blessing, increasing in strength and fervour the oftener Balak attempts to draw from him a different declaration, xxii. 36-xxiv. 9; until after the third blessing, each having been sublimer than the former, Balak loses all patience, and wishes to drive away the seer. He then of his own accord begins to announce to Moab and to all the heathen the fate which impends over them from that community to which, as perfectly righteous and worshipping the true God, no curse could cleave, and which must for ever advance from victory to victory, and could not be injured even by the extremest and most pressing dangers, xxiv. 10-24. Now this is the genuine praise and the true blessing which even enemies-be they prophets or kingsmust involuntarily speak or hear: and the Fourth or the Fifth Narrator, both of whom delight to put such prophetic words into the mouth of the Patriarchs, could not better close the history of the Mosaic age (as he scrupled to put such words into the mouth of Moses), than with prophecies which promise duration and development to the true community as established in the last days of Moses.

III. IDEAS ON THE GRANDEUR OF MOSES AND HIS AGE.

If the history of the long leadership of Moses closed thus triumphantly, we can easily understand how, although a few dark blots always marred the memory of that time, the exodus from Egypt and the interval of sacred repose at Mount Sinai, and indeed the entire period of the guidance of the people by Moses naturally shone in the after-memory of the Israelites as the brightest portion of their history. Of any extraordinary period of history some few ideas, brief and easily repeated, but all the more expressive, gradually form themselves in the memory; attaching themselves to special objects characteristic of the age, in themselves insignificant, but which thus become the bearers of grand and comprehensive thoughts; and when the peculiar grandeur of such an age is for ever gone, and the enthusiastic desire to revive it can no longer accompany the memory of its vanished glories, these standing symbols of recollection become more spiritualised. Such ideas, in which all that is remembered of the essential glory of such ages is concentrated, and which we therefore consider most suitably in this place, do not properly form a part of the history itself, but are expressed in every place wherever a short notice of the wonderful nature of the age in question suffices; but in time they become a more integral part of the history, as the original

story gradually loses its details, and has to supply their place by more general ideas.

The free elevation of a people towards the Divine grace, which is in reality ever coming forth to meet man, but yet at favoured moments calls to him with especial power, and the fruitful cooperation of human action with Divine truths and powers, are the sources of all true nobility of character among men, and therefore in an especial degree of the nobility of the Mosaic age. So perhaps the most beautiful idea concerning this age is that of the great Prophets of the eighth century, that Jahve found Israel young and helpless in the desert, and in pure love adopted him as his son, and Israel then responded to this great and prevenient love of Jahve and willingly submitted to his guidance. But yet those ages were not always so peaceful as they might appear from this conception: towards without, against other nations, the permanence of this new and unique community could only be rendered possible through the most violent convulsions of the world. Looking back upon those times, the Israelites knew that it was only through the newly-felt power of Jahve in their midst that they had won this position amidst the other nations of the earth, and thus it would appear to them as if Jahve when leading his people, had made the opposing world to tremble so that even mountains like Sinai shook before him, until the new nation, and with them the new law, had won a firm restingplace among the nations. This conception would occur most naturally in times of war, when the people were again fighting as they had done under Moses.1

Consolidating all that here is disjointed, the Earliest Narrator sets up the beautiful image of an Angel of God, invisible and yet powerful, preceding the host of Israel and leading it securely on all its ways: the simplest idea here possible, and prevalent on other similar occasions in the same age.2

But when the historical spirit required something more short and tangible, the idea sprang up, that the glory (majesty) of Jahve was in the Mosaic age actually cognisable in a physical phenomenon, and as it were personally present among the people.

Its prototype is found in Deborah's song, Judges v. 4, 5, in a short form, and at greater length in the equally ancient Paschal Hymn, Ex. xv. Afterwards the same images were sometimes verbally repeated, Hab. iii. 2 sq., Ps. lxviii. 8 [7] sq., warlike periods; Deut. xxxiii. 2; Ps. lxxvii. 14 [13] sqq. cxiv. 3 sq. also 4 Ezra 1 (3) 17, 18, and elsewhere.

The Angel whom the Earliest Narrator described as present among the people or going before to guide them, was gradually corporealised into a more visible appearance and a more tangible form. We find this more corporeal conception first in the Book of Origins. Here, although the idea is already very fully developed, its origin is still very easily recognisable. Indeed it is in general a characteristic feature of this book, while following the popular tendency of the times in elevating the fragmentary reminiscences of the Mosaic age into the region of the supernatural, still to allow the original more tangible and visible forms of an antiquity hardly yet felt to be gone beyond recall to peep through here and there. According to this new conception, the visible image of the Majesty then present in the people to protect and guide was a bright cloud which floated above the earthly sanctuary (the Ark of the Covenant or the Tabernacle), as if the heavenly cloud of fire in which Jahve descended upon Mount Sinai' (according to the Earliest Narrator also) had descended so as to form a permanent cover to the earthly sanctuary built according to his plan, and from thence to protect the entire people who faithfully gathered around it. Now in ordinary times this bright cloud covered the Sanctuary only lightly, and was scarcely visible from the outside. Strictly speaking, during the most sacred moments it occupied only the Ark of the Covenant in the mysterious darkness of the innermost Sanctuary, into which therefore the priest must only enter with a thick cloud of incense to meet and evoke,2 as it were, the Divine cloud. In a wider sense the cloud is said to fill the whole inner Tabernacle, and in the widest sense of all, even the outer one.4 Just at the first blazing up of the flame it so completely filled the innermost sanctuary that even Moses could not enter there. In extraordinary cases, however, it rose up high and was seen far and wide. Thus when the people were to start upon their journey, it appeared, and remained visible as a light to guide their steps, until they reached their night's encampment. Thus, too, in still more exceptional cases, it suddenly burst forth with terrific glory to menace the refractory, and to afford to Moses or Aaron protection and shelter from their rage. It is added that by night this sacred

1 Ex. xix. 16, 18.

7

3

2 Lev. xvi. 2, see my Alterthümer, pp. 402 sq. The entire passage, Lev. xvi. 3-13, is merely an exposition of the few brief words in ver. 2, where the cloud being regarded as a sacred apparition, is first mentioned quite apart.

