Evidence in the Historical Books.

In this section we shall follow chiefly the line of argument pursued by W. Robertson Smith. Our quotations, except when otherwise designated, shall be from his Old Testament in the Jewish Church.  

1. Joshua and Chronicles Set Asida Our author, in common with all of the destructive critics, while arguing from the historical books, deliberately sets aside, as unworthy of credence, the Book of Joshua, which covers the earliest period after Moses, and the Books of Chronicles, which cover the whole historic period from the death of King Saul to the close of the exile. With respect to the former, Professor Smith says:  

In working out this part of the subject, I shall confine your attention in the first Instance to the books earlier than the time of Ezra, and in particular to the histories in the "earlier prophets," from Judges to II. Kings. I exclude the Book of Joshua because it in all its, parts hangs closely together with the Pentateuch. The difficulties which it presents are identical with those of the books of Moses, and can only be explained in connection with the critical analysis of the law (235).  

The reason given for this exclusion is vague enough. The book does hang closely together with the Pentateuch, and this is a necessity if its records are true, seeing that it describes the introduction into Canaan of the people to whom the laws in the preceding books had professedly been given, and their experiences under these laws through one generation. But why this should be a reason for rejecting its testimony in respect to the existence of these laws, it seems that none but a critic with a foregone conclusion can see. Principal Cave very justly pronounced it "an exclusion which looks very singularly like shelving, from the exigency of theory, an awkward series of facts which renders the theory suspect" (I. O. T., 282). We will show, under a later section, that if this "awkward series of facts" actually occurred, the theory in question, both as to the law in Deuteronomy, and that in the middle books of the Pentateuch, is absolutely falsified. The exclusion of the testimony of this book is an admission, to say the least, that it furnishes no evidence in favor of the theory.  

Of the Books of Chronicles our author has this to say:  

The tendency of the Chronicler to assume that the institutions of his own age existed under the old kingdom makes his narrative useless for the purpose now in hand, where we are expressly concerned with the differences between ancient and modern usage (235)."(1)

The words "useless for the purpose now in hand" are well chosen; for to one who is aiming to show differences between ancient and modern usage, a book which represents modern, usage as being the same with ancient usage is, of course, "useless for the purpose in hand." It would seem, however, that to a writer who is seeking to learn whether such differences really exist or not, such a book is the very one he would find most useful, provided there are no other grounds for impeaching its testimony.  

Here a footnote which I find in Principles of Biblical Criticism, by J. J. Lias (p. 65), is in point:  

De Wette lets us Into the secret of this hostility to Chronicles. "The whole Jewish history," he says, "on its most interesting and important side, that of religion and the manner of observing the worship of God, assumes quite a different shape when the accounts in Chronicles have been set aside." So also: "A multitude of troublesome proofs, difficult to deal with, of the existence of the Mosaic books in earlier times, vanish altogether." It is with De Wette that all these fierce attacks on Chronicles originate. And with charming naivete he has told us the reason.  

Robertson Smith, and his English and American followers, do not venture to give De Wette's reason for accepting his conclusion, but the one which they do give is no reason at all, and this suggests the inevitable suspicion that his reason is really theirs.  

2. In the Book of Nehemiah. We shall now take up, in an order of our own, the several passages in the historical books by which our author seeks to prove that the Pentateuchal law was not known or enforced until the time of Ezra. He admits freely that the law in the hands of Ezra was "practically identical with our present Hebrew Pentateuch," and he affirms that from that time forward it was "the municipal and religious code of Israel" (43).(2) This fact should be distinctly noted and remembered by students of criticism. But he makes use of a passage in Nehemiah to prove that this had not been the case previously. He says:  

The people In their confession very distinctly state that their law had not been observed by their ancestors, or their rulers, or their priests, up to that time (Neh. ix. 34); and in particular it is mentioned that the feast of tabernacles had never been observed with the ceremonial prescribed in the law from the time that the Israelites occupied Canaan under Joshua (Neh. viii. 17).  

What is here said of the confession made by the people, if it has any bearing upon the question at issue, is intended to make the impression that their ancestors had not kept the law because they did not have it. But the opposite is the truth; for their words are: "Neither have our kings, our princes, our priests, nor our fathers kept thy law, nor hearkened unto thy commandments and thy testimonies wherewith thou didst testify against them." How could the law testify against them, if they did not have it? They had the law then, but had not kept it; and by "the law" is meant the law then in the hands of Ezra, from which he had been reading, and Professor Smith admits, as we have just seen, that it was "practically our present Hebrew Pentateuch." Moreover, in an earlier part of this prayer (verses 13, 14), the Levites who are praying, not the whole people, as Smith seems to think, declare that God had given this law, with its commandments and statutes, at Mount Sinai, and by the hand of his servant Moses. In their confession of sins, they confess precisely what we now read in their sacred books from their own day back to the beginning. This prayer, which fills the ninth chapter of Nehemiah, is an exhibition of most remarkable historical knowledge on the part of those who offered it; for it begins with the call of Abraham, and it touches, in passing down the stream of time, all the salient features of Israel's history without a break in the chronology, or a single mistake in the facts. As you read it you see that their memories pass from one book to another in such a manner as is most rare even in these days of printed Bibles. Not one preacher or priest in a thousand could, to this day, in an extempore prayer, do the same. They knew what they say about the giving of the law, and about the way in which their fathers had disobeyed it, because they had committed to memory the facts from the same books which we now read. The agreement could not otherwise be so perfect.  

Professor Smith deals unfairly also with the other passage which ho cites. Instead of saying that the feast of tabernacles "had never been observed with the ceremonial prescribed by the law from the time that Israel occupied Canaan under Joshua," they speak of only one part of the ceremonial, that of living in booths made of the boughs of trees; and say that this had not been observed before since the days of Joshua, not "from the time that Israel occupied Canaan under Joshua." There is a difference here of at least twenty-five years. It is implied that during those twenty-five years they did dwell in booths during this feast, hut had not done so since. Nehemiah speaks of this as an infraction of the law, which it could not have been if this law had not existed from the days of Joshua. Furthermore, the words used imply that in the days of Joshua this ceremonial had been observed; for otherwise the remark that it had not been since then would have no force. A little thought will show that while there was no adequate excuse for this neglect, there was an extenuation for it. The number of green boughs which would be necessary every fall for the whole male population of Israel to build booths would soon strip all of the trees in the vicinity of Jerusalem of the boughs which they could spare and still live; and the fear of thus denuding and destroying fruit and forest trees alike, sufficiently accounts for the neglect. It furnishes a much more plausible excuse for this omission than Israel could plead for many others of which they were guilty. And even now they were compelled, after the surrounding trees had enjoyed an uninterrupted growth during the whole period of the captivity, to strip olive-trees, both tame and wild, and palm-trees, as well as those called "thick trees."  

