wilkinson) ....... 294 The High Priest in his Official Eobes ..... 300 The Brazen Altar of Burnt Offering 302 The Great Cherubim in the Holy of Holies .... 303 Oriental Street, with Jews Praying at the Appearance of the New Moon ......... 330 Modern Egyptian Plough (L'Egypt, Etat Moderne) ... 332 The Syrian Plough of the Present Day ..... 333 Baal Worship, from a Babylonian Cylinder .... 340 Assyrians Forcing the passage of a Eiver (Kouyuigik) . . 343 Portion of a Slab from Nineveh, showing an Assyrian Chariot . 354 Assyrian Kings . . . 358 Assyrian Genii Kneeling before the Tree of Life . . . 3G5 Assyrian Standard with the Form of Assur .... 369 The Cotton Plant 370 Ploughing and Sowing (Wilkinson) 372 The Seed trampled into a Field by Goats (Wilkinson) . . 372 Ploughing and Breaking the Clods 373 Gathering of Millet and Stripping the Ears .... 373 A Black and White Slave Attending an Egyptian Lady . . 374 Egyptian Noble Fishing in his Pond 375 assurbanipal, the grandson of sennacherib, banqueting with his Wife 380 Triumphal Procession of the Assyrian King (Nimrud) . . 3S2 PSAMM&TICHUS . 391 Egyptians Praying (Wilkinson) . 403 MoLOCH-Ox- HEADED, ON A GEM FROM NlNEVEH (Layard) . . 405 The Egyptian Hippopotamus 415 Arabs of the Adwan Tribe [Captain Conder, Jt.E.) . . . 417 Jewish Captives, from the Assyrian Sculptures at Kuorsabad 435 State Slaves in Assyria Dr/ going a huge Sculpture to its destined Site . . 438 Ancient Egyptian Winged Form (Wilkinson) .... 447 Darics Hystaspis Treading his Enemies under Foot . . 457 Tomb of Darius Hystaspis, at Fersepolis ..... 4^9 OLD TESTAMENT CHARACTERS. ISTOAH. THE date at which Noah lived is differently reckoned in the various chronologies that have been ingeniously compiled from the sacred text. The Rabbis think he was born 1056 years after the creation of Adam ; the calculations of the authors of the Greek version of the Old Testament suppose his birth-year to have been 1642 years after that event; while the Samaritan Pentateuch carries it back to the year 707 after that of the first man. It is clear, therefore, that no certainty can be attained. Indeed, it should be remembered that the very frag mentary notices of the early chapters of G-enesis cannot be supposed to give more than a few isolated dates, and leave unknown intervals which did not bear on the sacred narrative, wholly unnoticed. The mountain- peaks and landmarks of primeval history are named, but the broad spaces between remain unmentioned. There is room for an indefinite expansion of the period since Adam's creation. Things had gone on badlv in the earth in these early i B 2 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. ages. Time enough had passed to raise man from the lower to the higher stages of civilization The pastoral life had perhaps succeeded that of the hunter, and by slow advance had passed to that of settled life in com munities. How long it takes for simple tribes to rise to, such an artificial culture as to need the arts and luxuries of a city population, with its implied develop ment of intercourse and education, it is easy to conjec ture, by recalling the slow advance to such a condition in historic periods. It is hard to say what the world was like in Noah's lifetime. The only possible clue must be sought in the stap-e which civilization had attained in the earliest dawn of the post-diluvian nations. But judging from this, Noah must have lived amidst a race enjoying many of the highest results of social and political ma turity. In the remotest period of which records in any measure survive, we find Egypt, almost a thousand years before the birth of Abraham, exhibiting a degree of civilization that is inexplicable except on the theory that she had received most of its secrets as a priceless heritage from the world that had perished in the Flood. Gigantic pyramids illustrated the triumphs of architec tural science ; for their masonry is still unrivalled, their finish still commands admiration, and their proportions and structure reveal a subtle knowledge of geometric and theoretical mathematics. Sculpture and statuary had reached a perfection, whether in wood, or soft ala baster, or the hardest granite, which later ages never surpassed in Egypt. The art of picture-writing had been perfected. The religion of the country was already reduced to a system, and the seasons marked by a regu lar calendar of festivals. The king's court exhibited all the state and circumstance of well-defined precedence NOAH. 3 and forms ; the army, the civil service, the hierarchy were minutely organized; and society had already divided and sub-divided itself into distinct grades, from the wealthy lord to the humble workman and slave. The glass-blower, the gold-worker, the potter, the tailor, the baker, the butler, the barber, the waiting-maid, and the nurse, were part of the establishment of each high noble or priest. The acrobat, the dancer, the harper and the singer ministered to the public pleasure, and games of chance and skill were as familiar as they are to-day. If the hut of the poor was wretched, the mansion of the wealthy was sumptuous ; and if the slave was well-nigh naked, his lord displayed himself in snowy white, set off by golden collars, bracelets, and anklets.1 Such refinement is always of slow growth, for it implies the discovery and general introduction of many arts and sciences, and Egyptian tradition appears only to have embodied what must be assumed, when it traced the " wisdom" which distinguished the valley of the Nile, to the race before the Flood. The Babylonian records, so strangely recovered in our own day, seem to point to the same conclusion respect- _ing the primitive civilization of the region in which mankind had its earliest seat. As early as two thousand years before Christ — that is, in Abraham's day— the adventures of Izdhubar had been composed in an epic of twelve books, each answering to a sign of the zodiao, and to the month named after it. A great collection of sacred hymns had already been compiled, which formed at once the Chaldsean Bible and liturgy. Libraries had been formed in which were treatises on the conjunction of the sun and moon, on th.e movement of Mars and 1 Birch's Egypt from ihe Monuments, p. 44-. See. also, pasibm, Eber s Uarda: An Egyptian Romance- 4 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. Venus, and on comets. There have even been found the directions for students, instructing them to write down the number of the book required, that the librarian might presently hand it them. One library was specially rich in mathematical works, and, connected with that at Cuthah, was an observatory, from which the Astronomei Royal was required to send fortnightly reports of his observations to the king, some of which have been re covered.1 That such many-sided culture should have flourished so early seems to point back to a still more remote civi lization, handed down by Noah and the survivors of the ancient world. But whatever the social and public life of the ante diluvian race may have been, it had attained a sad pre eminence in all that was evil. In the striking language of Scripture, "the earth was filled with violence." Lawless impiety grew continually more daring. Two great families had divided mankind since the Fall, — ¦ that of Seth, in whose posterity the knowledge and fear of God had been cherished ; and that of Cain, whose descendants had repudiated both. But while the latter had sunk steadily lower, the former had also sadly deteriorated, till at last the two had largely mingled. The light of paradise that had for a time lingered in the sky was gradually fading away. Even the race of Seth had thus become so tainted with the general corruption that it seemed as if god liness would utterly vanish from the earth. But amidst the almost universal darkness, one faint sparkle of cheering light shone beneath the roof of a son of the fallen race. Lamech still feared the God of Eden. As 1 Assyria, by George Smith, p. 20. Records of the Past, vol. i pp. 155-159. NOAH. 5 in every generation since, however, the burden of life lay heavy on this old-world patriarch, so that he was glad, like all of us, to catch comfort from any bright incident in his daily story. Such an one it seemed, when, in what we should think his old age, a son was born tc him. "Let us call his name Noah," said he; "this boy will comfort us in our work and the toil of our hands." But the name, which meant "rest," seemed far from carrying a prophecy with it, for instead of quiet, the Deluge was in the background. Yet, if he did not bring rest, Noah was a type and pledge of it in a higher sense than Lamech dreamed ; for his Ark has ever since been an emblem of the final redemption of our world from its curse, and he himself became the earnest of a second and greater Saviour, under whom evil was to be banished from the earth, not by a curse, but by the waters of love and pity, above which a new world of holiness should rise. Of the life of Noah before the awful event in which he played the most prominent part, we know almost nothing. One characteristic feature of it, indeed, is named, but with no details. He spent the long years of warning before the catastrophe that was to destroy mankind, in " preaching righteousness," l in the hope of leading some of his contemporaries to repent. The form and characteristics of the Ark built -by Noah have been the subject of much controversy. It would seem to have been larger than our greatest man-of-war, though somewhat less than the Gnat Eastern ; but in the uncertainty respecting the ancient cubit, the exact dimensions cannot, perhaps, be deter mined. Curiously enough, a Dutchman, at Hoorn, 1 2 Peter ii. 5 ; Hel xi. 7. 6 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. built a vessel, in 1609, on the model of the Ark as described in Genesis, and it was found that the result was a structure capable of holding much more than others differently shaped, though of equal cubical con tents. The range of the Flood was long supposed to have boen universal ; but the difficulties in the way of such a stupendous miracle, and the uselessness of covering with water vast regions as yet uninhabited; the absence of any traces which could be assigned to a universal deluge, and the evidence in the superficial drift of all countries of repeated great local floods; have led to the more natural and equally satisfactory conclusion that Noah's Deluge affected only a special region. The capacity of the Ark itself, indeed, is a decisive proof that this must have been so, for no one vessel of any conceivable size would afford room for the nine thousand species of quadrupeds, birds, and reptiles, already known ; far less contain food for them besides. Nor must it be forgotten that different parts of the world reveal distinct centres of creation which have been undisturbed, even from geological ages, by any violent catastrophe like a universal flood. ^ The entire ignorance of the extent of the earth, in antiquity, confirms the belief in the Flood having been only local. To the Hebrews, the " whole earth " was a phrase singularly childlike to our better knowledge. Even in the later ages, the ancient Jew fancied the world a great plain, roughened by mountains, with the ocean flowing round it in one great stream. He knew Egypt and Arabia, Asia Minor, the land bordering the south of the Black Sea, and between its eastern end and the Caspian, and the strip along the northern side of the Mediterranean, as far as Spain ;-— but all else was NOAH. 7 a mystery.1 Asia, Africa, America, and even Europe, in any large sense, did not exist to him. His use of the phrase "the whole earth" was in keeping with such narrow conceptions. He might either mean the whole world as known to him, or tho " whole country," or " district." He called the narrow bounds of the land of Judah, or of the Philistines, " the earth," no less than the wider all-embracing world. There is nothing therefore to hinder our belief that the judgment in which Noah played so prominent a part was limited to a special region. That such an awful catastrophe as the Flood really happened is strangely corroborated by the universality of the traditions of it among the most widely separated nations. Not only the neighbouring but the most re mote races have preserved the story of such a visitation. The Greeks, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Hindoos, the Chinese, and- even the American Indians have their legends of such a vast world-destroying