3

TT

cloud became fire, especially during journeys.'

2

If we take all these circumstances into consideration, it is clear that insofar as this idea is due to the memory of any actual phenomenon occurring during the journey in the desert, we are driven at length to think of the sacred altar-fire alone. At the sanctuary an eternal fire must burn. Such a fire actually was kept up even in a comparatively late age, as we see from certain evident indications. But upon journeys through the desert, and especially by night, this fire must have been kept up with especial brilliancy, on account of the great importance of holding together the extensive caravan by a visible token around the sanctuary as a centre; so that it would appear by day as a moving cloud, and by night as fire. But at the time of the composition of the Book of Origins the things real and apparent belonging to the desert and to the migratory life in general were already removed from the province of distinct memory. This obscured recollection, and the natural desire of forming a visible image of the Divine glory then present, might then easily combine to produce the above-described conception, which is certainly not a simple but a highly complex one. It is easy to see what particular points of this conception do, and what do not, rest upon real facts of experience. But the conception which had thus arisen was treated again differently by the Third Narrator; and again upon a nearer survey we discover that this newest version is separated from the former by a great interval in the development of the age. The cloud, being no longer regarded as subject to the variations in altitude alluded to above, is now termed a Pillar of cloud, and regarded as wholly unconnected with the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle, and as being in itself the visible covering of Jahve. Now therefore the cloud itself guides the people, or freely comes to and vanishes from the sacred Tabernacle, as only Jahve himself can freely appear in kindness or retire in wrath; and especially it tarries at the sacred Tabernacle in front, and is adored by the people whenever Moses goes out of the camp to speak with Jahve in the Tabernacle, and obtain

even apart from other indications, Ex. xiii. 21, 22, xiv. 19, 24, xxxiii. 9, 10; Num. xii. 5, xiv. 14; Deut. xxxi. 15. Such passages indeed in their present form are for the most part quoted by the Fourth Narrator; still I believe that the Third Narrator is the real author of this conception, because the chief interest of the Fourth Narrator turns rather on another point, namely the staff of Moses.

counsel (an oracle). The conception of the cloud has here imperceptibly become confounded with the originally very different one of the Cherubim (p. 322), and has become in reference to Moses only a tangible sign of his Divine appointment, a heavenly glory surrounding the sacred place of his oracle appearing and disappearing there as Moses himself comes and goes. And whilst in the conception found in the Book of Origins it is self-evident, as well as expressly stated, that the cloud never appeared till the sacred Tabernacle was raised and dedicated,' the Third Narrator can without difficulty represent his so-called Pillar of cloud as appearing long before from the very beginning of the exodus, now guiding the Israelites, now with terrible forms of fire scaring away their foes.3 Many similar conceptions might then without difficulty attach themselves and become amalgamated with this.*

Moreover, even the apparently unimportant things and events of daily life must undoubtedly have been regarded in a peculiar manner, with reference to an age whose spiritual life was conceived to have attained such an elevation. When once the seeing eye and the grateful heart of a nation are opened for the recognition of the true God, the nation sees, even in the daily gifts and blessings which it enjoys and through which it lives, more than mere physical matter. But in all alleviations of present trouble and privation, which come unexpected and undeserved, it feels far more inwardly and deeply the hand of the Infinite and Invisible God, whom even independently of this experience it had already begun to recognise. Now the desert, like the sea, seems as if created on purpose to remind man, whose spirit is so easily overwhelmed and corrupted by the luxury of some regions of the earth, of his bodily helplessness and frailty, and in this very contrast to teach him to esteem more truly and highly those remarkable alleviations and deliverances which surprise him often, even in the desert. And as we speak of seamanlike bluntness and honesty, so, even at the very earliest time known to us, the example of the Arab of the desert proves the desert

10.

1 Ex. xxxiii. 7-11; Num. xii. 4, 5, 9,

2 Ex. xl. 34; Num. ix. 10-12.

3 Ex. xiii. 21, 22, xiv. 19, 24. According to this conception also Prophets spoke, as Isaiah iv. 5, 6, Rev. xxi. 11 sq. and with it was bound up the entire feel ing of the living energy and glory of God's presence (see my Alterthümer, p. 379 sq.) Thus there were formed from it the Rabbinical expressions of the i. e. dwelling, presence, manifested glory of God; and

this word in the form

has even passed into the Koran, Sur. ii. 249, and für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, ii. p. thence into Islam poetry. (Zeitschrift 204, v. 49.

The ancient Hebrew conception, e. g. of the appearance of the God of heaven in the heavenly fire, p. 528; or those derived from the aspect of volcanic mountains. See Reinaud, Relation des Voyages (Paris 1845) i. p. clxi.; Hanno's Peripl. c. xvi.; Dio Cass. lxvi. 21.