He compassed him about, he cared for him, As an eagle that stirreth up her nest, He spread abroad his wings and took them, Jehovah alone did lead him, And there was no foreign god with him. 3. The Sinaitic Legislation. Moses, Mount Sinai, and the giving of the law to Israel are inseparably associated in the traditions of the Hebrew people. The substance of the Sinaitic legislation appears in most remarkable form in the decalogue, the "ten words," which were uttered by Jehovah himself amid the most sublime accompaniments of thunder, lightning, sound of a trumpet, quaking and smoking mountain. They were also delivered unto Moses in the mount in the form of two tables of stone graven with the finger of God. They were the divine basis of the covenant between Jehovah and Israel at Sinai, and were called "the two tables of the testimony." The two tables were in substance as follows: FIRST TABLE 1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 2. Thou shalt not make for thyself any graven image. 3. Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain. 9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. 10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. These tables of the fundamental law and testimony of God are supplemented in Exod. xxi-xxiii by numerous "judgments" which Moses was to set before the people. They are mainly of a simple and primitive character and notably adapted to the needs of an agricultural and nomadic populace. The statutes relating to domestic slavery receive prominent attention, and divers laws appear in modified forms and with noticeable repetitions and additions in the different sections of the Pentateuch. As the nation developed in strength, met new emergencies or faced new conditions, the relevant laws were codified anew and adjusted to the demands of the times. All subsequent legislation of this kind would naturally and properly be called Mosaic. 4. Comparative Legislation of the Nations. We find no civilized people or nation without laws, and we must not forget the profound observation of Paul that the Gentile nations are not without the law of God written in their hearts. Although without such laws and oracles of God as were the advantage and glory of the Hebrew people, they nevertheless possessed revelations from heaven of the wrath of God "against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." We have recently recovered the code of Hammurabi, believed to be the Amraphel of Gen. xiv, 1, the contemporary of Abraham. The laws are written on a huge stone about eight feet high, and are cast in the form of judgments conspicuously after the manner of the Sinaitic legislation of Exod. xxi-xxiii. Many of the laws are in substance identical with those of the Mosaic code, and Hammurabi himself is represented on the stone tablet as receiving them from Shamash, the God of the sun and the source of light. We have also the sacred laws or "Institutes of Manu," whose origin eludes us amid the mists of Hindu antiquity and legend; but they claim, nevertheless, to have been first given by the Creator of mankind to the ten great sages whom he made at the beginning and trained in sacred things. We are familiar also with the legends of Minos, the king and lawgiver of Crete, the son of Zeus, who received from "the Father of gods and men" the laws which he delivered to his people. He was wont to resort to a cave in Crete in which he obtained his laws by dictation from the deity and afterward reported them in different portions and at different times. His name also connects in Grecian story with Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, who made a journey to Crete to confer with Minos, and who also extended his researches into Egypt and other countries. When he went to Delphi, to consult the oracle of Apollo, he was declared to be the beloved of the gods, even more of a god than a man, and it was promised him that his laws should be the best in the world. Similar legends are told of Solon, the famous Athenian lawgiver, whose statutes and ordinances were cast in metric form, like those of Manu, and were inspired by Apollo and the Muses. There, too, was Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, born, according to tradition, the day that Rome was founded. He was wont to wander in the sacred groves, had frequent interviews with the goddess Egeria, and received from her the revelations which enabled him to become the founder both of the religion and the legislation of his people. There are those, perhaps, who fear that such comparisons tend to disparage Moses and his divine legation. We believe, on the contrary, that a faithful study of all that can be known of these men and nations and their laws will magnify and enhance the Hebrew legislation. Vainly will we seek to honor Moses by denying that God himself has also spoken to other prophets and other peoples. Moses himself would in spirit rebuke such narrow jealousy, and say rather: "Would to God that Jehovah would put his Spirit upon all the peoples and make them all prophets!" It is both interesting and noteworthy that Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, stands forth in the biblical records as the great lawgiver of Israel, and that Hammurabi, the contemporary of Abraham, and so living more than five hundred years before Moses, proclaimed the same laws in great part as the gift of the God of light. The great ethical commandments, like those of the decalogue, did not originate with Moses or with Hammurabi; they were spoken from heaven to men and written in human hearts before the times of Abraham. Abraham was called out of the land of Hammurabi, and his migration extended into Egypt where the future Hebrew lawgiver was born. There is no evidence that the different codes of these lawgivers were dependent on each other. The Hebrews did not copy their laws from the stones of Babylon, nor from the sacred scribes of Egypt. Law, in its deeper, fuller, higher meaning, is essentially a revelation of God to man. Moses, Confucius, Hammurabi, Manu, Minos, Lycurgus, Solon, and Numa represent so many different aspects of divine legation, and show the essential relations of law and religion. "One only is the lawgiver and judge, even he who is able to save and to destroy. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights" (James i, 17; iv, 12). Law and religion alike, but each in its own way, disclose the spiritual relationship between God and man.' And so the Sinaitic legislation of Moses, and its various modifications and codification in the subsequent history of Israel, form an important portion of the Hebrew revelation. In perfect accord with this deep truth, and beautiful in its expression, is that classic passage of Richard Hooker: "Of Law, there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all, with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy." -Ecclesiastical Polity, at end of First Book, Section 16. CHAPTER III CANAANITISH CONFLICTS AND MESSAGES OF THE PROPHETS 1. Israel's Apostasy from Jehovah. Nothing seems to come to perfection of itself, and that which seems to us most excellent is found to be the result of long and serious struggles. Seasons of great moral and religious awakening have quite generally been followed by long periods of decline. The history of Israel is no exception, but rather a monumental exhibition of this fact, and, withal, an admonition of corresponding weight. All the traditions of the Hebrew people and all their sacred records witness a uniform report of their tendency to forsake the commandments of Jehovah. Even while Moses was yet with them they murmured and rebelled, and when they encamped in the plains of Moab they "joined themselves unto Baal-peor" (Num. xxv, 3, 5; Hos. ix, 10; Psa. cvi, 28). In their conquest and settlement of the land of Canaan they did not succeed in utterly driving out the idolatrous inhabitants who were there before them, but made alliances with some of them, and for a long time lived on friendly terms with neighboring states and princes. According to Josh. xxiv, 14-28, the people entered into a solemn covenant before Joshua and before God to put away the strange gods and serve Jehovah only, their God who brought them out of Egypt and drove out the Amorites and other peoples before them; but the book of Judges tells us over and over how these children of Israel persistently ran into evil, "forgat Jehovah their God, and served the Baalim and the Asheroth," and were again and again delivered by Jehovah into the hand of various heathen oppressors. Thus they became leavened with the superstitions and idolatry of the nations that were round about them. Ephod and teraphim and molten images were connected with the priestly service of a descendant of Moses in the house of Micah in Ephraim and in the tribe of Dan (Judg. xvii, 5, 12; xviii, 18, 30). David's wife, Michal, had one of these images in her house (1 Sam. xix, 13), and we can hardly suppose that Josiah succeeded in thoroughly eradicating all such idolatry from the land (comp. 2 Kings xxiii, 24). The use of the ephod as a means of ascertaining the mind of God is repeatedly mentioned in the history of David (1 Sam. xxiii, 9; xxx, 7), and seems in no essential principle to be different from the methods of divination practiced by the king of Babylon (comp. Ezek. xxi, 21). The prevailing worship on high places, and that of the golden calves at Bethel and at Dan, witness the strong trend of the popular worship to idolatrous customs. The traditions of Samuel and of Elijah confirm these facts, and we find that, in spite of all laws to the contrary and of all the efforts of the great prophets to correct this evil, such idolatrous modes of worship and defective conceptions of God were maintained in Israel and in Judah until they were carried away into exile. 2. The Concept of Monolatry. The language of the biblical record favors the belief that the concept of God, prevalent with the ancient Hebrew patriarchs and with the Israelites long after the exodus from Egypt, was that of monolatry rather than of absolute monotheism. Whether the gods of other nations had a real existence was at that time no concern of the children of Israel; it was sufficient for them to know that Jehovah was greater than all the gods (Exod. xviii, 11). The first commandment of the decalogue neither assumes nor affirms the nonexistence of other gods, but simply forbids the worship of any other by the people of Jehovah. The language of Jephthah, in Judg. xi, 23, 24, recognizes Chemosh as the god of the Ammonites in the same manner that it recognizes Jehovah as the God of Israel. Even David seems to have supposed that to be exiled from the land of Israel was to be driven out of the inheritance of Jehovah into the service of other gods (1 Sam. xxvi, 19). Such a concept of a national or a local deity was widespread among the ancients, and it finds expression in the language of the Samaritan colonists in 2 Kings xvii, 26. Absolute monotheism, moreover, was scarcely consistent with the Deuteronomic legislation which aimed to localize the worship of Jehovah at one central sanctuary (Deut. xii, 5-7). Such legislation had a certain value and was a means of breaking down other local sanctuaries and the idolatry connected with them, but it inculcated monolatry rather than monotheism. It was not adapted to elevate the masses of common worshipers above the idea that each nation and country must have its own Deity. It begat the custom of pilgrimages to the holy place and, so far, prevented the higher conception of God which Jesus opened to the woman of Samaria when he declared God to be a Spirit who reveals himself everywhere to the true worshiper. It should be seen, however, that the symbolism of profane, and holy and most holy places serves the purpose of a suggestive object-lesson of approach unto God, and may be very helpful to the popular mind that is not prepared to receive the doctrine of the omnipresent Spirit. The graduated sanctity of holy places in the Levitical tabernacle and in the temple had an educating value, and the sacred structure with its furniture and services was a figure for |