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habitants, but who had never set foot there himself, and who knew not the effects of the conquest.

1. He was clearly not in Canaan when he wrote. This is plain from the use of the phrase in the land of Canaan, which is frequently in his mouth when speaking in his own person of places well known to all the inhabitants. Thus he speaks of 'Hebron in the land of Canaan' (Gen. xxiii. 2, 19), as the place where Sarah died, precisely as Jacob does, when he was in Egypt (Gen. xlix. 30). So also of Shechem which is in the land of Canaan' (Gen. xxxiii. 18), and of Luz, which is in the land of Canaan (Gen. xxxv. 6). Historians do not write so of distinguished places belonging to their native country, much less when they are writing for their fellow-countrymen actually living on the spot.

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2. There is nothing in the whole course of the work to show that minute knowledge of the country which results from personal examination, but only such as Moses could have derived from the old traditions and written documents of the nation, from the accounts, whether private or official, of the Egyptians, and from the forty days' careful exploration of the spies (Num. xiii. 18-20). This appears from the general terms in which the boundaries of Canaan are laid down in Num. xxxiv. 1-12, so inferior in detail to those given after the conquest. On the east and west there was no need for particulars. For on the one side the Jordan and the lakes, and on the other the Mediterranean, were marked enough. The south boundary must have been best known to those who lay so long in its neighbourhood. Yet even that is less specific (Num. xxxiv. 3-5), than the one given in Joshua xv. 15; and far inferior, of course, to the chain of towns enumerated in Jos. xv. 21-32. But the difference between the two authors is better seen in the drawing out

of the northern boundary (Num. xxxiv. 7-9), compared with Jos. xiii. 4-6, in which latter both mountain and town are specified with more exact detail.

3. As the boundaries assigned to Israelitic Canaan in the Pentateuch were never realised in fact, it is clear that the historian speaks from a point of view antecedent to the conquest. The Mediterranean is declared to be the western limit (Num. xxxiv. 6). And yet not even under David did the long Tyrian strip of coast come into the hands of Israel; and it may be questioned whether the northern limit was ever reached (Num. xxxiv. 7-9). There can be little doubt, that, had the author known the facts of the conquest, he would have spoken both more specifically, and more in harmony with the history.

§ 4.-Historian of the Pentateuch wrote for those who knew Egypt and the Desert, but not Canaan.

There are, besides, frequent indications that the author was writing for those very Hebrews who knew Egypt and the desert, and had yet to know personally the topography of Canaan. He never thinks it necessary to speak of Egypt otherwise than as one addressing a native. Goshen is not directly described nor localised. The position of towns or castles is to be gathered only from incidental remarks, or a knowledge of Egyptian geography. Thus it is with On, Ramses, Pithom, Tanis, Migdol, Etham, Pihahiroth, Baalzephon, Succoth. It is not even thought necessary to name the capital city, where Pharaoh and Joseph lived, as it was so well known to all who lived in Goshen hard by (Gen. xlv. 10); the very name of the great Pharaoh is passed over, as one sure to be embalmed. with his memory in the hearts of the grateful Israelites.

It is from Egypt that the author takes his illustrations,

when he wants his readers to have a definite idea of a subject. Thus the Jordan district, before the destruction. of Sodom had changed its face, is compared to the land of Egypt as thou comest unto Zoar' (Gen. xiii. 10). Where we should note, first, that the illustration is from. the beauty and fertility distinguishing a certain part of Egypt; and secondly, that the reader is supposed to be travelling, not like a Canaanite from Zoar southward to Egypt, but, like the Hebrews at the Exodus, from Egypt northeastward to Zoar.

Thus also the antiquity of Hebron is judged of by comparison with that of Zoan or Tanis, which is supposed to be quite well known (Num. xiii. 22). 'Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.' If, as the researches of Mariette and other Egyptian scholars lead us to believe, Tanis was the renowned Hycsos city of Avaris, it becomes quite intelligible how the Hebrews living in Egypt knew all about it. It lay on the borders of Goshen; it had been a stronghold of the former Semitic invaders; probably the Hebrews had occupied it themselves for a time; it was embellished by their great persecutor Ramses II., and no doubt with their forced labours; and it was in the plains of Tanis that Moses performed those wonders that resulted in the Exodus (Ps. lxxviii. 43). To the Hebrews of any other period the comparison would have conveyed no information whatever.

It was only they, besides, who could be supposed to know anything of the Egyptian language. That the historian gave his readers credit for such knowledge is plain from his taking no trouble to explain the Egyptian words, which occasionally turn up in his work, and which must have had great interest for the Hebrew. (See Gen. xli. 43, 45.)

Particular usages also, although sometimes noticed as

Egyptian (Gen. xliii. 32; in Gen. xlvi. 34, it is Joseph who makes the remark) in contradistinction to the customs of Israel (for the author sometimes looks expressly to posterity), are frequently merely hinted at, and taken for granted as understood. Such were the periodical ceremonial visits of Pharaoh to the Nile, and so many other traits of national manners before referred to.

His readers were evidently well acquainted, too, with the desert. For he does not think of explaining to those who had the facts before their eyes, the difficulty, which could not fail to rise in the mind of anyone else, about the supply of shittim wood; nor of specifying what he meant by towards the desert (Ex. xvi. 10), a phrase intelligible only to those who knew the position of the camp; nor of localising by the smallest trait so many of the stations catalogued in Num. xxxiii.

As to Canaan, they are far less acquainted with it than he is. For, as in Deuteronomy he is obliged to particularise very minutely the position of Ebal and Garizim, in order to ensure the speedy performance of the grand ceremonial of taking solemn possession of Canaan in the name of Jehovah (Deut. xi. 29, 30), so in Genesis we find him writing with this same idea of his reader's ignorance in his mind. To pass over his frequent juxtaposition of new and old names (Gen. xiv. 2, 7, 17, xxiii. 2, xxxv. 19), in order that the places, hallowed to the Hebrew by their old patriarchal names, may be the more easily identified after crossing the Jordan, we may take as an example the fountain where Hagar was found by the angel (Gen. xvi. 7-14). To a native Israelite it would have been sufficiently characterised as the well Lahai-roi (Gen. xvi. 14). For independently of its connection with Abraham and the purity of the race, it was a favourite resort of Isaac's (Gen. xxiv. 62, xxv. 11). But our

author speaks of it as a fountain of water in the desert,' 'the fountain on the way to Shur' (v. 7); and after giving the history, he determines it by its name, and adds, as if its position was unknown: Behold it is between Kadesh and Bered' (Gen. xvi. 14).

§ 5.-Historian of the Pentateuch is master of the minute statistics of the Exodus.

The author's precise knowledge of the dates, men, and statistics of the Exodus is as conspicuous as his familiarity with its localities, and is embodied in documents which must have been drawn up at the time. No doubt, a later writer may incorporate original documents with his own composition; and it would be sorry logic to conclude, that, if he did so, he showed a personal acquaintance with the men or things described in them. But, on the one hand, there is no reason, as we shall see at large in the next volume, to break up the story of the Exodus into fragments, and separate original from later documents; and, on the other, it is by showing singly the contemporaneousness of the different parts of the history with the events, that the authorship of the whole as to time is made out. Looking, therefore, at the author's dates, when he has a motive for specifying them particularly, we find him exact and precise. This is concisely put by a profound critic: After the overthrow of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, the Israelites advanced three days into the wilderness of Shur, and came to Marah; on the fifteenth day of the second month after the Exodus, they arrived at the desert of Sin between Elim and Sinai ; on the following day they had the manna to eat; on the first day of the third month they encamped at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moses now ascended the mountain. On

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