INDEX.

Footnotes

[1]. See Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Eng. tr., second edit., ii. p. 134.

[2]. Records of the Past, new ser., v. pp. 66 sqq.

[3]. Thus in an Assyrian hymn (K 890), published by Dr. Brünnow in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, July 1889, we have (line 8) istu pan Khabiriya iptarsanni âsi, ‘from the face of my confederates he has cut me off, even me.’

[4]. Records of the Past, new ser., vi. p. 39.

[5]. Thus Kharbi-Sipak, a Kassite or Kossæan, from the western mountains of Elam, is called a ‘Khabirâ’ (W. A. I. iv. 34, 2, 5). The name is probably connected with that of Khapir or Âpir, originally applied to the district in which Mal-Amir is situated, south-east of Susa, but afterwards in the Persian period extended to the whole of Elam (see my memoir on the Inscriptions of Mal-Amir in the Transactions of the Sixth Oriental Congress at Leyden, vol. ii.). Kharbi-Sipak himself, however, seems to have been employed by the Assyrian king in Palestine in the neighbourhood of the cities of Arqa and Zaqqal (Hommel in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, May 1895, p. 203).

[6]. W. A. I. ii. 50, 51 (where Khubur is said to be a synonym of Subarti).

[7]. W. A. I. ii. 51, 4.

[8]. Hommel, The ancient Hebrew Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments, pp. 196, 245-262, 323-327; Glaser in the Mittheilungen of the Vorderasiatische Gesellschaft, ii. 1897.

[9]. K 3500.

[10]. That Ebir-nâri signified the country west of the Euphrates in the later days of Babylonian history is shown by a contract-tablet, dated in the third year of Darius Hystaspis, and translated by Peiser (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, iv. p. 305), in which mention is made of ‘Ustanni, the governor of Babylon and Ebir-nâri’ (line 2). Meissner (Zeitschrift für Alttestament, Wissenschaft, xvii.) has pointed out that Ustanni is the Tatnai of Ezra, v. 3, 6; vi. 6, 13, who is there called the ‘governor of the land beyond the river’ (’Abar Nahara).

[11]. See Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, i. 2, p. 31.

[12]. An inscription of Sargon recently published by M. Dangin (Revue Sémitique, April 1897) states that ‘the governor’ of the subjugated Amorites was Uru-Malik, where the name of Malik or Moloch is preceded by the determinative of divinity. Uru-Malik, which is an analogous formation to Uriel, Urijah, Melchi-ur (or Melchior), etc., shows that what we call Hebrew was already the language of Canaan. The inscription has been found at Tello in Southern Chaldæa.

[13]. Zabsali, also written Savsal(la) or Zavzal(la), probably represents the Zuzim or Zamzummim of Scripture. See my article in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, February 1897, p. 74.

[14]. We possess a list of the kings of Babylonia, divided into dynasties, from the first dynasty of Babylon, to which Khammu-rabi belonged, down to the time of the fall of Nineveh. The number of years reigned by each king is stated, as well as the number of years each dynasty lasted. But, unfortunately, the compiler has forgotten to say what was the duration of the dynasty to which Nabonassar (B.C. 747) belonged; and as the tablet is broken here, the regnal years of most of the kings who formed the dynasty have been lost. There are, however, a good many synchronisms between the earlier period of Babylonian history and that of Assyria, and by means of these the chronology has been approximately restored. We can also test the date of Khammu-rabi in the following way. We learn from Assur-bani-pal that Kudur-Nankhundi, king of Elam, carried off the image of the goddess Nana from the city of Erech 1635 years before his own conquest of Elam, and therefore 2280 B.C. As Eri-Aku boasts of his capture of Erech, and as he was assisted in his wars by his Elamite kinsmen, it seems probable that the capture of the image by Kudur-Nankhundi was coincident with the capture of the city by Eri-Aku.

The discovery of Mr. Pinches has been supplemented by that of Dr. Scheil, who has found letters addressed by Khammu-rabi to Sin-idinnam of Larsa, in which mention is made of the Elamite king Kudur-Laghghamar. Sin-idinnam had been driven from Larsa by Eri-Aku with the help of Kudur-Laghghamar, and had taken refuge at the court of Khammu-rabi in Babylon. Fragments of other letters of Khammu-rabi are in the possession of Lord Amherst of Hackney (see inf. pp. 27, 28).

[15]. The name of Khammu-rabi himself is written Ammu-rabi in Bu. 88-5-12, 199 (Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum, Part 2).

[16]. Records of the Past, new ser., iii. p. xvi.

[17]. Hommel, Geschichte des alten Morgenlandes, p. 62, The Ancient Hebrew Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments, p. 96.

[18]. Published by Budge, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, iii. 3, pp. 229, 230.

[19]. The text, which is on a stela found in the ruined temple of Isis at the south-east corner of the great pyramid of Gizeh, is now in the Cairo Museum. It has been published by M. Daressy in the Recueil des Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes (xvi. 3, 4, 1894), and is dated in the third year of king Ai. It follows from the inscription that ‘the domain called that of the Hittites’ lay to the north of the great temple of Ptah, and immediately to the south of two smaller temples built by Thothmes I. and Thothmes IV. In the time of Herodotos there was a similar district assigned to the Phœnicians, and known as ‘the Camp of the Tyrians,’ on the south side of the temple of Ptah (see my Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos, p. 251).

[20]. Amurru, ‘the Amorite god,’ was a name which had been given by the Sumerians, the earlier population of Chaldæa, to the Syrian Hadad whom the Babylonians identified with their Ramman or Rimmon (cf. Zech. xii. 11). A cuneiform text published by Reisner (Sumerisch-babylonische Hymnen nach Thontafeln griechischer Zeit, p. 139, lines 141-144) couples Amurru, ‘the lord of the mountains,’ with Asratu, the Canaanitish Asherah, ‘the lady of the plain.’ Asratu is identified with the Babylonian Gubarra.

[21]. W. A. I. v. 12, 47.

[22]. W. A. I. v. 33, i. 37.

[23]. Padanu also had the meaning of ‘path.’ Whether this is derived from the other or belongs to a different root is questionable. But in the sense of ‘path,’ padanu was a synonym of Kharran.

[24]. This does not imply that the population which founded the kingdom of Mitanni, and probably came from the mountains of Komagênê or of Ararat in the north, was unknown in early Babylonia. In fact, one of the Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets, published by the British Museum in 1896 (Bu. 91-5-9, 296), contains the names of ‘the governor’ Akhsir-Babu and other witnesses to a contract, most of which are Mitannian.

[25]. I have given the tablet in transliteration in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, Nov. 1883, p. 18. The passage reads: ‘14-½ shekels of lead we have weighed in nakhur.’

[26]. See Sachau, Die altaramäische Inschrift auf der Statue des Königs Panammu von Sam-al and Aramäische Inschriften in the Mittheilungen aus den orientalischen Sammlungen d. K. Museums zu Berlin, ix., and the Sitzungsberichte der K. preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, xli. (1896).

[27]. See my Races of the Old Testament, pp. 110-117, and H. G. Tomkins in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, Feb. 1889.

[28]. In a report of an eclipse of the moon sent to an Assyrian king in the eighth century B.C., the countries of ‘the Amorites and the Hittites’ represent the whole of Western Asia (R. F. Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Letters, Part iv. p. 345).

[29]. The discovery of the name of Shakama or Shechem in the Travels of the Mohar is due to Dr. W. Max Müller (Asien und Europa, p. 394).

[30]. Or II., according to Maspero, who makes three Hyksos sovereigns of this name.

[31]. It is in the possession of Mr. John Ward.

[32]. See my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monument, pp. 160, 161.

[33]. Recent discoveries have made it clear that the Amraphel of Genesis is the Khammu-rabi of the cuneiform texts. Khammu-rabi is also written Ammu-rabi (Bu. 88-5-12, 199, l. 17), and Dr. Lindl has pointed out that the final syllable of Amraphel is the Babylonian ilu, ‘god,’ a title which is frequently attached to the name of Khammu-rabi. We learn from the Tel el-Amarna tablets that in the pronunciation of Western Asia a Babylonian b often became p.

[34]. Pinches, Certain Inscriptions and Records referring to Babylonia and Elam, a paper read before the Victoria Institute, Jan. 7, 1896; see also Hommel, The Ancient Hebrew Tradition, pp. 180 sqq.

[35]. Some Assyriologists interpret Manda as ‘much’ or ‘many’; in this case Umman Manda, ‘much people,’ will be still more literally the Hebrew Goyyim.

[36]. Dr. Scheil, the discoverer of the letters of Khammu-rabi to Sin-idinnam which are now in the Museum at Constantinople, gives the following translations of them (Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes, xix. 1, 2, pp. 40-44): (1) ‘To Sin-idinnam Khammu-rabi says: I send you as a present (the images of) the goddesses of the land of Emutbalum as a reward for your valour on the day (of the defeat) of Kudur-Laghghamar. If (the enemy) trouble you, destroy their forces with the troops at your disposal, and let the images be restored in safety to their (old) habitations.’ (2) ‘To Sin-idinnam Khammu-rabi says: When you have seen this letter, you will understand in regard to Amil-Samas and Nur-Nintu, the sons of Gisdubba, that if they are in Larsa, or in the territory of Larsa, you will order them to be sent away, and that a trusty official shall take them and bring them to Babylon.’ (3) ‘To Sin-idinnam Khammu-rabi says: As to the officials who have resisted you in the accomplishment of their work, do not impose upon them any additional task, but oblige them to do what they ought to have done, and then remove them from the influence of him who has brought them.’ All three letters were found at Senkereh, the ancient Larsa. Fragments of some other letters of Khammu-rabi are in the possession of Lord Amherst of Hackney. See above, p. [12].

[37]. Nicolaus of Damascus, in Josephus Antiq. i. 7, 2.

[38]. See my Patriarchal Palestine, pp. 160, 165. The figure and name of the god Salimmu, written in cuneiform characters, are on a gem now in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. The same god, under the name of Shalman, is mentioned on a stela discovered at Sidon, and under that of Selamanês in the inscriptions of Shêkh Barakât, north-west of Aleppo (Clermont-Ganneau, Études d’Archéologie orientale in the Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, cxiii. vol. ii. pp. 36, 48; Sayce in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archeology, xix. 2. p. 74).

[39]. As Professor Hommel says (Expository Times, Nov. 1896, p. 95), ‘The “Mighty King” cannot possibly be the Pharaoh.’ But he seems to me to introduce an unnecessary element of complication into the subject by supposing that in the Tel el-Amarna letters the epithet has been transferred to the king of the Hittites from the supreme god of Jerusalem, to whom it properly belonged. It is true that in a letter of the governor of Phœnicia (Winckler und Abel, No. 76, l. 66) the title is given to the king of the Hittites, but it does not follow that the king of Jerusalem employs it in the same way.

[40]. It should be noticed that, according to Hesykhios (s. v.), ‘the most high God’ of the Syrians was Ramas, that is, Ramman or Rimmon, who was identified with the sun-god Hadad, the supreme deity of Syria. The Babylonians called him Amurru ‘the Amorite.’

[41]. Pietschmann, Geschichte der Phönizier, p. 115. The suggestion was first made by von Bunsen.

[42]. For a possible explanation of the origin of the practice, see H. N. Moseley in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vi. 4, p. 396. Bastian gives another in his description of the practice among the Polynesians (Anthropologie der Naturvölker, vi. pp. 40, 41).

[43]. A brilliant suggestion of Professor Hommel, however, may prove to be the true explanation of the mysterious name. In the Minæan inscriptions of Southern Arabia a long â is constantly denoted in writing by h; and Abraham, therefore, may be merely the Minæan mode of writing Abram. If so, this would show that the Hebrew scribes were once under the influence of the Minæan script, and that portions of the Pentateuch itself may have been written in the letters of the Minæan alphabet (Hommel, The Ancient Hebrew Tradition, pp. 275-277). Dr. Neubauer has suggested to me that this also may be the explanation of the name of Aaron (Aharôn), which, like Ab-raham, has no etymology. Aaron would be the graphic form of Âron, an Arabic name which appears as Aran in the genealogy of the Horites (Gen. xxxvi. 28).

[44]. See Berger, L’Arabie avant Mahomet d’après les Inscriptions (1885), pp. 27, 28.

[45]. D. H. Müller, Epigraphische Denkmäler aus Arabien (1889), p. 13.

[46]. Thus we have anuki ‘I,’ Heb. anochi; badiu ‘in his hand,’ Heb. b’yado; akharunu ‘after him,’ Heb. akharono; rusu ‘head,’ Heb. rosh; kilubi ‘cage,’ Heb. chelûb; har ‘mountain,’ Heb. har.

See my Patriarchal Palestine, p. 247.

[47]. On the question of the site of Mizpah of Gilead, see G. A. Smith, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 586, 587.

[48]. Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli in Mittheilungen aus den orientalischen Sammlungen, xi. (1893).

[49]. Records of the Past, new ser., v. pp. vi, vii.

[50]. Dussaud (Revue Archéologique, iii. xxx. p. 346) states that according to the Ansarîyeh of the Gulf of Antioch the ‘Yudi’ or Hebrews formerly occupied their country, and constructed the ancient monuments found in it, one of which is called after the name of Solomon. For Neubauer’s suggestion that the Dinhabah of Gen. xxxvi. 32 is identical in name with the Dunip or Tunip of Northern Syria, see further on.

Hoffmann (Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, xi. p. 210) maintains that the origin of the Aramaic dialects is to be sought in a Bedâwin language allied to that of the Arabs and Sabæans, which underwent intermixture with Canaanitish (or Phœnician) through the settlement of its speakers in a Canaanitish country.

[51]. In Assyrian letters of the Second Empire mention is made of the Nabathean Â-kamaru, the son of Amme’te’, and the Arabian Ami-li’ti, the son of Ameri or Omar (Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Letters, iii. p. 262; iv. p. 437).

[52]. It is stated in Deut. xxiii. 4 that Balaam was hired from ‘Pethor of Aram Naharaim,’ not only by the Moabites, but by the Ammonites as well (though it is true that in the Hebrew text the word sâkar, ‘hired,’ is in the singular). It may be noted that the mother of Rehoboam, whose name is compounded with that of Am or Ammi (compare Rehab-iah, 1 Chron. xxiii. 17), was an Ammonitess (1 Kings xiv. 21). For a full discussion of the name of ’Ammi or ’Ammu, and the historical conclusions which may be deduced from it, see Hommel, The Ancient Hebrew Tradition, pp. 89 sqq.

[53]. The name of Carchemish is usually written Gargamis in the cuneiform inscriptions (Qarqamish in the Egyptian hieroglyphs), but Tiglath-pileser I. (W. A. I. i. 13, 49) calls it ‘Kar-Gamis’ (the Fortified Wall of Gamis) ‘in the land of the Hittites,’ and from the Hebrew spelling in the Old Testament we may gather that Gamis was identified with the Moabite Chemosh. In Babylonian tablets of the age of Ammi-zadoq mention is made of a wood Karkamisû or ‘Carchemishian’ (Bu. 88-5-12, 163, line 11; 88-5-12, 19, line 8). It may be noted that the name ‘Jerabîs,’ sometimes assigned to the site of Carchemish instead of Jerablûs, is, according to the unanimous testimony of English and American residents in the neighbourhood, erroneous.

[54]. See Records of the Past, new ser., v. p. 45.

[55]. For the identity of the Zuzim with the Babylonian Zavzala, see my note in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, xix. 2, pp. 74, 75.

[56]. See above, p. [21].

[57]. See above, p. [20].

[58]. We owe the term ‘Eurafrican’ to Dr. Brinton (see his Races and Peoples, 1890, Lecture iv.). For the relationship of the Libyan and the Kelt, see my Address to the Anthropological Section of the British Association, 1887.

[59]. The expression ‘mountain of the Amorites,’ which we meet with in Deut. i. 7, 19, takes us back to Abrahamic times. One of the campaigns of Samsu-iluna, the son and successor of Khammu-rabi or Amraphel, was against ‘the great mountain of the land of the Amorites’ (kharsag gal mad Martu-ki, Bu. 91-5-9, 333; Rev. 19).