3. In the Book of Judges. Robertson Smith is very radical in his position on the evidence of this book, and he argues it with a persistency equaled only by his inaccuracy in representing the facts. In opening the discussion, he says:  

We need not dwell on the fact that the whole religion of the time
of the Judges was Levitically false. . . . Acts of true worship, which
Jehovah accepted as the tokens of a penitent heart, and answered by
deeds of deliverance, were habitually associated with illegal sanctuaries (0. T., 267).
 

In support of these assertions ho presents five specifications:  

(1) At Bochim the people wept at God's rebuke, and sacrificed to the Lord (Judg. ii. 5).  

We have already answered, in another connection, that the location of Bochim is not known, that it may have been hard by the tent of meeting, and that there is not the slightest evidence that the sacrifice was not offered on the altar made by Moses.  

(2) Deborah and Barak opened their campaign at the sanctuary of Kadesh.  

There is not a syllable in the text to support this assertion, neither is there the slightest hint that such a sanctuary ever existed. This is an instance of manufacturing Scripture. Let the reader search the account in Judges iv., and Deborah's song in chapter v., to verify this statement.  

(3) Jehovah himself commanded Gideon to build an altar and do sacrifice at Ophrah, and this sanctuary still existed in the days of the historian (Judg. vi. 24).  

But if Jehovah commanded it, this made it lawful. Moreover, the occasion of this command, which was to rebuke the idolatry of the people of Ophrah, bv tearing down their altar of Baal, and defiantly building an altar to Jehovah in its place, justified the irregularity. This end would not have been accomplished by sending Gideon to Shiloh with his offering. In the statement that "this sanctuary still existed in the days of the historian," Smith uses the word "sanctuary" where the text says "this altar." The statement of the text was suggested by the fact that though the people of Ophrah were so enraged when the altar was built that they wanted to kill the man who tore down Baal's altar and erected this, yet they let it stand. There is not the slightest hint that it became a sanctuary; so here again our critic manufactures evidence.  

(4) Jephthah spake all his words "before the Lord" at Mizpah or Ramoth-Gilead, the ancient sanctuary of Jacob, before he went forth ir the spirit of the Lord to overthrow the Ammonites (Judg. xi. 11, 29; Gen. xxxi. 45, seq.).  

But neither Mizpah nor Bamoth-Gilead ever was a "sanctuary of Jacob." He was overtaken at Mizpah by Laban; he erected a rude monument there to mark a spot beyond which neither he nor Laban should ever pass to harm tho other, and ho offered a sacrifice on the occasion; but he never visited the spot again, and there is not the slightest ground for styling it a sanctuary. Moreover, Jephthah could speak all his words "before the Lord," by calling the Lord to witness what he said, without going to a sanctuary for the purpose.  

(5) Jephthah's vow before the campaign was a vow to do sacrifice at Mizpah.  

It was not. The place where the sacrifice was to be offered is not mentioned. He may have intended, so far as the text either affirms or intimates, to offer it at Shiloh, or at any other place which an outlaw such as he had been might select.  

Here are now the five specifications by which we are to be convinced that "the whole religion of the time of the Judges was Levitically false, and that acts of true worship were habitually associated with illegal sanctuaries." Suppose that all of the five were established as instances in point, what would they prove? Simply, that within a period of three centuries acceptable worship was offered three times at illegal sanctuaries. And how far would this go toward proving that this was habitual in these three centuries? What proof would it furnish that "the whole religion of the time was Levitically false"? Were Deborah and Barak and Gideon and Jephthah the only persons who worshiped God with true worship in that three hundred years? What was going on at Shiloh, where the tabernacle stood from the days of Joshua till the death of Eli, and whither some true men like Elkanah were even at the last date still going up yearly with their families and their victims? How shall we characterize such perversity in manufacturing evidence?  

But our disciple of Wellhausen perseveres in his line of argument and we must follow him still further. He says:  

All God's acts of grace mentioned in the Book of Judges, all his calls to repentance, and all the ways in which he appears from time to time to support his people, and to show himself their living God, ready to forgive in spite of their disobedience, are connected with this same local worship (267).
 

In this statement there is not a word of truth. The only specifications given to support it, or that can be given, are the five just disposed of above.  

Again he says of this period of the Judges:  

The call to repentance Is never a call to put aside the local sanctuaries and worship only before the ark of Shiloh  (ib.)

This is true; and it is true because there were no such sanctuaries then in existence. The calls to repentance were calls in reference to the illegal worship of the gods of Canaan. This is true in every instance, as any reader of the book may see for himself. If any one doubts it, he can test the statement in an hour by glancing through the Book of Judges. And in thus calling the people back from heathen worship, they were called to worship at Shiloh just as surely as the true worship was still conducted there, of which there can be no reasonable doubt.  

4. The Ritual at Shiloh. We next consider what our critic has to say about the service at Shiloh. He admits that throughout the period of Judges "the ark was settled at Shiloh," and that "a legitimate priesthood ministered before it." But he declares that "the ritual was not that of the Levitical law" (268). In his effort to make good his declaration, the number of alleged discrepancies between the two rituals which he tries to exhibit, is not so great as his own misrepresentations of the Shiloh ritual. He first says:  

Shiloh was visited by pilgrims from the surrounding country of Ephraim, not three times a year according to the Pentateuchal law, but at an annual feast (ib.).  

The only foundation for this statement is the case of Elkanah, described in the first chapter of I. Samuel. It so happens that Elkanah came from the country of Ephraim, but how does Professor Smith know that the "pilgrims" who came thither were from the same tribe? He says they came at "an annual feast." But this is not authorized by the text. Elkanah's annual visit was not to attend one of the annual feasts, but, as the text says, "to worship and to sacrifice to Jehovah of hosts in Shiloh." You could not know from the text that any other than Elkanah's own family were present on the occasion of any of his visits (see i. 3, 21, 24, 25). The assertion that the "pilgrims" did not go up "three times a year according to the Pentateuchal law," is groundless. For aught that Professor Smith knew when he penned this, or could know, Elkanah himself may have gone to the annual feasts in addition to going for his own family devotions. The annual feasts, according to the Pentateuchal law, were occasions for the national celebration of great events. Our critic has here committed the blunder of taking the annual visits of one devout man to worship God with his family, as proof of what Israel as a people did or did not do; and he has selected his example from the time when, according to the text itself, the people in general had been forced to "abhor the offering of Jehovah" by the disgraceful conduct of the priests. By this state of degeneracy and corruption he would have us judge the service at Shiloh throughout the previous three hundred years.  

