presupposed by the writer of Deuteronomy. And inasmuch as the history gives us no account of an institution like it before the reign of Jehosaphat (II. Chron. xix. 8-11) five centuries later, we must conclude that the law relating to judges and officers was made after his day. To this reasoning and conclusion alike we are quite unprepared to subscribe. For, in the first place, if anything is taken for granted in the Deuteronomic law of the higher court, it is the possibility, and the custom of appeal, not the existence of this very court. With such a general custom the people had been familiar at least for a generation, the harder questions having all along been carried to Moses and Aaron, and after Aaron's death to Moses and Eleazer (Numb. xxvii. 2). This practice was now to be continued, the highest civil authority acting for the lawgiver. In the second place, the court instituted by Jehosaphat was, in some of its features, a totally different affair from the one before us. It was composed of priests and Levites, instead of Levitical priests. It had a civil as well as ecclesiastical head acting at one and the same time. Our law presents them as acting independently. The civil head is represented by a family chief of Judah (), an official unknown to Deuteronomy in this connection, with whom are associated also some of the chiefs of the fathers of Israel; while the high priest is the ecclesiastical head. In the third place, we find David, a hundred and fifty years before the time of Jehosaphat, apparently guided in his appointment of officials by the Deuteronomic code (I. Chron. xxiii. 1-4, xxvi. 29-32). It might, indeed, be objected that this account of what David did is found only in the much depreciated history of the Chronicler. But if the second of his books be competent authority for the alleged acts of Jehosaphat, the first should be thought no less so for those of David.

The law for the punishment of Hebrew idolaters (xvii. 2-5) has been already casually mentioned in connection with that concerning seduction to idolatry. Like the latter, it professes to be anticipatory legislation (v. 2); and there would be no further need of calling attention to it, were it not for a peculiar species of idolatry to which it refers: "And hath gone and served other gods and worshipped them as the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven which I have not commanded" (v. 3). The worship of the heavenly bodies, Sabæanism, is here recognized as a possibility. But from the historical books of the Old Testament (II. Kings xxi. 3 ff.; II. Chron. xxxiii. 3 ff.), we learn that the public introduction of such worship in Judah took place in the reign of Manasseh at the beginning of the

seventh century before Christ. It is accordingly held that the present law would be out of place in the time of Moses, the tacit assumption, of course, being that a law never precedes, but always follows, the outbreak of the crime against which it is directed.

But, were such a principle to be admitted in the present case, the conclusion reached would by no means follow, since there is overwhelming evidence that this particular form of idolatry had been known to the Israelites from the beginning. The kingdom of Israel had practised it long before the time of Manasseh, as witnessed to by the Books of Kings (II. Kings xvii. 16). Amos, too (v. 26 f.), during the reign of Jeroboam II., makes direct reference, as is now acknowledged by the best authorities, to the worship of Saturn in the northern kingdom, naming the planet both by its Accadian and its Assyrian title.1

It is indisputable, moreover, that sun, moon, and star worship was one of the most primitive and universal forms of idolatry among the leading nations with which the Hebrews during the Mosaic period came in contact. It lay at the basis of the Baal and Astarte cultus of their Canaanitish neighbors. Its prevalence in Egypt is proved by the monuments. And how seriously Abraham's Chaldæan ancestry was devoted to it, appears from the fact that in the wedge-shaped inscriptions of their day, the uniform ideographic representation of the divinity was a star.3 Hence, so far from finding it strange that we meet with an alleged Mosaic law of this sort in Deuteronomy, we should think it strange if under the circumstances supposed it were not there.

