Authorship of the Book of Deuteronomy,
With its Bearings on the Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch
By J. W. McGarvey
Part First - Evidences for the Late Date
Section 6
Internal Evidence for the Late Date.1. From the Expression, "Beyond Jordan." The first verse of the Book of Deuteronomy corresponds to the modern title-page of a book. It reads: "These be the words which Moses spake nnto all Israel beyond Jordan in the wilderness, in the Arabah over against Suph, between Paran, and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Dizahab." It announces the authorship of what follows, and represents it as having been delivered orally; and it fixes with precision the locality in which the speaking was done. It was done "beyond Jordan," "in the wilderness," "in the Arabah," the Hebrew name for the Jordan valley; and "between" certain places then well known, but now unknown. In the fifth verse, which is more immediately introductory to the speech that follows, the locality is again fixed by the remark, "Beyond Jordan in the land of Moab began Moses to declare this law." These remarks are held by the adverse critics as equivalent to an assertion that Moses did not write the book. Moses is definitely located "in the land of Moab," which was certainly east of the Jordan, and as the author styles this "beyond Jordan," he locates himself west of the Jordan, and thereby distinguishes himself from Moses, seeing that Moses never crossed the river. Not only so, but no Israelite crossed the river till after the death of Moses, consequently no Israelite wrote the book while Moses was living. It must have been written after the death of Moses, and how long after is to lie determined by other sources of information. Professor Driver expresses the argument in the following form:
It is true that in these selected passages the phrase is used for the country east of the Jordan; but the professor has made a selection to suit his argument, and as an exhibition of the meaning of the original phrase it is misleading. A complete induction would have showed that it is used for both sides of the Jordan. In Deut. xi. 30 Moses says of the mountains Gerizim and Ebal: "Are they not 'beyond Jordan' by the way where the sun goeth down, in the land of the Canaanites?" In Numbers, while the phrase is used in xxii. 1 and xxxiv. 15 for the country east of the river, as stated by Driwr, it is used in xxxii. 19 for that west of the river; for the two and a half tribes say: "We will not inherit with them beyond Jordan, or forward; because our inheritance isfallen to us on this side Jordan eastward." Again, while the passages cited by Driver from Joshua and Judges are correctly represented, there are others in the same books which have the opposite reference. For example, in Josh. v. 1 and ix. 1 the tribes and kings in western Palestine are said to be "beyond Jordan," and in Judg. vii. 25 the heads of Oreb and Zeeb are brought to Gideon "beyond Jordan" while Gideon was yet on the western side of the river (comp. viii. 4). But the decisive fact is, that the phrase in question is frequently used for the side of the river on which the speaker or writer stood, and that therefore the original preposition did not have the meaning and force of our English word "beyond." The first example is in Num. xxxii. 19, already quoted. The two and a half tribes say: "We will not inherit with them 'beyond Jordan' forward; because our inheritance is fallen to us 'beyond Jordan' eastward." Here "beyond" in the latter clause represents the same preposition (eber) in the original as in the former clause, and it should bo translated by the same word in English. Of the translation we shall have something to say further on. Each side of the river is here called "beyond Jordan," and the two are distinguished by adding "forward" to one, and "eastward" to the other. In Dent . iii. 8 Moses, standing east of the Jordan, says: "We took at that time out of the hand of the two kings of the Amorites the land that was 'beyond Jordan' from the river of Arnon unto mount Hermon;" but the land was on the same side with the speaker. The Book of Joshua was -certainly written west of the Jordan, yet the writer, in his two remarks already quoted (v. 1; ix. 1), speaks of the tribes of Canaan and the kings of Canaan as being "beyond Jordan." The same is true of the author of Judges, who speaks of Gideon as being "beyond Jordan," when he was on the same side with the writer (viii. 4). This usage continues even into the latest books of the Old Testament. In II. Kings iv. 24 Solomon is said to have dominion over all the region "beyond the river," though all were on the same side of the river with the writer. In Ezra viii. 36 the writer speaks of "the governors beyond the river," meaning those on the same side with himself; and in I. Chron. xxvi. 30 the writer, who was undoubtedly in Palestine, speaks of men who were "beyond Jordan westward." These examples demonstrate that the Hebrew preposition (eber) translated "beyond," does not, by its own force, locate its object on the opposite side from him who uses it. They demonstrate that the opening words of Deuteronomy, "These be the words which Moses spake to all Israel beyond Jordan in the wilderness," may have been written by Moses as certainly as by any other writer, and that the argument based upon thorn is worthless. Andrew Harper's presentation of the argument under discussion has some marks of originality, and it must not be passed by. He says:
Notwithstanding the extreme confidence with which Mr. Harper here speaks, claiming that there is no doubt of his conclusion, the premises from which he argues are baseless assumptions; for we have already seen that the expression "beyond Jordan" does not by its own force locate either the speaker or the person spoken of, and so his first set of references are void of the significance which he attaches to them; and as to the use of the phrase in iii. 8, this verse is not the beginning of the archaeological note which he rightly regards as a comment by a later hand. This note, as any one can see at a glance, begins not at verse 8, but at verse 11. Professor Driver, though not so positive in his tone as Mr Harper, is very persistent in maintaining the force of this phrase in the opening verses of Deuteronomy; and well he might be, for on it, and it alone, depends the constant assertion of his class of critics that this book does not profess to have come from the hand of Moses. He says on the same page quoted above:
Here the professor betrays the fact, which he nowhere else openly sets forth, that the phrase is used of the side on which the writer stood; and this fact, I must insist again, nullifies completely the argument that is based on the expression. But, passing from this point in the extract, how does the fact that the habit of viewing the regions on the two sides of Jordan as contrasted with each other, imply residence in Palestine? Does a man have to reside in a country in order to view the regions on the two sides of a river in that country as contrasted with each other? Does a man have to reside in the United States in order to view the two regions on the two sides of the Mississippi as contrasted with each other? Does not every man who has ever seen a river, know that it has two sides, and that the two sides are contrasted with each other, so that if one is the west side, the other is the east, or if one is the northern, the other is the southern? And did not the Israelites, from the time they first heard of the Jordan, know this much about it? And when at last they were encamped on one side of it, close to its bank, where Moses is said to have spoken the contents of this Book of Deuteronomy, could they not see the contrast between this and the other side which was their promised land? To ask these questions is to answer them, and to show that in making this argument the learned professor did not see an inch before his face. The confusion apparent in these arguments of the critics has arisen from an improper use of the English preposition "beyond." It is impossible that a Hebrew preposition whose object is sometimes located on the same side of the river with, the person who uses it, can be uniformly translated "beyond.'' Yet this is what the revisers of our English version have attempted. They attempted it, but were compelled in a few instances to vary their rendering in order to avoid misstating the facts. For example, in I. Kings iv. 24, where it is said of Solomon that "he had dominion over all the region on this side of the river, from Tiphsah to Gaza, even over all the kings on this side the river," had they rendered the word "beyond" instead of "on this side," in both clauses, they would have had Solomon reigning over the region and the kings north of the Euphrates. Again, had they clung to their chosen rendering in Num. xxxii. 1!), they would have made the Reubenites say,. "We will not inherit with them beyond Jordan forward: because our inheritance is fallen to us beyond Jordan eastward;" thus locating the speakers on both sides of the river at one time. Yet again, in I. Sam. xiv. 4, where the waiter speaks of the two crags that were between the camp of Saul and that of the Philistines, they would have said, "There was a rocky crag beyond, and a rocky crag beyond," instead of saying, "on this side" and "on the other side." In all of these instances they were compelled to follow the version which they were revising. The revisers have in some instances, where they adhere to the rendering "beyond," committed the very mistake which in the three last cited they avoided by following the old version. For example, they make Moses say in Deut. iii. 8, "We took at that time out of the hands of the two kings of the Amorites the land that was beyond Jordan from the river Arnon to mount Hermon," though the land mentioned was not beyond Jordan, but on the same side with Moses. They make Joshua say to the two and a half tribes before they crossed the river, "Your wives, your little ones and your cattle shall remain in the land which Moses gave you beyond Jordan," when it was not beyond, but on the same side of the river with themselves; and they make the author of the Book of Joshua, who unquestionably wrote in the country west of the river, speak of "all the kings which were beyond Jordan westward." They were not beyond Jordan, but on the same side with himself. King James' translators recognized the ambiguity of this Hebrew preposition, and wisely attempted no uniformity in ita rendering. They ascertained as best they could from the context, the only source of information in case of ambiguous words, on which side of the river the speaker or writer stood, and translated accordingly. They render it on this side, on the other side, or beyond, as the context requires, arid in no instance have they made their renderings contradict the facts. The critics could have learned from the very translation which some of them helped to revise, if not from their own knowledge of Hebrew, that they were committing an error. This translation has the opening sentence of Deuteronomy rendered, "These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilderness" (verse 1), and, "On this side Jordan in the land of Moab" (verse 5) ; and thus it locates the writer of the book on the same side of the river with Moses. This is certainly correct if either Moses or one of his contemporaries wrote this preface. It is only after reaching the conclusion in some other way that some one west of the river wrote it, that any scholar could think of rendering the preposition "beyond." As this rendering was suggested by this preconception, it can not furnish evidence that the preconception is correct. One might as well attempt to make the roof of the house support the foundation. The argument, then, by which critics attempt to make the Book of Deuteronomy claim for itself an author who lived west of the Jordan and after the death of Moses, is a fallacy unworthy of modern scholarship. 2. Passages Implying Dates Long After the Events. Professor Driver says:
In this argument the expression "at that time" is pressed into a service which is contrary to its nature. It does not, and it can not, of itself, show that the interval which it implies is either a long one or a short one. The interval, whether long or short, is to be ascertained from the context, and not from this expression. I may say, Yesterday at sunset the sky was clear, and no one at that time expected foul weather to-day; or I may say, Just one year ago to-day our country was engaged in war, and at that time no one expected the peaceful times that we now enjoy. Admiral Dewey might have said in his report of the battle of Manila, I entered the bay at night, and at that time I knew not at what moment my ship might be blown up by hidden torpedoes. Thousands of instances of such use of the expression might be adduced. Why should it be thought, then, that this expression, when used by Moses, or when put into his mouth by another, must mean a longer period than six months in the past? In the passages cited, Moses says, or is made to say, of Sihon: "We smote him and his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time." At what time? At the time when we smote him. This was done probably less than three months previous. If that was not long enough for the expression "at that time," what should Moses have said? Let the critic tell us. In the next passage Moses speaks of Og, and says: "We smote him until there was nothing left to him remaining. And we took all his cities at that time." Ought he to have said, "at this time"? In the next, referring to the same two conquests, Moses says: "W& took the land at that time out of the hand of the two kings of the Amorites." The next is a repetition of the same thought, and the next is the statement: "I commanded you at that time, saying, Jehovah your God hath given you this land to possessit." Finally he tells the people: "At that time I besought Jehovah to let me go over into the promised land." This argument is so ill conceived, and even puerile, that I would be ashamed to spend time on it were it not that it has. been handed down in a traditionary way from critical father to critical son, as though it were a rich inheritance.(1) In Driver's book its nakedness is covered up by referring to the passages with Arabic figures and avoiding the quotation of a single one. Driver's second argument on the same passage is this:
Yes; he does thus address them. He says, "Thou shalt remember all the way which Jehovah thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness," etc. And why should he not? It is true that all of those who were over twenty years of age when they crossed the Rod Sea had died, but all, or nearly all, who were twenty years old or under when they crossed the sea were alive, and could remember every incident of the forty years. They were between forty and sixty years of age. The rest had been born during the forty years, some in one year and some in another, down to the youngest person standing there to hear; and the boys and girls only ten years of age had heard the whole story told by their elders a thousand times. Who is it that betrays himself here, the writer of the book, or the critic who invented, and the others who have blindly accepted this blundering criticism? The third argument is expressed in these lines:
