beginning. In this very narrative there is a plain indication of the oracle set up in Micah's house in connection with the ephod. For that is implied in the Danite request: Pray ask of God that we may know,' &c. (xviii. 5); and in the priestly response: Go in peace; before Jehovah is the way wherein ye go (xviii. 6).

The teraphim, moreover, which are so frequently found associated with divination and magic (2 Kings xxiii. 24; Zech. x. 2; Ezech. xxi. 26), and which seem to be the idolatrous or superstitious equivalents of the Urim and Thummim, are brought into immediate connection with the ephod here (Jud. xvii. 5 ; xviii. 14, 18, 20), as well as in Hos. iii. 4; and thus confirm the idea of the oracular use to which the ephod was put. Micah had in this way fallen upon what he thought an effectual means of enriching himself; and it was precisely because the appointment was so complete, with its priest and images, both carved and molten, with its ephod and divining teraphim, that it tempted the Danite rovers, and induced them to carry it off to their new conquest (Jud. xviii. 13-31).

The ephod of Gideon is the only other case to be disposed of; and in it we can find nothing to show that it was a statue or image of any kind. The ordinary sense of the word is quite suitable to the context. Gideon, as the extraordinary lay chief of the State, loved perhaps, according to the way of rulers, to have the regular highpriestly head of the theocracy within his reach, and under his control. He could reasonably wish, at any rate, to consult him in important emergencies, as Joshua had done Eleazar (Num. xxvii. 21); and to facilitate this, it was an obvious expedient to prepare a rich ephod, which the High Priest could put on when summoned to

Ophra on matters of state. The experiment was, indeed, a perilous one among a people so prone to run after superstitions, and to seek counsel from lying divinities rather than from Jehovah. And this was the snare pointed out in the story: not that it was an image of Jehovah, or of any false deity. So that we have no reason whatever to suppose that in this case the word ephod stands for image.

Vatke, indeed, asks how it was possible to expend such a mass of gold as 1,700 shekels on a vestment? 1

The golden shekel is set down at 129 grains: 2 whence it is easy to compute both the weight and the value of the robe. In weight it did not come up to 40 pounds troy; nor in value to the gold of 2,000l. Such a weight supported on the shoulders has nothing formidable; and such a value sinks into insignificance beside the celebrated coat of Prince Esterhazy, valued at 200,000l. Probably the golden rings of the booty were attached to the ephod, like the scales on a coat of mail. But they may have been partly drawn into threads for cloth of gold, partly fashioned into ornamental shapes, and partly exchanged for precious stones and other costly material.

Vatke's further appeal to 7 in Is. xxx. 22, decides the question against him. For there the idea is taken from the wrapping of a costly garment. Hence Benisch translates well the overlaying of thy graven images of silver, and the wrapping of thy molten images of gold.'

XII.

Kalisch's second reason for rejecting the Mosaic origin of the Levitical laws is in these words: The execution of

1 Die Religion des Alten Testaments, pp. 267-269, note 1.

2 See Weights and Measures in Smith's Dict. of Bib. Antiquities.

those ordinances argues a degree of religious education utterly at variance with the multifarious forms of perverse idolatry to which the Hebrews were addicted up to the sixth century.'1

This objection confounds the execution of an ordinance with its enactment. Obedience to the laws of Leviticus was, no doubt, utterly incompatible with the simultaneous existence of Hebrew idolatry. But it was with this view that they were made; and Moses would have done but little for his frail countrymen, unless he had taken such means as stringent laws afforded to preserve them from that greatest of all crimes. It is a poor argument against the existence of a law, that its provisions were sadly neglected. The idea, however, that underlies this reasoning is, that the Levitical code is the product of a national development in religion; that, on comparing its enactments with the simplicity of patriarchal times, we find them to 'imply a bound in religious progress destructive of all regular continuity; '2 and that to arrive at the view from which they sprung, it required the guidance of long and varied experience.' In working out his theory the author displays much learning and ingenuity. It may recommend itself, perhaps, to those who, assuming beforehand that Moses was not the lawgiver, are obliged to fall back upon some romancing process of construction to account for the phenomena of the book. But it has no power whatever to divest Moses of those legislatorial rights which we have proved to be his due.

Development from within is not the only source of a nation's code of laws; much less, when the original lawgiver is known to have enjoyed a transcendently higher civilisation than the people whom he wished to bring up,

2 Ib.

' Ib. p. 44.

p.

19.

3 Ib. p. 22.

Christianity did not

as far as possible, to his own level. evolve itself spontaneously out of the feelings and philosophy and institutions of the Roman world; nor even from the existing Judaism of the period. It came from without; and, nevertheless, succeeded in blending together, and lifting to a superior order, the old remains of an effete civilisation and the new elements of barbarian vigour. And if it took centuries to do the work, it was not because the instrument gradually gained in perfection as it grew in years, but from the immensity of the surface to be covered, and the inherent weakness of nations as of individuals. So with the Hebrews at the Exodus. Before that event they had no organisation fit to initiate any system of legislation. It was reserved for the creative genius, that planned and carried out the liberation of two millions of men, to mould them into a nationality worthy of their grand old traditions, and of the sublime destinies in store for those in whom were to be blessed all the nations of the earth. It was, indeed, a bound from the superstitions and idolatry of Egypt to the pure unadulterated monotheism of the Pentateuch. But, to say nothing of the inspiration of the lawgiver, it was a bound already prepared on the part of the people by all the traditionary memories so dear to their heart, and on the part of Moses, who gave the impetus, by the wisdom and experience and religious meditation of eighty years. The Levitical laws, said to be so pure, so elevated, so free from worldly alloy,' contain no purer or higher notions of the Divinity than are found in the Decalogue: which, nevertheless, is allowed to come from Moses, even by those who labour to reduce it in bulk, or change it in form. So that it is as much against analogy as against history to contest, on

1 Ib. p. 42.

such grounds, the Mosaic origin of the laws contained in Leviticus.

We have seen already (pp. 285-287), that they were drawn up when Aaron and his sons were still alive; and that they are so cast in the mould of the desert and of Egypt (pp. 283-305), that no Hebrew, at the Babylonian period, or at any time after the Exodus, could possibly have made them what they are. Nay, some of them, as Kalisch himself acknowledges,' are of such a nature that their observance in Canaan at any time whatsoever was an absolute impossibility. It was only in the desert, when all the tribes were encamped in close proximity to the tabernacle, that they could be followed out. Such especially is the law of Lev. xvii. 1-5, where the sacrificial animals killed for the use of the table are ordered to be first presented at the tabernacle door; and hence, as Israel was about to cross the Jordan, it was abrogated by Moses himself in Deuteronomy (xii. 15). Imagine a law like that fabricated by men of high cultivation and considerable power of thought '2 at the time of the captivity!

Kalisch, indeed, says: The expedient by which it has been attempted to reconcile this discrepancy, namely that the law in Leviticus treats of the period of the wanderings in the desert, that in Deuteronomy of the time of the settlement in Canaan, is untenable; for the injunction of Leviticus concludes with the words, "This shall be a statute for ever to them throughout their generations." Without consulting the text, common sense feels that such an interpretation would make sad havoc with the brains that framed the law. But when we look into it, we see that the clause should be confined to the negative com

1 Ib. pp. 20-22.

2 Ib. p. 57.

Ib. p. 39, note 9.