calamity.3 The awful recollection has burned itself into the memory of universal man. It is striking that the time assigned for the beginning of the Flood was the season of the year when the fruits of the earth were ripe, and that its close ushered the saved ones to the new earth again, at the time when sowing and planting for the next harvest were required.8 Macaulay has pictured the appalling ruin of the dreadful interval : — From the heaven streams down amain For forty days the sheeted rain ; 1 Merx's Altliebvaische Weltlcarte. * Delitzsch, Kom. iiber die Genesis, p. 224 * Nagelsbach. in Herzog, Art. " Noah." 8 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEKS. And from, her ancient barriers free, With a deafening roar, the sea Comes foaming up the land. Mother, cast thy babe aside : Bridegroom, quit thy virgin bride ; Brother, pass thy brother by : 'Tis for life, for life ye fly ! Along the drear horizon raves The swift advancing line of waves. On, on ; their frothy crests appear Each moment nearer, and more near. Urge the dromedary's speed. Spur to death the reeling steed, If, perchance, ye yet may gain The mountains that o'erhang the plain. On that proud mountain's crown The few surviving sons and daughters Shall see their latest sun go down Upon a boundless waste of waters. None salutes, and none replies ; None heaves a groan, or breathes a prayer; They crouch on earth with tearless eyes, And clenched hands, and bristling hair. The rain pours on, no star illumes The blackness of the roaring sky ; And each successive billow booms Higher still, and still more high. And now, upon the howling blast The wreaths of spray come thick and fast ; And a great billow by the tempest curled, Falls with a thundering crash, and all is o'er: And what is left of all this glorious world? A sky without a beam, a sea without a shore. The simple story of the sending forth the unclean raven which never returned, and then the gentle dove which let Noah" put forth his hand and take it in, is graven on all hearts. No less so are the incidents that follow — the sacrifice of thanks to God, and His accept- NOAH. 9 ance of it and promise that no such destruction should ever re- visit the world, but that seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night should never cease. The covenant made with Noah is of striking interest. Ages after, compliance with its requirements was all that was demanded from proselytes of the gate, who could not bring themselves to accept the whole law of Moses. Like the Sabbath, the prohibition of blood is dated from the earliest antiquity. Blood was, in the eyes of the Hebrew, " the life," or even " soul," and as such belonged to God, and must not be used in any way by man. It must either be poured out on the altar as a sacred offering, or otherwise put apart. Man must on no account partake of it. Yet all creatures, with this restriction, were to be his food. They were given to him, as the green herb had been already, to consume at his will. But the shedding of human blood was sternly forbidden, and was to be required even from a beast; a law which continued in force even in the time of Moses, for he, also, enacted that the ox by which a man was gored should be at once put to death. When man was the homicide, stern retribution was to be taken. " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed : for in the image of God made He man ;"x and as such, man is sacred and inviolable. It has been reserved to our day to witness a signal corroboration of the Scripture narrative of the Flood, from the long-buried tablets of Assyria ; the very region from which Abraham, the founder of the Jewish race, which was to be the channel and depositary of Revela tion, was sent forth by God, to carry out the high destiny assigned him. 1 Exod. xxi. 28< 10 OLD TESTAMENT CHABACTEES. The awful story had imprinted itself with special exactness on the memory of the race which had chosen for its home the very scene of the great visitation. The legend as handed down to us on the Izdhubar tablets, tells of a revelation to a Chaldaean Noah to build an Ark, and "to cause to ascend into it the seed of all life." He was to go into it himself, and to take with him "his grain, his furniture, his goods, his wealth, his women servants, his female slaves, and his young men," and is told that "the beasts of the field will be all gathered and sent to him, and enclosed in his door." Besides his own household, some " sons of the people " were to be saved. After a time Shamas sent a great rain flood, with thunder. All who were to be saved entered the Afk, and the flood ere long " reached to heaven. The bright earth was turned to a waste." On the seventh day the rains ceased ; the Ark was stopped by the mountain of Nizir, and Noah sent forth a dove, which presently returned. Then he sent out a swallow, which also came back, but a raven, sent out next, did not show itself again. As in Scripture, the Chaldasan Noah offered a sacrifice when he left the Ark, and God made a covenant that He would no more destroy the earth with a flood.1 So minutely do the recovered tablets, four thousand years after they were written, corroborate the Book of Genesis. The name Hasisadra given to Noah in the Chaldaaan story, indicates the estimate formed in those ages of his character. It means, " the reverent," and " attentive." He stands out on the edge of the world's history as a type of patient goodness in the midst of evil; strong in 1 Transactions of Soc. of Bib. Archceolngy, vol. ii. pj- 213-234 j vol. iv. p. 49. Smith's Babylonia, pp. 38-48. NOAH. 11 faith, when sense and reason might naturally doubt, and honoured supremely for this fidelity. The picture drawn of him in Scripture, and that given of the judg ment which he and his household alone survived, is very different from the wild fancies of legend. Even in the Book of Enoch we have extravagances respecting him and it which contrast very strikingly with the calmness of Genesis ; and the stories of the Rabbis are still more fantastic. But in the Sacred Narrative he stands before us with a touching human simplicity, which no false glare of exaggeration seeks for a moment to hide. Before the catastrophe, he shows his natural sympathy for his race by a prophet-like earnestness of persuasion to that " righteousness " which alone could save them, and, after it, we turn to him as the solitary figure in a desolated world, witnessing to his piety in the first moment of his deliverance by the smoke of grateful thank-offering from his rude altar ; to the end, as from the first, a man, in all points, like ourselves. AJTCIE3TT Altaes. ABRAHAM. AMONG the grand figures that stand out from the JTA. background of the remote past, none is more com manding than that of the patriarch Abraham. Other names may have much glory, but the supreme grandeur attaches to his, that it recalls to three great communions of mankind — the Jew, the Mussulman, and the Chris tian — -that from him they have received the common heritage of faith in One Living and Personal God, and that he was so unique in his fidelity to Him, whom he was, thus, the first to honour widely among men, that he was called, by Himself, His Friend. To reach the age of Abraham, we have to carry our selves back more than two thousand years before Christ. In that shadowy morning of time he was born in the tents of Terah " the Wanderer," among the hill pastures and wide plains of the Northern Euphrates.1 1 It would appear as if the Bible chronology fixed Abraham's birth at about sixty years before the death of Noah, and not more than three hundred after the Flood* But it is to be remembered that throughout Scripture it is the practice to omit many links in genealogies, and to pass in silence over whole generations not specially related to the transmission of the Promise; so that chronology in any strict sense is simply impossible. The ascertained age of the Egyptian dynasties, dating from • Kurtz, Art " Abbaham," in Heraog's Ency. 18 abeaham. 13 Even in those early days the splendour of the Chaldaean skies by day and by night had filled the minds of. the simple children of nature who lived be neath them with a solemn awe which soon passed into worship. Terah himself had fallen into this most ancient form of idolatry before Abraham's birth, 1 but his son rose above it, and clung to the purer faith of Noah. One day, in his boyhood, says tradition, or, rather, poetry, looking round on the earth, and up to the heavens, he began to think who could have created them. Presently the sun rose in his splendour, and he thought it must be the Creator ; and he bowed himself before it, and adored it the whole day. But when evening came, it set, and Abraham then thought it could not surely, after all, be the Maker of all things. But, now, the moon rcw in the east, and a countless host of stars appeared. " Verily," cried the boy, " the moon is the Creator of the universe, and the stars are His ministering servants ! " and he bowed himself before the moon, and adored it. The moon, however, ere long sank in the west, and the stars grew pale, and the sun showed himself once more on the edge of the horizon. Then said he, " Truly these heavenly bodies can none of them have created this universe : they only obey an unseen Will, to whom they all alike owe their being : Him alone will I henceforth adore, and to Him only will I bow." 2 Ur of the Chaldees, where Abraham first comes before about B.C. 3000, * is alone sufficient- to prove the existence of a gap in the fragmentary notices of Genesis respecting the ages be tween Noah and the Patriarch. 1 Joshua xxiv. 2. 5 Beer's Leben Abraham's, p. 3. * Birch's Ancient Egypt, p. 23. 14 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. us, has been identified, by the inscriptions on bricks, as having stood on the site of the present village of Mugheir, in Lower Babylonia. It was then close to the sea, so that its "ships" are often mentioned, but a wide extent of land, formed at the mouths of the Eu phrates and Tigris, now lies between it and the Persian Gulf. Here Abraham lived, and here perhaps he took for wife his half-sister Sarai.1 She was about ten years younger than he,3 and still famous for her beauty long after her marriage.3 Such a relationship was usual then, though at a later date not only forbidden by Moses, but punished with death.4 She had no children, but the love he bore her was none the less, and thus the youth and early life of the two passed pleasantly in their bustling sea-port home, amidst their friends. Ur was the centre of the local idolatry, and boasted of famous temples and gods. The moon especially was worshipped, but there were many humbler deities. To stay permanently in such a community might have imperilled the religious future of the race to spring from Abraham, which was designed by God to be the repository of His revelations to mankind. It is quite possible, besides, that the traditions of the Rabbis, which speak of Abraham suffering persecution for his faith, may have been well founded. To these causes, per haps, it was owing that Terah resolved to leave TJr, and move off with his sons Abraham — as yet called Abram — and Nahor — for his youngest son Haran, the 1 There is great difference in the etymologies proposed for chis name. They include " The oolocynth " — reckoned a grace ful plant (Michaelis), and " contentious or quarrelsome " (Ewald) I have given that of Fiirst. For her relationship to Abraham see Gen. xx. 12. 2 Gen. xvii. 17. ' Gen. xii. 14. * Lev. xviii. 9 ; xx. 17 j Deut. xxvii. 22. ABEAHAM. 