Here the professor was about to put his feet on thin ice, hut he drew back in time. Of course, these antiquarian notices are glosses, as any one can see who will observe how rudely every one of them breaks the close connection of thought in the words preceding and following it. At the beginning of every one of them the speaker's voice is suspended, and another person speaks through the parenthesis. Whether Moses is the speaker, or the hypothetical Deuteronomist, as these parentheses are by a different hand, they can furnish no evidence against the Mosaic authorship. Yet they do furnish evidence unfavorable to the date of Deuteronomy assumed by these critics. For after the days of Josiah, and in the absence of all historic documents earlier than the eighth century, what living Israelite knew anything, or could know anything, about the Emim, the Horites, the Zamzummim, the Awim, and others whose movements are mentioned in these notes? And if he did, what imaginable motive could he have had for interpolating these statements about them in the supposed speech of Moses? There is no answer to these questions. On the other hand, if Moses actually made these speeches, there were men living at the time, and for a generation or two after the time, who may have had possession of these facts, and who through an antiquarian interest may have made the interpolations. Whatever bearing these notes have, then, on the question of authorship, it is decidedly, if not conclusively, in favor of Moses. Driver's fourth argument, on the same page, is no more satisfactory than either of the preceding:
If this is true, then the Deuteronomist, with all his skill in simulating Moses, either betrayed himself at this point, or thought, contrary to Professor Driver, that these words were natural under the circumstances. We can judge whether he or his critics are correct, only by taking the expression in its connections. First, then, "Remember what Jehovah thy God did to Miriam by the way as ye came forth out of Egypt." Was it unnatural, at the close of the forty years, for Moses to say this? Did not the leprosy of Miriam occur "by the way as they came forth out of Egypt"? Second, "Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way as ye came forth out of Egypt." Is there anything unnatural in this? Did not Amalek do this by the way? Third, the Ammonites and Moabites are censured, "because they met you not with bread and water in the way when ye came forth out of Egypt." Does this use of the expression differ from the others? In all these instances the words, "as ye came forth out of Egypt," or "when ye came forth out of Egypt," are evidently used, not of the moment when they crossed the Red Sea, but of their whole journey from Egypt to the plain of Moab, where Moses was speaking; and any event which had transpired, whether at the beginning or near the end, is properly referred to in this way. It is like a child fishing in a wash-tub, to search in these passages for evidence against the Mosaic authorship of these speeches. 3. Evidence from Differences between the Laws of Exodus and Deuteronomy. It is argued that the differences between certain laws in Deuteronomy and those in Exodus show that the former were given in a later age than the latter, and when the latter had ceased to be "adequate to the nation's needs." Driver gives six specifications under this head which we shall notice: (1) The first is the law of the kingdom, as it is styled, in Deut. xvii. 14-20, which, he says, "is colored by reminiscences of the monarchy of Solomon." "The argument," he continues to say, "does not deny that Moses may have made provision for the establishment of a monarchy in Israel, but affirms that the form in which the provision is here cast bears the stamp of a. later age" (Com., xlvi.).(2) If, as is here alleged, this law is colored by reminiscences of the monarchy of Solomon, there is no need of further evidence that it was not given by Moses; but if, instead of being colored by reminiscences, it is colored by anticipation of such a monarchy, the argument is reversed. If, in other words, the expressions containing the supposed allusion to Solomon may have been used by a man of wise human foresight, they contain no evidence against the Mosaic authorship. We can judge of this only by placing the expressions in print before us, and carefully considering their force. The first provision of the law has reference to the nationality of the king: "When thou art come into the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are round about me; thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee whom Jehovah thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee; thou mayest not put a foreigner over thee, who is not thy brother." What was to prevent Moses from anticipating all this? He was starting his people on their national career without a king, when all the nations round about them had kings, and had been ruled by them in all the past. He would have been grossly ignorant of human nature had ho not anticipated and feared that in the course of time they would grow weary of such singularity, and want to be like other nations. Such has been the fearful anticipation of every body of patriots who have ever organized a democratic or republican form of government. And as to the nationality of the king, inasmuch as Israel had no man of royal blood, how prone they would be, when the royal fever should seize them, to offer the throne to some foreign prince. Even modern Greece was induced by this consideration, when she became a kingdom, to import a sprig of royalty from Denmark. Thus far, then, everything in the law accords with a Mosaic origin. On the other hand, if Deuteronomy was first published in the reign of Josiah, when Israel had been ruled by a line of kings for more than four hundred years, and the people of Judah had become so wedded to the house of David as to abhor the thought of submitting to any other sovereign, what could have been the motive for -writing such a law as this? It would be as if the British Parliament should at its present session pass a law that when, hereafter, a monarch of the empire shall be crowned, he shall not be a Frenchman. The next provision of the law is this: "Only he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to the end that he should multiply horses; forasmuch as Jehovah hath said to you, Ye shall henceforth return no more that way." What is there here that Moses may not have anticipated? He had left a land which was famous for its chariots and horsemen, and how could he avoid fearing that his people might some day imitate Egypt in this particular, and thus become a military instead of an agricultural people? And he knew perfectly well that if they or their possible king should be fired with this kind of ambition, many of them would be drawn back into Egypt by the traffic in horses, and would thus be brought once more under the idolatrous influences of that heathen land. On the other hand, why should this warning be given to the Israel of Josiah's reign, when the thought of multiplying horses had never entered the mind of a Hebrew monarch since the days of Solomon? The people remembered too well the oppressive burdens of Solomon's reign, entailed partly by his attempt to build up an army of chariots and horsemen, a burden which caused the revolt of the ten tribes, to need any warning against it at so late a day as Josiah's reign. It is true, as some critics have said in answer to this objection, that the prophets had rebuked some of the kings of Judah for trusting in horses rather than in Jehovah, but it was when they were trusting in help from the cavalry of Egypt, and not that they had, or desired to have, cavalry of their own. (See Isa. xxxi. 1; xxxvi. 