In the Books of Samuel.

In answering the charge of Robertson Smith that the ritual observed at Shiloh proves the non-existence at the time of the Levitical ritual, we have already exhibited much of its bearing in the opposite direction; we now consider its bearing in this direction more fully. While it is unquestionable, as we have seen before, that under the management of Hophni and Phinehas both the moral law and the ritual law were very grossly violated, we find, upon careful examination of the facts, indubitable evidences that the latter was the law under which they lived. We specify:  

1. The Structure in and before Which this Service was Conducted. It is styled "the house of Jehovah" (i. 7; ii. 15, 24); the "temple of Jehovah" (i. 9; iii. 3); and "the tent of meeting" (ii. 22). The last is the current title of the structure otherwise called the tabernacle, in the book of Moses. The first, "house of Jehovah," is first used in Ex. xxiii. 19, before the structure was erected according to Exodus. It is found in the command, "The first of the first-fruits of thy ground thou shalt bring into the house of Jehovah thy God." As no fruits of the ground were gathered during the wilderness wanderings, this precept, of course, had reference to the future, and to whatever structure might be known as the house of God when fruits of the ground should be produced. Until four hundred and eighty years after the Exodus, that is, until Solomon's temple was built, the house of Jehovah to which these first-fruits were brought was. none other than the tent of meeting. The same precept is repeated verbatim in Ex. xxxiv. 26, after Moses had received directions about the construction of the tent of meeting. Then Moses knew what the "house of Jehovah" was to be, and necessarily understood it to be the house to which the first-fruits must be brought. Later still, and after the tent of meeting had been in existence and use for nearly forty years, Moses said: "Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the wages of a dog, into the house of Jehovah thy God for any vow." From these three passages, if they speak the truth, it is placed beyond doubt that the tent of meeting built by Moses was known to him by the title, "house of Jehovah." This title it bears in I. Samuel. The title, "temple of God," is therefore the only new one here found, and the nature of the term is such that it may be applied properly to any structure in which God is habitually worshiped. The structure, then, in which Hophni and Phinehas served is identified by its names with the one which Moses built, and which Joshua first set up at Shiloh, where our text finds it. It had remained here for more than three hundred years, with the probable exception of a temporary removal to Bethel in the days of Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron (Judg. xx. 26-28).  

2. The Contents of the Structure. There is no formal description of the tent of meeting, or its contents, in our text, and consequently all that we learn about it is from allusions of the most incidental character. This prevents fullness of information, and at the same time it is a guarantee against the suspicion of any false or 'misleading representation by the writer. In mentioning the time and the place of God's call to the child Samuel, it is said that "the lamp of God was not yet gone out," and that Samuel slept "in the temple of Jehovah where the ark of God was." We thus learn that a lamp, which is called "the lamp of God," was kept there burning at least a part of the night; and this can be no other than the golden lamp incorrectly styled a candlestick in the Book of Exodus. The law required that it be kept burning all the night; but it is not surprising that under the lawless administration of Hophni and Phinehas, this requirement was neglected. The ark of God is identified with the one made by Moses, not only by its name, but by the circumstance that in describing its removal to the field of battle by these two wicked priests, the author says, "The people sent to Shiloh, and brought from thence the ark of the covenant of Jehovah of hosts, who sitteth between the cherubim"—the last clause having reference to the two golden cherubim that stood, one on each end of the mercy-seat, and overshadowed it with their wings. God had promised, "I will meet with thee, and commune with thee from above the mercy-seat, from between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony" (Ex. xxv. 22).  

The table of shewbread was also in this temple; for after its removal from Shiloh to Nob in the reign of Saul, David, in his flight from Saul, called on the priost Ahimelech for bread, and the latter gave him "holy bread: for there was no bread there but the shewbread, that was taken from before Jehovah, to put hot bread in the day when it was taken away" (xxi. 3-6). Jesus afterward noted the fact that this act was unlawful, the law providing that this bread should be eaten by the priests alone; but still it shows that the bread was kept there as the law required, and was renewed by hot bread at proper intervals.  