15 father of Lot, was already dead — to the pasture-lands of Canaan,- of which fame had doubtless spread glowing reports, as a green oasis on the west of the great Arabian desert, which stretched from the Euphrates to the hills of Gilead. Terah, with his dependents and flocks, and Abram and Lot with theirs, therefore, left the south, to seek new lands ; Nahor following at a later time. Man pro poses, however, but God disposes. Terah, the worshipper Babtlokiak Bbick, with Iksckiptiox. of strange gods, was not to found the new race in Canaan, chosen for special favour by God; his idolatry unfitting him for the honour. So he got no farther than the plain of Haran, on the banks of the stream that flowed from the Eastern hills. Here he spent the rest of his life, and here Abram watched by his death- be4- Legend fills up this period with narratives of fierce trials inflicted on the patriarch by the impious Nimrod, then king of all these regions. He is said to have been 16 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. thrown into a dungeon and miraculously fed, and even to have been cast into a fiery furnace, the flames of which suddenly went out, while the wood changed into blossoming, fruit-bearing trees, making a delightful garden, in which angels were seen sitting, with Abram in their midst.1 In Edessa a spring is still sacred, as that which burst from the earth and quenched the flames.3 But Abram was not to live and die in these remote and sequestered regions. He had been chosen to found a race in which the knowledge of the One God should be handed down to all future ages, and when the time was ripe he was irresistibly led to carry out this Divine purpose. What is meant by " the call " he received, we cannot tell, but, whatever it was, the voice of God was felt summoning him to carry out the earlier but unfulfilled intention of his father, by migrating, at last, to Canaan. It was the migration, not of a household, but of a tribe, from which, hereafter, were to spring many nations. Moving a short distance to the west and then striking south, along the eastern skirt of the Syrian hills, for the sake of water, he would ere long reach Damascus — the oldest city still inhabited by man. But though it must have seemed to the mass of the tribe, and to those who saw their long-drawn array on the march or in its encampment, only a migration like that of other tribes, the secret impulse in the breast of their leader to leave his country, his kindred, and his father's house, to go to a land to be pointed out by God, and 1 Beer's Luben Abraham's, p. 17. 2 Edessa was formerly thought by many to have been " Ur of the Chaldees." See Bertheau or. the whole subject, Art. ''Ub Kasdim," in Scbenkel's Lex. ' ABEAHAM. 17 the animating trust that his obedience to the heavenly " call " would secure the fulfilment of a Divine promise that had been made him, raised it, in its deeper aspect, to something unspeakably greater. For, had not the Lord said unto Abram, " Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee : and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great ; and thou shalt be a blessing : and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee ; and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed ? " Separated from the idolatry of his country, and even of his kindred, he was able, henceforth, to preserve in at least one branch of his descendants, the faith in the One God, and he henceforth became, for ever, its representa tive and first apostle, from whom all mankind received it. The promise was nobly fulfilled even in this. In the grand fidelity of Abram to this first principle and foundation of all true religion, and in the simple, unhesitating faith with which he acted at once and to the fullest, on every intimation of the Divine Will, lay the supreme distinction which gained him his two unique titles=^the " Father of the Faithful," and " The Friend of God." It is easy for us at this day to accept the belief in One God, but to be the first to maintain it amidst uni versal idolatry was very different. The worship, of the heavenly bodies, and even the servile worship of con querors and kings, had spread far and wide. Even at this day, after so many ages, the wandering Arab trembles at the name of Nimrod as of that of some awful power, and the sculptures of Egypt still embody the abject terror men then felt before kings, as before c 18 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEBS. superhuman beings, in the -gigantic size assigned to them in comparison to other men.1 The strength of mind and force of character which pould first realize, and then, in the face of a world opposed to it, keep resolutely to the belief in One God alone — distinct from nature, invisible, holy, almighty, and yet the Father of man — claim the truest homage. But this Abram did. Thus, when all else prove'd apostate, he showed him self the friend of God by steadfast faithfulness — the Abdiel of his generation. And as he bore himself in this way towards God, he was met, as always is the case, with a return infinitely greater, for he was treated as a friend, accepted and loved. He was " beloved of God," " chosen " and " called " by Him to be the de positary and transmitter of the Promise to future ages, and it was to him that it was said, " Fear not, Abram ; I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward." In all points only on the level of our common nature — no demi-god or hero, like the legendary fathers of other nations — he was yet honoured by such relations to the Almighty as no one besides ever enjoyed. It was to him, especially, angels were sent ; it was at his tent door that God, in Visible form, condescended to stand; and it was to him that an heir was granted when human hope had long ceased. But while God was thus the Friend of Abraham no less than Abraham was the friend of God, the mere loyalty to the doctrine of the Divine existence was by no means csni isively that by which the patriarch earned this great title. His whole life shows that his faith was no mere 1 The parts of a statue 100 feet high, of Barneses II., are still to be seen at Tanis-Zoan, in the Delta. It was cut in one piece, and was of highly polished granite. The quarries from which it was brought were at Assouan, far up the Nile. ABEAHAM. 19 profession, but the active principle of his being. In the grandest sense he was "the Father of the Faithful." No doubt of God's word ever for a moment occurred to him, even when its fulfilment might have seemed im possible. " By faith," says the Epistle to the Hebrews, " Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac — his only-begotten son — from whom his descendants were to spring — accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead."1 Never was the full force of the Hebrew word used more fitly than when it is said that he " believed in J ehovah " — that is, leaned back, as it were, on His assurance, as an all-sufficient stay ; rested on it, as a child on the arm of its father who carries it ; reposed his soul on it, as an infant lies trustingly in its mother's arms. No wonder that such faith was counted to him for righteousness, for it was the one principle from which all true righteousness must spring. To show itself in outward loyalty of practice was inevit able. " He obeyed the voice of Jehovah, and kept his charge, His commandments, His statutes, and His laws."2 He is the type of the religious man of all ages or nations. The first lengthened halt of the patriarch in his mi gration seems to have been at Damascus. Legend has made him for a time its king, but this is only in keep ing with the exaggeration of later ages. It was there, however, that he bought the slave Eliezer, whom he afterwards raised to be over his affairs. At the head of his armed dependents, and the numerous train of a great Arab tribe, he ere long moved farther south, and first pitched his tent and raised an altar in the Promised Land, under the shadow of the oak or terebinth tree oi Moreh, near Shechem, one of the most delightful spots in Palestine. Soon after, we find him moving south to 1 Chap. xi. 17. s Genesis xxvi. 5. 20 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. Bethel, but only on his way towards Egypt, for a local famine had stricken Canaan, though the bountiful Nile still spread fertility along its own valley. The Egyptian empire was already old when Abraham led his tribe of simple Asiatics into the midst of its won ders. The pyramids rose before them in their vastness, as before us to-day ; even then monuments of the past. The worship of animals had been introduced. The mon arch received personal adoration as the direct and lineal descendant of the gods, and of their substance and flesh. Anatomy and medicine had their literature and their professors. Geometry was applied to mensuration and other arts. Temples of limestone and red granite abounded ; huge obelisks of polished red granite rose on every side, only less wonderful than the pyramids, then cased with polished stone; and elaborately finished statues and idols of. stone, of gold, of silver, of bronze, of ivory, and of ebony, were common. The tombs of the embalmed dead were painted and sculptured with the wondrous minuteness and vividness that still arrests the modern traveller, and a perfected system of picture- writing recorded all public and private life. In social and political life there was no less to strike the mind of the wandering shepherd chief. The Court of Memphis, which he visited, swarmed with prophets and prophetesses, priests of the gods, and priests attached to the personal worship of the reigning Pharaoh. Public business was under the charge of a carefully organized civil service of scribes, secretaries, and super intendents. The great lords lived in splendour, sur rounded by slaves and dependents, and pamper 3d with every luxury at the table, and every refined enjoyment of art. Whether Abraham, like Moses, borrowed anything AT?EAHAM. 21 from Egypt is not clear, though it is belie red that the rite of circumcision was first adopted from it. None of the charms of even a land so rich and lovely could attract him to fix his dwelling in it permanently, and he preferred the open pastures of the Land of Promiso to all it could offer. Returning to Bethel, an event took place which decided the character of his whole future, and of that of his race. His own tribe and that of his nephew Lot had hitherto encamped together, but they had now grown too numerous to find pasturage on a single tract. It was necessary, therefore, that they should separate ; and Lot, availing himself of the magnanimity of his uncle, which left the choice of a future home to him, selected the plain of the Jordan, in the neighbourhood of Sodom and Gomorrah. Had he chosen the uplands of Judah and Samaria, and left Sodom to Abraham, how different might future history have been ! But Providence decided the result; — not the mere selfishness of Lot. The details of after years cannot be fully noticed in a short chapter. At one time we find the patriarch, at the head of three hundred and eighteen of his tribesmen who had been " trained' to war," rescuing Lot from an inroad of hostile tribes from the Euphrates; and that he could muster such a force shows that his encampment must have numbered some thousands, old and young, of the two sexes. It is the only instance of Abraham assuming the character of a warrior. But fidelity to his kindred was not less marked than the upright indepen dence that refused to accept any of the spoil. His intercession for Sodom bespeaks his charity and tender ness ; his purchase of the grave at Machpelah, his prudence and justice; and his sending his steward to Haran to get a wife from his own race for his son, 22 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEBS. illustrates his resolve to keep his posterity distinct from the idolatrous populations among whom he lived. It is, however, in his readiness to obey the Divine will, even at the cost of the life of his son, that his character rises to its loftiest grandeur. No other picture of absolute trust in the faithfulness of God was ever So perfect. It is impossible to conceive a loftier ideal of serene, undoubting confidence, that, even in the darkest mystery, the Judge of the whole earth would do right. Sarah, the faithful wife of his youth, died at his side more than fifty years before he himself followed her. Having laid her in the grave he had bought in Hebron, he henceforth stayed near at hand, to be ready to be laid once more beside her. Over his grave his two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, long separated, felt they could once .more meet, for by both he was loved and honoured. The wild Bedouin chief, with his fierce attendants, and the peaceful shepherd chief, with his servants, types oi different races and of different faiths, found a common attraction in his majestic character and worth. Egyptian Physicians and Patients. ISAAC. THE grand figure of Abraham— "The Friend of God" — is followed, in the stately succession of Old Testament worthies, by that of one who, though his son, was, in many" respects, a man of a wholly different type. It is well that it should be so in this great picture- gallery of the' Saints, if only to cheer all orders of mind or temperament, in turn, by such convincing proofs that men of every class have their fitting sphere in the service and honours of the kingdom of God. Isaac, the child of long-delayed promise and special miracle, was born when his mother was ninety years old, and his father a hundred — an age, however, which we must measure by the remembrance that Abraham lived till he was a hundred and seventy-five, and that Sarah died when Isaac was thirty-seven. His birth was the crowning event in the history of his parents, for it was the founding of a great spiritual dynasty which was to inherit all future ages — a dynasty springing, by God's special favour, from themselves. Twenty-four years had passed since the Divine " call " had made them leave their native country beyond the Euphrates, and, ever since, they had been waiting for the heir then promised them. The laughter of in credulity with which Sarah at last greeted the an- 23 24 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. nouncement of his speedy birth, was changed into that of joy. She was no longer Sarai — " The Fruitful One " — a name long a bitter mockery, but Sarab — " The Princess " — mother of future kings and nations ! x She had obtained the proudest honour of an Eastern woman — she was the mother of a son. We may trace the growth of Isaac's character in great measure from this exceptional beginning. From the first he was the idol of his mother, and from his earliest recollections he was' the only child in his father's tent. Aeab Sheiks. A woman of warm affections and true religious prin ciples, Sarah was, nevertheless, impulsive, jealous, and imperious. Impatient at her childlessness, she had first given her slave Hagar to Abraham, that she might at least have a foster-child, but presently turned against the poor girl, and drove her from the encampment. She had soon relented, however; perhaps at Abraham's instance; but Hagar's child rekindled her jealousy as 1 Gon. xvii. 15. ISAAC. 