9.) The next provision is this: "Neither shall he multiply wives, that his heart turn not away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold." Rameses II., from whom Moses fled into the land of Midian, and who died while he was there, left an inscription in which he declares that he had sixty-nine daughters and seventy sons; and, of course, he had multiplied wives unto himself. Moses would have been blind not to have seen the evils of his course, and not to have wished to guard any future king of his own people against this great folly. But a writer in the days of Josiah, when the kings of Judah, warned by Solomon's bad example in violating this law, had abstained from this vice through many generations, it would have been idle and preposterous to formally originate such a law. As to multiplying silver and gold, there was even less danger of this in the poverty-stricken condition of Judah under Josiah; while in the days of Moses the gracious promises of God and the bright hopes of Israel for temporal prosperity, and even the promise that Israel should lend to the nations, and borrow from none, made it exceedingly probable that the multiplication of silver and gold, with all its corrupting effects, would be one of the future dangers to both king and people. Respecting the last provision of this law, that the king should have a copy of it, and that he should be governed by it in all of his personal as well as his official conduct, there is no pretense that it is inappropriate to the time of Moses. We. leave the topic, then, with the fullest assurance that the evidence in the case is altogether in favor of the Mosaic origin of this statute. Driver, however, supplements his argument from the form of the law by an appeal to the facts connected with the first appointment of a king by Samuel. He argues thus:
Whether this is true or not, depends on the form of the law. If the law gave the people the privilege of making a king at any time they might choose to do so, they would undoubtedly have appealed to it against Samuel's remonstrance. But this it did not do. It said: "When thou shalt say, I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are round me, thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee whom Jehovah thy God shall choose." These words express the anticipation that they would make a king, but they express neither approval nor disapproval of the act. Whether it would be sinful or not, was to depend on circumstances at the time. Samuel resisted the application of the people, first of all, because it was setting him aside as their judge, although when called upon for an expression they declared that there had been no fault in his administration (I. Sam. viii. 6-8) ; and secondly, because they were rejecting God from reigning over them; and this last thought he enforced by reciting the facts in their past history which showed that in every time of oppression by their enemies God had raised up competent leaders to deliver them (xiii. G-12). This made it sinful, because it was ungrateful. In the third place, Samuel's resistance was based on the foreseen evils which the people would bring upon themselves by this change. Xo nation of antiquity had enjoyed so inexpensive a form of government as they, and none had been so free from the exactions of tyrants. The evils of the choice upon which they were now so intent, were fully pointed out to them (viii. 8-18), and it was on account of the plunge they were about to make into a sea of remediless miseries, that he vehemently exhorted them to desist. Driver's argument, then, is based on a misconception of the form of the law, and a still greater misconception of the grounds on which Samuel urged his remonstrance. It furnishes no evidence in favor of a late origin of the law. (2) Driver's second specification is the following:
In the first of these references the supreme tribunal is prescribed: it is not represented as already known; but all that is said of it looks to the future. The introductory words are these: "If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within thy gates: then shalt thou arise, and get thee to the place which Jehovah thy God shall choose; and thou shalt come to the priests the Levites, and to the judge that shall be in those days: and thou shalt inquire; and they shall show thee the sentence of judgment," etc In these words a supreme tribunal is formally constituted; it is to consist of the priests who shall be at the central sanctuary, and "the judge that shall be in those days." Who that judge was to be is not prescribed, but the later history shows that he was to be one of those rulers called judges who were raised up by Jehovah from time to time until the monarchy was established, and after that, the monarch himself. The second passage (xix. 17) is supplementary to the preceding, and prescribes the penalty for perjury: "If an unrighteous witness rise up against any man to testify against him of wrong doing; then both the men between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the priests and the judges that shall be in those days; and the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother, then shall ye do unto him as he had thought to do unto his brother." Here, again, provision is made for the proceedings in a tribunal "that shall be in those days" and not in one already known. Finally, the work done by Jehoshaphat (II. Chron. xix. 11), in which he established precisely this kind of judiciary in Judah, instead of being the original inauguration of it, was a renewal of it after it had fallen into neglect; for that proceeding is formally introduced by the words, "And Jehoshaphat dwelt at Jerusalem: and he went out again among the people, from Beersheha to the hill country of Ephraim, and brought them back to Jehovah, the God of their fathers." Then follows the account of setting up judges in every city, and giving them needed instruction. The absence of this judicature had been a departure from Jehovah; the re-establishment of it was a return to Jehovah. Thus the very passages relied upon to prove a late date for this legislation, proves the reverse—so grossly has the perverted vision of the critics distorted the sacred text. It is worthy of notice, here, that, notwithstanding the discredit which our critics attach to Chronicles, they are not ashamed to appeal to it when they think it speaks to suit them. (3) Driver next specifies the prohibition in Deuteronomy of the worship of the "host of heaven." He says:
This argument is frivolous. It assumes that the prohibition of a certain sin must be of later date than the commission of it. And this, too, when it is admitted that the sin in question was an ancient one, certainly more ancient than Moses. It was practiced by the Egyptians from whom Moses had delivered his people. If it was not practiced in Israel till the time of Ahaz, this may be accounted for by the very fact that it had been so plainly prohibited by name in the law of Moses. It would be just as reasonable to argue that the prohibition against devoting children to Molech (Lev. xviii. 21) was not known until the time of Ahaz, because he was the first king of Israel to practice it (II. Kings xvi. 3). Moses had personal knowledge of both these forms of idolatry, and he had good reason to prohibit both by name. (4) In his next specification Driver completely ignores the element of divine inspiration, as he does in all the others in a less degree. He follows Dillman in saying: "The style of Deuteronomy, in its rhetorical fullness and breadth of diction, implies a long development of the art of public oratory, and is not of a character to belong to the first age of Hebrew literature." If Moses spoke by inspiration of God, this is an idle remark; and no man could make it seriously who regarded the speaker as being moved by the Holy Spirit. It is therefore a rationalistic argument which he and Dillman, from whom he copies it, have adopted from unbelieving; critics. But, apart from this, the argument ignores a perfectly natural source from which this "public oratory" may have been acquired. If Moses lived in the first period of Egyptian literature, and was instructed in all the learning of the Egyptians, u man mighty in word and deed, he was able to use the Hebrew tongue with all tho excellencies of oratory which had been developed in the Egyptian. On the other hand, what evidence have we that such a development of oratory existed in the period from Manasseh to Josiah, that we should locate these splendid orations in that interval? On this point these critics are as silent as the grave. They claim that Jeremiah was influenced in his style by Deuteronomy; but by whom was the writer of Deuteronomy influenced? Xot by Isaiah; for the critics earnestly deny any connection between the two. A man possessed of such oratorical powers at that time, would be a far greater intellectual marvel than the wildest imagination can suppose Moses to have been after enjoying the culture of the golden period of Egyptian literature. True, Moses said, when his commission was first given, "Lord, I am not eloquent. I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue" (Ex. iv. 10) ; but that was after his sojourn of forty years as a shepherd in the wilderness, and before his inspiration or his long experience in public speaking to the tribes of Israel. Under this specification, as under others that we have noticed, the argument stands reversed; and it is intrinsically more probable that the discourses in Deuteronomy came from the lips of Moses than from those of any man who lived in Israel after his time. (5) We next notice the argument that "the prophetic teaching of Deuteronomy, the dominant theological ideas, the points of view under which the laws are presented, the principles by which conduct is estimated, presuppose a relatively advanced stage of theological reflection, as they also approximate to what is found in Jeremiah and Ezekiel." Here, again, the inspiration of the author is ignored, or, rather, it is assumed that there was none. The points of superiority mentioned are claimed as the result, not of divine enlightenment, but of "a relatively advanced stage of theological reflection." Once more we arc in the footsteps of rationalism. And suppose that all this is true, I should like to know what Israelite in the days of Josiah or before was possessed of a "more advanced stage of theological reflection" than Moses, who communed with God through forty years of shepherd life into which ho was thrown, by his zeal for God, and then communed with the same God under the light of an increasing knowledge of his character for forty years more of active service as the ruler of God's chosen people? Had he no time for "advanced theological reflection"? Was his head a blockhead? (6) The next specification under the present head is expressed in these words:
The law referred to reads thus: "But the prophet, that shall speak a word presumptuously in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which Jehovah hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of Jehovah, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which Jehovah hath not spoken: the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously, thou shalt not be afraid of him." What is there in this law to show that when it was written, the true prophets found themselves in conflict with numerous and influential false prophets I If plain words can mean anything, the law is predictive. There is no hint or ground for an inference that the false prophets were already in existence, but the very opposite. It is only those who deny the occurrence of predictive prophecy who can find in this law the presupposition of which Driver speaks. And to deny prophetic prediction is to deny every clause in this law; for not only is the law itself predictive, but the test of a false prophet which it prescribes is the fact that his predictions are not fulfilled. So essential is prediction to the existence of real prophetic powers, that a prophet must have uttered some prediction that has been fulfilled before he is to be credited as a prophet at all. This argument is another example of tacitly denying the reality of inspiration. It is the argument of critics who deny the supernatural, though employed by some who claim to accept it. The weapons of this warfare, we continue to see, were forged by the enemies of the Bible. (7) We notice only one more of Driver's specifications. It is the law against the removal of landmarks: "Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance which thou shalt inherit, in the land that Jehovah thy God giveth thee to possess it" (xix. 14). The argument of this law is a commonplace among the adverse critics, and by Driver it is stated as follows:
This statement contains two palpable contradictions of the law "in its present wording." The assertion that "it presupposes the occupation of Canaan by the Israelites" contradicts the words "in thine inheritance which thou shalt inherit;" and this designation of the inheritance by the future tense, contradicts the representation that the Israelites addressed are "the present possessors." No grosser misstatement of "the law in its present wording" could well be made. The people are addressed as the future possessors of the land, and the clause "which they of old times have set up" may refer either to the landmarks which the Canaanites set up, and which would still mark the boundaries of many estates, or the landmarks which the Israelites would have set up. As Hebrew verba have no future perfect tense, the past tense is used in the place of it in connection with future verbs in related clauses. This wellknown grammatical peculiarity of the language should have guarded Hebrew scholars from the blunder involved in this argument. Translated with reference to it, the law was, "Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's landmark, which they of old time shall have set up." This would protect all landmarks, whether set up by Canaanites or Israelites. It was needful that the former as well as the latter be protected, not only because the former would sometimes mark the corners of lines of an Israelite's land, but also because the distance and direction of a pew corner-stone from an old one of the Canaanites would often help to fix the position of the new one. It is an everyday occurrence, where a section of country has been surveyed at different periods, for old landmarks to help in determining the location of new ones, and vice versa. This argument, then, though universally accepted as valid by destructive critics, came into existence and is propagated only by reversing the time reference in the law. 4. Evidence for Late Date of the Blessings and Curses, the Song of Moses, and his Blessing of the Tribes. These three documents, occupying chapters xxviii.-xxxiii., are held to be of later date than the time of Moses, on the ground of internal evidence. (1) The predicted blessings and curses of chapter xxviii. Andrew Harper states the argument in the following paragraph:
