DEUTERONOMIST: LAST MODIFICATION OF THE BOOK. 131

In conclusion, we can now understand what extraordinary fortunes this great work underwent, before it attained its present form-how from a small beginning it was enlarged and modified at every important epoch of Hebrew literature till the end of the seventh or the beginning of the sixth century, and concentrated within its limits the most beautiful and lasting literary achievements of a long series of centuries; on a similar system to that which, in other fields of literature, may be observed in the collection of the Prophets, the Psalter, and the Book of Proverbs; with two exceptions-(1) that in the region of history it never became customary to give the names of the narrators as vouchers for their statements, nor to mention those of the compilers, and (2) that this work came to a comparatively early close, because it was commenced the soonest, and its subject, as being purely historical, was necessarily the soonest exhausted. In the course of the modifications and transformations which the work underwent, much of it gradually lost its original clearness and its peculiar character. The Deuteronomist gives to his work, which is included in the book as it now stands, the name (which indeed the whole volume might well bear) of Book of the Law of God,' or Book of the Law of Moses; by which however is strictly meant only the chief portion of the book, excluding the present Book of Joshua. Sometimes he calls it more briefly the Book of the Law, since the legislative portion seemed to him the most important; and thus the older names-Book of Origins, and the rest-were thrown into the background. Thus, too, the ancient divisions of the Book of Origins are very much obscured by later transformations and additions; and the whole work in its latest form is partitioned, we know not by whom, into six large sections, which by the Hellenists in Egypt and elsewhere were

of the whole; and that thus the first four books of the Pentateuch were cast into their present form by him, and that, for instance, the abridgments which have evidently been made in Gen. iv. and vi. (see p. 113) proceeded from him. But on further consideration I find this view not tenable, if only because there is nowhere the least trace of the spirit of the Deuteronomist before the first verse of the Book of Deuteronomy. Such passages, on the other hand, as Deut. v. 25-28 [2831] and xviii. 16-19 yield no sufficient proof that the Deuteronomist in a previous portion of his work had described the whole history of Moses, since what has been already said is a sufficient explanation of these.

K 2

In Josh. xxiv. 26; likewise 2 Kings x. 31; in Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah.

2 In Josh. xxiii. 6; the same name appears elsewhere after that time, 1 Kings ii. 3; 2 Kings xiv. 6, xxiii. 25, and in Chronicles and similar writings. In Deuteronomy, as well as in Josh. viii. 31, 32, only Deuteronomy itself is to be understood by the term; but from its intimate connection with the older work, the wider use of the name must have been from the first possible.

Deut. xxxii. 46; compare 2 Kings xxii. 8, 11, and elsewhere. With this name that of Book of the Covenant, 2 Kings xxiii. 21, is interchangeable.

4 The only natural divisions which the subject-matter itself creates in the great

called the Pentateuch (of Moses) and the Book of Joshua. But from amid the wreck of the oldest writings and the multitude of later additions, there still shines forth very much that is original nor have any of the later transformations been able entirely to obscure either the grand remains of the earliest times or the whole history of the gradual creation of the work itself; at least in the presence of that exact research, which alone is both suited to the importance of the subject and fruitful of results.

work are the following:-1. Genesis; 2. The history of Moses as far as Deuteronomy; 3. Deuteronomy; 4. The time of Joshua. But the second of these parts must, on account of its great extent, have been very early broken up into three portions, such that the whole work fell into six nearly equal parts: but this partition into three

books-Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers — agrees only remotely with the original divisions of the Book of Origins. The sixth of these parts might then the more readily be further separated and treated as a distinct book, and entitled the Book of Joshua.

II. THE GREAT BOOK OF THE KINGS.

BOOKS OF JUDGES, RUTH, SAMUEL, AND KINGS.