[60]. See my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, p. 41; D. H. Müller, Epigraphische Denkmäler aus Arabien, p. 8 (the Minæan inscriptions of El-Oela, south of Teima, are given pp. 21 sqq.).

[61]. Philo Byblius in his work ‘On the Jews,’ as quoted by Eusebius (Præp. Evang. i, 10), stated that ‘Kronos, whom the Phœnicians call El, the king of the country, who was afterwards deified in the planet Saturn, had an only son by a nymph of the country called Anôbret. This son was named Yeud, which signifies in Phœnician an only son. His country having fallen into distress during a war, Kronos clothed his son in royal robes, raised an altar, and sacrificed him upon it.’ In his account of the Phœnician mythology, the same writer describes the sacrifice a little differently: ‘A plague and a famine having occurred, Kronos sacrificed his only son to his father the Sky, circumcised himself, and obliged his companions to do the same’ (Euseb. l. c.).

[62]. Records of the Past, new ser., v. p. 49, No. 81.

[63]. L’Imagerie Phénicienne (1880), p. 105.

[64]. Which may also be read ayyal or ‘hart.’

[65]. See my Races of the Old Testament, pp. 130 sq.

[66]. See my Races of the Old Testament, pp. 127, 132, where a photograph is given of Professor Flinders Petrie’s cast of the Ashkelon profiles.

[67]. Black Obelisk, lines 60, 61, compared with Monolith Inscription, ll. 90-95.

[68]. One feddan or acre contained 1800 sari (Reisner in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, xi. 4, p. 421). The area was not great, though it was calculated that not more than 120 sari could be ploughed by a single ox.

[69]. Published by Strassmaier in the Transactions of the Fifth Oriental Congress, ii. 1, Append. pp. 14, 15; a translation will be found in Peiser’s Altbabylonische Urkunden in the Keilschriftliche Bibliothek, iv. p. 7. The tablet was found at Tel-Sifr.

[70]. Published by Meissner, Beiträge zum altbabylonischen Privatrecht, No. 43 (with corrections by Pinches); a translation is given by Peiser, Keilschriftliche Bibliothek, iv. pp. 23-25.

[71]. Gen. xxiii. 18. The Hebrew expression ‘In the presence of’ is the same as that which is translated ‘Witnessed by’ in the Babylonian documents.

[72]. Babylonian shaqâlu kaspa, Hebrew shâqal [eth-hak-] keseph.

[73]. According to Professor Flinders Petrie, the heavy maneh or mina as fixed by Dungi and restored by Nebuchadrezzar weighed 978,309 grammes. An example of it is now in the British Museum. See Lehmann in the Verhandlungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft, 1893, p. 27.

[74]. The identification is, however, doubtful, since only potsherds of the Roman period are visible at Umm Jerâr, which, moreover, according to Palmer (Name-lists in the Survey of Western Palestine, p. 420), is merely Umm el-Jerrâr, ‘the mother of water-pots.’

[75]. Beti-ilu (Winckler’s Tel el-Amarna Letters, Nos. 51, 125) is associated with Tunip and the country of Nukhassê. The reading of the name is not quite certain, however, as it may be transcribed Batti-ilu or Mitti-ilu. A Babylonian of the Abrahamic age also has the name of Beta-ili.

[76]. The title seems to have been of Horite origin (see Gen. xxxvi. 21, 29, 30).

[77]. It is noticeable that the Edomite leader who was carried captive to Egypt by Ramses III. after he had destroyed ‘the tents’ of ‘the Shasu in Seir,’ is entitled ‘chieftain,’ and not ‘king.’ There is a portrait of him on the walls of Medînet Habu at Thebes.

[78]. For another explanation of the name, see Gen. xxv. 26; Hos. xii. 3.

[79]. Jacob-el is written Ya’akub-ilu; Joseph-el, Yasupu-ilu and Yasup-il, which is found in a list of slaves of the same early age (Bu. 91-5-9, 324). In the same list mention is made of land belonging to Adunum, the Heb. adon, and to Nakha-ya, which is a parallel formation to the Heb. Noah. In a tablet dated in the reign of Zabium, the founder of the dynasty to which Khammu-rabi or Amraphel belonged, we find the name of Ya-kh-ku-ub-il, i.e. Ya’qub-il (Bu. 91-5-9, 387).

[80]. Iqib-ilu and Asupi-ilu.

[81]. See Records of the Past, new ser., v. pp. 48, 51.

[82]. One of the scarabs of Ya’qob-el is in the Egyptian Museum of University College, London. El is written h(a)l.

[83]. On the summit of the hill above Beitîn, the ancient Beth-On or Beth-el, the strata of limestone rock take the form of vast steps rising one above the other.

[84]. Cf. the article of Mr. Pinches on ‘Gifts to a Babylonian Bit-ili’ in the Babylonian and Oriental Record, ii. 6.

[85]. See, for example, Peiser, Texte juristischen und geschäftlichen Inhalts (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, iv.), p. 49, No. iii., where Ubarum hires himself out to Ana-Samas-litsi for a month, for half a shekel of silver.

[86]. Records of the Past, new ser., v. p. 169.

[87]. Deut. xxxii. 15. See also Deut. xxxiii. 5, 26; Isa. xliv. 2.

[88]. According to immemorial tradition, the site of the field is marked by Jacob’s Well (S. John iv. 6). Dr. Masterman in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, April 1897, gives for the first time a satisfactory explanation why this deep well, which is often dry in summer, should have been sunk in the neighbourhood of a number of springs:—‘The springs have probably always belonged to the townsfolk (since they became settled); and, in the case of any wandering tribes with considerable flocks among them, it is exceedingly probable that the more settled inhabitants would first resent and then resist the new-comers marching twice daily into their midst to water their flocks at their springs, Probably any experienced nomad with such flocks, accustomed to such a country as this, would know pretty surely where he might, from the conformation of the hills, expect to find water. If, then, a quarrel arose, what more probable than that he should seek to make himself independent of these disagreeable neighbours. Further, if we can accept the tradition, we have, in the story of Jacob, two special facts connected with this: firstly, he bought a piece of ground on which he could make a well for himself; and then we gather from Genesis xxxiv. that his family made themselves sufficiently obnoxious to the Shechemites to make it very necessary for Jacob to be independent of their permission to use their springs.’

[89]. Cf. Gen. xlix. 14, 15. The Hebrew word rendered ‘two burdens’ by the Authorised Version in v. 14 should be translated ‘sheepfolds,’ as it is in Judg. v. 16.

[90]. Thus the ancient Abshek, the Abokkis of classical geography, has become Abu Simbel, or ‘father of an ear of corn’; and Silsila is said to have derived its name from a ‘chain’ or silsila stretched across the Nile from the rocks on either bank, though it really has its origin in the classical Silsilis, the Coptic Joljel or ‘barrier.’

[91]. In the list of Thothmes III. the name of Nekeb of Galilee (Josh. xix. 33) is followed by that of Ashushkhen, which may be compared with Issachar, since the interchange of final n and r is not uncommon. But the substitution of kh for k (ch) is difficult to account for.

[92]. Shmâna is the thirty-fifth name in the Palestine list of Thothmes, and follows the name of Chinnereth (Josh. xix. 35; comp. also Shmânau, No. 18. See Tomkins in Records of the Past, new series, v. pp. 44, 46). One of the Tel el-Amarna tablets (W. and A. ii., No. 39) mentions ‘the Yaudu’ in the neighbourhood of Tunip, now Tennib, north-west of Aleppo. The name of the Jews is written in the same way in the cuneiform texts, though the Yaudu of the Tel el-Amarna tablets are probably to be identified with the land of Ya’di, which the inscriptions of Sinjerli place in Northern Syria. But it is noticeable that the Tel el-Amarna correspondence makes Kinza a district near Kadesh on the Orontes, close to the Lake of Homs, and Kinza is letter for letter the Biblical Kenaz. The Kenizzites, it will be remembered, formed an integral part of the later tribe of Judah.

[93]. Hommel, Aufsätze und Abhandlungen sur Kunde der Sprachen, Literaturen und der Geschichte des vorderen Orients (1890), p. 31.

[94]. The Rev. H. G. Tomkins (Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, April 1885) first pointed out the true signification of the name of Beth-lehem, Lakhmu was one of the primeval gods of Chaldæan religion.

[95]. The village of Rachel, which was probably where the stone stood, is referred to in 1 Sam. xxx. 29.

[96]. E.g. Yeôr, ‘river,’ Egyptian aur; akhu, ‘herbage on the river bank’ (Gen. xli. 2), Egyptian akhu; rebid, ‘collar,’ Egyptian repit. See Ebers, Aegypten und die Bücher Mose’s, pp. 337-339.

[97]. See my Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos, pp. 25 sq.

[98]. See Tomkins, Life and Times of Joseph, p. 184.

[99]. Asenath is probably Nes-Nit, ‘Attached to Neith,’ as Subanda is Nes-Bandid, ‘Attached to Bandid.’

[100]. Mattan-Baal. The corresponding Hebrew name is Mattaniah.

[101]. A translation of the Sallier Papyrus is given by Maspero in the Records of the Past, new series, ii. pp. 37 sq. For the scarab of ‘Sutekh-Apopi’ see Maspero’s Struggle of the Nations (Eng. tr.), p. vii. The names of Beth-On or Beth-el in Canaan, and of On near Damascus (Amos i. 5), indicate a connection with the cult of the Sun-god at On in Egypt. On in the ‘Beka’’ of Damascus is probably the Heliopolis of Syria, to which the worship of Ra of Heliopolis of Egypt was brought in the reign of the Pharaoh Senemures (Macrobius, Saturnal. i. 23, 10).

[102]. Aegypten und die Bücher Mose’s, p. 299.

[103]. Maspero, The Struggle of the Nations, p. 271, note 5.

[104]. Cf. Brugsch, Aegyptologie, pp. 218 sq.

[105]. Ebers, Aegypten und die Bücher Mose’s, pp. 323-333.

[106]. Ebers, l.c., pp. 335, 336.

[107]. See Wiedemann, Religion der alten Aegypter, pp. 142-144. The khartummîm and khakâmîm (Authorised Version, ‘magicians’ and ‘wise men’) seem to correspond with the Egyptian kherhebu, ‘interpreters of the sacred books,’ and rekhu khetu, ‘wise men.’

[108]. See Tomkins, Life and Times of Joseph, p. 44; Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt (Eng. tr.), p. 439.

[109]. Mariette, Abydos, p. 421 (Ben-Mazan from Bashan becomes Ramses-em-per-Ra); Daninos-Pasha and Maspero in the Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’ Archéologie égyptienne et assyrienne, xii. p. 214; and Sayce in the Academy, 1891, p. 461.

[110]. See Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt (Eng. tr.), p. 439.

[111]. See Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt (Eng. tr.), pp. 102, 103.

[112]. Thus ‘Captain’ Ahmes had land given him according to his biographical inscription, ll. 22, 24; see Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs (Eng. tr.), second edit. i. p. 249.

[113]. See Virey in Records of the Past, new ser., iii. pp. 7 sqq. There were similar public granaries in Babylonia called sutummi, under the charge of an officer who bore the title of satammu, and the institution was probably introduced into Egypt from Asia.

[114]. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt (Eng. tr.), p. 108.

[115]. See Brugsch’s translation of the inscription in his Die biblischen sieben Jahre der Hungersnoth (1891).

[116]. See Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs (Eng. tr.), 2nd edit., i. pp. 262, 263. ‘Captain’ Ahmes, who took part in the War of Independence under Ahmes I., calls himself the son of Abana, and traces his descent to his ‘forefather Baba.’ In Abana, Maspero (The Struggle of the Nations, p. 85) sees the Semitic Abîna, ‘Our father.’

[117]. Thus in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, Rib-Hadad, the governor of Phœnicia, asks the Pharaoh to send corn to Gebal, as the crops there had failed (Winckler and Abel, No. 48, ll. 8-19), and Meneptah sent corn to the Hittites when they suffered from a famine (Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Eng. tr., 2nd edit., ii. p. 119).

[118]. According to Abulfarag (Chron. p. 14), Joseph became Vizier in the seventeenth year of the reign of Apopi. Maspero (Struggle of the Nations, pp. 59, 107) makes Apopi Ra-aa-kenen the third of the name.

[119]. See Maspero’s translation in Records of the Past, new ser., ii. pp. 37 sq.

[120]. E. Naville, Goshen and the Shrine of Saft el-Hennah, Fourth Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund (1887), pp. 14 sq.

[121]. See Naville, Goshen, p. 26.

[122]. Bibl. Hist., i. 91.

[123]. N. H. xix. 5.

[124]. Abel-Mizraim may be the Abel that is mentioned in connection with the ‘gardens,’ the ‘tilth,’ and the ‘spring’ of Carmel of Judah in the list of places in Canaan conquered by Thothmes III. (No. 92). Another Abel is mentioned two names earlier (No. 90).

[125]. See Virey’s translation in Records of the Past, new ser., iii. p. 34.

[126]. This, however, is beginning to be doubtful, in view of the discoveries made by Messrs. de Morgan and Amélineau in 1886-87.

[127]. For the logical goal of the ‘Higher Criticism,’ see Bateson Wright, Was Israel ever in Egypt? (1895.)

[128]. The theory of Jean Astruc, the French Protestant physician, was set forth in his Conjectures sur la Genèse published anonymously at Paris in 1753. In this he assumes that Moses wrote the book of Genesis in four parallel columns like a Harmony of the Gospels which were afterwards mixed together by the ignorance of copyists. Astruc intended his work to be an answer to those who, like Spinoza, asserted that Genesis was written without order or plan. It is interesting to note that Dr. Briggs in his able defence of the ‘critical’ hypothesis (The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, pp. 138-141) quotes with approval Professor Moore’s appeal to Tatian’s Diatessaron—a mere ‘patchwork’ of the Gospels—in support of the literary analysis of the Pentateuch.

[129]. See Bissell, Introduction to Genesis printed in Colours (1892), pp. xi-xiii; also p. vii, where he says: ‘The argument from language outside the divine names requires extreme care for obvious reasons. It is admitted to be relatively weak, and can never have more than a subordinate and supplementary value. There is no visible cleavage line among the supposed sources.’ Professor Bissell’s work is an attempt to represent by different colours the text of Genesis as it has been analysed and disintegrated by the ‘higher critics,’ and the result at which he arrives in his Introduction is that the analytical theory is a house built upon sand. As regards the account of the Flood, in which ‘it is claimed’ that two distinct narratives can be distinguished from each other, he remarks: ‘Two flood-stories, originating, according to the theory, hundreds of years apart, and literally swarming with differences and contradictions ... are found to fit one another like so many serrated blocks, and to form, united, a consecutive history whose unity, with constant use for millenniums, has been undisputed till our day. Is this coincidence, or is it miracle? But let us take a closer look. We shall find no loosely joined, independent sections, but mutually dependent parts of one whole. An occasional overlapping of ideas, a repetition for emphasis, or enlargement, in complete harmony with Hebrew style, there undoubtedly is. But there is also a marked interdependence and sequence of thought wholly inconsistent with the theory proposed. Let the reader test what J’s story would be alone. Beginning it has none; no preliminary announcement of the catastrophe; no command to make preparations; no report of Noah’s attitude.... And so P’s story, taken by itself, would be equally incomplete.... As to the alleged discrepancies in other respects, they appear, as we have seen, to be true in other cases, only after the text is rent asunder. The lighting system of the one does not exclude the one window of the other; nor the covering for the roof, the door in the side. Without the door, for which one document alone is responsible, how is it supposed that the occupants of the ark got in and out of it? If objects are thrown out of their due perspective, as in a mirage, it need surprise no one if they appear distorted and grotesque.... It is particularly in the matter of language and style that resort is taken to this illogical and dangerous means of text-mutilation. There are certain stylistic peculiarities of one or the other document, it is claimed, which are fixed from the usage of previous chapters. But unfortunately for the scheme, they appear not unfrequently in the wrong place. For instance, the expression “male and female” is held to be characteristic of P, J using another for it. In vii. 3, 9, J uses this expression twice, and our critics must make the redactor deny it. The oft-recurring formula, “both man, beast, and creeping thing and fowl of the air,” is found in the first chapter of Genesis, and so is said to be characteristic of P. Here J has it in vi. 7 and vii. 23, and the redactor is called in to square the document to the theory.... In all these changes we are supposed to have the work of a redactor. How is it possible? What motive could a redactor have had for it? It is claimed by our critics that he has left the principal points of contrast between the two great documents from which he compiled in their original ruggedness. The principal changes made, with rare exceptions, are of single words, detached phrases, verses or parts of verses,—every one of them changes in what was originally homogeneous matter to what is now heterogeneous, from what was once true, from the point of view of the document, to what is now false!’