This reasoning is so inconsequential that it is difficult to see how any man of discrimination could be led into it except by the force of a foregone conclusion. If, as is here freely admitted, Moses may have "prophetically foretold Israel's disregard of warnings," what could have led him to lay more emphasis on the curses to came than on the blessings? Nothing except the fact that the future was to be just what he foretold. And if he had "dwelt more equally on both sides of the picture," he would thereby have proved himself a false prophet; for the history of Israel, from the day that Moses died until their final dispersion by the Romans, contains tenfold more on the darker side of the picture than on the lighter. But Mr. Harper accounts for this difference on the ground that the writer was "subject to moods" like others, and the unfaithfulness and revolt common in his day gave form to his predictions. This is to contradict what had just been admitted; for if a darker future was predicted than history was to verify, what becomes of the admission that Moses may have prophetically foretold what he did? The explanation completely ignores prophetic foresight. And this is unjust to the author of Deuteronomy, whether he was Moses or some unknown man in the time of Manasseh; for the captivity of Israel was at that time still in the future, and no uninspired man could have predicted it so clearly as he does, unless, indeed, he was a mere copyist of Hosea and Isaiah, with which ho has never been charged. He not only predicts the Babylonian captivity, which was less than a hundred years in the future, but he predicts even more plainly the Roman captivity (xlix. 53), which was yet seven hundred years in the future. Who is more likely to have possessed this wonderful predictive power, Moses or some unknown writer under the wicked reign of Manasseh? Moreover, this chapter is admitted to be one of the most admirable specimens of oratory to be found in the whole Bible. Driver goes even further, and says of it:
Who was this matchless orator? Did he live and stir the heart of the nation to its depths, and still remain absolutely unknown to his generation, though living and writing in the very center of it? Or was it really Moses, the great Egyptian scholar and Hebrew lawgiver, to whom it is expressly ascribed? Surely there is nothing here to throw doubt on the Mosaic authorship, but everything to confirm it. (2) The song of Moses. The copy of this song which is preserved in the thirty-first chapter of Deuteronomy is preceded by three historical statements respecting it, and followed by another. The first is the command of the Lord to Moses: "Now therefore write ye this song for you, and teach thou it to the children of Israel: put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel." According to this, the song was to be written by Moses; he was to teach the people to sing it, and it was to be preserved as God's witness against them in any future departure from its sentiments. The last thought is repeated in the next statement: "It shall come to pass, when many evils and troubles are come upon them, that this song shall testify before them as a witness; for it shall not be forgotten from out of the mouths of their seed: for I know their imagination which they go about, even now, before I have brought them into the land which I sware." Here is the additional prediction that the song would not be forgotten; and this is generally true of national songs such as this was intended to be. In the third place, it is formally stated that "Moses wrote this song the same day, and taught it to the children of Israel" (xxxi. 19, 21, 22). The fourth statement, made at the end of the song, is this: "And Moses came and spake all the words of this song in the ears of the people; he, and Hoshea the son of Nun" (xxxii. 44). If now, this song, which stands in between these last two statements, was actually composed as is here declared, and copied into the. place which it now occupies, every generation of Israel, from the time of their first apostasy after the death of Joshua, reali7ed the fulfillment of its purpose when it was read or sung; and the generation in which Hilkiah brought the book forth out of the temple realized it as keenly as any that preceded. But if, when the book was brought forth by Hilkiah, no aged Israelite had been able to remember the existence of the song in former years, or could remember hearing his forefather} speak of it, how could the whole nation have been made to believe that it had existed through all their past generations, and had testified, as God said it would, against every generation that had apostatized? The insertion in the book of these four statements would have exposed at once the falsehoods contained in them, and would have brought the whole book into contempt. Furthermore, if the supposed author of the book, in the reign of Josiah or Manasseh, had wished these four statements to be believed, he certainly would not have put such indications of date in the song itself as to demonstrate their falsity. We may affirm, then, a priori, that the song has nothing in it which the Deuteronomist considered inconsistent with these four statements. This leads us to the song itself. The first four verses are a magnificent appeal to heaven and earth to hear its lofty praises of Jehovah. Then follows at verse 5 an abrupt transition to these words: "They have dealt corruptly with him, they are not his children, it is their blemish; they are a perverse and crooked generation." The generation here spoken of is not designated. The words are applicable to almost any generation in the history of Israel, and they were not inappropriate to the generation to which Moses was bidding farewell. The sentence is so framed, indeed, that the generation to which Moses recited the song would instinctively apply it to itself, and every subsequent sinful generation would as instinctively do the same. This was necessary if the song was to have perpetually its intended effect. Next after this fifth verse comes a series of questions and remarks having reference to events which had already transpired in the days of Moses, and reaching forward to the time when, in the luxuries of the promised land, he says, "But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked" (verse 15). From this point forward the people are spoken of alternately in the third, person and past tense, the second person and present tense, and. in the future tense. But, amid this variety of form, every sentence uttered is an appropriate warning to every generation that might be a sinful one. There is nothing to indicate in the slightest degree a late date for the composition, except the fact that in this last section the speaker in some sentences addresses a future generation as if he were present before them. This is the one evidence which is held by adverse critics as proof that the song is post-Mosaic. In arguing this point, Driver makes a series of statements which here demand our attention:
What force is there in this negation, when four statements of the author of the book in the immediate connection declare that he was the author?