25 soon as her own was born. Ishmael had grown to be a fine boy of fourteen or fifteen, and Abraham's pride in him was as unmistakable as it was natural. Could it be that he would make him, instead of Isaac, his heir ; at least, could he love her child j,p ^supremely as she wished, while this bright-eyed son of r>..e slave-woman was daily winning more of his heart, by his high spirits and promise of splendid manhood ? He must be sent away to some other tribe : she could not suffer his presence. The customary feast at Isaac's weaning supplied pretext enough for a jealons woman. Ishmael, full of boyish mirth, was making merriment, and, very possibly, bear ing himself as the elder bom, with a, boy's airs of superiority to' the infant of two yeurL old, whose birth was making so great a stir. It vvas more than Sarah could bear. Acting on the impulse cf the moment, she demanded that Abraham should send away Hagar and her son, now a lad of sixteen or seventeen, and let them join some distant tribe and . never return. Nor had Abraham any alternative, but much against his will agreed to do so.1 Isaac thus grew up from infancy in his mother's tent, an only son, with the natural result of catching a womanly turn of character, for we copy that with which we are most surrounded in early years. He seems, indeed, to 1 Gen. xxi. 11. The word translated " mocking " is translated "laughed" in xvii. 17; xviii. 12, 15; "to laugh at," xxi. 6; "to mock," xix. 14; "sporting with," "caressing," xxvi. 8; "to mock," xxxix. 14, 17. But as Ishmael was only a boy, his " mock ing," even if we take that sense of the word, was not as yet very serious. Bosenmiiller, Scholia in loc, gives "to persecute" as the best meaning; but he is singular in this. Hebrew children were weaned at two years old, or it might be three. — Winer, Kind- heit. 26 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. the end of his mother's life, to have remained very much under the spell of her authority; and the tradition of the Rabbis, that his being " comforted " after her death by taking a wife, points to his having been prevented by her from doing so earlier, that she might have him all to herself, may not be without some grounds. It was doubtless wisely ordained that his boyhood and youth should be saved the example of one who grew to be so unfit to benefit him as Ishmael. The quiet life of easy prosperity which he always enjoyed, and the pure example ever before him in both his parents, were left to mould him into a gentle, obedient, religious nature, "whsjch showed itself to the last in his peaceful, yielding, simple, easy character, made venerable by his integrity and devoutness. According to Josephus, he had reached his twenty- fifth year when the great trial of his life came on him at Mount Moriah, or Moreh, whichever it was — the future hill of the Temple or the Samaritan Gerizim — in 'the demand of Abraham, so appallingly startling to a young man, that he should lie down on an altar he had helped to build, and let himself be offered as a human sacrifice. It may be that the "temptation" was sent to Abraham to show that he was willing to do as much for his faith as the idolatrous nations round, who often offered their children to their gods ; yet it is certain that human sacrifice and self-immolation were alike condemned by the result. But how grand the trust in the Divine promises, which such a test could not shake ; and how sublime the filial obedience and meekness which were ready tp yield even life at a father's sad request. Gentle dutifulness could go no further. Eleven peaceful years passed after this fiery ordeal, which had perfected and crowned the faith of the father, ISAAC. 27 and moulded for ever the character of the son. Then came the first break in the little circle, when Sarah, ever more tender, and more tenderly loved in return, lay down and died, in a good old age, at Hebron.- Abraham was not there when the wife of 'his youth and of his old age passed away; and, it may be, even Isaac was not at hand to close her eyes ; but they came at once, at the sad news, " to weep for her," and sit on the ground in lamentation before the dead. Three years later the grief of Isaac was still keen and fresh, for if there were even a shade of truth in the thought that she had kept her son too much in her pupilage, there is far more in the belief that when he was found alone, in the even tide, in the open country, he had gone out to give • free vent in solitude to his sorrow for her loss.1 In Rebekah, Isaac found, at the age of forty, a mind stronger than his own, to which henceforth he sur rendered himself, as he had hitherto done to his parents. He had been passive in the selection of a wife, and he meekly accepted her who had been chosen for him. Her name, " The Enchainer," may have been a fitting tribute to her charms, but it was equally so to the influence she forthwith acquired over her lord. He had been a gentle and dutiful son, and was now to show himself a constant and faithful husband. Even Abra ham had had Hagar as well as Sarah, and was hereafter to marry Keturah in his old age, but Isaac had no wife but the one. He had been born in his mother's tent in the poor upland pastures of the Negeb, or southern district of Palestine, and he spent his whole life within 1 Gen. xxiv. 63. So Fiirst : different interpreters translate the word for which " meditate " is used in our version, as " to pray," «' to commfiine with himself," " to take the air," and " to gather together the flocks for the night." 28 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. a few miles of his birthplace. On his marriage he led his wife to his father's tents, after Eastern custom, anil still lived under his authority. Abraham was now a hundred and forty years old, but survived for thirty-five years more, and in these years married Keturah, apparently one of his female slaves, for she is called only his concubine, or wife of a lower grade.1 Six sons from this marriage must have clouded the hearts of both Isaac and Rebekah, for twenty years passed with out their having a child. At last Esau and Jacob were born when Isaac was sixty, and grew up to be boys of fifteen in the daily presence of their saintly grandfather, " The Friend of God." The sons of Keturah had been sent away to the distant East, beyond the desert, before Abraham died, and thus all that the patriarch had, passed into Isaac's hands when he was gone.2 Forgetting at their father's grave their long estrange ment, the two brothers, Ishmael and Isaac, met at his burial, for the only time, so far as we know, after their separation in Isaac's infancy. They came together to lay the honoured dust of their father devoutly beside that of Sarah at Hebron, known even now as El Khalila, " The Friend," in remembrance of Abraham. Isaac soon after moved with his flocks a little way to the south, to the well of Lahai-roi, where Hagar rested on her first dismissal ; but the quiet unadventurous life he led may be judged from the fact, that he never seems to have wandered more than twenty-five miles in any direction from his subsequent camping-place at Beer- sheba, the " Well of the Oath," where he was born. In a life protracted like that of Isaac, periods which now comprise our whole span pass as only acts in a long-continued story. Seventy years glided away from 1 1 Chron. i. 32. • Gen. xxv. 5. ISAAC. 29 the birth of his two sons before the rupture of the little household by the flight of Jacob to Mesopotamia, after his ignoble deception of both father and brother in the matter of the birthright. Till then, the only troubles that seem to have befallen the prosperous man were disputes with the Philistines respecting wells, so price less in the dry -and hot hill pastures of these parts. Isaac had thriven so greatly as to rouse the jealousy, and perhaps the fears, even of a people so warlike, for he had " become very great," and had " great store of servants." More than a hundred years before, his father had over three hundred fighting men, born in his own tents a — that is, his household slaves — -and since then they must have increased to the numbers of an army. Isaac had, in fact, become a great Sheik or Emir, and might well treat on equal terms with a petty chief. But nothing could ruffle the placid gentleness of the quiet loving man. To dig a well through the limestone rock, often to a great depth, was no small undertaking, but meant, it might be, years of labour ; yet, rather than have strife, he yields again and again, and giving up what he might easily have retained, goes farther of, till he is left in peace. Esau's marriages with the daughters of the idolatrous peoples round were likely a greater trouble to him than the feuds of his neighbours for the watering-places of his flocks. He could put an end to these by sheer gentleness, but there was a dark foreboding in his son's alliances, which- must have cast a shadow on his heart. He loved the open, ingenuous, impulsive nature of Esau, and had hoped mr ch from him, as perhaps the heir of the promise, but was now sadly disappointed. Then 1 Gen. xiv. 14, " trained warriors." See Bertheau, Gesch, A Israeliteii, vol. ii. p. 14. 30 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. came Jacob's deceit and flight, and Esau's bitter grief at the loss of the blessing, which made even his father " tremble exceedingly," in sympathy with his outraged son. He was already failing, and thought his death near at hand, and this family trouble must have told on him heavily. Yet he lingered on for more than forty years, and for the greater part of tUem without Re bekah, for she died while her favourite son was an exile. For twenty years, however, before his death, Jacob was once more near him. He was still haunting the long-familiar spots near the graves of his father and mother at Hebron when Jacob returned, and there, at last, at his burial, his two sons for a time forgot their lifelong bitterness, and laid him in peace beside his wife and his honoured father and mother, in the cave at Mamre. Few have passed a long life as uneventfully. He never knew anything but wealthy ease, and his de pendents were numerous enough to protect him in the enjoyment of it to the last. His position brought out no strongly-marked character, but it sufficed to show how a quiet and modest retirement may honour God as much as a life of prominent action. The guileless simplicity which lets Jacob overreach him, because he could not disbelieve a son's assurance; the tenderness which lamented his mother so long, and bade Esau kiss him as he came near ; the patient submission with which he bears trial, which none can escape ; the grand obedience with which he puts even his life at his father's disposal ; the artless purity with which he keeps to Rebekah alone, as his one wife, in an age of polygamy; the majestic strength of his faith in the Divine promises given to his race — a faith which lights up the distent future as he blesses Jacob; and from ISAAC. 