[130]. Cf. the plates in Flinders Petrie’s Tel el-Amarna (Methuen and Co., 1894).

[131]. Literally, ‘Aten-Ra! the Record Office.’ Many of the bricks with the inscription upon them still lay on the spot when I visited it in 1888.

[132]. See my Patriarchal Palestine, p. 222.

[133]. Hommel, Aufsätze und Abhandlungen zur Kunde der Sprachen, Literaturen und der Geschichte des vorderen Orients, pp. 2 sqq.

[134]. See my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, pp. 56 sq.

[135]. The Elohist and the Chaldæan story further agree in making the hero of the Deluge the tenth in descent from the first man.

[136]. See my Archæological Commentary on Genesis, in the Expository Times, July and August, 1896.

[137]. Cf. Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos, p. 114.

[138]. See above, p. [13].

[139]. Naville, Das aegyptische Todtenbuch der XVIII. bis XX. Dynastie, Einleitung; Maspero, Études de Mythologie et d’ Archéologie égyptiennes, i. pp. 325-387.

[140]. Sanctuary and Sacrifice, by W. L. Baxter (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1895).

[141]. Cowley and Neubauer, The Original Hebrew of a Portion of Ecclesiasticus, p. xviii.

[142]. Ham for Am or Ammon, and Zuzim for Zamzummim (Gen. xiv. 5); see my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, pp. 160, 161.

[143]. This probably stands for the Babylonian al-Larsa, ‘the city of Larsa.’

[144]. Contemporary Review, February 1890, p. 221.

[145]. Mesha says in the inscription (l. 8): ‘Omri took the land of Medeba, and [Israel] dwelt in it during his days and half the days of his son, altogether forty years.’ The real length of time was not more than fifteen years.

[146]. Oppert dates the reign B.C. 2394 to 2339; Sayce, B.C. 2336-2281; Delitzsch, B.C. 2287-2232; Winckler, 2264-2210; and Peiser, 2139-2084; while Hommel suggests that the compiler of the list of dynasties has reversed the true order of the first two dynasties in it, and accordingly brings down the date of Khammu-rabi or Amraphel three hundred and sixty-eight years. This would better suit the Biblical data, but so far nothing has been found on the monuments in support of the suggestion. Dr. Hales’s date for the birth of Abraham was B.C. 2153.

[147]. Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, 1889, pp. 97-105.

[148]. The ‘prince’ of Thebes who revolted against Apophis was Skenen-Ra Taa I., whose fourth successor was Ahmes.

[149]. Revue Archéologique, March 1865.

[150]. E. Naville, The Store-city of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus (1885).

[151]. Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, 1872, p. 18; see also J. de Rougé, Géographie ancienne de la Basse-Égypte, pp. 93-95.

[152]. Cf. the articles of Sayce and Hommel in the Expository Times for August, October, and November 1896, pp. 521, 18, and 89.

[153]. See Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 249.

[154]. E. Naville, Goshen and the Shrine of Saft el-Hennah, Fourth Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund (1887).

[155]. Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs (Eng. tr.), second edit., ii. p. 133.

[156]. Flinders Petrie, Tel el-Amarna, pp. 40-42.

[157]. See above, p. [115].

[158]. For Khar, the Horites of the Old Testament, see Maspero, Struggle of the Nations, p. 121.

[159]. On the road from Assuan to Shellâl, ‘Messui, the royal son of Kush, the fan-bearer on the right of the king, the royal scribe,’ has left his name and titles on a granite rock (Petrie, A Season in Egypt, No. 70). Below the inscription is Meneptah in a chariot, with Messui holding the fan and bowing before him.

[160]. For Dr. Neubauer’s suggestion that the name of Aaron, otherwise so inexplicable, is the Arabic Âron or Âran written in the Minæan fashion, see above, p. [34], note 1. If the suggestion is right, it was specially appropriate that Aaron should have met Moses in ‘the Mount of God,’ on the frontiers of Midian (Exod. iv. 27).

[161]. A translation of the papyrus has been given by Professor Maspero in The Records of the Past, new series, ii. pp. 11-36.

[162]. See Preface to Maspero’s Dawn of Civilisation, p. v.

[163]. Reuel, ‘Shepherd of God,’ was a son of Esau, according to Gen. xxxvi. 4. It may have been a title of the high-priest, since rêu, ‘shepherd,’ is one of the titles given to the kings and high-priests of early Babylonia. The high-priest Gudea, for instance, calls himself ‘the shepherd of the god Nin-girsu.’ On the other hand, Hommel (The Ancient Hebrew Tradition, p. 278) compares the name Reuel-Jethro with the Minæan Ridsvu-il Vitrân.

[164]. In the word seneh a popular etymology seems to have been found for the name of Mount Sinai. Hence it is that in Deut. xxxiii. 16, Yahveh is described as ‘him that dwelt in the seneh.’ The seneh was probably the small prickly acacia nilotica.

[165]. No satisfactory etymology of the name Yahveh has yet been found. This, however, is not strange, considering that the etymology was unknown to the Hebrews themselves, as is shown by the explanation of the name in Exod. iii. 14, where it is derived from the Aramaic hewâ, the Hebrew equivalent being hâyâh, with y instead of w (or v). The Babylonians were also ignorant of the original meaning of the word, since one of the lexical cuneiform tablets gives Yahu or Yahveh as meaning ‘god’ (in Israelitish), and identifies it with the Assyrian word yahu, ‘myself’ (83, 1-18, 1332 Obv.; Col. ii. 1). No certain traces of the name have been found except among the Israelites. It is a verbal formation like Jacob, Joseph, etc.

[166]. Maspero, Dawn of Civilisation, pp. 132-134.

[167]. For ‘strikes’ among the Egyptian artisans, see Spiegelberg, Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung im Pharaonreich unter den Ramessiden (1895).

[168]. At Tel el-Maskhuta, or Pithom, however, the bricks were not mixed with straw.

[169]. See Wiedemann, Religion der alten Aegypter, pp. 142 sq.

[170]. Exod. vii. 19 contains an exaggeration which could easily be omitted without any injury to the sense of the narrative. The change of water in the river would affect the canals and such pools and ponds as were fed from the Nile, but nothing else. The river-water is not considered fit for drinking in the early days of the inundation. The green and slimy vegetation brought from the Equatorial regions renders it quite poisonous, and it is not until some days after it has become ‘red’ that it is again fit to drink.

[171]. The ‘camels’ mentioned along with the cattle in Exod. ix. 3 have been inserted from an Israelitish point of view. The Egyptians had no camels; and though the Bedâwin doubtless used them from an early period, none were employed by the Egyptians themselves until the Roman or Arab age.

[172]. The passage is, unfortunately, mutilated. What remains reads thus: ‘... the tents in front of the city of Pi-Bailos, on the canal of Shakana; ... [the adjoining land] was not cultivated, but had been left as pasture for cattle for the sake of the foreigners. It had been abandoned since the time of (our) ancestors. All the kings of Upper Egypt sat within their entrenchments ... and the kings of Lower Egypt found themselves in the midst of their cities, surrounded with earthworks, cut off from everything by the (hostile) warriors, for they had no mercenaries to oppose to them. Thus had it been [until Meneptah] ascended the throne of Horus. He was crowned to preserve the life of mankind.’ The word translated ‘tents’ is ahilu, the Hebrew ôhêl, which is used by Ramses III. of the ‘tents’ of the Shasu or Edomites of Mount Seir. For translations of the text, see E. de Rougé, Extrait d’un Mémoire sur les Attaques dirigées contre l’Égypte, pp. 6-13 (1867); Chabas, Recherches pour servir à l’histoire de la xixe Dynastie, pp. 84-92 (1873); Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Eng. tr. (2nd edit.), ii. pp. 116-123; Maspero, The Struggle of the Nations, pp. 433-436.

[173]. Cont. Apion. i. 26.

[174]. This name, however, varied in different versions of the legend. Chærêmôn makes it Phritiphantes, which may represent Zaphnath-paaneah, the dental (t) taking the place of z, and pa-Ra, ‘the sun-god’ of pa-Ankhu, ‘the living one.’

[175]. The papyrus is in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg (Golénischeff, Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes, xv. pp. 88, 89).

[176]. Dr. Wilcken has pointed out (Zur Aegyptisch-hellenistischen Literatur in the Festschrift für Georg Ebers, 1897, pp. 146-152) that two fragments of a Greek papyrus published by Wessely in the Denkschriften der Wiener Akademie, 42, 1893, pp. 3 sqq., contain a legend which closely resembles that of the Egyptian version of the Exodus. In this, however, a potter takes the place of the seer Amenôphis, the desire of the king to see the gods is explained by his wish to know the future, the ‘impure people’ are called the ‘girdle-wearers,’ and the beginning of a Sothic cycle is apparently combined with the story. Moreover, it would seem that the papyrus does not yet know of the identification of the ‘impure people’ with the Jews.

[177]. The Threshold Covenant or the Beginning of Religious Rites (New York, 1896).

[178]. The Threshold Covenant, pp. 203, 204.

[179]. See above, p. [155].

[180]. Egypt under the Pharaohs (Eng. tr.), second edit., ii. pp. 96-98.

[181]. Anastasi, v. 19. For the translation, see Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs (Eng. tr.), second edit., ii. p. 132.

[182]. First pointed out by Goodwin in the Sallier Papyrus, iv. 1, 6.

[183]. Josh. ii. 10; iv. 23; xxiv. 6-8.

[184]. Ps. cvi. 7-9, 22; cxxxvi. 13-15; Neh. ix. 9; see also Acts vii. 36.

[185]. The event was first recorded by Kallisthenes, and Plutarch (Alex. 17) states that ‘many historians’ had described it. Arrian (i. 27) alludes to it, and Menander introduced a scoffing reference to the miracle in one of his plays. The actual facts are given by Strabo (Geog. xiv. 3, 9), who says that near Phasêlis Mount Klimax juts out into the sea, but that in calm weather a road runs round its base on the seaward side. If the wind rises, however, the road is submerged by the waves. Alexander ventured to march along it while still covered by the sea, and though the water was up to the waists of the soldiers, passed safely through it, the wind not being very strong. His success came to be regarded as a miracle, and the miraculous passage of the sea by his army is narrated with many embellishments in the fragment of an unknown historian in a lexicon discovered by Papadopoulos in 1892.

[186]. The narrative is careful to indicate that this was the case (Exod. xiv. 23, 28). It is only in the Song of Moses (Exod. xv. 19) that ‘Pharaoh’s horses’ are changed into ‘the horse of Pharaoh,’ a change which, like the confusion between ‘the sea’ and the Yâm Sûph, shows either that the Song is of later date or that its language has been modified and interpolated.

[187]. Pap. Anastasi, iv. A translation of it by Dr. Birch will be found in Records of the Past, first series, vol. iv. pp. 49-52. The poet says of the king: ‘Amon gave thy heart pleasure, he gave thee a good old age.’ The name of the king, however, is not given, and it is therefore possible that Seti II. rather than Meneptah is referred to.

[188]. The last Pharaoh whose monuments have been found in the Sinaitic peninsula is Ramses VI. of the twentieth dynasty (De Morgan, Recherches sur les Origines de l’Égypte, p. 237).

[189]. The Amalekites adjoined Edom (Gen. xxxvi. 12) and southern Israel (Judg. v. 14), and extended from Shur, or the Wall of Egypt, to Havilah, the ‘sandy’ desert of Northern Arabia (1 Sam. xv. 7; see Gen. xiv. 7). That these Amalekites were the same as those conquered by Moses is expressly stated in 1 Sam. xv. 2 (cf. Exod. xvii. 16). The latter, therefore, lived miles to the north of the Sinaitic peninsula. The wilderness of Paran lay on the southern side of Moab (Deut. i. 1) and Judah (Gen. xxi. 14, 20, 21). Kadesh, now ’Ain Qadîs, was situated in it (Numb. xiii. 26). The geography of the Exodus is treated with great ability and logical skill in Baker Greene’s Hebrew Migration from Egypt (1879).

[190]. Judg. v. 4, 5; Deut. xxxiii. 2; Hab. iii. 3.

[191]. First pointed out by Baker Greene, The Hebrew Migration from Egypt, p. 170; Elim is the masculine, and Elath the feminine plural. Compare El-Paran, perhaps ‘El(im) of Paran,’ in Gen. xiv. 6, as well as Elah in Gen. xxxvi. 41.

[192]. Exod. xvi. 1 compared with Numb. xxxiii. 11.

[193]. The name is found in an inscription of Hadramaut (Osiander, Inscriptions in the Himyaritic Character, p. 29), where the god is called the son of Atthar or Istar instead of her brother, as in Babylonia, as well as in a Sabæan text from Sirwaḥ.

[194]. Numb. xiii. 26. The sanctuary had originally been Amalekite (Gen. xiv. 7).

[195]. Unfortunately, no calculation of distance can be made from the statement that Elijah was ‘forty days and forty nights’ on his way from Jezreel to Horeb, since ‘forty’ merely denotes an unknown number.

[196]. In the early days of the monarchy the armies of both the Israelites and the Philistines were similarly divided into companies of a hundred and a thousand (1 Sam. xxii. 7; xxix. 2; 2 Sam. xviii. 1). The system could not have been derived from Babylonia, where sixty was the unit of notation.

[197]. See my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, pp. 74-77, and Hibbert Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, pp. 70-77.

[198]. The text of this is given in the 125th chapter of the Book of the Dead. A translation of it will be found in Wiedemann’s Religion der alten Aegypter, pp. 132, 133.

[199]. The conceptions which underlay this were embodied in the mediæval jurisprudence of Europe, and curious reports exist of the trials of cocks, rats, flies, dogs, and even ants, which lasted down to the eighteenth century (see Baring-Gould, Curiosities of Olden Times, second edit., pp. 57-73).

[200]. The exhortation, together with some of the laws, is given again in a somewhat changed form in Exod. xxxiv. 10-26.

[201]. The name belongs to the period when the Philistines were infesting the sea, before they had settled on the coast of Palestine, and indicates the early date of the passage in which it occurs. Perhaps the Greek tradition of the command of the sea by the Kretan Minos is a reminiscence of the same period.

[202]. W. A. I. i. 54, Col. ii. 54 sqq.

[203]. Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vii. 1, pp. 53, 54.

[204]. A contract-tablet dated in the 32nd year of Nebuchadrezzar, and published by Dr. Strassmaier (Inschriften von Nabuchodonoser, No. 217), gives us an insight into the details of Babylonian sacrifices, though, unfortunately, the signification of many of the technical words employed in it is doubtful or unknown. The tablet begins as follows: ‘Izkur-Merodach the son of Imbiya the son of Ilei-Merodach of his own free will has given for the future to Nebo-balásu-ikbi the son of Kuddinu the son of Ilei-Merodach the slaughterers of the oxen and sheep for the sacrifices of the king, the prescribed offerings, the peace-offerings (?) of the whole year, viz., the caul round the heart, the chine, the covering of the ribs, the ..., the mouth of the stomach, and the ..., as well as during the year 7000 sin-offerings and 100 sheep before Iskhara who dwells in the temple of Sa-turra in Babylon (not excepting the soft parts of the flesh, the trotters (?), the juicy meat and the salted (?) flesh), and also the slaughterers of the oxen, sheep, birds, and lambs due on the 8th day of Nisan, (and) the heave-offering of an ox and a sheep before Pap-sukal of Bit-Kidur-Kani, the temple of Nin-ip and the temple of Anu on the further bank of the New Town in Babylon.’

[205]. The Ancient Hebrew Tradition, pp. 282-284.

[206]. See the illustration in Erman’s Life in Ancient Egypt (Eng. tr.), p. 298.

[207]. Mr. G. Buchanan Gray (Studies in Hebrew Proper Names, p. 246, note 1) suggests that Aholiab is a foreign name. At all events, while we find names compounded with ohel, ‘tabernacle,’ in Minæan and Phœnician inscriptions, no other name of the kind is found among the Israelites.