We are next told, with reference to the so-called "annual feast" which Elkanah attended, that "this appears to have been a vintage feast, like the Pentateuchal feast of tabernacles; for is was accompanied by dances in the vineyards (Judg. xxi. 21); and, according to I. Sam. i. 20, 21, it took place when the new year came in; that is, the close of the agricultural year, which ended with the ingathering of the vintage (Ex. xxxiv. 22)." Here, again, the learned professor commits blunder after blunder. He has the girls of Judg. xxi. 21 dancing in the vineyards, the worst place on dry ground that they could find to dance in, whereas the text has the young men who were to steal the girls, hid in the vineyards. He supposes the feast to be that of the tabernacles held "at the close of the year which ended with the ingathering of the vintage," forgetting that in Palestine the grapes ripen in July, and the vintage follows immediately, while it is the olive gathering, and not the vintage, which ends the agricultural year. At that time the vines have dropped their leaves, and the vineyards would not afford a hiding-place for the young men who stole the dancing girls. This incident connects far more closely with the feast of Pentecost, when the vines were in full leaf, than with the feast of tabernacles, when they were bare.(3) Again, he has the year closing at the time of Samuel's birth, "according to the correct rendering of I. Sam. i. 20, 21." As rendered in the Revised Version, that text reads, "And it came to pass, when the time was come about, that Hannah conceived and bare a son." The clause, "when the time was come about," means the time for Hannah to conceive and bear a son. The "correct rendering," which Smith suggests, is, "when the new year came." Suppose we adopt it; what is the result? Only this: "It came to pass, when the new year came in, that Hannah conceived and bare a son." And how does this show that the feast at which Hannah prayed for a son, was the feast of tabernacles? A woman may pray for a son on the fourth of July, or any day of any month, and still not conceive and bear him till after the new year comes in. Finally, the blunder is committed of quoting Ex. xxxiv. 22, in support of the assertion that the agricultural year ended with "the ingathering of the vintage;" whereas the passage says nothing about the vintage. It says, "Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, even the first-fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the end of the year." Professor Smith could not have been ignorant, for he was familiar with Palestine both from reading and from residing in it, that the last ingathering of the year is not that of the grapes, but, as we have said above, that of the olives. Next to the wheat harvest this is the most valuable harvest of the year.  

Professor Smith asserts that the service at Shiloh was a local affair, attended only by "pilgrims from the surrounding country of Ephraim." If he had said this with reference to the time of Hannah's prayer, it is possible that he might have been correct; for this was the time at which the officiating priests had, by their covetous and beastly conduct, disgusted the people with the offerings of Jehovah. It was when Jehovah himself was on the eve of providentially destroying the whole family of Eli and divorcing the ark of his covenant from the tabernacle which they had defied. But as a representation of the service at Shiloh as a whole, running back as it did through nearly three centuries, it is as false as it can be, and the passage in Judges which he cites, when the dancing girls were stolen by the young Benjamites, is proof of this; for at the close of the incident it is said, "The children of Israel departed thence at that time, every man to his tribe and to his family, and they went out thence every man to his inheritance" (Judg. xxi. 24). This was while Phinehas was still alive (xx. 27), and it was therefore very soon after the death of Joshua; and it shows that then the people from the tribes in general came up to Shiloh to worship. Why judge the whole period from what we read at the end of it, rather than by the order established at the beginning? Was it because these facts were not known to the critic, or was it because they were very conveniently ignored?  

Professor Smith next points out in detail the evidences that the ritual of Shiloh was not that of the Levitical law. He says (1) that—  

Ell's sons would not burn the fat of the sacrifice till they had procured a portion of uncooked meat (I. Sam. ii. 12, seq.. Revised Version, margin). Under the Levitical ordinance this was perfectly regular; the worshiper handed over the priest's portion of the flesh along with the fat, and part of the altar ceremony was to wave it before Jehovah (Lev. vii. 30, seq., x. 15). But at Shiloh the claim was viewed as Illegal and highly wicked (O. T., 269).  

There is just enough inaccuracy in this representation, both of the law and the custom of Eli's sons, to make out the discrepancy aimed at. The law as it stands in the passages cited from Leviticus required the offerer of the peace-offering to give to the priest the fat and the breast and right thigh. The priest was to burn the fat as the Lord's part, then wave before the Lord the breast and thigh as his own part . The rest of the animal was cooked and eaten by the offerer and his family. To deal fairly with the case, we should suppose that thus far the sons of Eli proceeded according to the law; and that they did so is implied in what follows; for the first offense charged against them in the text, but wholly unnoticed by our critic, is, that while the offerer was boiling his portion of the flesh the priest's servant came with a flesh-hook of three teeth and stuck it into the vessel, and whatever it brought up he took away. This is evidently treated as an exaction beyond what the priest was entitled to. The second charge is, that before they burned the fat, that is, before they gave the Lord his portion, they mado another exaction by demanding from the offerer tome of his portion of the raw flesh. Here were two exactions beyond what the law allowed; and the law has to be presupposed in order to see the unlawfulness of the priest's conduct. The bearing of the passage, then, is the reverse of what is claimed by the critic. It shows that the law was known, by showing the ways in which it was violated. Furthermore, without the pre-existence of the Levitical law, how would these priests, or the worshipers, have known anything about the fat, or about the priests' portion and the people's portion of the peace-offerings \ How could anybody have thought that "the sin of the young men was very great before Jehovah," if Jehovah had not given the law which they were violating? A wicked violation of the law necessarily presupposes a knowledge of the law.  

(2) The ark stood, not In the tabernacle, but in a temple with door-posts and folding doors, which were thrown open during the day (I. Sam. i. 9; iii. 15).  

True, the structure in which the ark stood is in the first of these passages called "the temple of Jehovah." In the second it is called "the house of Jehovah." But in ii. 22 it is called by its old name, "the tent of meeting." If it was the tent of meeting, this constituted it the house of Jehovah and the temple of Jehovah; for any structure devoted to the worship of God bears properly both of the latter titles.  

(3) But the structure here called a temple had "door-posts and folding doors," whereas the tent of meeting had only "an embroidered linen hanging in front."  

True, but it is still, according to the same writer, "the tent of meeting." What follows? That the structure is no longer the tent of meeting? or that the tent of meeting now has, in addition to its front curtain, a wooden protection with doors to open and shut— doors which are closed at night, but which leave the front as it was from the beginning when they are opened in the daytime? This is all; and it is not strange that in the course of three centuries since this tent was constructed, a wooden protection, whether with or without divine authority, was erected in front of it. This has nothing to do with the "ritual of Shiloh"  

(4) In the evening a lamp was burned in the temple (I. Sam Hi. 3), but, contrary to the Levitical prescription (Ex. xxvii. 21; Lev. xxiv. 2), the light was not kept up all night, but was allowed to go out after the ministers of the temple lay down to sleep (ib.)

This neglect is easily accounted for, when we remember the avarice and general wickedness of Eli's sons who were then the active "ministers of the temple;" but how, if this was not the old tent of meeting in which the Levitical law required the lamp to burn all night, can it be accounted for that it was burned even a part of the night? Here, again, a partial neglect of the law shows the previous existence of the law.  