31 first to last, his lowly and unwaveilng homage to tho God of his father, make it easy to understand why even our Lord's authority is vouchsafed for his having passed from earth to heaven at his death. He had failings, no doubt, though only few are told us, but he showed us how we may walk before God, whatever our sphere, and command the respect of our fellow-men, in our life and death, as His faithful servants. Eabtubs Woman is FtTLi Dbess. (TwftyifiS>a^_ .eajfWSrf^NWBtW —^*FROUGHT up in the court of the great Rameses -"--' II., Moses, to all outward appearance, became entirely Egyptian. The favour of Bithia, or Merrhis, the king's only daughter and presumptive heir, made his life in these early years one long, unclouded summer morning, for all that wealth and power could command were at his service. At the University Temple of Zoan, or Heliopolis, every advantage of the highest culture of the age was put at his disposal. It was the Oxford of Ancient Egypt, the foremost of the priestly colleges of the land, those of Memphis and Thebes standing only in a secondary rank. Its high functionaries were the great personages of the State, after Pharaoh, and bore the flattering title of " The good and fair." King Sethos had set the power of Joseph on a firm basis in marrying, him to Asenath, the high-priest's daughter, fo: it was his admission into the supreme aristocracy of Egypt. Hither the young Moses was duly sent for his uni versity career. The great temple dedicated to the sun, had owed its foundation to the " Spring of the Sun," which welled up on the spot, a grateful fountain in such a country, but famous then, besides, for the healing powers ascribed to it, and noted even yet as the 94 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. sweetest spring- water of the land. Nebuchadnezzar, in after years, struck down the glory of this "Beth Shemesh," or " House of the Sun," x and Cambyses finally destroyed both the temple and the town which had grown up round it. It must have been a glorious place when Moses listened to the lectures of its priestly pro fessors on astronomy and philosophy, lectures so famous that even Plato came to attend them a thousand years later. It was the capital of the province of Goshen, the district assigned to the Hebrews, and lay on a great canal which led the waters of the Nile to north-eastern Egypt. Both temple and town -were built on an arti ficial mound, to save them from inundation by the Nile. On the north side stood the town, on the south the temple. An avenue of colossal sphinxes led to the huge gateways of the latter, surrounded by huge flag- staffs, from which floated blue and red streamers. Lofty obelisks of pobshed red granite stood in pairs before the temple and within its courts, in keeping with the worship of the sun-god whose rays were sym bolized by both obelisks and pyramids. One alone remains, fifty-eight feet high, covered with hiero glyphics, but in the days of Moses there were two raised by the son of Sesostris, which cast their shadows from amidst a crowd of others, from a height of a hundred and fifty feet. Round the cloisters of the- vast painted courts to which all this magnificence led, were the mansions and lecture halls of the priests, philosophers, canons, and professors of the famous sanctuary, and in these shady and luxurious retreats Moses spent many happy years, first as pupil, then us colleague of the learned cor poration. Egyptians knew him only as Osarsiph, or 1 Jer. xliii. 13. MOSES. 95 Tisithes — ''The priest of Osiris," i the sun-god, — and fancied, no doubt, as he passed before them in his pure white priestly robe, that he had no dream of anything beyond their own idolatry. But, meanwhile, the misery of his nation had gone on increasing. The Egyptian peasants oi our own day chant sad refrains against their oppressors as they toil in the fields, or at the shadoofs for irrigation : — " The chief of the village, the chief of the village, may the dogs tear him, may the dogs tear him ! " or, " They starve us, they starve us, they beat us, they beat us ! " to which there rises an antiphony, " But there's some one above, there's some one above, who will punish them well, who will punish them well." 2 Things were evidently much the same then, and Moses noted them with a heart in which the love of his people was fast rising to a supreme passion. His early training by his godly mother had fixed his character from his boy hood. That he should have been able, with his strong feel ings, to suppress all outward show of them during his early manhood, reveals the power of self-control, and of patient waiting for the right time, which mark a great mind. He was known by his brethren as a Jew at court. His name was whispered in all their slave huts with vague expectations. But the hour had not 1 Tisithes was another name for Osiris, though, primarily, that of Sirius, the dog--star — the brightest star in the heavens. It would require 400 of our suns to send as bright a light from the same distance as this one star yields. In keeping with theii wild fancies, the Rabbis maintained that the name Tisithes alluded to the transmigration of the soul of Seth into the body of Moses, to give the law, " which men had forgotten," through him. 3 Nassau Senior's MS. Jownal of a Stay in Egypt, 1856. 96 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. come. To have sympathised with them openly would' have been fatal both to them and himself. God was training him as their future deliverer, though he did not know it. He was getting a thorough insight into the religion, manners, and life of Egypt ; he was being brought into contact with her greatest men and learn ing all the secrets of statecraft in the chambers of Pharaoh himself. The fullest knowledge of mankind, and of religious, political, and social science, were neces sary for the future founder of a nation, and premature action would have broken off his training in them at once. But, though outwardly reserved, he had long chosen his part. With a magnanimity which is almost im possible to realize, he had deliberately resolved to cast in his lot with his own race — to suffer with, them, to dry their tears, to free them, at any cost to himself, rather than share the splendour wrung from them by the tyrant in whose halls a strange providence had fixed his home. Fear had no power to keep him back ; and even royal prosperity could not seduce him from his grand self-sacrifice of patriotism and faith. At last, when he was forty years of age, a sudden outburst of irrepressible indignation at an Egyptian taskmaster, who was maltreating a Hebrew, * changed his whole life. The oppressor fell dead before him; and though he was hurriedly buried in the desert-sands 1 Likely by the bastinado, which is constantly seen in use on the ancient monuments. The hasty burial in the sand prevented embalming and thus destroyed the possibility of the body await ing, intact, the day of resurrection. But those only hoped to rise again whose bodies were thus preserved, and hence to prevent embalming was in effect to take away the hope of the future life. This made the or'me »: Moses especially abhorrent to the Egyptian mind. MOiES. 97 clos6 by, the act left no choice to Moses but flight — for it was speedily bruited through the Hebrew villages. The direction he took marked his character. Passing along the one road on the north, from Egypt to the east, — the narrow ridge of sand between the Mediterranean and the Serbonian gulf — he turned to the south, after passing through the Great Wall, at Pelusium, and fled to the Arab tribes of the peninsula of Sinai, among whom the knowledge of the true God was still pre served, as it had been in Canaan by Melchisedek in the days of Abraham. Somewhere in the mountainous valleys of Sinai and Horeb,1 the seven daughters of an Arab sheik, "the priest of Midian," — as sheiks still are of their encamp ments or tribes,2 — were tending their father's flocks ; for Arabs even yet think it below their dignity to do any. work, and leave their sheep to the care of their wives and. daughters, or slaves.3 Like Jacob at Padan Aram, Moses, still dressed as an Egyptian, hastened to aid them in their laborious task ; and further earned their favour by defending them from some shepherds, who were disposed to trouble them. An introduction to their father, and an engagement in his service, having naturally followed, the courtier and possible heir of Rameses silently descended to the post of a shepherd. His master's name was Jethro — "The chief ; " or rather Reu-el — " One that fears God " * — a proof that the wanderer had chosen his retreat in a district where his faith was in honour. As in the case 1 The meaning of the name of " Sinai " is unknown. That of * Horeb" is " The dry, the desert." 2 Eobinson's Palestine, vol. ii. p. 402. ¦ Burkhardt's Syria, p. 858, 4 Exod. ii. 18. 98 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. of Jacob, marriage to a daughter of the house ere long followed; and Zipporah — "The Httle bird" — became his wife. Two sons blessed the union — Gershom— "The child of the driven-out man"; and Eliezer — "For the God of my fathers is my help." l For many years — forty, in the belief of the later Jews 2— -Moses now passes from view. It was well he should have the stillness and retirement of the desert to ripen his long-brooding thoughts of the possible deliverance of his people by his hands. He would learn the free life of the wilderness, and the deep hatred of Egypt in the hearts of the tribes among whom his lot was cast. But the task was heavy and difficult beyond conception, and the self-distrust of modest greatness shrank from attempting it. It was in these years, how ever, beyond question, that he revolved and elaborated many points of his future scheme as the Lawgiver and Prophet of his nation, for God had chosen him as His servant, to work their deliverance, and was slowly fitting him for the mighty work. At last a mysterious vision brought the second stage in his life to a close, and led him to assume the part for which all his previous history had been designed to train him. He had led his flock to the depths of the solemn valleys where Sinai and Horeb rise in awful grandeur, bare and stern, when suddenly, close at hand, a clump of the thorny bushes that sprinkle the lower edge of these awful heights appeared as if burning, and yet, as he gazed, it remained unharmed. No fitter symbol of Israel under God's protection, even in Egyptian bondage, could have been found, and now a voice made clear that it was no mere natural wonder, but a sign of the present God. 1 Exod. xviii. 3, 4. * Acta vii. 30. MOSES. 