[208]. Sir Thomas Browne, in his Religio Medici (Part i.), remarks on this: ‘I would gladly know how Moses, with an actual fire, calcined or burnt the golden calf into powder; for that mystical metal of gold, whose solary and celestial nature I admire, exposed unto the violence of fire, grows only hot and liquefies, but consumeth not.’

[209]. An interpolation (Exod. xxxiii. 1-5) makes the worship of the golden calf account for the fact that, as declared in Exod. xxiii. 20, an angel should lead Israel into Canaan, and not Yahveh Himself. But it ignores the further fact that Yahveh was really present in the Holy of Holies as well as in the pillar of fire and cloud.

[210]. Hadad-sum and his son Anniy (see my Patriarchal Palestine, p. 250). Small stone tablets like those of Balawât, engraved with cuneiform characters, are in the museums of Europe.

[211]. Sayce, Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, pp. 79-83.

[212]. The contrast between such cases, where the names and details are as circumstantially stated as in the legal tablets of early Babylonia, and cases which rest merely upon the memory of tradition, will be clear at once from a reference to Numb. xv. 32-36. Here we have to do with tradition only, and accordingly no name is given, and the story is introduced with the vague statement that it happened at some time or other when the Israelites ‘were in the wilderness.’ The whole of the chapter is an interpolation which is singularly out of place in the narrative, and seems to have been substituted for a description of the disasters which followed on the abortive attempt of the Israelites to invade Canaan.

[213]. Sayce, Babylonian Literature, pp. 79, 80; Knudtzon, Assyrische Gebete an den Sonnengott, pp. 73 sqq.

[214]. Athenæus, Deipn. xiv. 639 c.

[215]. Amiaud’s translation of the Inscriptions of Telloh in the Records of the Past, new ser., ii. pp. 83, 84.

[216]. This was clearly shown by Colenso, The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically examined, Pt. i.

[217]. The soss was 60, the ner 600.

[218]. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt (Eng. tr.), p. 475.

[219]. So in Josephus, Antiq. ii. 10.

[220]. Trumbull, Kadesh-barnea (1884).

[221]. Numb. xiii. 21 seems to be a later exaggeration when compared with the following verse. No argument, however, can be drawn from the statement that the spies were absent only ‘forty days,’ since here, as elsewhere, ‘forty’ merely means an unknown length of time.

[222]. Eshcol, however, was already the name of an Amorite chieftain of Mamre in the time of Abraham (Gen. xiv. 13).

[223]. Numb. xxi. 1-3 is a combination of this abortive attempt and the subsequent conquest of Arad and Zephath by Judah and Simeon (Judg. i. 16, 17), and is intended to resume the thread of the history which had been broken by the insertion of chapter xv.

[224]. In Numb. xx. 1-13 a tradition about the waters of Meribah takes the place of a history of the long period that elapsed between the first and the second arrival at Kadesh, during which the numerous series of stations mentioned in Numb. xxxiii. 19-36 was passed. A comparison with Exod. xvii. 1-7 and Deut. xxxiii. 8 seems to show that the story of ‘the water of Meribah’ has been transferred from Rephidim to Kadesh. At Kadesh, indeed, there would have been no want of water (see Gen. xiv. 7), and it may be that the meaning of the word Meribah, ‘contention,’ has been the cause of the transference. En-Mishpat, ‘the Spring of Judgment,’ where contentions were decided, had been for centuries the name of the spring at Kadesh-barnea. As for the name of Zin, it possibly signifies ‘the dry place.’

[225]. Gen. xxxvi. 27; 1 Chron. i. 42.

[226]. In Deut. x. 6, 7 (which has been interpolated in the middle of the narrative of the legislation at Mount Sinai), the order of events is: (1) Departure from Beeroth of Beni-Yaakan to Mosera, (2) death of Aaron at Mosera, (3) departure to Gudgodah, (4) departure to Yotbath. In Numb. xx., xxxiii. 30-39 it is, on the contrary: (1) Departure from Hashmonah to Moseroth, (2) departure to Beni-Yaakan, (3) departure to Hor-hagidgad, the Gudgodah of Deuteronomy, (4) departure to Yotbathah, (5) departure to Ebronah, (6) departure to Ezion-geber, (7) departure to Kadesh, (8) departure to Mount Hor, (9) death of Aaron on Mount Hor.

[227]. The passage was already corrupt in the time of the Septuagint translators. But instead of eth-wâhab, their text reads eth-zâhâb. If this was correct, the reference would probably be to Dhi-Zahab, ‘(the mines) of gold’ which, according to Deut. i. 1, was not far from Sûph.

[228]. Zeitschrift des Palästina Vereins, xiv. pp. 142 sq. Tell ’Ashtereh is the Ashteroth-Karnaim of Gen. xiv. 5.

[229]. Professor Erman reads them Akna-Zapn, perhaps Yakin-Zephon, ‘Jachin of the North.’ Above the figures is the winged solar disk (Erman, Der Hiobstein in the Zeitschrift des Palästina Vereins, xiv. pp. 210, 211).

[230]. On the left side of the base of the second statue in front of the pylon, where it follows the name of Assar, the Asshurim of Gen. xxv. 3; see Daressy, Notice explicative des Ruines du Temple de Louxor, p. 19.

[231]. Bela’s city is stated to have been Dinhabah (Gen. xxxvi. 32), which Dr. Neubauer has identified with Dunip, now Tennib, north-west of Aleppo, which played an important part in the history of Western Asia during the fifteenth century B.C.

[232]. W. A. I. i. 46; Col. iii. 29, 30. In another passage Esar-haddon describes them as ‘serpents with two heads’ (Budge, History of Esar-haddon, p. 120).

[233]. Bronze serpents were regarded in Babylonia as divine protectors of a building, and were accordingly ‘set up’ at its entrance. Thus Nebuchadrezzar says of the walls of Babylon, ‘On the thresholds of the gates I set up mighty bulls of bronze and huge serpents that stood erect’ (W. A. I. i. 65, i. 19-21).

[234]. It is called simply Iyîm in the official itinerary (Numb. xxxiii. 45). Punon is the Pinon of Gen. xxxvi. 41, where it is coupled with Elah, the El-Paran of Gen. xiv. 6.

[235]. Those who wish to see what can be done by ingenious philological conjectures which satisfy none but their authors may turn to a paper by Professor Budde in the Actes du Dixième Congrès Internationale des Orientalistes, iii. pp. 13-18, where they will find a ‘revised’ version of Numb. xxi. 17, 18. The two last lines are changed into ‘With the sceptre, with their staves: From the desert a gift!’

[236]. Numb. xxxii. 41, 42; Deut. iii. 14. We learn from Judg. x. 3, 4, that Jair was one of the judges, so that the conquest of Havoth-Jair must have taken place long after the death of Moses.

[237]. Now Dar’at (pronounced Azr’ât by the Bedâwin) and Tell-Ashtereh.

[238]. Zippor of Gaza was the name of the father of a certain Baal- ... whose servant carried letters in the third year of Meneptah II. from Egypt to Khai, the Egyptian governor of the fellahin or Perizzites of Palestine, and the king of Tyre (Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Eng. tr., second edit., ii., p. 126).

[239]. Ammiya is said to have been seized by Ebed-Asherah the Amorite (The Tel el-Amarna Tablets in the British Museum, 12. 25., 15. 27). It is also called Amma (ib. 17. 7., 37. 58, where it is associated with Ubi, the Aup of the Egyptian inscriptions) and Ammi (W. and A. 89. 13).

[240]. If the two Balaams, ‘son of Beor,’ are really the same person, Edomite and Israelitish history will have handed down two different conceptions of him. The Israelitish chronology, moreover, would make it impossible for him to have been the first Edomite king (see Numb. xx. 14).

[241]. Sheth are the Sutu of the Assyrian inscriptions, the Sittiu or ‘Archers’ of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Bedâwin of modern geography. The Beni-Sheth will be the Midianite Bedâwin who are associated with the Moabites in the Pentateuch (Numb. xxii. 4, 7; xxv. 1-18; xxxi. 8).

[242]. Records of the Past, new ser., iii. pp. 61-65.

[243]. Tiglath-pileser I. (B.C. 1100) boasts of having sailed upon the Mediterranean in a ship of Arvad, and of there killing a dolphin, while his son, Assur-bil-kala, erected statues in the cities of ‘the land of the Amorites’ (W. A. I. i. 6, No. vi.). A little later Assur-irbi carved an image of himself on Mount Amanus, near the Gulf of Antioch, but the capture by the king of Aram of Mutkina, which guarded the ford over the Euphrates, subsequently cut him off from the west. Palestine is already called Ebir-nâri, ‘the land beyond the river,’ in an Assyrian inscription which Professor Hommel would refer to the age of Assur-bil-kala, the son of Tiglath-pileser I. (The Ancient Hebrew Tradition, p. 196). Professor D. H. Müller (Die Propheten, p. 215) conjecturally emends the Hebrew text of Numb. xxiii. 23, 24, and sees in it a reference to the kingdom of Samalla, to the north-east of the Gulf of Antioch. The two verses become in his translation, ‘[And he saw Samalla], and began his speech, and said, Alas, who will survive of Samalla? And ships [shall come] from the coast of Chittim, and Asshur shall oppress him, and Eber shall oppress him, and he himself is destined to destruction.’ Samalla, however, was only the Assyrian name of a district called by natives of Northern Syria Ya’di and Gurgum; nor is it easy to understand how Balaam could have ‘seen’ the north of Syria from Moab. Professor Hommel is more probably right in his view that Asshur here does not signify the Assyrians, but the Asshurim to the south of Palestine (Gen. xxv. 3, 18).

[244]. For the Messianic prophecy of Ameni, see above, p. [175].

[245]. Similar cities of refuge, called puhonua, existed in Hawaii. ‘A thief or a murderer might be pursued to the very gateway of one of those cities; but as soon as he crossed the threshold of that gate, even though the gate were open and no barrier hindered pursuit, he was safe as at the city altar. When once within the sacred city, the fugitive’s first duty was to present himself before the idol and return thanks for his protection’ (Trumbull, The Threshold Covenant, p. 151, quoting Ellis, Through Hawaii, pp. 155 sq., and Bird, Six Months in the Sandwich Islands, pp. 135 sq.). For the asyla of Asia Minor see Barth, De Asylis Græcis (1888); Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités, Grecques et Romaines, i. pp. 505 sqq.; Pauly’s Real-Encyclopädie (ed. Wissowa), iv. pp. 1884-5.

[246]. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt (Eng. tr.), p. 299.

[247]. Cornelius Nepos, Them. ii. 10.

[248]. Mahaffy, The Empire of the Ptolemies, pp. 144, 156-158. For the hiera or priestly cities of Asia Minor, see Ramsay, The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, pp. 101 sqq.; their constitution resembled very closely that of the Levitical cities in Israel. Examples of such cities in the history of Israel are Nob in the time of Saul and Anathoth in the age of Jeremiah.

[249]. The order of events is in many places confused, which probably points to later insertions in the text. See, for example, Deut. x. 6-9, which interrupts the context, and has nothing to do either with what precedes or with what follows.

[250]. E.g. Deut. xiv. 21, compared with Lev. xvii. 14-16.

[251]. In this respect it resembles the ‘Negative Confession’ of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which the soul of the dead man was required to make before the judges of the other world (Wiedemann, Religion der alten Aegypter, pp. 132, 133).

[252]. Levi is included among the six tribes which stood on Mount Gerizim to bless. This is an inadvertency, as the Levites were placed on both mountains, it being their duty to utter the curses as well as the blessings.

[253]. If it did so, xxxiii. 4 can hardly be original. Perhaps Yahveh rather than Moses was described as ‘king in Jeshurun’ (cf. v. 26). A very ingenious attempt has been made by Dr. Hayman to explain the corruptions of the text in the song by the theory that it was originally written on a clay tablet, a fracture of which has caused some of the words at the ends of the lines to be lost.

[254]. Cf. 1 Chron. iv. 22.

[255]. This passage must have been written at a time when Judah had not yet come to occupy a definite place among the tribes in Canaan, and when, as in the Song of Deborah, the territory of Benjamin was regarded as a sort of appendage of that of Ephraim, and as extending as far south as the desert of the Amalekites. (See also Josh. xv. 63.)

[256]. Josh. xviii. 22.

[257]. Colonel Watson in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, July 1895, pp. 253-261; see also Quatremère, Histoire des Sultans Mamluks, ii. p. 26; and Mr. Stevenson in the Quarterly Statement October 1895, pp. 334-338.

[258]. The play is on the verb gâlal, ‘to roll.’ Gilgal, however, means the ‘circle’ of stones, or ‘cairn.’ Moreover, the Egyptians were circumcised, so that uncircumcision could not correctly be called ‘the reproach of Egypt.’ Some of the Israelites may have been circumcised at Gilgal, but it is incredible that none of the males born in the desert had been so. This would have been a flagrant violation of the Mosaic law (see Lev. xii. 3; Gen. xvii. 14).

[259]. The tongue-like wedge of gold finds its parallel in six tongue-like wedges of silver discovered by Dr. Schliemann in the ‘Third prehistoric City’ of Hissarlik or Troy, and figured by him in Ilios, pp. 470-472. Mr. Barclay V. Head has shown that they each represent the third of a Babylonian maneh.

[260]. See my Races of the Old Testament, pp. 75-77; Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, July 1876 and July 1877.

[261]. Gezer was similarly laid under tribute by Ephraim (Josh. xvi. 10).

[262]. The Septuagint has Elam instead of Hoham, from which we may perhaps infer that the older reading of the Hebrew text was Yeho-ham. If so, we should have an example of the use of the name of the national God of Israel among the Hebronites. The substitution of El for Yeho would be parallel to the fact that in the inscriptions of the Assyrian king Sargon the contemporary king of Hamath is called both Yahu-bihdi and Ilu-bihdi. Cf. also Joram and Hado-ram (2 Sam. viii. 10; 1 Chron. xviii. 10). Piram resembles the Egyptian Pi-Romi; the name was also Karian (Sayce, The Karian Language and Inscriptions in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, ix. 1, No. ii. 3). The Jarmuth of which Piram was king cannot be the same as the Yarimuta of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, as that seems to have been in the north, though Karl Niebuhr makes it the Delta. For Piram the Septuagint has Phidôn; and it changes Yaphia into Jephthah and Eglon into Adullam.

[263]. See Flinders Petrie, Tell el-Hesy (Lachish) (1891) and Bliss, A Mound of Many Cities.

[264]. For Horam the Septuagint again has Elam. Perhaps the original reading was Yehoram. There is no ground for supposing that Hoham of Hebron and Horam of Gezer are one and the same.

[265]. It is called Huzar in the list of the conquests of Thothmes III. at Karnak, where it follows Liusa or Laish, and precedes Pahil, identified with Pella by Mr. Tomkins, and Kinnertu or Chinnereth.

[266]. Records of the Past, new ser., v. p. 89.

[267]. Records of the Past, new ser., v. p. 44, No. 18.

[268]. See also Josh. xi. 2.

[269]. Josh. xii. 21-24. Probably the kings of Tappuah, Hepher, Aphek, and Sharon are to be included in the confederacy (verses 17, 18). We do not know where Tappuah was (though it is usually placed in the Wadi el-Afranj; G. A. Smith, Hist. Geog. of the Holy Land, p. 202). Hepher can hardly be the southern Hepher referred to in 1 Kings iv. 10, but is probably Gath-Hepher west of the Sea of Galilee. Aphek (1 Sam. xxix. 1) was a few miles to the south of it, and the plain of Sharon began at Dor. Cf., however, Beth-Tappuah (in the Wadi el-Afranj) and Aphekah near Hebron, in Judah (Josh. xv. 53).

[270]. In Josh. xi. 3, ‘the land of Mizpeh’ is said to include ‘the Hittite’—so we should probably read instead of ‘Hivite’—‘under Hermon.’

[271]. The main body of the Kenites, however, who, like ‘the children of Judah,’ had settled in the neighbourhood of Jericho after its capture, moved afterwards into the desert south of Arad (Judg. i. 16; 1 Sam. xv. 6), and lived here along with a portion of the tribe of Judah.