(5) Access to the temple was not guarded on the rules of Levitical sanctity. According to I. Sam. iii. 3, Samuel, as a servant of the sanctuary, who had special charge of the doors (verse 15), actually slept "in the temple of Jehovah where the ark of God was."  

Yes, he actually slept in the temple where the ark of God was; and if this means that he slept in the same apartment of the temple in which the ark was, there was certainly a violation of the Levitical law. But how could this be thought strange under the management of such priests as Hophni and Phinehas? Nothing was too irregular or unlawful to meet their sanction if it suited their whims or their convenience. If it is objected that Eli was in supreme control, the objection is set aside by the fact that Eli's sons had complete control of Eli.  

But does this text mean that Samuel slept in the holy of holies, the inner room of the sanctuary? It does not so assert; for if he slept in the holy place, or in the wooden structure which had been erected in front, he would still be said to sleep in the temple of the Lord. We have similar phraseology in reference to the temple in the time of Christ. Whatever was done in the Jewish court, or in the Gentile court, was said to be done in the temple. The fair construction of the text, the construction which was always put upon it till destructive critics commenced their work, is merely that Samuel slept in some part of the structure in which it was thought proper for a little boy to sleep.  

(6) It la taken for granted that Samuel became a priest at once. As a child he ministers before Jehovah, wearing the ephod which the law confines to the high priest, and not only this, but the high priestly mantle—I. Sam. ii. 18, 19 (270).  

I wonder if Professor Smith never saw a little boy dressed up in the uniform of a British officer—buttons, feathers, gold lace and all? Did he argue from that that those who dressed him so took it for granted that he was already a major-general? Why, then, charge such folly on little Samuel's mother when she dressed him in imitation of a priest? There is no evidence that he wore either the ephod or the mantle except in his childhood, when he could not officiate as a priest, even if he had been the son of a priest.  

(7) And, above all, It Is noteworthy that the service of the great, day of expiation could not have been legitimately performed in the temple of Shiloh, where there was no awful seclusion of the ark in an inner adyton, veiled from every eye, and inaccessible on ordinary occasions to every foot  

This is true only on the supposition that Samuel slept in the most holy place, of which, as we have said above, there is no proof. The inner sanctuary may have been as closely veiled as ever before and the child may have slept in some other part of the "house of Jehovah."  

(8) These things strike at the root of the Levitical system of access to God. But of them the prophet who came to Eli has nothing to say. He confines himself to the extortions of the younger priests (ib.).  

On the contrary, we have seen that not one of "these things" strikes at the root of the Levitical system, except the misconduct of the priests; and it follows that when the prophet rebuked Eli for this alone, ho did precisely right. The proposition that the ritual of Shiloh was not the ritual of the Levitical law, has, we now see, no more truth in it than the one preceding it, that "the whole religion of the time of the judges was Levitically false."  

After the removal of the ark from the tent of meeting in Shiloh, and its stay of seven months in the land of the Philistines, it remained twenty years in Kiriath-jearim before we learn anything more of the altar service in Israel. During that period the Philistines held control of central Palestine, and Samuel was growing up from childhood to manhood. He then took control of public affairs, and acted in the threefold capacity of judge, prophet and priest until Saul was fully inducted into his office as king (I. Sam. vii. 1-xii. 25). He did not restore the ark to its place in the tent of meeting, neither did he ever return to the latter or restore its priesthood. In view of these facts, Robertson Smith remarks:  

The truth is that Samuel did not know of a systematic and exclusive system of sacrificial ritual confined exclusively to the sanctuary of the ark (O. T., 274).  

The truth of this assertion we have sufficiently discussed in Section 3.  

But while we have sufficiently refuted in Section 3 the arguments of the critics, there is another side to the evidence drawn from this part of Israel's history. Robertson Smith himself mentions a number of facts connected with it, the true bearing of which on the general question he fails to observe. He cites the facts that Saul "destroyed necromancy;" that "he was keenly alive to the sin of eating flesh with the blood;" that a man ceremonially unclean "might not sit at his table" (ib., 271). But how did Saul know these things, every one of which was a subject of Levitical legislation, if the Levitical law had not yet been given? "The priests," he says, "of the house of Eli were at Nob, where there was a regular sanctuary with shewbread, and no less than eighty-five priests wearing a linen ephod" (272). But how could they have a regular sanctuary with shewbread, if the law in which this unique kind of bread to be eaten by priests alone originated, had not yet been given? The parts of the law which were still observed during periods of religious anarchy were precisely such as to prove that the law had been given; for they were such as could not spring up independently.  

5. Offerings Made by Saul and David. Professor Smith specifies, on pages 271 and 275 of his work, several other irregularities which prove ignorance, as he argues, of the Levitical law:  

(1) Saul's sacrifice at Gilgal (I. Sam. xiii. 8), which he says was not regarded as a sin because he was not of the house of Aaron, but because he did not wait for tho presence of Samuel; and in this connection he alleges that it was then the privilege of every Israelito to offer sacrifice. It is true that Saul sinned by not waiting for the prophet; but there is no evidence whatever that he personally officiated at the altar. Immediately after the sacrifice he moved his little army back up to Gibeah, whence they had fled seven days before from the Philistines, and when he readied that place Ahitub tho priest was with him, and was called on to inquire of the Lord (xiii. 15, 16; xiv. 1-3, 18, 19). How can Professor Smith know that he did not come up from Gilgal with Saul, and that Saul did not offer the burnt offerings and peace-offerings at Gilgal by his hand, and not by his own? Has a critic the right to assert that which ho can not know to be true, and that, too, when the probabilities are against his assertions? This he does, not only in Saul's individual case, but in the statement that at that time to offer sacrifice in the same sense was the privilege of every Israelite; for this statement can not be made good by a single specification; and it is falsified by the fact that Elkanah, and the people in general, until disgusted by the priests at Shiloh, went to those priests, wicked as they were, to present their offerings.  

(2) It is said of David:  

When he brought up the ark to Jerusalem he wore the priestly ephod, offered sacrifices in person, and, to make it quite clear that in all this he assumed a priestly function, he blessed the people as a priest in the name of Jehovah—II. Sam. vl. 14, 18 (O. T., 274).  

Here, again, it is assumed without the slightest warrant, that the sacrifices offered by David were offered by his own hand as a priest. On the contrary, Abiathar tho priest was a constant companion of David, and had been ever since he joined his company in the cave of Adullam, and the author of Chronicles says expressly that both he and Zadok the priest were with him when he moved the ark (I. Chron. xv. 11, 12). In this whole procedure the law was observed; for the ark was carried by its own bars on the shoulders of Levites, and the writer adds, "as Moses commanded according to the word of Jehovah" (verse 15). Critics very conveniently set this testimony aside by denying the truthfulness of the account; but this is only another example of applying historical criticism by denying history.  