1 See Riehm's Wörterbuch, s.v. "Assyrien," "Sonne," "Sterne"; also Schrader, Die Keilinschriften, etc. 2te Aufl., p. 442, and in Studien und Kritiken, 1874, pp. 324-322. Hommel, too (Die Vorsemitischen Culturen i. (2), p. 204), speaks of the renowned temple of the goddess of the Moon, which the old king of Ur, Ur-bagas (c. 2870 B.C.), and his son Dungi built; and still further (p. 209), of a temple of the Sun at Larsa, the Ellasar of Gen. xiv. 1. Rawlinson, in The Religions of the Ancient World (p. 145), says of the religion of the Phoenicians, "That Shamas or Shemesh, 'the Sun,' was worshipped separately from Baal has been already mentioned. In Assyria and Babylonia he was one of the foremost deities; and his cult among the Phoenicians is witnessed to by such names as Abed-Shemesh, which is found in two of the native inscriptions. . . . The sun-worship of the Phoenicians seems to have been accompanied by a use of sun-images of which we have perhaps a specimen in the accompanying figure which occurs on a votive tablet found in Numidia."

2 Cf. Ebers, s.v. "Egypten," in Riehm's Wörterb.; also s.v. "Gebet," idem. 8 Idem., s.v. “Assyrien." Cf. Rawlinson, Ancient Mon., i., pp. 125, 127.

Besides, the form of the statute is not to be overlooked: "And hath gone and served other gods . . . which I have not commanded." A certain kind of worship then had been enjoined. We cannot well be mistaken in supposing that the second of the ten commandments is specially referred to. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," and especially the clause, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of that which is in heaven above” (Ex. xx. 3, 4). And we are confirmed in this view by what is said in a previous chapter of Deuteronomy (iv. 19), where the writer, indirectly commenting on the giving of the law at Horeb, alludes to this very thing, i..., interprets the second commandment, as it would seem in this sense: "And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, shouldst be led to worship and serve them." So that the force of the concluding words of our law, "worship any of the host of heaven which I have not commanded," may fairly be said to be, "which I have elsewhere already forbidden."

We come next in order to the law of the king (Deut. xvii. 14-20). Fault has often been found with the original political constitution of the Hebrew people, as formulated in the Pentateuch, on the ground of its impracticability. It was, to some extent, impracticable and for a very natural reason. A pure theocracy would be wholly practicable only among unfallen or perfectly sanctified men. But it is not to be regarded as a defect of the Mosaic constitution that it put forward so unique and noble an ideal; that it pursued it till its practicability at that time, and under the circumstances that then prevailed, was fully demonstrated; or, further, that from the first it foresaw the exigencies that would arise (Gen. xvii. 16, xxxvi. 31, xlix. 10), and made provision for them by means of statutes designed to regulate and limit what might not be wholly prevented. The law of the king, as we find it recorded in Deuteronomy, is, on its face, framed in anticipation of a juncture to arise. It looks forward to a period when the Canaanites shall have been dispossessed, their land apportioned, and Israel definitely settled in it (cf. NJ, WI, J). The demand for a king would then arise. It would come from the people. mission is granted to comply with this demand conditionally, and directions given in detail, concerning the manner of the sovereign's

Per

-the govern ,(מושל or שליט not מלך) choice, the title he shall bear

ment of his household, his income, his relative position among his brethren, the succession and other matters, in a way to set him wholly apart from any contemporaneous kings, so, indeed, as to show that he

was to be a king under the peculiar conditions of a government that must still be recognized as, in the end, theocratic. The law, in short, is Mosaic in the finest shading of its phraseology. It is true that some temptations and evil practices of kings in general in the event proving to be also those of later Israelitish kings, like Solomon — seem to have been directly in mind throughout, and guarded against. But with the knowledge of what the kings of Egypt and Canaan were, what less could have been expected of such a man as Moses, to say nothing of the fact that our book represents him as a prophet.

On the other hand, there are features of this law which plainly preclude the theory of its supposed origin, near the close of the seventh century, B.C. What sense in such a supposition in the injunction that a foreigner was not to be set up as king? Already, for centuries, the succession had been firmly established in the family of David.1

Or, in forbidding to lead the people back again to Egypt? Such a return had not been thought of since the first crossing of the Jordan; although so familiar a subject in the mouths of the people in Moses' time (Ex. xvi. 3; Numb. xi. 5, xiv. 4).