The correctness of this statement we deny. The period covered by the verses cited was in the recent past when Moses stood on the bank of the Jordan, and the occupation of Canaan wad not included. The verses referred to are these:
All this was certainly in the past when Moses is said to have spoken, and only parts of it were in the distant past. The past tense is continued as the song gradually glides into the future, and the state of apostasy which was predicted in the twenty eighth chapter is spoken of as if it were already in existence. On this feature of the song, as we have remarked above, is based the inference of its post-Mosaic origin. Driver says:
And Andrew Harper, in discussing the same question, says:
To say that it is unnatural, is irrelevant; for all real prediction is unnatural, and is guided not by the instincts of the prophet, but by the will of the inspiring Spirit . And to say that it is unheard of in the history of prophecy, is only to assert that it is found in this prophecy alone, which would not be a very strange circumstance. There is no law requiring all prophecies to be alike. But it is not unheard of in the history of prophecy. A striking instance is found in so familiar a passage as the second Psalm. There the rage of kings and peoples against Jehovah and his anointed is depicted as if it were already in the past, and these kings are addressed in the second person with an admonition calling on them to be wise and to serve Jehovah with fear lest they perish when his wrath shall be kindled. Harper cites, in support of his assertion, the fact that Isa. xl.-xlvi. is "now ascribed to a prophet or prophets of the exile" (ib., 353). It is so ascribed by the class of critics to which he belongs, but this is to cite a disputed conclusion of these critics to prove the correctness of another which is also disputed. If conjectural critics are allowed this privilege, there is nothing which they can not prove to their own satisfaction, and to the satisfaction of nobody else. It is safe to say, too, that if, in connection with any one prediction in this part of Isaiah, there were four explicit statements that God commanded Isaiah the son of Amoz to write it and read it to the people, and cause them to memorize it, and that Isaiah did this, the most radical of our critics would hardly have the hardihood to deny that Isaiah was its author. But such is the exact fact in regard to this song of Moses. Furthermore, in this very portion of the Book of Isaiah there are predictions in which this feature that Driver says is unnatural, and Harper says is unheard of, actually occurs. Take, for example, xliv. 22, 23; and let it be granted, for argument's sake, that it was written by a prophet in the exile. Writing before the exile is ended, he speaks of its end in the past tense, saying: "O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of me. I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee." Then, taking his standpoint at the close of this redemption, he calls upon all nature to rejoice with him, exclaiming: "Sing, O ye heavens, for Jehovah hath done it; shout, ye lower parts of the earth; break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree therein: for Jehovah hath redeemed Jacob, and will glorify himself in Israel." Again, in the fifty-third chapter, which, in spite of all that unbelieving critics have said to the contrary, is a prediction res]>ecting the Messiah, if one is to be found anywhere in the Old Testament, the career of our suffering and dying Lord is depicted as if the prophet were standing this side of it, and looking back; and it is only after his "soul has been made an offering for sin," that the prophet looks forward and declares that "he shall see his seed, and shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hands." The two principal allegations, then, on which critics base their denial of the Mosaic authorship of this song, are untrue; and with these their contention breaks down. This makes it unnecessary to cumber these pages with a few other inferences, vague and without force, which are put forward by the same writers in the sections from which we have quoted. (See Driver, Com.; 3-44-348; Harper, Com., 452-454.) One more remark of Harper is worthy of note as we close" this discussion:
If this is true, how is it that the literary genius, not inferior to Moses, from whom it really sprang, lived in the midst of Jerusalem, in an enlightened age, and even his existence has not gone into the history of the times? Is this credible? (3) The blessing of the tribes. This poem, occupying the thirty-third chapter of Deuteronomy, is introduced with this statement: "And this is the blessing wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death." The authorship here asserted is denied by the critics who deny the Mosaic origin of the book as a whole. The grounds of this denial are fully set forth by Driver in his comments on the chapter, and we shall consider them seriatim. He says:
The question turns upon the use of the pronoun "us;" and it is to be determined by observing whether the giving of the law referred to was so far in the past that Moses might include himself among those to whom it was given. If we believe the record in Exodus and Leviticus, it was; for it had been given nearly forty years previous. The poem begins with the words, "Jehovah came from Sinai," which is a direct allusion to the events connected with that mountain, and the sentence of which the words in question are the beginning is this:
The context shows plainly that the reference is to the law given at Mount Sinai, and Moses, thirty-nine years afterward, might well say he gave it to us, seeing that it was law for him not less than for any other Israelite. Moreover, the song was written to be sung by the people after the death of its author. It is then altogether credible that Moses wrote this passage.
The verses read thus:
As the blessing is prophetic, and as the happy state hero alluded to had been promised to Israel again and again, what is to hinder the thought that hero the prophet speaks of the near future as if it were already present? Nothing is more common in prophecy.