The ephod which he wore on this occasion was the linen outer garment, perfectly plain, of the common priest. It was the simplest garment which he could wear, and involved the laying aside of his royal apparel. It incurred tie displeasure of Michal to see the king so humbly attired, and she exclaimed to him, "How glorious was the king of Israel to-day who uncovered himself to-day in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants." He answered her, "It was before Jehovah ... I will be yet more vile than this, and will be base in my own sight" (II. Sam. vi. 20-23). He was not assuming the office of a priest, but was adopting their simple vesture in order to humble himself before Jehovah. As to his blessing the people in the name of Jehovah, it is absurd to represent this as a priestly function, as though a pious king might not call for God's blessing on his subjects. The critic's thought seems to have been born of the sacerdotalism of some modern churches, which in their exaltation of their clergy have fallen upon the idea that only a clergyman can properly pronounce the benediction at the dose of a religious meeting.  

6. The Priesthood of David's Sons. Robertson Smith continues:  

In II. Sam. viii. 18 we read that David's sons were priests. This statement, so incredible on the traditionary theory, has led our English version, following the Jewish tradition of the Targum, to change the sense, and substitute "chief rulers" for priests. But the Hebrew word means priests, and can not mean anything else (275).  

If this is true, and if the word "priest" is here used in its ordinary sense, then unquestionably we have here one instance of a violation of the Levitical law. Whether such a violation was to our English translators so "incredible" that they changed the sense, is another question. It is easy to imagine that they had not discovered what Professor Smith so positively asserts, that "the Hebrew word can mean nothing else." They may have supposed that, while priest is its primary meaning, it might have a secondary meaning, or it might be used as an honorary title. The bold assertion that it can mean nothing else, can scarcely be made truthfully of any word in any language. Take, for instance, the Hebrew word for father, which occurs about the same number of times with the word for priest. If you say that it means father, and "can mean nothing else," then you will make the prophet Elijah the father of Elisha; for the latter on one occasion addresses the former as "my father" (II. Kings ii. 12). If our translators, through fear lest some readers might suppose that this was the actual relationship between the two prophets, had ventured to substitute for this complimentary use of the word "father"' the word "leader," or "master," and some modern critic, with a pet theory to support, had come forward with the affirmation that father and son was their relationship, and that the translators had thought this so incredible that they had changed the sense, we should have a case parallel to the one made out by Professor Smith. Or suppose that a Latin scholar, reading medieval Latin, should find that the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church of Home were married men with children? He would miss the truth as Smith does in saying that David's sons were officiating priests. Yet again, should a Frenchman see a list of all the colonels in Kentucky, and find them to be five hundred in number, he might argue after Smith that a colonel means a commander of a regiment of soldiers, and it can mean nothing else; therefore the militia force of Kentucky includes five hundred regiments, or five hundred thousand men.  

While Professor Smith is so confident as to the meaning of this word, I find another competent Hebrew scholar who represents it differently. He is the author of the Book of Chronicles; and Hebrew was his vernacular. He had the Book of Samuel before him when he wrote, and he copied much from it; but when he came to the list of David's chief officers, instead of rendering the last clause, "David's sons were priests," he expresses it, "the sons of David were chief about the king" (I. Chron. xviii. 17; cf. II. Sam. viii. 18). Now, this was either a deliberate change of the text, of which the author of a sacred book aught not to be suspected, or it was a free rendering intended to express the meaning of the word "priest" in that connection. It shows that the word is employed in an unusual sense. The priests under the Levitical law were an order of nobility, having hereditary privileges not shared by others, and as there was no other rank or title of nobility in the early years of Israel by which the sons of the king might be distinguished, it was but natural to give them the honorary title of priest. If the people knew that they were not priests in reality, they would understand the title, as Romanists now do the title "Father," and as Kentuckians do the title "Colonel."  

7. Solomon's Career. Continuing his argument, Professor Smith says:  

But in fact the Book of Kings expressly recognizes the worship of the high places as legitimate up to the time when the temple was built—I. Kings iii. 2, seq. (ib., 275).  

Professor Smith ought not to have made this statement; for it flatly contradicts the passage which he cites, but does not quote. The passage reads thus: "Only the people sacrificed in high places, because there was no house built for the name of Jehovah until those days. And Solomon loved Jehovah, walking in the statutes of David his father. Only he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places." Here the praise of Solomon for loving God and walking in the statutes of his father, is discounted by the fact that he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places; and the remark that the people did the same is introduced by "only," to indicate that in this they did wrong. The Book of Kings, then, instead of expressly recognizing this worship as legitimate till the temple was built, expressly condemns it, and this Professor Smith would have known had he read carefully the text before he referred to it to prove the opposite. This method of citing the Scriptures is characteristic of this class of critics.  

One would naturally suppose that, when we find Solomon constructing his temple, placing in it the ark of the covenant and the materials of the dismantled tent of meeting, and especially Avhen he inaugurated the elaborate temple ritual, there would be an end at last to the denial that the Levitical law was yet in existence. But the same confident denials assail us here as in the previous history. Robertson Smith utters the voice of his fellow critics when he raises the question and answers it in the negative, "Was the founding of the temple on Zion undertaken as part of an attempt to give practical force to the Levitical system?" He declares that "the wrhole life of Solomon answers this question in the negative" (259). Let us see with what kind of evidence this startling proposition is supported:  

1. He not only did not abolish the local sanctuaries, but he built new shrines, which stood till the time of Josiah, for the gods of the foreign wives whom, like his father David (II. Sam. iii. 3), he married against the Pentateuchal law—I. Kings xi.; II. Kings xxiii. 13 (259, 260).  

If the proposition was that Solomon violated some of the statutes of the law, the facts here stated would be in point. That he did so needs no argument; it is set forth as emphatically by the author of the Book of Kings as it is by Robertson Smith. But how does the fact that he thus violated the law show that his founding of the temple was not an attempt to give practical force to the law? Many a man has erected buildings for the worship of God, and has failed to worship him, or has worshiped him very imperfectly. But the statement of facts here made demands modification. The only "local sanctuary" named in the text at which Solomon offered worship was the one at Gibeon, where the old tent of meeting then stood, with the brazen altar built by Moses in front of it; and this he moved into the "chambers" of the temple after the latter was built. After the erection of the temple there is no evidence that either he or his subjects worshiped Jehovah at such places during his reign. His only departure from the law in this respect was the erection of heathen altars on the high place in front of Jerusalem, for the accommodation of his heathen wives. This is treated in the text as an apostasy from the system of worship represented by the temple. The same is true of his marriage with women belonging to the tribes with which Israel had been forbidden to intermarry. His commission of these sins, even the worst of them, is no proof that the service continually observed in the temple was any other than that prescribed in the Levitical law. Nothing has been more common in the history of religion than strictness of ritual service accompanied, in the same individual, by disregard of the weightier matters of the law.  