We now see that three out of the four sacred vessels which, according to the Levitical law, were to be kept in the tabernacle, were kept in the house at Shiloh, and it is fair to presume that the only reason why the fourth, the altar of incense, is not mentioned, is, that in the accounts of the priests and visitors to the structure at this period, there was no occasion for alluding to it. We may assert, then, with confidence, that while in some respects the law of Moses, if in existence, was seriously violated by the priests then in charge, the tent of meeting erected by Moses for the purpose of putting the Levitical ritual into effect, together with all of the sacred furniture provided for various acts of that ritual, was standing at Shiloh in the days of Samuel. But how could this have been if the law which originated this service had not been enacted before this time? Let us see what answer the critics give to this question. We have seen a part of their answer in a preceding section (p. 144), and have found that it consists in irrelevant assertions and unfounded assumptions. We now seek their final and decisive answer.  

3. The Existence of the Tabernacle Denied. In the first place, they deny that the tabernacle so elaborately described in the Book of Exodus, and so often mentioned in later history, ever had a real existence. Wellhausen says:  

The tabernacle rests on a historical fiction. . . . Hebrew tradition, even from the time of the judges and the first kings, for which the Mosaic tabernacle was, strictly speaking, intended, knows nothing at all about it (Prol., 39).  

Robertson Smith says of it:  

It is, in short, not a fact, but an idea, an imaginary picture of such a tabernacle as might serve as a pattern for the service of the second temple (O. T., 410).  

Andrew Harper, more modest, takes the same ground when he says:  

There is not a hint in the legislation of Deuteronomy that its author knew of the tabernacle and its sole right as a place of sacrifice. From the beginning to the end of the code he never mentions the tabernacle or the sacrifices there (258).  

Such is the dictum of the critics, from the most radical to the most conservative After this sweeping denial, it is an easy step to declare, as they do, that I. Sam. ii. 22, in which the structure at Shiloh is called "the tent of meeting," is an interpolation (Prol., 41, 43; Encyc. Brit., article, "Tabernacle"). There ia not the slightest suspicion of this verse on grounds of textual criticism, but it stands as an insuperable barrier against the dictum that there never was a tabernacle, and, therefore, it must be erased from the text.  

I can, not do better with reference to this wholesale slashing of the Scripture records, than to quote what Mr. W. L. Baxter says of it in his "Reply to Wellhausen":  

Wellhausen's treatment of this branch of the subject Is so astounding, in its utterly unsupported assumptions, and in its wholesale imputations of falsehood to the writers of Scripture, that we always feel a difficulty in realizing that he can expect his views to be soberly accepted by any Bible student. Nothing In the whole of the Old Testament is more Indubitably, more minutely and more solemnly asserted and described than the erection of the Mosaic tabernacle. Next to the delivery of the Decalogue, it is the main outstanding event in Israel's first year of a national emancipation. No less than thirteen entire chapters (Ex. xxv.-xxxi. and xxxv.-xl.) are devoted to a most circumstantial account of its contrivance and execution. Its precious metals, its cunning workers, its hearty contributors, its every division and curtain and vessel, its time in making, and its splendid inauguration, are all there most explicitly detailed. . . . If anything seems imbedded immovably in the history of Jewish worship, it is the giving, of the divine pattern for the sanctuary, and the elaborate execution thereof in the wilderness "as the Lord commanded Moses" (22).  

The enormity of such dealings with sacred records is not at all alleviated when we come to consider the excuses which some who feel the need of an excuse, have given for it . Robertson Smith, for example, mentions the "gold and silver, the rich hangings of rare purple, the incense and unguents of costly spices," and demands:  

How came these things to be found in the wilderness? It Is absurd to say, as is commonly said, that the tabernacle was furnished from the spoil of the Egyptians (Ex. xi. 2; xii. 35), and that the serfs who left Egypt carrying on their shoulders a wretched provision of dough tied up in their cloaks (Ex. xii. 34), were at the same time laden with all the wealth of Asia and Africa, including such strange furniture for a long journey on foot as store of purple yarn and the like (O. T., 410).  

