and are at once annihilated by the certainty that Moses was the author who used the words.

As for Salem, it would be a pleasure to feel that the city of Melchizedek was really Jerusalem. The name, at all events, is more ancient than David, or even Moses. For on the monuments of Rameses the Great it appears among the cities of Canaan as

§ 3.-Archeological Difficulties.

I.

Shaluma.1

The first archeological difficulty is deduced from Ex. xvi. 36: Now an omer is the tenth part of an ephah.' This explanation seems to have originated in a change of time, the measure having gone out of use. Here Hengstenberg, after Michaelis and Kanne, contends that omer is not the name of a measure, but of a common earthen vessel of a definite size, whose proportion to the ephah is given to determine more exactly the quantity of manna collected. We abide by the view of Gesenius, Lee, and other lexicographers, which is in all respects the more natural one, that omer means a measure.'

2

What is an omer? Is it the name of a statutory measure of capacity, or merely of a vessel corresponding roughly in its cubic contents to the tenth part of an ephah?

Were the question one of mere antiquarian interest, it might be safely left in the hands of professed archeologists. But when our opponents make it a question, which is to decide whether or not Moses wrote the Pentateuch, it becomes us to ascertain what strange virtue there is in the word, to prove the possession of 3000 years to be an 2 Davidson, ib. p. 4.

1 Denkm. Ab. iii. Bl. 156.

usurpation. After all, we find it to be nothing more than what is derived from a view of Gesenius, Lee, and other lexicographers.' Strange, that a view of some learned critics, opposed by others equally learned, should be allowed to decide an objective fact of such moment!

Davidson, however, thinks that his view is in all respects the most natural one, that omer means a measure.' Perhaps the reader may find the following considerations to tell more powerfully in favour of the opposing view, that omer is not a measure.

1. The word nowhere appears in those Mosaic laws that regulate quantities according to the standard weights and measures. There, where we should naturally expect the statutory measure to be named, the equivalent of the omer occurs more than twenty times, either as 'the tenth part of an ephah' (Lev. v. 11, vi. 20; Numb. v. 15, xxviii. 5), or simply as the tenth' (Lev. xiv. 10, 21, xxiii. 13, 17, xxiv. 5; Numb. xv. 6, 9, xxviii. 13, 21, 29). If omer in the days of Moses was the statutory measure, why, in his laws, should he always use the fractional expression, or the ungraceful circumlocution? In such cases, at least, as two tenths' (Lev. xxiii. 13), he would surely have stumbled upon two omers' instead. Of course we here assume, not only in our right of defendants attacked, but also as possessors who have made good our claim by evidence, that these laws are really Mosaic. And it would be most arbitrary and uncritical to suppose, that in these laws, infinitely more sacred in the eyes of the Hebrew than the twelve tables in the eyes of the Roman, a modernising process should have been allowed to deface the features of the venerable code, and to have struck out of the legislation a word that was preserved in the history. The tenth is found in those Levitical laws, which Bleek, Bertheau, and others have

been compelled to acknowledge, as proceeding in their present shape from the hand of Moses (Lev. v. 11, vi. 20, xiv. 21).1

2. The word occurs in no other metrical system, that could have influenced that of the Hebrews; not in the Babylonian, apparently the mother of all the metrical systems of antiquity; not in the Egyptian, whence the Hebrews borrowed their hin, and probably their ephah ; not in the Phenician, which had so much in common with the Hebrews.2

3. The decimal relation of the omer to the ephah is a fact that militates against its comparative antiquity. For it is the usual opinion among the learned,3 that the duodecimal system is the most ancient one. The relative scale of dry measures among the Hebrews is :

6

On which the able writer, who contributes Weights and Measures' to Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,' remarks: The above scale is constructed, it will be observed, on a combination of decimal and duodecimal ratios, the former prevailing with respect to the omer, ephah, and homer, and the latter in respect to the cab, seah, and ephah. In the liquid measure the duodecimal ratio alone appears, and hence there is a fair presumption that this was the original, as it was undoubtedly the most general principle on which the scales of antiquity were framed (Boeckh, p. 38).' Had the name, therefore, of

1 See Bleek, Einleitung, pp. 183, ff.

2 See Böckh. Metrologische Untersuchungen; and Smith's Bib. Ant. art. Weights and Measures.

3 See Böckh, Metrologische Untersuchungen, pp. 37, 38; Munk, Palestine, p. 399; Smith, Dict. of the Bible, art. Weights and Measures.

any of the old measures dropped gradually out of use, it would be much more natural to look for it in the still older names that belong to the duodecimal ratio.

4. As it was by the omer that each family among the Hebrews was to measure the morning-gathering of manna, we must suppose that every household was in possession of one. It would be a fact unique in the history of the world, that the statutory measure should have been in the hands of every single Hebrew family in the deserts of Arabia, at a time when their national organisation had not yet begun, and when their hurried flight from Egypt made them leave much behind.

We are, therefore, driven to the conclusion that the omer was no statutory measure whatever. What then was it? The Arabic furnishes a clue to the mystery. For the Arabs use the very word to designate a small goblet which they carry with them in their journeys through the desert. No doubt the Hebrews endeavoured to supply as soon as possible their wants in kitchen utensils, as well as in other things. Jethro's Midianite Arabs, who were traders even in the time of Joseph, were at hand to furnish them with the most convenient appliances in their nomadic life. Or more probably they had their immediate wants supplied, as soon as they crossed the Red Sea. For there near Ayûn Musa are still to be seen such remains of pottery, as convinced Monge that it was the site of an ancient pottery work.' The omer,

furnished to every family at the entry of the desert, may, with great probability, be accounted for in this way. The word was clearly a fugitive one among the Hebrews. For in the sense it bears in Ex. xvi. it occurs nowhere else in the Bible. Both the name and the vessel, there

1 Robinson, Bib. Res. &c. vol. i. p. 63.

fore, seem to have come from Arabia. We see, thus, how naturally the omer became the vessel appointed to contain the manna in the sanctuary; and also why it was necessary to state its cubic contents, and inform posterity that it was equal to the tenth part of an ephah.'

II.

'In Ex. xxx. 13, xxxviii. 24, 25, 26, as already remarked, we have mention made of a shekel, "after the shekel of the sanctuary," before there was, according to the story, any sanctuary in existence. This is clearly an oversight,' indicating a much later date than the age of Moses and the Exodus.'

6

To this objection of Colenso two valid answers may be given:

6

1. The word, which in some versions is really translated sanctuary,' properly means holiness.' It is an abstract noun, and is very frequently placed after another in the genitive to denote that the noun which it governs belongs to the class of sacred things. The literal translation, therefore, is shekel of holiness,' which phrase is best expressed in our idiom by sacred shekel.' We cannot suppose that the erection of the sanctuary was necessary to confer this sacredness on any object. There was a Hebrew religion, there were Hebrew priests and Hebrew rites, before the Mosaic ceremonial was introduced. Both the idea and the word were familiar to the Israelites long before the tabernacle was heard of; and no doubt, among them, as among other nations, what was put under the guardianship of religion was esteemed and called sacred. Such was the case precisely with weights and measures