Suppose that they do: is the authorship of a prophecy to be denied because its "particularity" is unusual? This would be a strange rule of criticism. And what arc these geographical allusions, the particularity of which is so unusual? In verse 12 it is said of Benjamin:
Instead of geographical allusions, there is nothing hero but the nearness of Benjamin to his God who keeps him in safety —a matter with which geography has nothing to do. As to the other verses cited, the reader can see, by glancing over them, that while they contain allusions to the mountain, the sea, the sand, the west and the south, they are all of the vaguest kind, and such as a poet, speaking of either the past or the future, might easily make.
But this presupposition could not account for the silence about Simoon; for a poet writing after Simeon disappeared as a tribe, and putting his poem in the mouth of Moses, would have been almost certain to make him predict the fate of Simeon, He could have had no reason for the omission. On the other hand, if Moses wrote the blessing, and if he was an inspired prophet, it may have appeared to the Spirit wise not to make known beforehand the sad fate awaiting the tribe, but rather, by silence with reference to it, to leave the members of the tribe and of all the others in wonder as to the reason, until the event should disclose it. Once more the argument is reversed and favors the Mosaic authorship. Continuing his argument, Driver admits that the blessing is ancient, more so than the Book of Deuteronomy, and decides that its most probable date is "shortly after the rupture under Jeroboam I." He argues the question thus:
In all this Driver assumes that there is no predictive element whatever in the blessing, and thus he agrees with his unbelieving predecessors in this criticism. His allegations, so far as they are true, agree perfectly with the Mosaic date, and positively disagree with that which ho espouses. For instance, when Moses died, Eeuben had already "dwindled in numbers," for at the first census his number was 46,500, and at the second census, thirty-nine years later, it was only 43,730. The allegation about Simeon we have just disposed of above As to the tribe of Levi, it was as warmly respected in the last days of Moses, when it had successfully carried the ark and the tabernacle through the wilderness, and had never engaged in any rebellion, as it ever was afterward, and far more so than in the days of Jeroboam, when all the Levites living in his territory were forced to leavo their homes and retire into Judah in consequence of Jeroboam's sin with the golden calves and his other unlawful practices. For the statement that the temple had been built, there is not the slightest evidence in the verso referred to as proof. It reads thus:
An allusion to the temple has to be read into this verse: it is not there. Benjamin could be beloved of Jehovah, and dwell in safety by him; and Jehovah could cover him all the day, and dwell between his shoulders as well before the temple was built, or after it was destroyed, as while it was standing. Furthermore, this high spiritual encomium on Benjamin was altogether undeserved at any long period after the death of Moses. We have only to think of the affair at Gibeah, of King Saul, of Shimei, of Sheba's rebellion, and of the insignificance of Benjamin at the time of Jeroboam's defection, in order to realize how shocking would be the application of this blessing to Benjamin in the later history. Next we are told that the blessing was written "when Ephraim was flourishing and powerful, and Zebulon and Iseachar commercially prosperous." But all that is said of these three tribes is spoken in the future tense. It is prophecy and not history, though the argument assumes that it is the latter. Moreover, though Ephraim was certainly prosperous and powerful under the reign of Jeroboam, it was no less so in the reigns of Saul, David and Solomon. Indeed, when Moses died, the combined tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, which are both included in this blessing, outnumbered every other tribe by many thousands. And as to the commercial prosperity of Zebulon and Issachar, there is not a word said about it in the history of Jeroboam's reign. It exists only in the imagination of the critic. Finally, our author says that the blessing points to "no trace of idolatry, or of Israel's declension from its ideal . . . no word of censure or reproach." This is true; and the statement of it is on the critic's part suicidal; for in the period of Jeroboam I. the one sensation of the time was the calf-worship set up by Jeroboam, and his decree that his subjects should no longer go to Jerusalem to worship. This is the sin the references to which ring like a chorus through all the subsequent chapters of the Book of Kings, till the fall of Israel, styled "the sin which Jeroboam the son of Nebat taught Israel to sin." From Professor Driver's own point of view there could not be a more complete demonstration, than is here presented, that the date which he advocates is not the true one. Indeed, there is not a period in tho history of Israel, from the death of Moses to that of Josiah, to which this last characteristic of the blessing could be fully applied. To the full extent that it has any force as evidence, it is proof that the blessing came from the lips of Moses. As to Judah, he was not, in the time of Jeroboam, "severed from the rest of Israel," for he had Benjamin with him, and he was not "in some difficulty or need;" on the contrary, he raised a powerful army for the purpose of bringing back into subjection the tribes in rebellion under Jeroboam, and was turned back from the attempt only by the command of God through the prophet Shemaiah. The words of the blessing pronounced on Judah are these:
The early history of the patriarch Judah himself supplies the facts here alluded to. After his father and his brethren returned from Padan-aram, he separated himself from his brethren, went down to Adullam, and united in business with a Canaanite named Hirah, married there, and resided there until after the birth of his two grandsons Perez and Zerah (Gen. xxxviii. 1-30). We now have before us the grounds on which this learned commentator would have us deny the Mosaic authorship of the blessing of the tribes, and we have seen that every one of them is without force in that direction, while the majority of them have great force in favor of the opposite conclusion. |
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1. Comp. Robertson Smith, O. T., 326; Addis, Doc. of Hex., xv.f. 2. Driver here follows Kuenen, who says: "The warnings against trade with Egypt, polygamy and great riches, are borrowed from the traditions concerning the wise king, and are directed against the errors Into which he fell" (Rel. of Israel, II. 33 f.). |
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