Here he accepts a part of the text of Exodus only to misrepresent it, and utterly ignores another part of which he could not have been ignorant . The text does not say that they left Egypt "carrying on their shoulders a wretched provision of dough." They would have been fools indeed to start on a desert journey of two hundred miles, by the most direct course, with no better supply of food. They actually supplied themselves, before getting entirely out of Egypt, with food sufficient to last them a whole month; for they stared on the fifteenth of the first month (xii. 3, 18) and it was on the fifteenth day of the second month that they ran out of bread (xvi. 1-3). The dough with which they started was intended only for the start, and the statement of xii. 39, that "they could not tarry, neither had they prepared for themselves any victuals," has reference only to the departure from their homes for the rendezvous at Rameses. On the other hand, the positive statements that "according to the word of Moses" they "asked of the Egyptians jewels of gold and raiment," that "the Egyptians let them have what they asked," and that "they spoiled the Egyptians," are just as credible as the statement that they took unleavened dough on their shoulders bound up with their clothing. And while they were asking what they would of the Egyptians, they unquestionably gathered up a 'month's supply of provisions, thinking that they would make their journey to Canaan before it would be exhausted. It was because they were led by an unexpected route that their supply was exhausted in the wilderness. As to the quantity of gold and jewels with which they supplied themselves, if every man and woman secured a single dollar's worth, the amount would have been about $1,200,000. As to purple yarns, and costly goods for wearing apparel, the women of Israel, unless they differed very much from modern women, were more eager for these than for gold and silver; and especially so from the fact that Egypt was richly supplied with articles of this kind which money could not buy in any other land. To give Smith's reason, then, for denying that the tabernacle was built in the wilderness, is worse than to deny that it was, and give no reason.  

For the assertion quoted above, that the passage (I. Sam. ii. 22) in which the "tent of meeting" is named, is an interpolation, there is no evidence whatever, and it is clear that the assertion is made to get rid of evidence against the theory. But even if this assertion could be maintained, there would still remain unchallenged the passages in which it is perfectly manifest, as we have said above, that the structure before which Hophni and Phinehas officiated, and which is called elsewhere the temple of Jehovah, and the house of Jehovah, stood at Shiloh, and that it is identified with the structure that Moses is said to have built in the wilderness, by the fact that it contained the same sacred vessels, the ark, the golden lamp, and the table of shewbread. All the evasions and bold denials of the critics on this subject fail as completely to rid them of the binding force of evidence against their theory as did the writings of the fabled Laocoon to rid him and his sons of the entwining serpents.  

4. The Ritual at the House in Shiloh. In a former section (p. 7) we have already discussed this topic in answer to the objections of the adverse critics; we now consider the positive evidence which it furnishes for the pre-existence of the law. We find here, as respects the interior of the house, that according to the law there was a regular trimming and lighting of the lamp, and the renewing of the shewbread, as seen in the preceding section. We find also an altar for sacrifices, and at least three priests—a high priest and two common priests— who officiate at this altar. While the latter have been so corrupt in their practices as to disgust the mass of the people, and cause them to "abhor the offering of Jehovah," we find one faithful Israelite still coming annually with his family to offer, and his sacrifice is the peace-offering which in its peculiar features is a creation of the Levitical law. We find the extortionate priests demanding of the offerers a larger share of the victims than they are entitled to, thus implying that there was a prescribed portion allotted to them, yet they still burn on the altar the fat, which is the only part of the peace-offering that according to the Levitical law was to be burned. We find also that Hannah was acquainted with the Naririte vow, to the restrictions of which she binds her unborn son, and with the priestly ephod, in imitation of which she dresses her boy when she leaves him with the priest; and both of these are creations of the Levitical law.  

Besides the argument of Robertson Smith which we have quoted and discussed in a former section (p. 144), one more is advanced for the purpose of setting this evidence aside:  

The arrangements agree with those of the second temple in various particulars in which Solomon's temple was different; e. g., there is one golden candlestick, and not ten (O. T., 410; note 1).  

But all the descriptions of the tabernacle which we have in the Scriptures, represent it as having but one; so if this is the tabernacle built by Moses, it must have but one; and if the account of it is imaginary, it should still have but one. Only in case the account was imaginary, and was taken from the pattern of Solomon's temple, could there have been ten. The second temple copied in this respect the original tabernacle, and not the temple of Solomon. This, perhaps, was not because Zerubbabel and his colaborers had any objection to the ten lamps used by Solomon, but because they brought with them from Babylon only the one which had been made in the wilderness and kept in both the tabernacle and the temple. The other nine may have been left in the heathen temple at Babylon because the Jews were content with the one which Moses made and would not ask Cyrus for the others. Some new critic much arise, and make an advance on his predecessors, before the efforts of the latter shall be able to shake the evidence for the Mosaic law and the Mosaic tabernacle, which is furnished by the tent of meeting at Shiloh, and the service which was so imperfectly rendered there by the sons of Eli.  

There are some other evidences for the Mosaic origin of the law to be found in the Books of Samuel, less conclusive than those which we have presented. The reader who desires to exhaust the subject will do well to study the essay in Lex Mosaica by J. J. Lias, under the heading, "The Times of Samuel and Saul." All of the essays in that work are worthy of most careful study.