99 The character of Moses receives vivid illustration from what followed. Commissioned by the Almighty to undertake the- deliverance of His people, he draws back in humble unwillingness to venture on so great a task. If possible he will be excused, and urges one reason after another. At last a leprous hand, another symbol of the results of Egyptian bondage, leaves no room for further question, but he still falls back on his want of natural eloquence to persuade the multitude, entreating, "Lord, send by whom Thou wilt, but only not by me ! " Yet, when the command is imperative, there is no further shrinking. The new name of God— I AM — ¦ then given, becomes his over-mastering thought hence- ) forth. He accepts the responsibilities of his high duty, and henceforth lives only as the mouthpiece of Jehovah./ What it involved to bring about the exodus we can only faintly imagine. The opposition of a mighty king— for though Rameses was dead, and his successor was a weak and wicked man, Egypt was still a great kingdom — the dull insensibility of those for whom he was labouring ; the dread of increasing their sufferings by his attempts to end them; the apprehension, soon realized, that the immediate result would rouse even his countrymen, for whom he was daring all, against him; the long consuming struggle against misconcep tion, distrust, and the slave-vices of a degraded race ; the stupendous difficulty of rousing their long dormant religious instincts, which alone would make the move ment national and worthy, might well have overwhelmed him. But he triumphed, by God's help, in the end, and Israel encamped in the very solitudes which the burning bush had sanctified — a free nation. Henceforth the character of Moses divides itself into 100 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. that of a Leader of his people, and the Founder of its religion and social and political constitution. Into the details of his course in these different aspects we cannot enter. As Leader of Israel, he guided them wisely and safely through forty years to the edge of Canaan. The long sojourn in the desert was needed to train them for separate life in their own land. As the Founder of their religion, he gave them a creed which, in the course of ages, prepared for the perfect revelation of Bethlehem and Nazareth. Its one central conception of the hving God, the Father — the Protector — the Judge — ever present — was itself the sublimest gift ever received •by man, till the still greater gift of the teachings of Jesus Christ. His social and political system gradually ,formed a nation which has maintained itself as such for nearly three thousand five hundred years, and it is still in its fundamental principles, as far as circumstances allow, their law over the earth. No figure of ancient history stands out so grandly, because no one else is so surrounded by the splendour of a constantly recognised Divine presence. But even in other ways elements of character display themselves which command our homage and admiration. He was the meekest of men, not perhaps in his being free from sudden accessions of feeling and correspondent action, but in the. long patient endurance implied in the creation of a free people from a corrupted and sunken population of slaves. To educate and mould the character of a nation, presumes a grand character in him who effects it. The strength of purpose and firmness to principle, which sacrificed the greatest prospects to the good of his race ; the utter unselfishness of his devotion to them till death; his freedom from ambition, shown in his founding no dynasty, but leaving his sons mere citizens, MOSES. 101 soon to be lost in the multitude ; his majestic tenacity of purpose through all discouragements, and his unique success in his amazing enterprise, . mark him as one of the greatest of men who ever lived, — perhaps tho greatest. A»oiBin B8TPHAI Gambit ;-«itfc Vizard and Tress, Ksh Ponds, Hm the Amorites the lands taken by them for a time. But the appearance of Israel as a new owner, by right of conquest, seemed to cloud their prospect, and substitute another victorious people as the wrongful holders of the territory they still counted theirs. The position of Moab was, indeed, in every way full of alarm. Already stripped of more than half its territory, it seemed now in danger of losing the rest. Zippor — " The Bird," father of Balak, the reigning king — bad lost his life in the battle with Sihon, which had cost him also the greater and richer part of his kingdom. 1 Num. xxi. 21, 23-25, 31 ; Deut. ii. 32, 33. s Num. xxi. 17. BALAAM. 113 Seeing the utter overthrow of the Amorites, the con querors of his own people, Balak, in "sore distress," sent messengers to the elders of Midian, a related tribe, urging them, in a figure well suited to a pastoral race, to come to his help, else " this people will lick up . all round about us, as the ox licketh up the grass of the field." But he did not confine himself, in his terror, fa mere warlike precautions. It was the firm belief of antiquity, that the blessing or curse of eminent religious men carried, irresistibly, with it, good or evil to a person or community. Far off, on tbo Upper Euphrates,1 among the moun tains of Aram or Armenia, amongst which it rises, lay the fortress town of Pethor, one of the northern bulwarks of Assyria.2 It was then famous, however, not for its strength, but as the home of a great prophet — Balaam, son of Beor — " The Torch "—an Assyrian, whose fame had crossed the desert and reached Moab, on the shores of the Dead Sea. His very name, " The conqueror of the people," seemed to point him out as a seer, whose blessing or curse was of mightiest power. Perhaps in him Balak might find one able to overcome Moses, and avert the peril that hung over Moab. A hasty message forthwith sped over the desert, by a joint embassy of the elders of Midian and Moab, carrying with them the gifts usually presented to a " prophet," to induce him to use his " divinations." 3 What followed has given rise to the most opposite estimates of Balaam's character. While some have 1 Num. xxii. 5. 2 George Smith's Assyria., p. 33. 8 Thus Saul asks his servant what present here is to give to Samuel, " to tell us our way " (1 Sam. ix. 8) ; and the gifts to the priests of heataon nations are well known. I 114 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. seen in him the most dutiful obedience to the voice of God, others have recognised, as it seems to us justly, a man at bottom wholly unprincipled — trying to deceive himself into the belief that he is acting in obedience to conscience and revelation, while he is sinning against both;1 ready to do anything that may further his worldly advancement;2 and, while holding the purest form of religion, willingly pursuing a course im measurably below if.3 It is hard to tell how far he was insincere or the reverse in the earlier part of his action, but it is certain that his final counsel to Balak shows a terrible fall from the lofty tone he had at first main tained, and his death proves the contradiction that, at least in the end, displayed itself between his words and his deeds. The whole story is intensely Oriental and primeval. The first deputation is dismissed in obedience to a Divine warning ; but, so far as we know, " the wages of unrighteousness " which Balaam " loved," are carefully retained.* A second embassy of nobler messengers, carrying richer gifts, succeeds. He does not at once dismiss them,, as God had required, but presses for permission to go with them, which at last is granted. He would fain earn the wealth and honour apparently in his grasp, yet knows that when the prophetic afflatus comes on him he can only utter what it prompts. With a feigned religiousness, he protests that if Balak were to give him his house full of silver and gold, he could not go beyond the word of Jehovah his God, to do less or more ; but he also bids them wait overnight to see if he may not, after all, be allowed to go with them. If 1 Butler's Sermons, vol. vii. * Newman's Sermons, vol. iv. p. 21. * Arnold's Sermons, v 1. vi. pp. 55, 56, * 2 Pet. ii. 15. BALAAM. 115 his ignoble wish to be allowed to Curse an unoffending nation be gratified, he has the wealth he craves : if it be refused, he can appeal to his words as proof of his being only the mouthpiece of God. That he should have been allowed to go with Balak's messenger, was only the permission given every man to act as a free agent, and in no way altered the Divine command, that he should bless and not curse. Yet he goes, as if, perchance, at liberty to do either, and lets Balak deceive himself by false hopes, when the will of God has been already decisively made known. Arrived in Moab, Balaam found Balak in the ex- tremest terror. He was willing to offer up even his eldest son to his gods, if required, to deliver his nation. Nothing shows more vividly the enlightened and almost Christian views of this Prophet among the heathen, than a fragment of the first conversation between him and Balak, preserved in Micah.1 "Wherewith," asks Balak, in his agony, "shall I come before Jehovah (thy God), and bow myself before the God of heaven (the height) ? shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old ? " "Has Jehovah pleasure," answers Balaam, "in thousands of rams, or in ten thousands of streams of oil ? " " Shall I " then " give my first born (son) as the sacrifice expected?" cries the agonized -king; "the fruit of my body as expiation for my soul ? " 2 " He has told thee, 0 man," replies Balaam, finely, " what is good; and what does Jehovah require of thee 1 Micah vi. 6-8. 2 In 2 Kings iii. 27 we have an instance of another king of Moab in a similar dire extremity actually offering up his eldest soii as a burnt sacrifice. 116 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with. thy God!" Nothing could be nobler than this beginning, but how contradictory is the sequel ! Balak, in his excited distress, takes him to one peak after another' of the long range of the hills of Moab, that he may see the wide encampments of Israel on the steppes, or in the deep valley of the Jordan beneath them. Balaam follows him, willing to curse, if possible, though he already knew God's mind. They climb wearily to the " high places of Baal," on the top of the mountains, to the summit of one of the peaks of the Pisgah range, and to the top of " Peor," that he might see the vast extent of the hosts Balak dreaded ; and on each summit Balaam uses his " enchantments " to try to extort leave to curse them, and seeks to forget the warning of conscience and the voice of God, in the excitement of mighty sacrifices. It is of no use. Fall ing prostrate in the prophetic trance, but with the eyes of his mind and spirit open, a vision of the immediate and distant future unrolls itself before him, and he cannot control his utterances.1 He still sees the wide landscape of mountain, valley, and desert, the homes of many populations; and far away in the bosom of the Mediterranean he pictures to himself the isles of western races, then first mentioned in Scripture. Beneath him, in the Valley of the Acacias, stretch out the tents of Israel, spreading like valleys, like gardens beside the streams of his native land, like aloe trees which Jehovah has planted, like cedars by the waters. He seems to see a stream, the type of Israel, widening as it flows, till it broadens to many waters — the image to an Oriental of a triumphant future. Jehovah, their 1 Num. xxiv. 4. BALAAM. 117 God, is with His people, and the trumpet-sounds of a king are among them ! They have the fierce swiftness of the buffalo that mocks the hunters : they rouse themselves like a lion that will not lie down till he has consumed the prey and drunk its blood ! He will devour his enemies, and crush their bones, and break through the circle of the archers sent against him, and then, lying down in his majesty, who shall rouse him ? i Enraged with disappointment, Balak tries once more to wring from Balaam the curse he wishes, but the inspiration only bears the prophet away to grander visions. He beholds, but not nigh, a star — the symbol of a great prince — come out of Jacob, and " a sceptre," like the shepherd's, staff that marked the ruler of a tribe, rise out of Israel— and it shatters Moab on every side, and destroys those who are against the people of God. Edom, whose red mountains gleamed in the south, shall be the possession of the mighty ruler thus foreseen — the son of Jesse, himself the type of the greater David — the Messiah to follow ! But, as he gazes, the vision takes a wider sweep. The plundering hordes of Amalek ranged the desert which lay on the edge of the horizon : they are the first of nations now, but they are doomed to perish ! The dwellings of the Kenites were before him, across the Dead Sea, in the cliffs of Engedi. But though their nest be in the rocks, they shall be driven out and led away captive by Assyria. "Who shall live," he continued, "when God sets Assyria to His work of wrath ? " But ships shall come from the coast of Chittim— the island of Cyprus, the one glimpse of the western world visible from the hills of Palestine, and thus the symbol of western power — and will break 118 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. Assyria and Eber — " the people beyond " the Euphrates — and they also shall perish for ever ! Utterances so lofty might have led us to think of him who had been chosen from among the heathen to proclaim them, as a true servant of Jehovah, whom he professed to follow. But if he knew God, and was used by Him as His instrument to make known His will, he had no earnest depth of religious feeling, no true devotion of soul. What shall we say of one who, while inspired to speak thus, could give the sinister counsel to Balak, that though God had not allowed hfm to curse Israel, the same end might be gained by other means ? The worship of the Moabite god, Baal Peor, was a consecration of sensuality : let a feast to him be proclaimed, and Israel invited. Amidst the lewd temptations of unbridled impurity, they would bring down on themselves that curse which was not allowed to be uttered in words ! 