It is true that we do not find Samuel, when long after the subject of a king is broached by the discontented people (I. Sam. viii. 1 ff.), quoting this law. And there is excellent reason for his not doing so. He is looking at the matter and speaking of it from the point of view of his petitioners. He calls attention to the additional and oppressive burdens the new office will entail on them; to the more than questionable spirit and form in which their request is made. It is true that he feels obliged to condemn the project, as it is brought before him, just as Gideon had already done (Judges viii. 22-23); and that, finally, in those particular circumstances as in any circumstances if the best thing were wanted the request for a king is conceded under protest. But there is just as little reason on this ground for holding that Samuel was unacquainted with the Deuteronomic law of the king, as there is for holding that Hosea was not acquainted with it, who

1 Delitzsch (Zeitschrift für kirchliche Wissenschaft, etc., 1880, p. 565) has sufficiently answered the point made by Prof. Robertson Smith (Answer to the Amended Libel, p. 26), who refers to Is. viii. 5, “wonach die syrisch-ephraimtische Ligue die Davidische Dynastie zu beseitigen und einen Syrer Ben-Tab'el zum Könige von Juda zu machen gedachte, indem er dabei bemerkt, dass eine Partei in Juda dieses Vorhaben begünstigte. Aber woher weiss er dass so gewiss? Es ist nichts als auf streitiger und mehr als unwahrscheinlicher Deutung von Ies. 8, 6 beruhende Vermuthung."

also says (xiii. 11) that God gave to Israel a king in his anger; or that St. Stephen (Acts xiii. 21) was ignorant both of Samuel's and of Hosea's words, because in his reference to the choice of Saul as king he says not a word of there being any opposition to it. The people of Samuel's time, it is evident, knew of the law; they do not overlook the advantage they have in it in the appeal they make. They use its language almost word for word in Hebrew, "make us a king to judge us like all the nations" (I. Sam. viii. 5; cf. Deut. xvii. 14). And it has been noticed that the whole context is saturated with Deuteronomic expressions and ideas.1

Not inferior in importance to this law of the king, among the independent statutes of the present code, is that relating to the prophet

1 Cf. Sime, Kingdom of All Israel (London, 1883), pp. 35-38; and Prof. Green in the Sunday School Times for Oct. 6, 13, 1883. The ingenious theory of Ewald adopted by Riehm (Gesetzgebung Mosis, p. 81 ff.), that in the specification of our law that the king "shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he may multiply horses," the hiring out of Israelites as mercenaries to the Egyptian king is meant; and that such a state of things might well have existed in the time of Manasseh is utterly lacking in documentary support. The only passage that even looks in this direction is the threatening contained in Deut. xxviii. 68, that in case of unfaithfulness the people shall be carried down to Egypt in ships. Aside from this there is not a hint of such a possibility in the biblical books. And it is impossible to suppose that if a project so repugnant to the Jewish spirit and institutions had been entertained, it would have been so completely overlooked.

Moreover, in the narrative of the crowning of Joash, c. 878 B.C. (II. Kings xi. 12), there is a notable allusion to a law of some kind that was committed to him. It is said of the high-priest on that occasion that he brought forth the king's son, and put the crown and the testimony upon him. On the word Thenius says (Com., in loco) that it was not an ornament, not a phylactery on the crown, not the royal insignia, but the law, a book in which Mosaic regulations had been written. This conclusion is certainly in harmony with the uniform employment of the word in the Old Testament. And Kleinert (Deuteronomium, p. 97), with other first-rate authorities supposes that our Deuteronomic law of the king is specially meant. Whether this be so, or as seems more likely, it be the entire code of Deuteronomy that is referred to (cf. Deut. xvii. 18, 19), there can be little doubt that it was considered the proper thing to do to put a written copy of some portion of the Pentateuchal law in the hands of the king on his accession. And since this is one of the very things enjoined in the statute we are now considering, it is to be inferred that the custom arose in this way through the mediation of the priests, in whose hands it was kept.