2. And when the Book of Deuteronomy describes what a king of Israel must not be, it reproduces line for line the features of the court of Solomon—Deut. xvii. 16, seq. (260).  

This is true of just three features of his court—his multiplication of horses, of wives, and of gold and silver. If it were proved that Deuteronomy was written after Solomon's reign, this would account for the correspondence; and if it were proved that it was written before his reign, this would account for it; for, as we have said before, Moses knew by the example of the Pharaohs that the maintenance of a large cavalry force was a disastrous drain upon the resources of a nation, and a constant temptation to war; that a great multiplication of wives, such as enabled Remises II. to have sixty-nine sons and seventy daughters, was almost equally disastrous; and he knew that the attempt to amass great hoards of gold and silver would ordinarily involve extreme oppression of the people. In making laws, then, to govern the future king, should there ever be one, his natural good sense, even without the aid of inspiration, would lead him to say just what is said in Deuteronomy. As the coincidence, then, is adequately accounted for on either hypothesis, it is a fallacy of which scientific critics ought to be ashamed, to use it as proof of either.  

3. The two brazen pillars which stood at the porch (I. Kings vii. 21) were not different from the forbidden macceba, or from the twin pillars that stood in front of Phoenician and Syrian sanctuaries (ib.).  

How could Professor Smith know this? Did pillars or columns about all temples have the same significance? We know that those called obelisks, which stood by Egyptian temples, were lined with inscriptions in praise of the gods worshiped there, or of the kings who erected the temples; and wo know that the Doric, Ionian or Corinthian columns connected with Greek temples had no such significance, but were purely ornamental. How was it with these two brazen pillars before the temple? There was not a letter of inscription on them. They were, from their nature and form, highly ornamental. Their combined names, Jachin and Boaz, meant, "He shall establish it in strength," and had reference, no doubt, to the firm establishment of God's worship in that house. What was there in this forbidden by the Levitical law, or the law in Deuteronomy? The argument would have been far more plausible if it had been directed against the two gigantic images of cherubim that stood in the oracle, overshadowing the ark with their outstretched wings. That device has some semblance to a violation of the Second Commandment; yet it showed how perfectly Solomon understood that commandment as not forbidding the making of images except when they were intended as objects of worship.  

4. I. Kings ix. 25 can hardly bear any other sense than that th« king officiated at the altar in person three times a year. That implies an entire neglect on his part of the strict law of separation between the legitimate priesthood and laymen (ib.).  

That text reads thus: "Three times in a year did Solomon offer burnt offerings upon the altar which he built unto Jehovah, burning incense therewith upon the altar that was before Jehovah." How does this prove that he "officiated at the altar in person"? The very next sentence is, "And King Solomon made a navy of ships." Would a scientific critic say, This can hardly bear any other sense than that the king made these ships in person? I think not. Then, why stultify himself by applying to words connected with offerings a rule of interpretation which is absurd if applied to the same words in other connections? Elkanah, the father of Samuel, came up to Shiloh from year to year "to sacrifice unto Jehovah" (I. Sam. i. 3); why not say that he also officiated at the altar? The obvious answer is that the exigencies of criticism did not call for such a perversion in the case of Elkanah, but they did in the case of Solomon.  

There is still another view of Solomon's career which we must not omit. The specifications just considered are the proof that the whole life of Solomon answers in the negative the question whether his founding of the temple was an attempt to enforce the Levitical system. But is the whole life of Solomon involved in these specifications? Why is it forgotten tha1 he devoted seven years of his reign, vast sums of money, and the labor of 180,000 of his subjects, to the erection of a magnificent temple suitable only for the Levitical system of worship? For what form of worship was that temple divided into the holy and the most holy places, with the ark of the covenant in the latter, and the altar of incense, the candlesticks of gold, and the table of shewbread in the former, unless it was for the observance of the rites prescribed in the Levitical law? Why the altar of burnt offerings in front, and the lavers, and the inner court, except for the purpose of complying with the same law? And why did Solomon offer sacrifices on the altar three times every year, corresponding to the three annual festivals appointed in the Levitical law? Why did he, after the erection and dedication of the temple, refrain from offering sacrifices at any other spot until, in his old age, and under the persuasions of his many wives, he was induced to accommodate them by the erection of altars to their several gods? Herein lies, not the whole of Solomon's life, but an immensely greater part of it than in any of the departures from the Levitical law of which he was guilty. It would be difficult to conceive a more erroneous representation of the life of a great king than this that we have considered. And this is historical criticism—a criticism which sets aside history to make good its conclusions.  

8. Evidence from Foreign Guards in the Temple. It is asserted by our critics that the body-guard of foreigners which from the time of David was kept by the kings of Judah, were admitted within the temple, and took the same part in the service which the Levitical law restricted to the Levites; and this is held as proof conclusive that this law had not yet been given Robertson Smith expresses it thus:  

As long as Solomon's temple stood, and even after the reforms of Josiah, the function of keeping the ward of the sanctuary, which by Levitical law is strictly confined to the house of Levi, on pain of death to the stranger who comes nigh (Num. iii. 38), devolved upon uncircumcised foreigners, who, according to the law, ought never to have been permitted to set foot within the courts of the temple (id., 263).  

In another place he styles this "the admission of uncircumcised strangers as ministers in the sanctuary" (265). Had we not already found in his book so many misrepresentations of Scripture, we should be astonished at such a statement from the pen of such a scholar. Let us see what the facts in this case am  

It is not pretended that this irregularity was permitted by either David or Solomon. The first instance cited is under Rehoboam. Smith says, "The guard accompanied the king when he visited the sanctuary." The text says (I. Kings xiv. 28) : "As often as the king went into the house of Jehovah, the guard bore them [the shields of brass which he had made after Shishak had taken away the shields of gold], and brought them back into the guard chamber." It is not here said, nor is it implied, that the guard "went into the house of Jehovah." The Sultan of Turkey is accompanied by a military guard as often as he goes to the mosque; but when he enters the mosque the guard remains outside How does any man know that this was not the case with Rehoboam's guard I  

Leaping from this passage in I. Kings to II. Kings xi. 19, Professor Smith's next proof is the fact that "the temple gate leading to the palace was called the gate of the foot-guards." What of that? Does it prove that the foot-guards passed in and out through this gate, or is it just as probable that it was so called because they habitually halted and waited at this gate while the king was worshiping inside? The name of the gate does not imply that the guards ever passed through it. Again, it is asserted that this royal body-guard "was also the temple guard, going in and out in courses every week," and that when the priest Jehoiada crowned the young king Jehoash, he "was surrounded by the foreign body-guard, who formed a circle about the altar and the front of the shrine, in the holiest part of the temple court."  