1 Can it be wondered that one who knew the right so well, and so basely lent himself to that which was basest and worst, should be the type, to the sacred writers, of all that was most to be shunned in a seduc ing teacher, so that, even in the last books of Scripture, his name is uttered as an awful warning ? Sold to evil, Balaam clung to the god he had chosen, and joined Moab and Midian in their vain attempts to crush Israel in battle — for he was a warrior as well as a prophet. But his dead body, left on the battle-field, proclaimed the folly as well as guilt of knowing the better course and choosing the worse. 1 Num. xxv. 1-5 ; Rev. ii. 14 MIRIAM. MIRIAM, — whose name, in its later forms, became that of " Mariamne," the loved and murdered wife of Herod the Great, and, as "Mariam," or "Maria," and "Mary," that of the mother of our Lord, — was the sister of Moses, the eldest of the family, as Moses was the youngest. Her present name seems to have been given to her in later life, for its meaning — " Their rebellion " — appears to be an allu sion to the painful incident of her one difference with her august brother, on the occasion of his second marriage which she and Aaron resented.1 Rabbinical fables relate that she was only five years old at the time of her first, mention in Scripture ; but, however young, her ready quickness in securing for the infant Moses the care of his mother, laid him under an abiding sense of obligation, which showed itself through out his life, in the power she exerted over him. Her superiority of age, added to this feeHng of gratitude on his part, gave her an independence and high position which made her famous, even in later ages, as one of the three deliverers of ber nation.2 It is difficult to carry ourselves back to- those remote times, and realize life as it then was among the Hebrews. 1 Num. xii. 1, 2. 2 Micah vi. 4 (b.c. about 750). lis 120 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. In the tombs of Benihassan there is a remarkable mural painting which may help us to do so. A number of foreigners, of some race kindred to the Jews, are represented as arriving at the court of Pharaoh, and being presented to him. The details offer what seems a striking parallel to the arrival of Jacob in Egypt. The men are draped in long garments of various colours, wearing sandals, like open shoes, with numerous straps. They are armed with bows, arrpws, spears, and clubs. One is playing on a seven-stringed lyre, the counterpart, doubtless, of the harp, so often' mentioned in later Jewish history. Four women accompany them, dressed in garments which reach below the knees, and wearing fillets round their hair, and ornaments on their ankles, but barefooted. A boy armed with a spear walks at their side, and two children in panniers on an ass, precede them, while another ass has empty panniers, but carries some spears and shields.1 This may not give an exact idea of the rude simpHcity of Hebrew life in the days of Miriam, but it brings it before us approximately. At the time of the Exodus, Moses, the youngest of his father's children, was already eighty years of age, at least according to later Rabbinical belief,2 so that Miriam must have been nearly ninety when she accom panied him and her race in their hasty flight from bondage. The route taken on that eventful march has lately been explained, very differently from the theories hitherto accepted. Dr. Brugsch,8 an eminent Egypto- 1 Birch's Egypt from the Monuments, p. 66. See Illustration in Hours with the Bible, vol. i. p. 360. 3 Acts vii. 23, 30. ' Trans'iotions of Congress of Orientalists, 1874, pp. 260-282. MIEIAM. 121 logist, who has passed many years in the country, claims to have identified all the stations mentioned in Exodus, with sites along the coast of the Mediterranean. The whole district assigned to the Hebrews was more or less marshy, and only one highway led through it into the wilderness outside. This ran past Migdol, — "The Tower," — still marked by its Egyptian equivalent " Samout," — one of the frontier defences towards the Arabian desert, — to Baalzephon — the town of "The Lord of the North." It thence passed, along a narrow ridge of sand on the coast, with the Mediterranean on the one hand, and " the gulfs " — Pi-hahiroth — -now known as the bottomless marshes of Serbonis, on the other. The sea, raised by storms, not infrequently inundates this perilous bridge, and on one occasion drowned a great part of the army of Artaxerxes, who was attempting to invade Egypt. Brugsch supposes that a tempest, sent by Providence, flooded the- sand ridge and the surrounding country, after the Israelites had passed, and caused the destruction of Pharaoh's host, by making it impossible for them to know their way among the terrible dangers of Serbonis. It may be that it was in this way, and at this place, that God wrought His mighty deliverance of His people. The identifications of the route, however, have been widely challenged, though the use of the phrase " Red Sea " in our version,1 in reality proves nothing, as the Hebrew word is "Weedy," not "Red," — a characteristic, pre eminently true of the Sirbonian marshes, with their wide beds of papyrus. The recent survey of the isthmus of Suez by Dr. Hull, seems to show, however, that the Red Sea extended much farther to the north at the time of the Exodus than it does now. This, of course, 1 Exod. xv. 4. 122 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. would make any identification of the towns so named on the route of the Hebrews very difficult. In common with her two brothers, Miriam enjoyed the mysterious honour which is implied in the name " Prophetess." x In high rejoicing at the wonderful intervention of God on behalf of His people, Moses composed a triumphal psalm, which was chanted by the multitude in the first hours of their excited devo tion at the deliverance vouchsafed them. Miriam, instinct with some of her brother's genius, and touched by the same prophetic fire, roused the women cf the nation by her glowing enthusiasm, and taking a tab ret in her hand — apparently, like our modern tambourine, a wooden rim, covered with membrane, and hung round with bells or rattles — headed them, in religious songs and dances, to the music of similar instruments. The refrain of one song alone remains — " Sing ye to Jehovah, for He hath triumphed gloriously ; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." The next mention of her name is in connection with the marriage of Moses with a Cushite woman, or negress.2 Strange as this may seem to us, and con trary as it was to the traditions of the Hebrews, and to his own subsequent legislation,3 there was much in his Egyptian education to make it more natural than might be supposed. From . the first, of mixed blood, the Egyptians became increasingly so, as their wars with the negro kingdoms led to the settlement among them of vast numbers of prisoners. There was no prejudice of colour, for all had more or less dark blood in their veins, and intermarriage between all shades was so common, that a negress had been queen of Egypt in •¦ » Exod. xv. 20. s Num. xii. * Exod. xxxiv. 15, 16 ; Deut. vii. 3, 4 ; xxiii. 3, 7, 8, eta MIEIAM. 123 the dynasty preceding that under which Moses was born, and the same thing had already happened at an earlier period.1 The native royal family had taken refuge in the south during the long triumph of the Shepherd Kings, and alliance with the daughters of negro kings had thus become frequent. Moses only copied the example of the highest of the land by marry ing a Cushite. But though in keeping with Egyptian usage, the marriage was distasteful to Miriam, and she excited Aaron also against it. She seems to have felt wounded, as was natural in a woman, by her brother having acted without consulting her on the matter, and she foolishly gave vent to her irritation in words which might have spread discontent in the camp had they passed unre- proved. " Has Jehovah," said she, " indeed spoken only by Moses ? Has he not spoken also by us ? " It appeared as if she disputed his position as the head of the people, and wished herself and Aaron advanced to equal dignity. Her rank and influence demanded an instant vindication of Moses as the one leader chosen by God, and this fell on her in the grievous form of a visitation of the hateful Egyptian leprosy. From all but the highest eminence she was, in a moment, struck down beneath the lowest in the camp, and could no longer remain in it. There could be no more am bitious dreaming, no more insubordination, after so dreadful a lesson. It went to the heart even of Aaron, almost as keenly as -her own. "Alas, my lord," cried the humbled man to his mighty brother, "I beseech thoe, lay not these sins upon us wherein we have done foolishly, and wherein we have sinned. Let her not be like a dead-birth, born with its flesh half gone ! " 1 Birch's Ancient Egypt, p. 81. 124 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. "Heal her, O God!" entreated Moses. But the of fence was too great for immediate pardon, and it was only after her exclusion from the camp for seven days that she was allowed to return to her former soundness, The whole community felt the stroke, and remained in camp where it was till her restoration to them. This incident took place at a spot known in our ver sion as Hazeroth, — " The encampment," — in the wilder ness country of southern Palestine. Miriam's name is not mentioned again till her death, which took place towards the close of the long desert life of the tribes. They were wandering, apparently, in the arid district south-east of the Dead Sea/ — the wilderness of Zin — when her en I came. She was the first of the three illustrious ones to die, but she must have reached a good old age. Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he laid aside all earthly cares at Nebo;1 Aaron, a hundred and twenty-three when he died in Mount Hor ; 2 and Miriam's age, though not given, could hardly have been much less.3 The elder brother and sister passed away about the same time, for their deaths are both told in the same chapter,4 and Moses was left to finish his course alone. " She was buried," says Josephus, " on a mountain in Zin, and all the people mourned, in public lamenta tion for her, thirty days." He adds that " she died on the first day of the month called Xanthicus," nearly our April, so that she was laid among the spring flowers, before the burning heat of summer had come to try her once more. Traditions speak of her as the wife of Hur, and adds many legends of miracles wrought by her. 1 Deut. xxxiv. 7. 2 Num. xxxiii. 39. s Num. xx. 4 Josephus says she died in the end of the fortieth year of the wanderings, and that Aaron died in the same year (Ant., IV. 4. 6.) MIEIAM. 125 Of these Scripture says nothing, but it leaves us the noteworthy lesson that, even in those early ages, woman was held in high respect among the Hebrews. The day of her death was observed by the nation for ages, and the best evidence of her having merited an honour so great is found in her having been, first, the means of the rescue of Moses from Egyptian influences in his childhood, and, subsequently, in her life-long devotion to him, and her zeal in maintaining the worship of Jehovah among her own sex. The triumphal ode at the Exodus reveals a soul fitted to influence her sex, and shows that she used her grand position to do so for the noblest ends. Thb Top of Sinai. — Laborda JOSHUA. THE Exodus and the Forty Years' Wandering had demanded a Prophet to perform the signs and wonders of God, to receive and deliver to the people the Law, and to mould them, through long discipline, into a nation. The great work of conquest now before Israel required a soldier, and he appeared in the person of Joshua. The successor of Moses was a descendant of Ephraim, the son of Joseph, in the twelfth generation. His father's name, we are told, was Nun; and a Jewish tradition makes Miriam, the sister of Moses, his mother. His family was one of the most famous in their great tribe, for he himself is expressly named as one of " the heads of the children of Israel," J and his intimate relations with Moses, from the first, imply distinction of birth. Born in Egypt, Joshua was about forty years old at the time of the Great Deliverance, in which he probably held a high command, for we find him appointed general of the forces of Israel at their encounter with the rob ber-hordes of Amalek, while the newly-escaped multi tudes were still on the way to Mount Sinai. Even then his fitness for the future leader of the people must have 1 Num. xiii. 8. 