[272]. Beth-lehem has been supposed to have been the original headquarters of the tribe, as it is called Beth-lehem-Judah (xix. 1). But this was merely to distinguish it from another Beth-lehem in Zebulon.

[273]. Thus, in a despatch sent to one of the later Assyrian kings, the writer says, ‘I am a dog, a dog of the king his lord’ (Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Letters, iv. p. 460).

[274]. Josh. xv. 49. In one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets Ebed-Tob of Jerusalem, when referring to the Khabiri or ‘Hebronites,’ speaks of Bit-Sâni, which may be the Kirjath-Sannah of the Old Testament. Winckler (Tell el-Amarna Letters, 185) has given a wrong translation of the passage, which is partly based on an incorrect copy of the text. The translation should be, ‘Behold Gath-Carmel has fallen to Tagi and the men of Gath. He is in Bit-Sâni, and we will bring it about that they give Labai and the land of the Sutê (Bedâwin) to the district of the Khabiri.’

[275]. The determinative of ‘writing’ is attached to the word Sopher, showing that the Egyptian scribe was acquainted with its meaning. The name of Beth-Sopher (Baitha-Thupar) was first deciphered on the papyrus by Dr. W. Max Müller, and published in his Asien und Europa.

[276]. Not the pluperfect, as in the Authorised Version.

[277]. See above, p. [247].

[278]. The latter reading (Judg. ii. 9) is probably the more correct. The name of Timnath-heres, ‘the portion of the Sun-god,’ may have been changed to Timnath-serah, ‘the portion of abundance,’ on account of its idolatrous associations. Perhaps it is the modern Kafr Hâris, nine miles south of Shechem.

[279]. Judg. iii. 3. The ‘Hivites’ of the Hebrew text should probably be corrected into ‘Hittites.’ The Sidonians are mentioned to the exclusion of the Tyrians, as in Gen. x. 15-18. This takes us back to the period before that of David, when Tyre was still a place of small importance, and Sidon was the leading city on the Phœnician coast. Cp., however, 1 Kings xvi. 31.

[280]. Judg. iii. 6, 7.

[281]. As Israel was theoretically considered to be divided into twelve tribes, there is no reason for doubting the cypher, even though there were not actually twelve tribes at the time in Canaan, and one of tribes, Benjamin, can hardly have had a piece sent to it. The text carefully avoids saying that the pieces were sent to each of the tribes. In chap. xx. 2, the word ‘all’ is used in that restricted sense to which western students of Oriental history have to accustom themselves, since one at least of the tribes, Benjamin, was absent.

[282]. The value of modern philological criticism of the Old Testament may be judged from the fact that Stade pronounces the narrative of the war against Benjamin to be unhistorical, because the first king of Israel was a Benjamite! (Geschichte des Volkes Israel, p. 161).

[283]. Judg. xviii. 12, 13, where it is said to be ‘behind’ or west of Kirjath-jearim. In xiii. 25 the Camp of Dan is placed between Zorah and Eshtaol, which were west of Kirjath-jearim. See G. A. Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 220, 221.

[284]. We hear on other occasions of a regiment of six hundred men among the Israelites (Judg. xx. 47; 1 Sam. xiii. 15, xxiii. 13), and it would seem, therefore, that in the division of the troops a memory of the culture of Babylonia was preserved. Six hundred men represented the Babylonian ner.

[285]. Judg. xviii. 30. ‘The captivity of the land’ is of course that described in 2 Kings xv. 29, and shows that the compilation of the Book of Judges must be subsequent to the conquest of Northern and Eastern Israel by Tiglath-pileser.

[286]. Kennicott, Vetus Testamentum Hebraicum, i. p. 509. ‘Moses’ is also the reading of the Vulgate and a few Greek MSS.

[287]. See 1 Kings viii. 9. The addition of the pot of manna and Aaron’s rod in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ix. 4) is due to a misunderstanding of Ex. xvi. 33, 34, and Numb. xvii. 10.

[288]. The identity of Mitanni and Nahrina is stated in one of the Tel el-Amarna letters (W. and A. 23) from Mitanni, a hieratic docket attached to it stating that it came from Nahrina. In one place, however (W. and A. 79. 13, 14), the Phœnician governor Rib-Hadad seems to distinguish between ‘the king of Mittani and the king of Nahrina,’ though the passage may also be translated, ‘the king of Mittani, that is, the king of Nahrina.’ Ilu-rabi-Khur of Gebal (W. and A. 91. 32) writes the name Narima, and says that the king of Narima in alliance with the king of the Hittites was destroying the Egyptian cities of Northern Syria.

[289]. W. and A. 104. 32-35. Comp. Numb. xxiv. 24, where Assyria and Eber take the place of Babylonia and Nahrima. The translation given above is from a corrected copy of the cuneiform text.

[290]. See Records of the Past, new ser., vi. pp. 28, 29, 34, 45.

[291]. Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs (Eng. tr.), ii. p. 151; Records of the Past, new ser., vi. pp. 31-45.

[292]. Records of the Past, new ser., vi. pp. 38-41. As only the qau or ‘district’ of Shalam is mentioned, it is possible that the city itself was not captured by the Egyptian troops. Hebron is written Khibur, i.e. the city of the ‘Khabiri.’

[293]. Was the campaign of Ramses III. the mysterious ‘hornet’ sent before the children of Israel to destroy the populations of Canaan (Exod. xxiii. 28, Deut. vii. 20, Josh. xxiv. 12)? At any rate, this is more probable than the suggestion that tsir’âh, rendered ‘hornet,’ is a variant of tsâra’ath, ‘plague.’

[294]. The name has been Hebraised, and perhaps corrupted, so that it is difficult to suggest what could have been its Mitannian original. The Khusarsathaim of the Septuagint, however, reminds us of the name of Dusratta or Tuisratta, the Mitannian king who corresponded with the Pharaoh Amenophis IV.

[295]. Livy, xxviii. 37, xxx. 7.

[296]. The Welsh laws allowed a stranger to acquire proprietary rights in the fourth generation, and to become a tribesman in the ninth (Seebohm, in the Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1895-96, pp. 12 sqq.).

[297]. This is expressly stated in the Song of Deborah: the Reubenites could not come to the help of their brethren, for they had become a body of scattered and nomad shepherds (Judg. v. 15, 16).

[298]. See Judg. xx. 16.

[299]. P’sîlîm, mistranslated ‘quarries’ in the Authorised Version. They were the sacred stones, believed to be inspired with divinity, which formed the Gilgal or ‘Circle.’ Modern critics have raised unnecessary difficulties about the geography of the narrative, and conjectured that the name of the capital of Eglon has dropped out of the text in Judg. iii. 15 (see Budde: Die Bücher Richter und Samuelis, p. 99). The Biblical writer makes it plain that Eglon was at Gilgal, not at Jericho as his would-be critics assert.

[300]. Caphtor is written Kptar in hieroglyphics at Kom-Ombo (on the wall of the southern corridor of the temple), where it heads a list of geographical names, and is followed by those of Persia and Susa (Sayce: The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, 3rd edition, p. 173). The name of the Zakkal, formerly read Zakkar or Zakkur, and identified with the Teukrians, has been pointed out by Professor Hommel in a Babylonian inscription of the fifteenth century B.C. (W. A. I. iv. 34, No. 2, ll. 2, 6). Here it is called the city of Zaqqalu, and we may gather from a papyrus in the possession of M. Golénischeff that it was situated on the coast of Canaan not far from Dor.

[301]. A reminiscence of the event is probably preserved in Justin, xviii. 3, where we read that in the year before the fall of Troy, ‘the king of the Ascalonians’ destroyed Sidon, whose inhabitants fled in their ships and founded Tyre. The date would harmonise with that of the reign of Ramses III. Lydian history related that Askalos, the son of Hymenæos, and brother of Tantalos, had been sent by the Lydian king Akiamos in command of an army to the south of Palestine, and had there founded Askalon (Steph. Byz. s.v. Ἀσκάλων), and according to Xanthos the Lydian historian, the goddess Derketô was drowned in the lake of Askalon by the Lydian Mopsos (Athen. Deipn. viii. 37, p. 346). In these legends we have a tradition of the fact that the Philistines and their allies came from the coast of Asia Minor and the Greek Seas.

[302]. Josh. xiii. 2, 3; Judg. iii. 1-3. The statement in Judg. i. 18 was true only theoretically; it was not true in fact until the reign of David.

[303]. Stephanus Byzantinus s.v. Ἰόνιον, where it is also said that Gaza was termed Ionê. According to Kastôr the thalassocratia or ‘sea-rule’ of Minôs lasted until B.C. 1180, when it passed into the hands of the Lydians. By the latter may be meant the expedition sent to the south of Palestine by the Lydian king Akiamos.

[304]. Sayce, Races of the Old Testament, pp. 126, 127, and pl. i.

[305]. Deut. ii. 23. Avim is merely a descriptive title signifying ‘the people of the ruins.’

[306]. See my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, pp. 325-327. It is possible that some of the Semitic deities had been adopted by the Philistines before they left Krete, if indeed they came from that island. At all events it has been supposed that certain Canaanitish divinities were adored there, more especially Ashtoreth, under the title of Diktynna. The presence of Semites in the island seems indicated by the name of the river Iardanos or Jordan.

[307]. In the age of Deborah, however, it would seem that the seaport of Joppa was still in the possession of the Danites (Judg. v. 17). But cp. Josh. xix. 46.

[308]. Winckler and Abel, Mittheilungen aus den orientalischen Sammlungen, iii. 143. 37, 43. Anatum or Anat, the son of Sin-abu-su, is also a witness to the sale of some property in a deed dated in the reign of the Babylonian king Samsu-iluna, the son of Khammurabi or Amraphel, and published by Mr. Pinches, Inscribed Babylonian Tablets in the Collection of Sir H. Peek, iii. p. 61.

[309]. See Judg. i. 27. Beth-shean, the Scythopolis of classical geography, is the modern Beisân.

[310]. Twenty is half the indeterminate number forty, and merely denotes that the exact number of years, though unknown, was less than a generation.

[311]. Judg. v. 15. Literally the words are: ‘Issachar [is] like Barak.’ The Heb. kên is the Assyrian kêmi, ‘like,’ and is used in the same way as kida in modern Egyptian Arabic. It is criticism run wild to assert with Budde, Wellhausen, and others, that Deborah also is described as belonging to Issachar.

[312]. Pindar, Pyth. iv. 106; Lactant. i. 22; Etym. Mag. s.v. ἐσσην.

[313]. Gen. xxxv. 8, where the name of the terebinth, Allon-Bachuth, ‘the terebinth of weeping,’ is derived from the lamentations over the death of the nurse. A different origin of the name, however, seems to be indicated in Hos. xii. 4.

[314]. Rimmon, one of the chief Assyrian gods, was also entitled Barqu, ‘the lightning,’ and it is possible that the name had migrated westward along with that of Rimmon. Noam, whose name enters into that of Abinoam, the father of Barak, seems to have been a Phœnician god, whose consort was Naamah.

[315]. ‘Forty thousand’ represents the highest unit, one thousand, in the division of the army, multiplied by the indeterminate number forty.

[316]. ‘The Hittites of Kadesh,’ according to the reading of Lucian’s recension of the Septuagint, 2 Sam. xxiv. 6, in place of the corrupt and unmeaning Tahtim-hodshi of the Massoretic text. See Hitzig, Z. D. M. G., ix. pp. 763 sqq.; Wellhausen, T. B. S., p. 221.

[317]. It has been generally assumed to have been near the Kishon, on account of Judges iv. 16. But the inference is not certain, partly because we do not know how far the pursuit may have extended, partly because Oriental expressions cannot be interpreted with the mathematical exactitude of western language. The name of Harosheth means probably ‘[the town of] metal-working,’ or ‘the smithy.’

[318]. Being a poem, it was probably handed down orally at first. This would account for variant readings like ‘also the clouds dropped,’ by the side of ‘also the heavens dropped,’ in v. 4; or ‘in the days of Jael,’ by the side of ‘in the days of Shamgar ben-Anath,’ in v. 6. The name of Jael, however, may have been a marginal gloss like sârîd, ‘a remnant,’ possibly, in v. 13. The song was almost certainly written from the outset in the letters of the so-called Phœnician alphabet, and not in cuneiform characters. Had it been written in cuneiform there would have been a confusion between aleph, hê and ’ayin, which cannot be detected in it. At the same time, the use of the preposition bě in vv. 2 and 15 (b’ Isrâel, b’ Issachar) could be explained from the cuneiform syllabary, in which the character pi (used for bi in the Tel el-Amarna tablets) also has the value of yi. The omission of the article, which is a characteristic of the Song, reminds us that in Canaanite or Phœnician the definite article of Hebrew did not exist.

[319]. A variant reading gave ‘clouds’ instead of ‘heavens.’

[320]. Probably a marginal gloss.

[321]. This line also is corrupt, but there is a reference to it again in verse 11, ‘The people of Yahveh went down to the gates.’

[322]. I.e. on the road.

[323]. Dabbĕrî shîr, with a play on the name of Deborah.

[324]. The Massoretic text has ‘captives.’

[325]. The text is here again corrupt. The Septuagint renders it: ‘Then went down the remnant to the strong.’ But sârîd, ‘remnant,’ is possibly a marginal gloss derived from the name of the place Sarid in Zebulon (Josh. xix. 10), the meaning being ‘Then the people of Yahveh descended to Sarid to the nobles.’ The second member of the verse shows that the ‘nobles’ are Israelites.

[326]. The text cannot be right here, though the general meaning of it is clear.

[327]. The idea is the same as that of the sun and the moon standing still while Joshua defeated the kings at Makkedah (Josh. x. 12-14). Babylonian astrology taught that events in this world were dependent on the motions of the heavenly bodies.

[328]. Septuagint: ‘My mighty soul has trodden him down.’ The verse seems to be corrupt. Cheyne translates: ‘Step on, my soul, with strength!’

[329]. The Massoretic punctuation makes it ‘spoil.’ Ewald conjecturally reads sârâh, ‘princess,’ for shâlâl, ‘spoiling.’ The Septuagint has, equally conjecturally, ‘spoils for his neck.’ The garment referred to is the white towel worn round the neck as a protection from the sun or wind, and called shaqqa in Upper Egypt, or the parti-coloured milâya used for the same purpose in Lower Egypt. Cheyne translates: ‘A coloured stuff, two pieces of embroidery, for my neck, has he taken for a prey.’

[330]. Judg. vi. 32.

[331]. 1 Sam. xii. 11, 2 Sam. xi. 21 (where ‘Baal’ has been changed into ‘bosheth,’ ‘shame’).

[332]. Judg. ix. 1.

[333]. See Kittel, Geschichte der Hebräer, ii. p. 73.

[334]. If a distinction is to be drawn between the names of Gideon and Jerubbaal, it might be conjectured that the first was the name under which the bearer of it was known to the Israelites at Ophrah, the second that whereby he was known to the Canaanites of Shechem. According to Porphyry, Phœnician annals spoke of a priest of Ieuô named Hierombalos, which is clearly Jerubbaal. The Canaanitish kings could also be priests, as we learn from the history of Melchizedek. Baethgen makes Jerubbaal practically identical with Meribbaal (Beiträge zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, p. 143).

[335]. The Kadmonites of Gen. xv. 19, where they are coupled with the Kenites and Kenizzites of Southern Palestine: see above, p. [162].

[336]. Many of the accounts of battles given by Livy are similarly confused, and are doubtless drawn from more than one source, but no one would think of distinguishing the sources, much less of splitting the narrative of the Roman historian into separate documents.

[337]. Judg. vi. 24.

[338]. The usage lingered even as late as the time of Hosea (Hos. ii. 16).

[339]. The name of Abimelech, ‘my father is king,’ cannot be used as an argument, since the ‘king’ referred to in it is the divine king or Moloch, not an earthly ruler.

[340]. Judg. ix. 4, 46. Cf. viii. 33.

[341]. See Judg. i. 28.

[342]. The story of the pitchers and torches is pronounced by modern criticism to be a myth, and has been compared with old Egyptian romances like that which described the capture of Joppa in the reign of Thothmes III. by a stratagem similar to that which we read of in the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. But from the point of view of history alone there is no reason for discrediting the narrative. Bedâwin superstition would fully account for the panic and flight if the camp believed that the spirits of the night had attacked them. Indeed similar panics have been known to arise not only among the Bedâwin of the wilderness, but even among disciplined English soldiers.

