Incidental Evidence.

There are certain enactments recorded in Deuteronomy which were wholly out of date in the time of Manasseh and Josiah, and which could not have originated later than the time of Moses. A few of these we specify:  

1. The Decree against Amalek. "Remember what Amalek did to thee by the way as ye came forth out of Egypt; how ho met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and wears-; and ho feared not God. Therefore it shall be, when Jehovah thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget" (xxv. 17-19).  

If Moses is the author of Both Exodus and Deuteronomy, this order is simply an order issued by Moses in the last year of the wanderings, for the execution of a decree issued by God in the first year (Ex. xvii. 8-16) ; but if the narrative in Exodus was not written till six hundred years after Moses, and Deuteronomy not till seven centuries after, then the author of the former put into the lips of God a decree which he never uttered, and the latter put an order for the execution of this decree in the lips of Moses which he never uttered. Moreover, at the supposed time of the writings. Amalek had long since disappeared from the earth, having been exterminated by Saul and David. What motive, then, could have actuated these two writers? If we suppose that the hypothetical J or E wrote the account in Exodus because there was in his day an oral tradition that such a decree had been issued, this furnishes no excuse to the author of Deuteronomy for putting into the mouth of Moses an order for which there was not even traditionary evidence. We must conclude either that it was an invention of the latter spun out of his own brain, or that he is himself an invention spun out of the brains of modern critics. Driver says that "only an antiquarian reason is assigned for the injunction to exterminate Amalek" (Com., xxxi.). The reason given is, that Amalek had made an unprovoked attack on Israel in the wilderness. If that was a valid reason, it does not become invalid by giving it a strange name, and calling it an "antiquarian reason." It would be better to inquire, For what reason did the hypothetical writer put this "antiquarian reason" in his book? It could only have been to sustain the deception that Moses was the author of the book.  

2. The Order to Exterminate the Canaanites. It is only in Deuteronomy that this order is found: "But of the cities of these peoples, which Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: but thou shalt utterly destroy them; the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; as Jehovah thy God hath commanded thee: that they teach you not to do after their abominations, which they have done unto, their gods; so should ye sin against Jehovah your God" (xx. 16-18). On the critical hypothesis, this order was not in existence in any written document when Deuteronomy was composed, not even in the imaginary documents J and E. The writer, then, must have composed it himself and put it into the mouth of Moses. And what motive could he have had for so doing? The Canaanite tribes mentioned had long since disappeared from the face of the earth, and Israel had not exterminated them as this order required. They had slaughtered many, but they had spared many. Did the writer wish to hold up his ancestors as disobedient to a divine command? And was he so anxious to do this that he invented the command to make them appear disobedient to it? No critic will answer, Yes. The existence of this order in the Book of Deuteronomy is, then, an enigma, if it was not placed there by Moses himself. This conclusion is confirmed by the wholly evasive attempt of Driver to account for the order. He says: "Religious motives sufficiently explain the strongly hostile attitude adopted against the Canaanites" (Com., xxx.). Yes; of course. But who adopted this strongly hostile attitude; a writer who lived long centuries after the Canaanites had disappeared? or a writer who lived while they were yet living and powerful? If the latter, then Moses wrote Deuteronomy. If the former, then the man who wrote it was wasting ammunition by firing at a dead enemy.  

3. The Order Respecting Ammon, Moab and Edom. This order provided that an Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter into the assembly of Jehovah, even to the tenth generation; and two reasons are given: First, because they "met not Israel with bread and water in the way;" and, second, because they hired Balaam to curse Israel. It also contained the prohibition, "Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite; for he is thy brother" (xxiii. 3-7). This order, like the one respecting the extermination of the Canaanites, is found in Deuteronomy alone It is not in Numbers or Exodus, nor in the hypothetical documents J and E. Whence, then, did D obtain it? Was it a traditionary law which D here puts into the mouth of Moses? If so, why does it reverse the traditional attitude of Israel toward these tribes? From the days of David the bitterest hostility had existed between Edom and Israel, while friendly relations had in the main existed between Israel and the Ammonites and Moabites. David's Ammonite war which lasted two years, his severe chastisement of Moab, and the expedition of Jehoshaphat and Jehoram against Moab, are the exceptions. How, then, could D have conceived the idea of putting into the lips of Moses the command that an Edomite shall not be abhorred, but that an Ammonite or a Moabite shall not come into the assembly of Jehovah even to the tenth generation? It is incredible that he did so; but it is most credible that Moses did it, and that Israel in the case of the Edomites were finally led to abhor them on account of their later hostility and treachery.  

4. The Predictions in the Book. In the speeches ascribed to Moses many events are predicted, all of which were yet future in the time of Moses, and some were future in the time of the imaginary I). As respects those which were not future to D, it was of course possible for him to put predictions respecting thorn in the mouth of Moses, and thus write history under the pretense of writing ancient prophecy. This, on the critical hypothesis, was another device intended to deceive the reader by making it appear that Moses had predicted events of which he had never spoken. This might have magnified the name of Moses as a prophet, but what other purpose could have actuated it our critics have not informed us. Indeed, they have overlooked this phase of the subject. Among the events yet future to D, we mention the two captivities of Israel, the many evils consequent upon them, and the final restoration of the remnant.  