This is all based on what is said about the Carites ("captains" in A. V.) in the account of the crowning of Jehoash by Jehoiada. But the Carites, generally supposed to be the foreign body-guard, are mentioned only twice in the proceedings, and in both instances they are expressly distinguished from the temple guard. In the first instance it is said that Jehoiada sent and fetched the captains over hundreds, of the Carites and of the guard, and brought them into the house of Jehovah, and made a covenant with them, and took an oath of them in the house of Jehovah, and showed them the king's son (verse 4). In the second instance it is said of Jehoiada, "He took the captains over hundreds, and the Carites, and the guard, and all the people of the land; and they brought down the king from the house of Jehovah, and came by the way of the gate of the guard, unto the king's house" (verse 19). In both of these instances the Carites and the guard are two distinct bodies—as distinct as each is from "all the people." To say, then, that the Carites were at this time the temple guard, is to speak not only without authority, but in contradiction to the text. This perversion of the text is the more inexcusable from tha fact that the previous history informs us unmistakably of whom the temple giiard consisted. It was the section of Levites who were set apart to this service by David under the name of porters (gate-keepers). A full account of their appointment, and of the rules governing their service, is given in I. Chron. xxvi. 1-19. I suppose that Professor Smith and his critical predecessors failed to recognize the real temple .guard, because of having rejected as untrue this passage in Chronicles. If so, this is but another instance of setting aside a piece of unimpeached history in order to save a theory.  

In the first of these two instances the Carites were among those brought into the house of Jehovah, and to whom Jehoiada showed the king; but it does not appear whether this was in the outer court, into which Gentiles were admitted, or the inner court, into which only the circumcised were admitted. If the latter, then there was an infraction of the law on this subject, provided the Carites were uncircumcised. If they were circumcised (and their long continuance in the service of the kings of Judah would naturally lead to their being circumcised), they had the same right of admission into the inner court as the Jews. If they were not, Jehoiada might well excuse himself for admitting them there when the life of the king, his own life, and the lives of all who entered into the covenant, were at stake. Indeed, the continuance of the house of David on the throne, according to God's promise, was at stake, as all of his male offspring in the line of inheritance, except this child, had been slaughtered by Athaliah. In such a death-struggle a man of Jehoiada's decision and courage could not fail to brush aside any matter of mere ritual that stood in his way. If, then, all that is logically assumed by our critics in reference to his use of the Carites on this occasion were true, and if the law excluding foreigners from the inner court was in his hand, still there can be no doubt that Jehoiada would have proceeded as he did. The incident furnishes not the slightest ground for denying his knowledge of the Levitical law.  

In this connection Professor Smith mentions, as further evidence that the Levitical law was not yet known, the fact that neither the sin-offering nor the trespass-offering is once mentioned before the captivity, and that "sin-money and trespass-money" were given to the priests. He pronounces this last custom "nothing but a gross case of simony" (263 f.). Here he betrays an unaccountable ignorance of both the history and the law. For whence came the "sin-money and the trespass-money" except from the sin-offerings and the trespass-offerings? What is the meaning of the very text on which his assertions are based; viz.: "The money for the guilt-offerings, and the money for the sin-offerings, was not brought into the house of Jehovah: it was the priests'" (II. Kings xii. 16)? This is a mention of these two offerings aa existing before the captivity, and in admitting what the writer of Kings says about the use made of the money, our critic is stopped from denying what he says about the source of the money. And what does the law say about this money? It expressly provides that when a man committed a trespass in holy things, he should bring to the priest a ram for a guilt-offering, and one-fifth of its value in money, which was to be the priest's (Lev. v. 14-16). It further provides that when the trespass was against a fellow man, he was to make restitution in full, and add a fifth part. This fifth part was to go to the injured person, if alive, and to his heirs, if he was dead ; but if no heirs were known, it was given to the priest who officiated. Here are now two instances in which "sin-money and trespass money" was to be given to the priests, and there is not a single provision of the law requiring it, as Professor Smith asserts, to go into the Lord's treasury.  

In the same connection, strange to say, our critic brings forward as proof of his thesis, the sacrilege committed by Ahaz: in setting up an idolatrous altar in the house of the Lord, and the ready compliance of the priest Urijah in having it made and set up under the king's order. He must have felt hard pressed for evidence when he resorted to such as this. Why did he not bring forward the worship of false gods by Ahaz and the sacrifice of his own son, as proof that the Ten Commandments were unknown at that time? It would have been as logical. And so it would be to bring up the infamous crimes of the apostate Julian to prove that the Christian religion was not yet known in his day. The sacrilege committed by Ahaz consisted, in part, in the changes which he made about the temple in violation of the Levitical law, in accordance with which the temple service had been inaugurated. As to the priest Urijah, he is not the only priest, whether of the Jewish or any other religion, who has violated law at the command of a wicked king rather than lose his place or his head.  

Similar to this is the argument based on Solomon's deposition of Abiathar as high priest and the substitution of Zadok. Professor Smith styles it "subornation of the priesthood to the palace carried so far that Abiathar is deposed from the priesthood, and Zadok, who was not of the priestly family of Shiloh, set in his place, by a mere fiat of King Solomon" (266 f.). But Abiathar had been guilty of treason, the penalty of which was death, and deposition from office was a merciful commutation. Solomon said to him: "Thou art worthy of death: but I will not at this time put thee to death, because thou bearedst the ark of the Lord God before David my father, and because thou wast afflicted in all wherein my father was afflicted" (I. Kings ii. 26). As to Zadok, it is true, as Professor Smith says, that he was not of the priestly family of Shiloh, which family, in accordance with the prediction of Samuel, had now been deprived of the priesthood, but he did belong to another branch of the family of Aaron, being descended from Kohath (I. Chron. vi. 1-12). It is constantly affirmed by destructive critics that Zadok was not of the priestly family; but, in order to do so, they set aside his genealogy in Chronicles, our only source of information on the subject (266, note).  

In the paragraph last quoted, Professor Smith falls into the common error of supposing that the Israelites were forbidden to intermarry with foreigners. He says: "The exclusive sanctity of the nation was not understood in a Levitical sense; for not only Solomon, but David himself, intermarried with heathen nations" (266). This prohibition had reference only to the tribes of Canaan (Ex. xxxiv. 11-16; Deut . vii. 1-3);. consequently the people were left as free to intermarry with other nations as they had been before the law was given. Indeed, the Book of Deuteronomy contains an express provision for the marriage of Hebrews to foreign women taken captive in war, which were usually reduced to slavery (xxi. 10-14). David, therefore, did not violate the Levitical law in marrying, though Solomon did (I. Kings xi. 1, 2). If it is still argued that Solomon's course in this respect proves that he was ignorant of the Levitical law, you may just as well argue that his participation in idolatry is proof that he knew nothing of the Decalogue, or even of the First Commandment. It is a new thing under the sun to argue that violations of a law by lawless men furnish proof that the law was not known to exist. This is "scientific criticism"!  