[343]. The names of the chiefs have been said to have been derived from the two places which local tradition associated with their deaths. But though ‘the rock of the Raven’ is a very possible geographical name in the East—there is indeed more than one ‘Raven’s Rock’ in modern Egypt—‘the winepress of the Wolf’ is quite the reverse. Animal names like raven and wolf, on the other hand, were frequently applied in ancient Arabia to individuals and tribes (see W. Robertson Smith in the Journal of Philology, ix. 17, 1880, pp. 79-88).

[344]. In the narrative the quarrel with Ephraim comes before the defeat of Zebah and Zalmunna, but Judg. vii. 25 shows that it is misplaced. Certain critics have maintained that two different versions of the same story lie before us, and that the Oreb and Zeeb of the one version are the Zebah and Zalmunna of the other. This, however, is to exhibit a curious ignorance of Bedâwin organisation and modes of warfare: there would have been more than one raiding band, and the different bands would have been under different shêkhs.

[345]. See above, p. [270]. Of the cities mentioned in Judg. i. 27, Dor, as we learn from the Golénischeff papyrus, had been occupied by the Zakkal, the kinsfolk of the Philistines, and would not have become Israelitish until after the conquest of the latter people. (Cf. 1 Kings iv. 11.) Dor, however, properly belonged to Asher, and Josh. xvii. 11 expressly states that the Canaanitish cities afterwards possessed by Manasseh were originally included in the territories of Issachar and Asher. Issachar could not have lost them until after the time of Barak.

[346]. Even at Tyre, the title of the supreme Baal, Melek-qiryath (Melkarth), ‘the king of the city,’ shows that at the outset the state had been a theocracy.

[347]. See above, p. [306]. The priestly character of Jerubbaal has been suppressed in the narrative in accordance with the feelings of a later time, when the priesthood was strictly confined to the tribe of Levi. But at an earlier date the anointed king was regarded as invested by Yahveh with priestly functions. Saul and Solomon offered sacrifice, and David’s sons acted as priests (2 Sam. viii. 18).

[348]. See Judg. xvii. 5; Hos. iii. 4.

[349]. 1 Sam. ii. 18, xxii. 18, xxiii. 9, xxx. 7, 8.

[350]. Judg. vi. 24, viii. 27.

[351]. See Judg. ix. 1, 28.

[352]. 2 Sam. xx. 14. The reading of the latter passage, however, is not certain.

[353]. See Judg. ix. 41. Verse 31 should be translated, Zebul ‘sent messengers unto Abimelech to Arumah.’

[354]. The name of Jobaal, ‘Yahveh is Baal,’ has been preserved in the Septuagint. Its signification has caused it to be omitted in the Massoretic text where we have only ben-’ebed, ‘the son of a slave,’ corresponding to the expression ‘son of a nobody,’ which we meet with in the Assyrian inscriptions.

[355]. It is here called the Migdal Shechem or ‘Tower of Shechem,’ but seems to have been the same as the Millo of v. 6. The fort would have stood in the same relation to Shechem that the ‘stronghold of Zion’ taken by David stood to Jerusalem. It was probably built just outside the walls of the town. We may compare also the ‘Millo’ constructed by Solomon to defend his palace and the temple (1 Kings ix. 15).

[356]. See 2 Sam. xi. 21.

[357]. See Judg. x. 11, 12. All records of the wars with the Zidonians and the Maonites have perished. Perhaps Professor Hommel is right in identifying the Maonites with the people of Ma’ân in Southern Arabia, whose power waned before the rise of that of Sheba, and extended to the frontiers of Palestine (Aufsätze und Abhandlungen sur Kunde der Sprachen, Literaturen und der Geschichte des vorderen Orients, pp. 2, 47).

[358]. Numb. xxvi. 23, 26.

[359]. Had the southern Beth-lehem been meant, it would have been called, as elsewhere in the book of Judges, Beth-lehem-Judah.

[360]. Numb. xxxii. 41; Deut. iii. 4, 14. In Deut. iii. 4, the ‘cities’ of Argob are described as sixty in number, which in Josh. xiii. 30 are identified with ‘the towns of Jair which are in Bashan.’ This, however, is incorrect, as it was thirty villages and not sixty cities that were conquered by Jair.

[361]. This must mean that he had claimed a portion of his father’s inheritance from the legitimate sons, and that ‘the elders’ who tried the case decided it against him. In the narrative he is called merely ‘the son of Gilead.’

[362]. Tubi (No. 22) is one of the places mentioned by Thothmes III. among his conquests in Palestine. It is probably the modern Taiyibeh, the Tôbion of 2 Macc. x. 11, 17.

[363]. The argument put into the mouth of the Ammonites (Judg. xi. 13), like the answer made by Jephthah, doubtless expressed the feelings on both sides, but the language is that of the historian, as in the case of the speeches in Thucydides. When it is said (v. 26) that the Israelites had occupied the district north of the Arnon for three hundred years, the chronology is that of the compiler. Three hundred years are equivalent to ten generations, and the ten generations are made up by counting the names of the judges given in the book of Judges, down to Jephthah, as representing so many successive generations (1. Moses; 2. Joshua; 3. Othniel; 4. Ehud; 5. Shamgar; 6. Barak; 7. Gideon; 8. Abimelech; 9. Tola; 10. Jair. If Moses and Joshua are reckoned as one generation, the numeration would be carried on to Jephthah).

[364]. The name of Jephthah is a shortened form of Jephthah-el, which we find as the name of a valley on the borders of Asher (Josh. xix. 27).

[365]. See Steinthal, The Legend of Samson, Eng. tr. by Russell Martineau in Goldziher’s Mythology among the Hebrews, pp. 392-446.

[366]. Ramath-lehi is ‘the height of Lehi,’ and has nothing to do with râmâh, ‘to throw’; ’Ên-haqqorê is ‘the Spring of the Partridge,’ not ‘of the caller.’

[367]. It may be gathered from Judg. i. 16, 17, that Simeon preceded Judah in the occupation of the future Judah. When the expedition against Arad and Zephath was formed, the Jews and Kenites were still encamped together at Jericho. The Kenites seem to have remained behind in the newly-won territory of the Negeb, while the Jews established themselves at Beth-lehem.

[368]. We hear only of citizens of Mount Ephraim going up yearly to sacrifice at Shiloh (1 Sam. i. 1-3).

[369]. It must be remembered that at this time, before the rise of Judah, Ephraim was the nearest neighbour of the Philistines as well as of the Amalekites.

[370]. It cannot be supposed, of course, that an Ephraimite would have recorded the defeat and slaughter of his tribe at the hands of Jephthah. But such a momentous disaster could not fail to become known throughout Canaan, and some notice of it must have been taken by the chroniclers of Ephraim themselves. Where and by whom, however, the present account was composed it is vain to inquire, and the question may be left for discussion to the philological critics. That Samuel, who was brought up at Shiloh, could write we are assured in 1 Sam. x. 25.

[371]. 1 Sam. ix. 5; xiv. 1.

[372]. 1 Sam. ix. 18, 19. The disintegrating critics have assumed this narrative to be primitive and contemporary because it presents us with a picture of Samuel which seems to degrade him into an obscure local soothsayer, and on the strength of it have disputed the antiquity of such narratives as assign to him national influence. They might just as well maintain that the only primitive and contemporary account of King Alfred that we possess is the story of the burnt cakes at Athelney.

[373]. 1 Sam. vii. 14.

[374]. Zuph gave his name to ‘the district of Zuph’ (1 Sam. ix. 5), which has the plural form in Ramathaim-zophim.

[375]. Ephraim, however, may be, like Jerusalem, the older form of which has been recovered from the cuneiform inscriptions, a later Massoretic mispronunciation of an original plural Ephrim. The Massoretes have erroneously introduced a dual form into the pronunciation of the name Chushan-rishathaim, and probably also into that of Naharaim when compared with the Egyptian Naharin and the Nahrima of the Tel el-Amarna tablets. Perhaps the dual form Ephraim originated in the existence of the two Ophrahs (with ’ayin), which are already mentioned in the geographical lists of Thothmes III.

[376]. 2 Sam. viii. 18; see also 2 Sam. xx. 26. The Authorised Version mistranslates the word in both passages.

[377]. Translated by me in the Records of the Past, new ser., IV., pp. 109-113.

[378]. See above, p. [244]. The Hebrew Samuel could also represent a Babylonian Sumu-il, ‘Sumu is God’ or ‘the name of God,’ which we actually find in early Babylonian contracts.

[379]. So, too, the Chronicler states that he was descended from Ithamar the younger son of Aaron (1 Chron. xxiv. 3).

[380]. It would seem from 1 Sam. iii. 3, as compared with Exod. xxvii. 21, and Lev. xxiv. 3, that there was no veil at the time in ‘the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.’

[381]. ‘The priest’ of the narrative is equivalent to ‘high priest’: see above, p. 219. Eli’s two sons were naturally not on a level of equality with himself. It has been gravely maintained that there were only three priests at Shiloh at the time, because nothing is said about any others; had the narrative not required the mention of Hophni and Phinehas we should have been told there was only one. Such trifling with historical documents is unfortunately only too characteristic of the so-called ‘literary criticism.’

[382]. It has been assumed that ‘the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation’ (Exod. xxxviii. 8, 1 Sam. ii. 22) were religious prostitutes like the qedashoth in the Phœnician temples (see Deut. xxiii. 17, 18). But the fact that the intercourse of the sons of Eli with them was a sin in the eyes of both Yahveh and the people proves the contrary. Here, as in other cases, an old institution of Semitic religion was retained among the adherents of the Mosaic law, but it was deprived of its pagan and immoral characteristics.

[383]. 1 Sam. ix. 9.

[384]. 1 Sam. xix. 23. Nâbî is not of Arabic derivation as is often supposed, as, for example, by Professor Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, pp. 8-10, where it is erroneously stated that the Babylonian nabû does not mean ‘to pronounce’ or ‘proclaim.’ The name of Nebo shows to what antiquity the Babylonian nabium in its special sense of ‘prophet’ reaches back. The modern Arabic nebi is borrowed from the Hebrew nâbî. Nâbî corresponds with the Greek προφήτης ‘forth-speaker,’ as distinguished from μάντις or ‘diviner,’ the Babylonian asipu. In Babylonia the asipu performed the offices which the Hebrew roeh had once fulfilled; he determined whether an army should move or not, whether victory would be on its side, whether an undertaking would be prosperous or the reverse. While, therefore, the asipu and the nabiu continued to exist side by side, performing the functions which had been combined in the Hebrew roeh, and at the outset in the Hebrew nâbî, among the Israelites the roeh disappeared, and the nâbî alone remained with purely prophetical attributes.

[385]. Towards the end of Samuel’s life, however, a Naioth or ‘monastery’ grew up around him at Ramah, which must have closely resembled the Dervish colleges of the modern Mohammedan world; see 1 Sam. xix. 23. This monastery will have taken the place of Shiloh, and become a veritable ‘school’ of prophetical training and instruction.

[386]. Gad, however, still retained the title of ‘seer’ (1 Chron. xxix. 29), and one of the histories of the reign of Solomon was contained ‘in the visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam’ (2 Chron. ix. 29). Even Isaiah’s history of Hezekiah was called ‘the vision of Isaiah the prophet’ (2 Chron. xxxii. 32). But the title was merely a survival.

[387]. We must, however, distinguish between Samuel’s authority as a seer, which did not excite the jealousy of his Philistine masters, and his authority as a dispenser of justice. That was confined to a small area in the heart of Mount Ephraim. Each year, we are told (1 Sam. vii. 16) he went on circuit like a Babylonian judge, ‘to Beth-el and Gilgal and Mizpeh.’ This is the Mizpeh of Benjamin.

[388]. Ramah, ‘the height,’ is identified in 1 Sam. ii. 11 with Ramathaim, ‘the two heights.’ The village evidently stood on two hills. For the possible site of Aphek, see G. A. Smith, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, p. 224. Eben-ezer is identified with the great stone at Beth-shemesh (1 Sam. vi. 14, 18) by M. Clermont-Ganneau (Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1874, p. 279; 1877, pp. 154 sqq.), but this is questionable.

[389]. See my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, p. 154; and above, p. [196].

[390]. 1 Sam. iv. 13.

[391]. The Septuagint text omits the ‘eight.’

[392]. The Septuagint reads Ouai-bar-khabôth, ‘Woe to the son of glory,’ with the insertion of the Aramaic bar, ‘son.’

[393]. 1 Sam. xiv. 3.

[394]. As Abiathar was the contemporary of David, and his father Ahimelech or Ahiah of Saul, Ahitub will have been the contemporary of Samuel. If Solomon came to the throne about B.C. 965, and Saul was about forty years of age at the time of his death, we should have about B.C. 1045 for the date of Saul’s birth. Samuel was an old man when he died; if he lived ten years after Saul’s accession, and was ten years old when the ark was taken, we may place his birth about B.C. 1090. This would give about B.C. 1180 for the birth of Eli, or very shortly after the Israelitish invasion of Canaan. The life of Eli would thus cover almost the whole period of the Judges, and form a single link between the Mosaic age and that of Samuel. In such a case it is not astonishing that the records and traditions of the Mosaic age were preserved at Shiloh. The ark was only seven months among the Philistines (1 Sam. vi. 1), and it was removed from ‘the house of Abinadab’ at Kirjath-jearim some time after the seventh year of David (see, however, 1 Sam. xiv. 18). ‘The sons of Abinadab,’ in 2 Sam. vi. 4, must mean, as is so frequently the case, the descendants of Abinadab.

[395]. In Zeph. i. 9 there is an allusion to the practice of the Philistine priests of ‘leaping’ over the threshold. For the origin and reason of this sacredness of the threshold see Trumbull, The Threshold Covenant, pp. 10-13, 116-126, 143. ‘In Finland it is regarded as unlucky if a clergyman steps on the threshold when he comes to preach at a church.... In the Lapp tales the same idea appears.’ (Jones and Kropf, Folk-Tales of the Magyars, p. 410.)

[396]. Philo Byblius according to Euseb., Præp. Evangel. i. 6.

[397]. That Dagon was worshipped in Canaan before he was adopted by the Philistine emigrants we know, not only from the evidence of geographical names, but also from the fact that one of the Tel el-Amarna correspondents in Palestine was called Dagan-takala.

[398]. It is noticeable that Zophim in Ramathaim-zophim means ‘Watchmen.’ Poels (Le Sanctuaire de Kirjath-jearim, Louvain, 1894) has, moreover, made it probable that Kirjath-jearim, Mizpeh, Gibeah, Geba, and Gibeon all represent the same place.

[399]. According to 1 Sam. vii. 2, the victory at Eben-ezer took place ‘twenty years’ after the ark had been removed to Kirjath-jearim. But this is merely the half of an unknown period, and means that the interval of time was not long.

[400]. 1 Sam. vii. 13, 14. The area of independence, however, must have been very confined, since there was a garrison of the Philistines in ‘the hill of God’ at Gibeah (1 Sam. ix. 5), as well as one at Michmash (1 Sam. xiv. 1).

[401]. There is no reason for doubting the very explicit statement made in 1 Sam. vii. 14, which explains and limits the preceding verse. Its antiquity is vouched for by the concluding words: ‘And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites.’ The term ‘Amorite’ instead of ‘Canaanite’ points to an early date, and the sentence reads like an extract from a contemporary chronicle. The peace was an enforced one, as both Israelites and Canaanites alike were under the yoke of the Philistines.

[402]. See 2 Kings xviii. 4.

[403]. 1 Chron. xvi. 39, xxi. 293; 2 Chron. i. 3, 5.

[404]. Is it an inference from 1 Kings iii. 4? That the Chronicler sometimes drew erroneous inferences from his materials, I have shown in The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, p. 463. It is difficult to understand how ‘fixtures’ like the tabernacle and the altar escaped destruction when the temple at Shiloh was ruined.

[405]. Kirjath-jearim was a Gibeonite town (Josh. ix. 17).

[406]. 1 Sam. ix. 3.