In chapter xxviii. a long series of sins and punishments is predicted, culminating in this: "Jehovah shall bring thee, and thy king which thou shalt set over thee, unto a nation which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers; and there shalt thou serve other gods, wood and stone" (36). That this is the Babylonian captivity is made certain by the considerations, first, that their king was to be taken away with them; and, second, that the nation taking them away was not one previously known to them or their fathers. This was true of the Babylonians, or Chaldeans, who came into power on the overthrow of Nineveh after the close of Josiah's reign. At the date ascribed to D, the power of Assyria was at its zenith, and Babylon was one of its subject provinces. Nebuchadnezzar and his Chaldean army, by whom Jerusalem was overthrown and Judah carried into exile, represented a nation which had just sprung into power as if by magic  

Now, it is possible that the hypothetical D, guided by the utterances of the writing prophets, from Amos and Hosea to Isaiah and Micah, could have framed a prediction of the Babylonian captivity, such as we have in this passage; but if this is the way in which he obtained his foreknowledge, he was guilty of a deliberate fraud in putting the prediction back seven hundred years and pretending that Moses had uttered it. Let it be noted, too, that when the book of the law was found in the temple and read to King Josiah, it was this very prediction most of all which so frightened him that he rent his clothes and effected a religious reformation in his kingdom. He may have known that the four great prophets of recent times had predicted the same disaster and have been comparatively unmoved by the fact; but when he heard it out of a book written by Moses, and heard it from the lips of Moses, he believed it and trembled; and yet, on the critical hypothesis, he was frightened by something which Moses never spoke and never dreamed of speaking.  

This prediction is followed by a terrific array of the calamities which were to come upon Israel after this captivity, and then at verse 49 another captivity is introduced: "Jehovah shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance,-which shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favor to the young: and he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy ground. until thou be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee corn, wine or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or the young of thy flock, until he have caused thee to perish" (49-51).  

This conquering nation is distinguished from the first by three characteristics: first, it was to come "from far, from the end of the earth;" second, its tongue was to be one not understood by Israel; and, third, it was to be unmerciful to all classes of persons. Such were the Romans, by whom Jerusalem was finally overthrown, and the Jews scattered as they are to-day. They came from the end of the earth, the western end, whereas the Chaldeans came from a comparatively short distance. Second, their tongue, the Latin, was as strange to Israel as the Chinese is to an Anglo-Saxon, while the Babylonian was a kindred Semitic dialect. Third, they were more ruthless in the destruction of human life, and they swept the country cleaner of all men and means of subsistence, than had Nebuchadnezzar or Sennacherib. Josephus says (Wars, B. vi., c. 9), with perhaps some exaggeration, that they slew 1,100,000 of the population; and he recites many of the cruelties here predicted.  

The prediction proceeds: "Thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and daughters which Jehovah thy God hath given thee, in the siege and straitness wherewith thy enemies shall straiten thee" (53). The prediction is repeated in the next few verses with horrifying details; and we have the testimony of Josephus, an eye-witness (ib.), that these things actually took place during the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans, whereas nothing of the kind is mentioned in connection with the siege of Nebuchadnezzar. Furthermore, the prediction goes on to say: "Ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest in to possess it . And Jehovah shall scatter thee among all peoples, from the one end of the earth even to the other end of the earth; and there shall ye serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers, even wood and stone." The dispersion effected by Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldeans was far less extensive than this. It did not extend westward at all.  

Finally, the distresses and persecutions to be endured after the last captivity are portrayed by the prophet in a style scarcely equaled for power and pathos in all the writings of the prophets: "And among all these nations thou shalt find no ease, and there shall be no rest for the sole of thy foot: but Jehovah shall give thee a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and pining of soul: and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear night and day, and shalt have none assurance of thy life: in the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart which thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see" (63-68).  

The prediction does not end even here. The train of thought, interrupted by the twenty-ninth chapter, is resumed in the thirtieth, and the prophet adds: "And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations, whither Jehovah thy God hath driven thee, and shalt return unto Jehovah thy God, and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul; that then Jehovah thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the peoples, whither Jehovah thy God hath scattered thee. If any of thine outcasts be in the uttermost parts of the heavens, from thence will Jehovah thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee: and Jehovah thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers" (xxx. 1-5). As this gathering is to follow the last dispersion, and as it is to be universal, which the return from Babylon was not, it is still in the future; and it guarantees the final restoration of Israel to her God, and to the land which he swore to her fathers as an everlasting possession.  

Now, it was impossible for the hypothetical D to have uttered these predictions unless he was miraculously inspired; and if he was thus inspired it is inconceivable that he would have sought to deceive by putting his own words in the mouth of Moses. The prophecy, then, must have come from Moses; and it is in some respects the most wonderful prediction of the future ever uttered by a prophet of Israel. It antedates the predictions of other prophets by from six to eight centuries, and it reaches further down the stream of time than almost any other. It proves Moses to be the greatest prophet that ever lived until the Prophet like unto Moses appeared in the person of the Son of God.