THE first phenomenon that strikes the observer here is the marked difference in the language of this great Book of Kings, in comparison with that of the preceding great book of the primitive history. Although both are equally made up of passages by the most diverse writers, yet on the whole each is distinguished by a peculiar cast of language. Many fresh words and expressions become favourites here, and supplant their equivalents in the primitive history; others that are thoroughly in vogue here, are designedly avoided in the primitive history, and evidently from a historical consciousness that they were not in use in the earliest times; 2 but the most remarkable and pervading characteristic is, that words of common life, which never occur to the pen of any single relator of the primitive history, find an unquestioned reception here.3 I have no hesitation in

Such as prince, instead of mentioned at p. 93 (it is also peculiar to the Chronicles in places which are wanting in the four books of Kings, 1 Chron. v. 2, ix. 11, 20, xiii. 1, xxvi. 24, xxvii. 4, 16, xxviii. 4, xxix. 22; 2 Chron. vi. 5, xi. 11, 22, xix. 11, xxviii. 7, xxxi. 12 sq., xxxii. 21, xxxv. 8); a, in the signification to sweep away (not to burn; Deuteronomy is the first that obliterates the distinction); in the sense of prevalent custom; for to reveal, 1 Sam. ix. 15, xx. 2, xxii. 8, twice; 2 Sam. vii. 27; Ruth iv. There are quite new words, such as П anything (which only occurs in the Fourth Narrator); in derivatives, with the signification of to subdue, to humble; troop, 1 Sam. xxx. 8, 15, 23; 2 Sam. iii. 22, iv. 2; 1 Kings xi. 24; 2 Kings v. 2, xiii. 20 sq.; also to be silent (which sense is expressed by many other words) first appears in prose in Judges xviii. 9; 1 Kings xxii. 3; 2 Kings ii. 3, 5, vii. 9, and only in later times in poetry, except Ps. xxxix. 3 [2].

4.

2 This is especially shown by the name 1 Sam. i. 3, 11, iv. 4, xv. 2,

xvii. 45; 2 Sam. v. 10, vi. 2, 18, vii. 7, 26 sq.; 1 Kings xviii. 15, xix. 10, 14; 2 Kings iii. 14. On the other hand, the Books of Chronicles are again sparing in its use, and only use it in the life of David; it is entirely unknown to the Pentateuch, Joshua, and Judges.

which was really first בְּלִיַּעַל

• Such as introduced into the written language by David (cf. Psalmen, sec. ed., p. 4); 1 Sam. i. 16, ii. 12, x. 27, xxv. 17, 25, xxx. 22; 2 Sam. xvi. 7, xx. 1; Kings xxi. 10, 13; Judges xix. 22, xx. 13, which, in the other province, has only penetrated into Deut. xiii. 14 [13], xv. 9; the oath

which is also put into the mouth of heathen, the verb in that case being made plural, 1 Sam. iii. 17, xiv. 44, xx. 13, xxv. 22; 2 Sam. iii. 9, 35, xix. 14 [13]; 1 Kings ii. 23, xix. 2, xx. 10; 2 Kings vi. 31; Ruth i. 17; the similar oath of common life, which however can only be used by Hebrews, quae in many in 1 Sam. xx. 3, xxv. 26, 2 Sam. xi. 11 (with

saying that the established usage of centuries must have sanctioned for the primitive history a style of narrative and a cast of language utterly different from those customary in the history of the Kings; just as the style of the regular historians of the Greeks differs from that of the so called logographers, and-to cite a nearer example-as the Arabian narrators of easy style, the authors of Wâkidi's books, of the Thousand and one Nights, and others, select a form of language different from that of the older historians.