[407]. 1 Sam. viii. 2. Joel is called Vashni in 1 Chron. vi. 28, where the Septuagint reads Sani.

[408]. As has been noticed above (p. [315], note 1), the title of the supreme god of Tyre is evidence that there, too, the state had been originally regarded as a theocracy.

[409]. The name of Saul corresponds with the Babylonian Savul, a title of the Sun-god, though it might also be explained as a Hebrew word meaning ‘asked for.’ But one of the Edomite kings was also named Saul, and he is stated to have come from ‘Rehoboth (Assyrian Rêbit) by the river’ Euphrates (Gen. xxxvi. 37). This points to a Babylonian origin of the name. Kish, Saul’s father, has also the same name as the Edomite god Qos (in Assyrian Qaus), of which the Canaanitish Kishon is a derivative. As Saul’s successors in Edom were Baal-hanan and Hadad, while Hadad was a contemporary of Solomon, and El-hanan is said in 2 Sam. xxi. 19 to have been the slayer of Goliath, I have proposed (The Modern Review, v. 17, 1884) to see in the Saul and Baal-hanan of Edom the Saul and David of Israel. Saul is said to have fought against Edom (1 Sam. xiv. 47), and Doeg the Edomite was his henchman. But the proposal is excluded by two facts. The kings of Edom recorded in Gen. xxxvi. 31-39 reigned ‘before there was any king over the children of Israel,’ and Saul the son of Kish did not come from the Euphrates.

[410]. 1 Sam. ix. 3. In 1 Sam. x. 14-16, Saul’s uncle takes the place of his father.

[411]. Much has been made of the supposed fact that Saul had never heard of Samuel, and did not know that he was a seer. But the narrative only says that Saul’s slave informed him that a seer was in the town, without mentioning his name; and if Saul had never previously seen Samuel, he would naturally not recognise him in the crowd.

[412]. That the prophets were at Gibeah is shown by the fact that ‘the hill of God,’ where they met Saul, was also where ‘the garrison of the Philistines’ was (1 Sam. x. 5, xiii. 2, 3).

[413]. It has been usually supposed from this verse that ‘Gibeah of Saul’ was the original home of Saul’s family. But as the family burial-place was at Zelah (2 Sam. xxi. 14), this can hardly have been the case. Gibeah was the scene of Jonathan’s first success against the Philistines, and it was here that Saul fixed his residence during the latter years of his life.

[414]. Cp. Judg. xix. 29, where the Levite similarly cuts up his concubine and sends the pieces to the several tribes of Israel.

[415]. See my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, pp. 463-4. When Ahab came to the help of the Syrians against the Assyrian king Shalmaneser, his whole force consisted of only ten thousand men and two thousand chariots, and ‘Assur-natsir-pal thinks it a subject of boasting that he had slain fifty or one hundred and seventy-two of the enemy in battle.’ The whole of the country population of Judah carried into captivity by Sennacherib was only two hundred thousand one hundred and fifty, which would give at most an army of fifty thousand men. The Egyptian armies, with which the victories of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties were gained, were of small size. One of them, in the time of the nineteenth dynasty, contained only three thousand one hundred foreign mercenaries and one thousand nine hundred native troops (Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, Eng. tr., p. 542). At the same time, we must not forget that if there were fifty thousand available fighting men in Judah in the time of Hezekiah, there would have been about three hundred and fifty thousand among the other seven tribes a few generations earlier. Consequently the calculation given in the text of 1 Sam. xi. 8 is approximately correct as a mere calculation. Between available and actual fighting men there was, of course, a great difference. In the second year of Saul’s reign, when his authority was established, he was not able to muster more than three thousand fighting men (1 Sam. xiii. 2). A larger body, indeed, had flocked to him, but they were an undisciplined, unarmed multitude, who had to be dismissed to their homes.

[416]. As the Hebrew netsîb signifies a ‘governor’ as well as a ‘fortified post’ or ‘garrison,’ many writers have maintained that the netsîb in ‘the Hill of God’ at Gibeah was the Philistine official. But Jonathan would not have required a thousand men in order to destroy a single official and the few soldiers who might have been with him.

[417]. The Hebrews had, of course, no means of ascertaining the exact numbers of the enemy. The number of chariots is quite impossible, and they would have been useless in the mountainous country. In the great battle in which Meneptah saved Egypt from the combined armies of the Libyans and their northern allies, nine thousand three hundred and seventy-six prisoners in all were taken, while the slain amounted to six thousand three hundred and sixty-five Libyans and two thousand three hundred and seventy of their Mediterranean confederates. To these must be added nine thousand one hundred and eleven Maxyes. And yet it does not seem that any of the invaders escaped from the battle.

[418]. 1 Sam. xiii. 6, 7. For the distinction that is here drawn between ‘the men of Israel’ and ‘the Hebrews,’ see above, p. [6].

[419]. The identification is uncertain, as it depends on the position to be assigned to Gibeah.

[420]. Ahimelech (1 Sam. xxii. 9, 11, 20) is here called Ahiah, perhaps out of reluctance to apply the term Melech, ‘King,’ with its heathen associations, to Yahveh.

[421]. Here called by its old name of Beth-On, which the Massoretic punctuation has transformed into Beth-Aven.

[422]. Some of the literary critics have started the gratuitous supposition that a prisoner was substituted for Jonathan, though the fact was suppressed by the later Hebrew historian. It is perhaps natural that those who re-write history should have a poor opinion of the trustworthiness of their predecessors.

[423]. 1 Sam. xii.

[424]. 1 Sam. x. 8, compared with xiii. 8-15.

[425]. 1 Sam. xiii. 14. Though Saul’s kingdom did ‘not continue,’ it nevertheless lasted some time, and was not overthrown at Michmash, as those who heard Samuel’s words must have expected. As David was not anointed until some years later, he cannot be ‘the man’ after Yahveh’s ‘heart,’ whom the seer had in his mind at the time.

[426]. The nakhal (A.V. ‘valley’) is probably the Wadi el-Arîsh, which lay on the way to the Shur or line of fortifications that protected the eastern side of the Delta. Havilah, the ‘sandy’ desert, corresponds with the Melukhkha or ‘Salt’ desert of the Babylonian inscriptions. The ‘city of Amalek’ may have been El-Arîsh, if this were not in Egyptian hands at the time.

[427]. The Israelites had been stirred to vengeance by the murderous raids of the Bedâwin at a time when the Philistine invasion had made them too weak to defend themselves (1 Sam. xv. 33).

[428]. For ‘Edom’ we should probably read ‘Aram,’ as is demanded by the geographical order of the list of countries which runs from south to north. In 2 Sam. viii. 13, ‘Aram’ has been substituted for ‘Edom,’ which was still read by the Chronicler (1 Chron. xviii. 12), and the marriage of David with the daughter of the king of Aram-Geshur (2 Sam. iii. 3) implies hostility between Saul and the Geshurites.

[429]. The ‘critics’ have decided that the list of Saul’s wars has been ‘borrowed’ from the history of David. In this case, however, we should have heard of ‘the king’ of Zobah, not of ‘the kings.’ We happen to know that Saul fought against Ammon. Had the fact not been mentioned, the ‘critics’ would have maintained, as in the case of Moab and Zobah, that such a war never took place. The argument from silence may simplify the process of reconstructing history, but from a historical point of view it is worthless.

[430]. Saul showed himself in other cases such a scrupulous observer of the Law that we can well understand his obeying the precept of Deuteronomy that the king should not ‘multiply’ horses or wives (Deut. xviii. 16, 17).

[431]. 1 Sam. xxii. 6.

[432]. It is clear, however, from 1 Sam. xxi. 9, that there must be some mistake here, since the sword of Goliath was laid up at Nob while Saul was king.

[433]. This must be an exaggeration, since David, who was not above the ordinary size, afterwards used his sword (1 Sam. xxi. 9).

[434]. The narrative goes on to say that ‘David took the head of the Philistine and brought it to Jerusalem; but he put his armour in his tent.’ This verse is given in the Septuagint, though the next nine verses are omitted. But the statement cannot be right. Jerusalem was not captured by David until many years after the battle in the valley of Elah, and the shepherd lad had no tent of his own at the time.

[435]. 1 Chron. xx. 5. ‘Beth-lehemite’ is turned into ‘Lahmi,’ the name of the ‘brother’ of Goliath, and the unintelligible Yaare-oregim becomes Yair. Oregim, ‘weavers,’ however, has crept in from the end of the verse, and the original reading of 1 Sam. xxi. 19 must have been, ‘El-hanan, the son of Yaari (the forester) the Beth-lehemite, slew Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.’

[436]. 1 Kings xix. 15, 16; 2 Kings ix. 2, 3. Ahijah, however, did not anoint Jeroboam when he suggested to him that he should head a revolt of the ten tribes against the house of David. When David was made king at Hebron he was anointed by ‘the men of Judah,’ not by a prophet (2 Sam. ii. 4), and no mention is made of a prophet or priest when he was anointed ‘king over Israel’ (2 Sam. v. 3).

[437]. We must remember that in any case the act of anointing would have been a secret, and that consequently an erroneous account of it might easily have been set on foot.

[438]. 1 Sam. xviii. 6. The singular ‘Philistine’ has to be noted, as if there was a reference in it to the overthrow of Goliath. Cf. xix. 5.

[439]. See above, p. [342].

[440]. It is also possible that chapter xx. ought to precede chapter xix.

[441]. 1 Sam. xix. 2.

[442]. Hitzig identified the name of Achish with that of the Homeric Ankhisês. Whether this is so or not, Dr. W. Max Müller is probably right in seeing the same name in that of a native of Keft, or the northern coast of Syria, mentioned in an Egyptian papyrus where it is written Akashau (Spiegelberg in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, viii. p. 384).

[443]. Unless, indeed, 1 Sam. xxiii. 16-18 is an interpolation.

[444]. 1 Sam. xxiv. 2. Compare the expression used by Sennacherib when describing his campaign against the Cilicians: ‘Like a wild goat I climbed to the high peaks against them’ (W. A. I., i. 39, 77).

[445]. The name is preserved in the modern Tell Zif.

[446]. Shunem was a fortified city, already mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, Aphek a mere village. Shunem had evidently been captured, and the Philistine camp subsequently formed outside its walls a little to the west.

[447]. See Exod. xxii. 18; Lev. xx. 27; Deut. xviii. 10, 11.

[448]. We are told in 1 Chron. xii. 19 that even while he was in the Philistine camp at Aphek, and again when he was on the march back to Ziklag, ‘some of Manasseh’ deserted to him.

[449]. The Negeb or ‘South’ was divided at the time into the Negeb of the Cherethites or Philistines, of the Jews, and of the Calebites (1 Sam. xxx. 14, 16.) Up to the end of Saul’s reign, therefore, Caleb and Judah had not been as yet amalgamated into a single tribe.

[450]. See above, p. [234].

[451]. Aroer had belonged to Reuben (Josh. xiii. 16), Hormah, Ziklag, Chor-ashan, and Ramoth of the south to Simeon (Josh. xix. 4-8.) It is curious that no mention should be made of Beth-lehem, and it is therefore possible that ‘Beth-lehem’ should be read in place of ‘Beth-el’ in 1 Sam. xxx. 27. The Septuagint has Baith-Sour.

[452]. Boaz, the grandfather of Jesse, is said to have been the son of Salmon or Salma, who, according to 1 Chron. ii. 50, 51, was the founder of Bethlehem, and the son of Caleb.

[453]. Criticism has seen in the story told by the Amalekite a second version of the death of Saul inconsistent with that which precedes it. The inconsistency certainly exists, but that is because the Amalekite’s story was a fabrication, the object of which was to gain a reward from David. There was this much truth in it, that Saul had been wounded and had desired death; the Amalekite could easily have learned this from those who had witnessed the last scene of Saul’s life. But the fact that he had robbed Saul’s corpse shows that he must have come to the ground after the flight of the Israelitish soldiers; he was, in fact, one of those Bedâwin thieves who, in Oriental warfare, still hang on the skirts of the battle in the hope of murdering the wounded and plundering the dead when it is over and the victors are pursuing the vanquished.

[454]. The translation is that of the Revised Version, with a slight change in the 21st verse. The contrast between the preservation of the text in this Song and in that of the Song of Deborah is great, no passage in it being corrupt, and points to the more archaic character of the latter, as well as to a confirmation of the fact that the Song of the Bow was learnt in the schools from the time of its composition.

[455]. Ish-Baal or Esh-Baal, ‘the man of Baal,’ is called Ishui in 1 Sam. xiv. 49 (where the name of Abinadab is omitted; see 1 Chron. viii. 33). Later writers changed Baal into Bosheth, ‘Shame,’ in accordance with the custom which grew up when the title of Baal came to signify the god of Phœnicia, rather than Yahveh of Israel.

[456]. That the reign of David ‘in Hebron’ continued for five years after the death of Esh-Baal seems the most probable way of explaining the statement in 2 Sam. ii. 10, that the reign of Saul’s son lasted only two years. It is certainly preferable to the usual supposition that ‘two’ is a mistake for ‘seven.’

[457]. The author of the books of Samuel did not know his age (2 Sam. ii. 10). In 1 Sam. xiv. 49 Ishui is named before Melchi-shua, but in 1 Chron. viii. 33 Esh-Baal is the youngest of Saul’s children. That Esh-Baal did not take part in the battle of Gilboa would suit equally well with either hypothesis. Abner, the son of Ner, the son of Abiel, was the great-uncle of Esh-Baal (1 Sam. xiv. 50, 51). As he was still in the prime of life when he was murdered, it is reasonable to suppose that his great-nephew was very young.

[458]. 1 Chron. ii. 16.

[459]. If, as is probable, we should read ‘Geshurites’ for ‘Ashurites’ in 2 Sam. ii. 9, Esh-Baal would have claimed rule over Geshur, and consequently would have been as much involved in war with the king of that country as he was with David. We subsequently find the Aramæans in alliance with the Ammonites (2 Sam. x. 6, etc.), and the king of Ammon was the ally of David against Esh-Baal (2 Sam. xi. 2). It is probable that in 1 Sam. xiv. 47, ‘Aram’ must be read for ‘Edom,’ the geographical position of which was not between Ammon and Zobah (see above, p. [368]); if so, Esh-Baal, in asserting his authority over Geshur, would only have succeeded to his father’s conquests.

[460]. Absalom, as the son of a princess, would claim precedence of his two elder brothers, who, although born after David’s coronation, were nevertheless not of royal descent on their mother’s side. The name of the eldest, the son of Ahinoam, was Amnon, that of the second, the son of Abigail, is given as Chileab in the Hebrew text of Samuel, Daniel in that of 1 Chron. iii. 1, the Septuagint reading Daluia (Dalbia) and Damniêl in the two passages. He seems to have died young. The fourth son of David was Adonijah, the son of Haggith, who, by the death of his three elder brothers, became the eldest son before his father’s death, while the fifth and sixth sons were Shephatiah, the son of Abital, and Ithream, the son of Eglah. All were born in Hebron.

[461]. 2 Sam. iii. 17. This goes to show that Saul’s suspicions of David were founded on fact.

[462]. The name of the Babylonian god Rimmon or Ramman implies that the family of the murderers were idolaters. They are said to have been originally from Beeroth, the inhabitants of which had fled to Gittaim (2 Sam. iv. 3). If the flight had been due to Saul, the hostility of the sons of Rimmon to the son of Saul would be explained. Beeroth was one of the cities of the Gibeonites (Josh. ix. 17), and Saul, we learn from 2 Sam. xxi. 1, had slain the Gibeonites.

[463]. The name Merib-Baal, given by the Chronicler (1 Chron. viii. 34, ix. 40), is doubtless correct. In the books of Samuel Baal has, as usual, been changed into Bosheth, and Merib corrupted into the senseless Mephi.

[464]. See 1 Chron. xi. 2, and xii. 38-40, where it is added that the coronation-feast lasted for three days.

[465]. See 2 Sam. xiii. 13-17.

[466]. It is difficult to say whether the number of the gibbôrîm or ‘heroes’ was actually restricted to thirty, or whether thirty was an ideal number which was elastic in practice. In 2 Sam. xxiii. thirty-seven ‘heroes’ are named, but some of these may have been appointed to supply the place of others who had died or fallen in war. To be included among the thirty was equivalent to receiving a Victoria Cross.