126 JOSHUA. 127 been seen by Moses, for the execution of the curse denounced on the fierce, lawless marauders, after they were driven off, was expressly left to him to carry out.1 Cumbered as the Hebrews were, with women, children, and cattle, a sudden attack of the fierce outlaws of the desert had put everything in imminent peril, and it could have been no light task to drive them off with a hastily extemporized militia, to whom the use of arms must have been wholly new, and who had been long crushed and unmanned by slavery. But the stout heart of Joshua knew no fear. A simple, undaunted, straight forward soldier, he knew his duty and did it, and by his example, perhaps, as much as by his dispositions, hurled back the assailants. But his relations to Israel were very different from those of Moses, for while he fought, the victory was directly ascribed to the uplifted rod of the great Prophet, as the symbol of the resistless power of God. Whether Joshua was attached to Moses before this eventful day, as his personal attendant, is not told us ; but from this time he always appears in this character, as if brought into constant and confidential intercourse with the Head of the people, that he might be able, hereafter, to succeed him as its Leader. Henceforth his prospective dignity was foreshadowed by a change of name. Till the great day of the battle with Amalek he had been only Hosea — " Deliverance " or " Salva tion ; " henceforth he should be Joshua, or Jehoshuah — " The Salvation " or " Deliverance of Jehovah." The camp should see in him the great fact, and be reminded of it by the very change thus made in his name, that the deliverance on the day of Rephidim was not of man, but from above, and that in all the future glory 8 Exod. xvii. 14. 128 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. of Israel human power was only the instrument of a higher. No name was ever so illustrious, for in a later age it passed, in a Greek form, into that which is above all others — the name Jeius. At Sinai, Joshua was privileged, as the "minister" of Moses, to accompany him to the upper heights of the mountain,1 leaving " the elders " of the people, and even Aaron and Hur, behind, and in these awful soli tudes he waited for him till he returned from com munion with God on the summit. It was on their beginning their descent together that the noise of the feasting and rejoicing in honour of the golden calf, rising into the stillness of the hills, broke on their ears. True to his character as a soldier, the first thought of Joshua is,/that it was " the shouting of a battle ; " but Moses, in as natural keeping with his peaceful turn, familiar with religious festivities, at once recognised that it was not the shout of victory, nor the wails of the conquered, but the voice of singing and mirth.2 When the law had been proclaimed, and the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the nation settled in its leading features, steps were taken towards an im mediate entrance into Palestine from the south. To prepare the way, twelve chiefs were selected, one from each tribe, to go as spies and bring back a report, after having personally examined the strength and weakness of the land.3 From the encampment in the wilderness of Et Tih, in the south, they went through the whole country to the far north, travelling, most likely, in separate parties, to avoid suspicion. The fertility even of the southern districts, now so barren, was then astonishing, for long mounds of pebbles, on which vines were wont to be trained, are still seen in places 1 Exod. xxiv. 13. 2 Exod xxxii. 18. s Num. xiii. 1-16, JOSHUA. 129 now utterly unproductive l through neglect of irri gation. At Eshcol, not far from the present Ain Kadis, the Kadesh Barnea of the Book of Numbers, they ventured, as they were so near safety again, to cut a cluster from one of the vineyards, as a sample of the fertility of the land, of which it was a convincing proof, for it had to be carried on a pole, between two, to prevent its being crushed. But the strength of the country, the fierceness of the inhabitants, the towns of the Amorites on the tops of the hills, " walled," as it seemed, " up to heaven," the iron chariots and cavalry of the Canaanites of the coast and inland valleys, and the haughty bearing of the Amalekites of the central highlands, had overawed nearly all the exploring party. Two only, Caleb and Joshua,2 retained their self-possession and confidence, and the faint-heartedness of the emissaries struck terror into the people at large. Israel was, as yet, unequal to the task of the conquest of Palestine. For nearly forty years we hear no more of Joshua, except the one incident — still marking his soldier-like spirit of discipline — of his indignation at Eldad and Medad,3 presuming to "prophesy" without special authorization from Moses. He had no idea of any one acting in a public capacity except under orders. The close of the wanderings saw Joshua and Caleb the sole survivors of their generation. Moses was about to be taken, and Miriam and Aaron were already dead. It was necessary that Joshua should be formally consecrated, to the Leadership for which he had been so long marked out,4 and for this end the people were 1 Palestine Fund Reports,1870, p. 23. 2 Num. xiv. 6-9, 24. 3 Num. xi. 28, 29. 4 He was to be the Duke (" dux," leader), or, as would be said K 130 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. called to a solemn assembly ; Eleazar, the High Priest in succession to Aaron, set him apart by laying his hands on his head ; and Moses commended him to the congregation, and gave him special counsels in their hearing.1 No more legislation was needed; Moses himself had framed the laws of the future nation, and the. special want now was a brave and skilful soldier to lead it triumphantly into the land which was to be its permanent home. No maxims of statecraft were im pressed on him ; one, which suited his simple warrior- nature, was enough. " Ye shall not fear : for the Lord your God He shall fight for you." s " Be strong and of a good courage." 3 After the miraculous passage of the Jordan, Joshua's first step was to make a fortified camp at Gilgal, on the hills above Jericho, as his future centre of operations. The generation that had died in the wilderness had been fickle and unreliable, but their children, now at last on the soil of the land which, though theirs by Divine gift, had to be won by the sword, were resolute and trustworthy. To kindle a still stronger enthusiasm, however, was all important, for religious zeal was the one impulse sufficient to ensure victory in the task before them. Although eighty-five years of age, their leader was as full of fire as a young man. Spear in hand4 or slung at his back,5 he was present every where. Now, the camp was engrossed by the erection of a circle of huge stones taken from the Jordan, as a memorial of the crossing ; sacrifices on an altar within in German, the " Herzog " (literally, leader of an army), the equivalent of our " Duke." 1 Num. xxvii. 23 ; Deut. xxxi. 14, 23. 2 Deut. iii. 22. * Deut. xxxi. 23. 4 Josh. viii. 18, 26. « 1 Sam. xvii. 6. JOSHUA. 131 the circumference probably adding additional sacred- ness to the incident. The next day, the long neglected rite of circumcision, sacred even among the Egyptians and Canaanites, but a special sign among the Hebrews of their covenant relation to Jehovah as His chosen people, was once more honoured throughout the con gregation; and a few days later, the remembrance of the mighty deliverance of their fathers was kindled to a burning zeal for the task before themselves, by the celebration of the Passover, amidst great rejoicings, for the first time since leaving Sinai, nearly forty years before. To heighten the enthusiasm, the long-con tinued supply of manna suddenly ceased on the day after the festival; the wheat of Canaan henceforth taking its place. The past was ended ; a new era was before them. Even Joshua was not without his special excitement to zealous earnestness. While the border city of Jericho, the key of Palestine on the east, was yet unattacked, a Divine vision was vouchsafed to him. " A man stood over against him with his sword drawn in his hand," and when accosted by Joshua with his instinctive fearlessness, " Art thou for us or for our adversaries ? " announced that he had come as prince of the host of Jehovah, before whom their human leader was to " loose the shoe from off his foot," v as on holy ground. Jericho being taken, by the aid of a miracle, acting, it- may be, through an earthquake, the Hebrews were free to begin the conquest of the country, without dreading an attack on thei: rear. Three different campaigns brought the enterprise to a triumphant con clusion. Central Palestine was taken by an invasion to the north-west, in which Ai, Bethel, and Gibeon fell » Josh. v. 13-15. 132 OLD TESTAMENT CHAEACTEES. into the hands of Joshua. The chiefs of the different tribes and races, alarmed at the fall of Jericho and Ai, formed an alliance to drive back the enemy. Adoni- zedek — " The just lord " — " king " of Jerusalem ; Ho- ham, "king" of Hebron, in the south; Piram — "The' invincible," — "king" of Jarmuth, on the slopes of the Judasan hills, behind Ashdod ; Japhia — " The splendid," — " king " of Lachish, on the edge of the south country, behind Gaza; and Debir — "The oracle," — "king" of Eglon, about ten miles west from Lachish, joined with the five " kings " J of the Amorites, on the central hills of Judasa and Ephraim, to resist the threatened attack. The battle took place at Gibeon, among the steep, bare hills, and resulted in a great victory for Joshua, who drove the enemy in headlong rout down the two narrow and precipitous passes of Beth-horon, a little north-west of Jerusalem, and by miraculous aid dispersed and crushed them utterly. A rapid march to the south overcame all scattered hostility, and, henceforth, Cen tral Palestine, with the exception .of Jerusalem, was permanently in the hands of Israel. A campaign in the north followed, and here again Joshua conquered, for not even the cavalry and chariots of the Phoenicians could withstand the fierce onslaught and enthusiasm of his forces. A final march and a last battle, at Hebron, with the remnants of the gigantic aboriginal races, completed the great conquest, at least so far that the Hebrews had space enough to settle quietly in their new territory. The last years of Joshua were passed in well-deserved rest at Timnath-serah, in his own Ephraim. A solemn assembly of the people, called at Shechem, renewed 1 The sheik of a petty Arab encampment still bears the name " Melek," translated " king " in our version. JOSHUA. 133 the national covenant of 'fidelity to Jehovah, and the work of dividing the country into portions for each tribe followed. It is a striking sign of the personal influence of Joshua, that during his lifetime there was no attempt at resisting his authority, or even at forsaking the wor ship of Jehovah for that of idols, which, however, soon began after his death. His last public act had been an attempt to pledge them to lasting fidelity to Jehovah, and he died and was buried in his. own town, in the fond belief that his people would continue in the path marked out for them by Moses and himself. Joshua is one of the few characters in history dis figured by no stain. He realized the ideal of a devout warrior; stern when duty required, but tender where possible, and always loyal to his conscience and his God. He had been taught to command in age by serv ing in youth ; and he earned, by manly vigour and fear lessness, an honoured rest for his later years. Israel could have had no- leader more fitted for her wants at the time. Fearless, simple, reverent, he had no higher conception than duty. Like Moses, he did not transmit his power to his family, though he had no such reason as that -of Moses, whose children, as Jewish only on their father's side, might have been rejected by. a nation so exclusive. In his old age his position must have been lonely in the extreine, for 'he was the last survivor, by many years, of the vast host who had escaped from Egypt;. He lived to the age of a hundred and ten, the patriarch of his race, and at last passed away leaving" a name • held in everlasting honour.