This remarkable phenomenon-quite worthy of minute investigation, and sufficient to rouse us to profound meditation on the great changes Hebrew historical composition has undergone -necessarily leads us to assume that when historians began to treat of the period of the Kings, the mode of delineation of the stories of antiquity had long since adopted its established tone and style, seeing that the above-described Book of Origins (pp. 74 sqq.) does not indicate the commencement, but the highest perfection, and in a certain sense the consummation, of the development of the primitive history. When therefore a new branch of literature, describing the history of the Kings, was originated, doubtless by different writers at first, it naturally created for itself a new style of narrative and of language, and thus two species of historical composition, differing in many respects, were established: the long developed style of the primitive history, which occupied a province more or less sacred; and the new style of the history of the Kings, whose province was that of common life and daily progressing

events.

some variation), xv. 21; 2 Kings ii. 2, 4, 6, iv. 30; and in a shorter form 1 Sam. i. 26, xvii. 55; 2 Sam. xiv. 19. To this class belong also the common proverb of the dead dog, or dog's head, 2 Sam. iii. 8, ix. 8, xvi. 9; 1 Sam. xxiv. 15 [14], further shortened in xvii. 43; 2 Kings viii. 13; as also the two phrases pvp, 1 Sam. xxv. 22, 34; 1 Kings xiv. 10, xvi. 11, xxi. 21; 2 Kings ix. 8, and

1 Kings xiv. 10, xxi. 21; 2 Kings ix. 8, xiv. 26 (which occurs nowhere else but in the little song, Deut. xxxii. 36, where it is most likely to be original); with this distinction only, that we discern a certain difference between older and later writings of this province in the use of the

latter.

Some words of the same species are at any rate very rare or doubtful in the Book of Origins; as the term of execration,

which only occurs in Jos. xxii. 29; and the exclamation to secure a favourable hearing from a superior (1 Sam. i. 26; 1 Kings iii. 17, 26; Judges vi. 13, 15, xiii. 8), which, though used by the later narrators of the primitive history, Gen. xliii. 20, xliv. 18; Éx. iv. 10, 13, to whom Num. xii. 11 may also belong, in the Book of Origins appears only in Jos. vii. 8, if it is the original reading there. The meaning of the latter expression is hardly to be explained by such longer phrases as that in 1 Sam. xxv. 24; we might rather assume that was an abbreviation of ja compare, Jer. xlix. 23; but the most probable explanation is, that is shortened from 7 (Job xxxiv. 36; 1 Sam. xxiv.

12 [11]) into a mere exclamation: see my Lehrbuch, 7th edition, p. 258.

The history of the Kings followed the events themselves much sooner and more immediately, before centuries had separated the sacred from the secular elements in them; nay, it began with the most documentary registrations and minutest descriptions of memorable events. Springing from the immediate life of the time, and presenting a more exact picture of the day, it was also more ready to take the colour of the language of the day, and less fastidious in the employment of phrases of common life. In conformity with this, it did not enter, while it retained this simple form, on those wide surveys and lofty generalisations which are inseparable from the primitive history, and which, on account of their sublime import, demand a higher language.

The difference between the two styles is most sensible when the late historical composition is new. How far, for example, is the Book of Origins removed as to character from the earliest book of the Kings, although as to date separated by scarcely a century! This diversity indeed gradually decreases; the late revisers of the primitive history occasionally introduce a word hitherto foreign to that sphere; and on the other hand the later writers of the history of the Kings attempt grander descriptions after the fashion of the primitive history. Nevertheless, the diversity never entirely disappeared down to the end of David's reign; and even the latest redactors of the primitive history retain certain characteristics of the ancient language with great consistency. This is essentially the same feeling as that which prompts the author of the Book of Job to preserve the air of antiquity in his representation of the affairs and persons of the primitive time; for we are by no means to fancy that Hebrew literature in the period of its fullest development and art was so unlearned and simple.

The style in which the period of the Judges is described, like the period itself, stands in the middle, and has less distinctive character. Treated in the earlier portions like an appendix to the primitive history, and written in a similar tone accordingly, it subsequently, as the diversity of the two styles develops itself, assumes the type of the history of the Kings; and the later writers properly treated the period as only a preparation for the history of the Kings.

The most copious source left to us for the recognition of the