9. The Toleration of High Places. The last of Professor Smith's specifications from the historical books which we shall notice is expressed in the following words:  

The priests of the popular high places were recognized priests of Jehovah, and, instead of being punished as apostates, they received support and a certain status in the temple (xxiii. 9). We now see the full significance of the toleration of the high places by the earlier kings of Judah. They were not known to be any breach of the religious constitution of Israel (259).  

What is here said of the priests of the high places is true only of so many of them as were priests of Jehovah; that is, descendants of Aaron. No heathen priests were ever admitted to support or to a "status in the temple." The statement that priests of Jehovah who had officiated in the high places were not punished by Josiah is a contradiction of the very passage (xxiii. 9) cited in support of it. It reads: "Nevertheless the priests of the high places came not up to the altar of Jehovah in Jerusalem, but they did eat unleavened bread among their brethren." This, as we showed in a former discussion of this passage, was the Levitical law for all priests who were disqualified for the functions of their office. Josiah dealt with them as the law required sons of Aaron to be dealt with who were defective in bodily parts. If this was not punishing them as apostates, it was inflicting on them the penalty of the law, and the only penalty which the law prescribed for disqualified priests.  

But, in proof of his proposition, Professor Smith refers to the toleration of the high places by the earlier kings of Judah, and he especially cites the example of Jehoash in tolerating them while he was directed by the high priest Jehoiada (II. Kings xii. 2, 3). He may as well have said, tolerated by Jehoiada; for as Jehoash began his reign at seven years of age, Jehoiada had complete control of affairs for at least ten or twelve years. But that faithful priest had enough on his hands without undertaking what King Hezekiah undertook, but failed to accomplish. When Athaliah slew, as she thought, every male of the royal family in order to secure to herself an undisputed reign, Jehoiada and his wife, at the imminent peril of their lives, concealed the infant Jehoash, and kept him concealed till the day that he brought him out and crowned him king. During these six years his own life and that of the child both hung upon a thread that was liable to break at any moment. And when, at last, he had crowned the child, find brought about the death of Athaliah, it would be idle to suppose that he was out of danger. If Athaliah had any friends, and she certainly had among those who had followed her in the worship of Baal, they necessarily looked upon Jehoiada as a usurper, if not an assassin, and might bo suspected constantly of conspiring against him. Had he added to these enemies all the worshipers at the high places, together with the priests who served at these altars and gained their livelihood by it, he and the young king might have perished after all. Had the latter been slain in his boyhood, the house of David would have been brought to an end, and the promise of God to David would have been broken. Well might the good priest, then, be contented with what he did accomplish until the king whom he had saved could take the reins of government into his own hands.  

Before we can accept the closing statement of the extract last made from Professor Smith, that until the time of Josiah the high places were not known to be any breach of the religious constitution of Israel, two questions must be satisfactorily answered: First, Why does the author of the Book of Kings reproach every good king of Judah, from Asa to Hezekiah, for not destroying the high places? The answer usually given, that this author wrote after the Book of Deuteronomy was discovered, and throws back what he learned from that book into the earlier history, is to prefer a charge which has no shadow of proof. It is to bring this charge against an author who had a better opportunity to know the facts in the case than has any modern critic. On the critical hypothesis of the late date of Deuteronomy, this author would have known whence he obtained his own knowledge that the high places were unlawful, and he would have known perfectly, what the modern critic can only conjecturally assert, that the historical documents anterior to the discovery of Deuteronomy which ho used in compiling his history contained not a hint of unlawfulness in the high places; and to have written about them as he does would have been deliberately falsifying the record. If the evident honesty of the author is not sufficient to protect him from such a charge, he should be at least protected by the absence of any motive for such perversity. No critic has yet pointed out, even conjecturally, such a motive. Until one is found, and until its existence in the mind of the author is demonstrated, let the tongue of detraction be silenced.  

The second question to be answered by those who deny that the high places were known to be unlawful till the Book of Deuteronomy was brought out by Hilkiah, is this: Why, then, did King Hezekiah, who died seventy-five years earlier, make an honest and persistent effort to destroy them all? The author of Kings answers this question indirectly, but explicitly, when he says: "He did that which was right in the eyes of Jehovah, according to all that his father David had done. He removed the high places, and brake the pillars, and cut down the Asherah: and he brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made; for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it; and he called it Nehushtan [a piece of brass]. He trusted in Jehovah the God of Israel; so that after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among them that were before him" (II. Kings xviii. 1-5). Hero the answer is given and repeated, that the reason why he removed the high places, and broke up other abuses of a similar character, was because he trusted in Jehovah, doing that which was right in his eyes. Undoubtedly, then, unless we here again charge the author of Kings with false representation, Hezekiah knew that the high places were not right in the eyes of Jehovah; and this he could not have known without Jehovah's law on the subject.  

We have now reviewed the evidence for the late date of Deuteronomy which destructive critics claim to find in the older historical books. We have found none that is really such, but much of the so-called evidence the bearing of which is in the opposite direction. In view of the extreme fallaciousness of these arguments, it is startling to read at the close of the lecture from which we have quoted, this statement:  

In truth the people of Jehovah never lived under the law, and the dispensation of divine grace never followed its pattern, till Israel had ceased to he a nation. The history of Israel refuses to be measured by the traditional theory as to the origin and function of the Pentateuch (O. T., 277).  

This statement would be unaccountable but for the well known ease with which acute minds, when committed to a theory, can deceive themselves.

1. The destructive critics have no mercy on the Chronicler. Kuenen says: "It is quite certain now that about the year 300 B. C, or still later, he rewrote the history of Israel before the exile in a sacerdotal spirit, and, in so doing, violated historical truth throughout" (Rel. of Israel, I. 321). If he did worse in this respect, or one-tenth as bad as our modern scientific critics have done, the Lord have mercy on him. Wellhausen, among a number of severe remarks about him, says: "One might as well try to hear the grass growing as attempt to derive from such a source as this a historical knowledge of ancient Israel" (quoted by Alexander Stewart, Lex M, 400). And one might as well attempt to smell the color of the grass as to derive such knowledge from such sources as the writings of Wellhausen.

2. This is conceded even by the radicals. Wellhausen says: "Substantially at least, Ezra's law-book, in the form in which it became the Magna Charta of Judaism in or about the year 444, must be regarded as practically identical with our Pentateuch, although many minor amendments and very considerable additions may have been made at a later date" (Art. "Israel," Encyc. Brit., p. 428, c. 2).

3. Here Smith was misled by Kuenen, who expresses the same idea in Religion of Israel, II. 27.