[467]. 2 Sam. xxiii. 8, but the text is corrupt, and reads literally: ‘He that sitteth on the seat, a Takmonite, chief of the third (?); he is Adino the Eznite, over eight hundred slain at one time.’ The Septuagint has: ‘Yebosthe the Canaanite is chief of the third; Adino the Asônæan is he who drew his sword against eight hundred warriors at once’; while the Chronicler (1 Chron. xi. 11) omitted the name of Adino, and read: ‘Jashobeam, a Khakmonite, chief of the captains; he lifted up his spear against three hundred slain at one time.’ For Jashobeam the Septuagint gives Yesebada. Adino seems to be the Adnah of 1 Chron. xii. 20, a Manassite who deserted to David when he was at Ziklag. Jashobeam is the most probable form of the name, and there must be some confusion between Jashobeam, who brandished his spear over three hundred enemies, and an unknown Adino, who did the same over eight hundred enemies.

[468]. G. A. Smith, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, p. 218.

[469]. See 2 Sam. xxi. 15-22, xxiii. 8-17.

[470]. If the name of Ishbi-benob, ‘my seat is in Nob,’ is correct, ‘Gob’ must be corrected into ‘Nob.’ But perhaps it is the name of the giant which needs correction.

[471]. See the map given by Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, p. 268, and my ‘Topography of Præ-exilic Jerusalem’ in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Oct. 1883, pp. 215 sqq.

[472]. Bliss, ‘Excavations at Jerusalem’ in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Oct. 1896 and Jan. 1897.

[473]. Antiq. viii. 5, 3; C. Ap. i. 18.

[474]. It is, of course, possible that Abibal had been preceded by an earlier Hiram of whom we otherwise know nothing, and who is meant in 2 Sam. v. 11. It is also possible that the use of Hiram’s name in this passage is proleptic, derived from the fact that it was he who subsequently sent materials to David for the construction of the temple.

[475]. 1 Chron. xxii. 8.

[476]. 1 Kings v. 3.

[477]. 2 Sam. vi. 3. In Josh. xviii. 18 ‘Gibeah of Kirjath’ is given as one of the cities of Benjamin. Like most of the Egyptian and Babylonian cities it had a second and sacred name, Baalê-Judah, the city of ‘Baal of Judah’ (2 Sam. vi. 2).

[478]. The name of Obed-Edom, ‘the servant of Edom,’ shows that Edom was the name of a deity as well as of a country, like Ammi, the patron-god of Ammon, and it is met with in the monuments of Egypt. A papyrus (Pap. Leydens. i. 343. 7) states that Atum or Edom was the wife of the Canaanitish fire-god Reshpu, and one of the places in Palestine captured by Thothmes III. was Shemesh-Edom (No. 51), ‘the Sun-god is Edom’ (Records of the Past, new ser., v. p. 47).

[479]. 2 Chron. i. 3. See above, p. [353].

[480]. This must be the general signification of the Hebrew expression Metheg-ammah in 2 Sam. viii. i., which the Septuagint translates τὴν ἀφωρισμένην, ‘the tribute.’ The Chronicler read Gath for Metheg (1 Chron. xviii. 1), and consequently understood ammah in the sense of ‘mother-city.’ My own belief is that we have in the phrase a Hebrew transcription of a Babylonian expression which has been derived from a cuneiform document. The Babylonian mêtêg ammati (for mêtêq ammati) would signify ‘the highroad of the mainland’ of Palestine, and would refer to the command of the highroad of trade which passed through Canaan from Asia to Egypt and Arabia. Ammati is the Semitic equivalent of the Sumerian Sarsar (W. A. I. v. 18, 32 c.), which was an early Babylonian name of the land of the Amorites or Syria (W. A. I. ii. 51, 19; see Records of the Past, new ser., v. p. 107); and mêtêq is given as a rendering of kharran, ‘a highroad’ (W. A. I. ii. 38, 26).

[481]. 2 Sam. xxiii. 20.

[482]. See my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, p. 367.

[483]. Ibid. pp. 349, 350.

[484]. The Septuagint has misread ‘Amalek’ for ‘Maacah.’

[485]. El-Hîba probably stands on the site of the Egyptian town of Hâ-Bennu, the Greek Hipponon, the capital of the eighteenth nome of Upper Egypt, and its fortifications were built by the high priest Men-kheper-Ra and his wife Isis-em-Kheb. The Tanite Pharaohs formed the twenty-first dynasty.

[486]. See Delitzsch, Wo lag das Paradies, pp. 279-280. Assur-bani-pal states that he sent his troops against the cities of Azar-el, the Khiratâqazians, Edom, Yabrudu, Bit-Ammani or Ammon, ‘the district of the city of the Haurân’ (Khaurina), Moab, Sakharri, Khargê, and ‘the district of the city of Tsubitê, or Zobah.’ Delitzsch identifies Yabrudu with the Yabruda of Ptolemy, the modern Yabrûd, north-east of Damascus. In the tribute-lists of the Second Assyrian Empire, Tsubitê or Tsubutu comes between Dûru (Tantûra) and Hamath, Samalla (Sinjerli) and Khatarikka or Hadrach (Zech. ix. 1.), and Zemar (Sumra), and the Quê on the coast of the Gulf of Antioch.

[487]. The fact that the Assyrian king Shalmaneser II. calls Baasha, the contemporary king of Ammon, ‘the son of Rukhubi’ or Rehob, just as he calls Jehu ‘the son of Omri,’ shows that Rehob was a personal name. The Biblical Beth-Rehob is parallel to Bit-Omri, a designation of Samaria in the Assyrian texts. Beth-Rehob is placed near Dan in Judg. xviii. 28. In 1 Chron. xix. 6, Aram-Naharaim is apparently substituted for Aram-Beth-Rehob, though, as the dominions of Hadad-ezer extended to the Euphrates, soldiers may have come to the help of the Ammonites from Mesopotamia, as well as from Beth-Rehob. The name of Hadad-ezer is incorrectly given as Hadar-ezer in 2 Sam. x. 16. It appears as Hadad-idri in the Assyrian inscriptions (with the Aramaic change of z to d), where it is the name of the king of Damascus, called Ben-Hadad II. in the Old Testament.

[488]. So, according to the Septuagint and 1 Chron. xviii. 4. The Hebrew text of 2 Sam. viii. 4 has ‘700 horsemen.’ But it is possible that we ought to read ‘1700 horsemen.’

[489]. Nicolaus Damascenus, as quoted by Josephus, makes Hadad the king of Damascus, who thus vainly endeavoured to check the torrent of Israelitish success. Hadad, however, must be merely Hadad-ezer in an abbreviated form, Perhaps we may gather from 1 Kings xi. 23, that the ruling prince in Damascus at the time of David’s conquests was Rezon, the son of Eliadah.

[490]. 1 Chron. xix. 18. In 2 Sam. x. 18, the numbers are 700 charioteers and 40,000 horsemen, which are clearly wrong.

[491]. The account of the war with Zobah given above is the most probable that can be gleaned from the scanty and fragmentary notices that have been preserved to us. But it must be remembered that it is probable only. It is not even certain that ‘the Syrians that were beyond the river’ (2 Sam. x. 16) were not the Aramæans of Damascus rather than those of Mesopotamia, since, as Professor Hommel has shown (Ancient Hebrew Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments, pp. 195 sqq.) the term Ebir Nâri, ‘Beyond the river,’ is already used in an Assyrian poem (K. 3500, l. 9) of the age of David, in the Assyro-Babylonian sense of the country westward of the Euphrates. Indeed, Professor Hommel suggests that it already denoted the country westward of the Jordan. This, however, is inconsistent with 2 Sam. x. 17; and west of the Jordan, moreover, there were no Aramæan kingdoms.

[492]. The Chronicler (1 Chron. xviii. 8) has preserved the true form of the name of Tibhath, which has been corrupted into Betah in 2 Sam. viii. 8. It is the Tubikhi of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, the Dbkhu of the geographical list of Thothmes III. (No. 6). Instead of Berothai the Chronicler has Chun.

[493]. 1 Chron. xviii. 8.

[494]. Hadoram, the older form of the name, is found only in 1 Chron. xviii. 10. The text of the books of Samuel has the Hebraised Joram.

[495]. Salamanu appears as Shalman in Hos. x. 14, as Sulmanu in Assyro-Babylonian. Sulmanu was the god of Peace, like Selamanês in a Greek inscription from Shêkh Barakât in northern Syria, whose name is also found in a Phœnician inscription from Sidon (Clermont-Ganneau, Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études CXIII., vol. ii. pp. 40, 48).

[496]. This is usually supposed to mean that they were tortured in various ways, but more probably it means only that they were made public slaves and compelled to cut and saw wood, harrow the ground, and make bricks. At all events, if tortures are referred to, no parallel to them can be found elsewhere. As the crown is said to have weighed ‘a talent’ it can hardly have been worn by an earthly king.

[497]. 2 Sam. viii. 13. In 1 Chron. xviii. 12, however, the victory is ascribed to Abishai, the brother of Joab.

[498]. 2 Sam. viii. 13, where the mention of ‘the valley of salt’ shows that we must read ‘Edom’ instead of ‘Aram,’ as indeed is done by the Chronicler as well as in the superscription of Ps. lx. and in the Septuagint. The ‘valley of salt’ was part of the Melukhkha or ‘Saltland’ of the cuneiform inscriptions.

[499]. 2 Sam. xxiii. 37, 36, 34.

[500]. 1 Kings xi. 21.

[501]. This was Ithra who ‘went in’ to Abigail, the daughter of Nahash, the sister of Zeruiah, Joab’s mother (2 Sam. xvii. 25). The form of expression may imply that Abigail was seduced. If so, the hostility of Joab would be easily accounted for.

[502]. It is probable that ‘Shobi the son of Nahash of Rabbah of the children of Ammon’ (2 Sam. xvii. 27) was a brother of the last king of Ammon, and it is even possible that he may have been the cause of the Ammonite war. If he had been a rival of his brother Khanun, and had received shelter and protection from David, we should have an explanation of the otherwise gratuitous insult offered by Khanun to the ambassadors of the Israelitish king.

[503]. That the forest was on the eastern bank of the Jordan is plain from Josh. xvii. 15-18 and 2 Sam. xix. 31.

[504]. It is called Abel-Maim, ‘Abel of the Waters,’ in 2 Chron. xvi. 4, compared with 1 Kings xv. 20. In 2 Sam. xx. 14, we should perhaps read, ‘And all the young warriors’ (bakhûrîm for bêrîm) ‘were gathered together,’ as the Septuagint has ‘all in Kharri,’ and the Vulgate ‘viri electi.’

[505]. 2 Sam. xxiv. 6, according to Lucian’s recension of the Greek translation (‘Khettieim Kadês’). See Field, Origenis Hexaplorum quæ supersunt, i. p. 587.

[506]. 2 Sam. xix. 29. Ziba, the steward of Mephibosheth, who was lame, had accused his master of aiming at the kingdom, and David had accordingly given him all Mephibosheth’s property. David not only had believed the accusation, but in spite of Mephibosheth’s protests and excuses, must have continued to do so, since Ziba, so far from being punished, was allowed to retain half his master’s possessions. The Jewish historian evidently takes a different view from that of David, and regards the accusation as false. Mephibosheth is more correctly written Merib-Baal in 1 Chron. viii. 34; ix. 40.

[507]. ‘Adriel, the son of Barzillai the Meholathite’ (2 Sam. xxi. 8), cannot be the same as Phaltiel or ‘Phalti the son of Laish of Gallim’ (1 Sam. xxv. 44), to whom Saul had given Michal after David’s flight, and from whom David afterwards took her (2 Sam. iii. 16). As Michal never seems to have subsequently left the harîm of David (2 Sam. vi. 23), it would appear that the name of Michal in 2 Sam. xxi. 8 must be a mistake for that of some other daughter of Saul.

[508]. See 2 Sam. xxiv. 23, where the Septuagint has ‘Orna(n) the king.’ The various spellings of the name Araunah, Araniah (2 Sam. xxiv. 18), and Ornan (1 Chron. xxi. 15) show that it was a foreign word, the pronunciation of which was not clear to the Israelites. Araniah is an assimilation to a Hebrew name.

[509]. 2 Sam. xxiv. 6.

[510]. In 1 Kings v. 3, 4, the reason why David could not build the temple is given a little differently. It is there stated to have been because of the constant wars in which he was engaged which prevented him from securing the needful leisure for the work. This reason, however, does not apply to the latter part of David’s reign.

[511]. The Chronicler (1 Chron. xviii. 16) reads Shavsha, apparently through a confusion with the later Sheva (2 Sam. xx. 25). However, the Septuagint has Sasa in 2 Sam. viii. 17, and the two scribes of Solomon at the beginning of his reign were the sons of Shisha (1 Kings iv. 3).

[512]. The genealogy of the high priests is involved in a confusion which with our present materials it is hopeless to unravel. In 1 Sam. xiv. 3, Ahimelech is called Ahiah, and in 2 Sam. viii. 17, as well as in the document used in 1 Chron. xxiv. (verses 3, 6, and 31), he is made the son of Abiathar instead of his father. In 1 Chron. xviii. 16, the name is transformed into Abimelech, and in 1 Chron. xxiv. Ahimelech and Abiathar are stated to have been descended from Ithamar the son of Aaron, and not from his brother Eleazar. That the genealogy in 1 Chron. vi. 4 sqq. is corrupt is evident not only from the repetition of the triplet Amariah, Ahitub, and Zadok in verses 7, 8, and 11, 12, but also from the statement that Azariah four generations after Zadok ‘executed the priest’s office’ in Solomon’s temple. In 1 Chron. ix. 11; Neh. xi. 11, again, the order is ‘Zadok the son of Meraioth the son of Ahitub,’ whereas in 1 Chron. vi. 7, 8, and 52, 53, it is Zadok the son of Ahitub the son of Amariah the son of Meraioth.

[513]. Hadoram (2 Chron. x. 18) is written Adoram in 2 Sam. xx. 24, and Adoniram in 1 Kings iv. 6. Adoni-ram is a Hebraised form of the original name Addu-ramu, ‘Hadad is exalted.’ His father’s name, Abda, has an Aramaic termination. An early Babylonian seal-cylinder in the collection of M. de Clercq has upon it the name of Abdu-ramu.

[514]. See above, p. [92].

[515]. 1 Chron. xxvii. 25-32.

[516]. The Jewish historian includes among those who refused to go with Adonijah the otherwise unknown Shimei and Rei (1 Kings i. 8). They are referred to as well-known personages, implying that the writer must have had before him a large collection of documents relating to the history of the time, most of which have now perished.

[517]. As Barzillai was already eighty years of age at the time of David’s flight (2 Sam. xix. 35), the death of David could not have happened very long after that event. That Joab and Abiathar were still vigorous implies the same thing. As for the authenticity of David’s dying instructions, there is no reason to question it. A later writer is not likely to have gratuitously credited them to David; and inconsistent though they may seem to us with David’s piety, they were in full keeping with his character as well as with that of other Israelites of his age. If they had been falsely ascribed to David by Solomon’s admirers after the murder of Joab and Shimei, Adonijah also would have been included among the victims.

[518]. E.g. Ps. lx.

[519]. E.g. Ps. cviii.

[520]. See my Hibbert Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, pp. 348-356. Thus we read:—

‘O lord, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!

O my goddess, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!

The sin that I sinned I knew not.

The transgression I committed I knew not.

The cursed thing that I ate I knew not.

The cursed thing that I trampled on I knew not.

The lord in the wrath of his heart has regarded me;

God in the fierceness of his heart has revealed himself to me.

I sought for help and none took my hand;

I wept and none stood at my side;

I cried aloud and there was none that heard me.

I am in trouble and hiding; I dare not look up.

To my god, the merciful one, I turn myself, I utter my prayer;

O my god, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my sins!

O my goddess, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my sins!’

[521]. See above, p. [175].

[522]. Cont. Ap. i. 17, 18.

[523]. The single reigns are:—(1) Hiram for thirty-four years; (2) Baleazor for seven years according to the Armenian version of Eusebius and the Synkellos, seventeen years according to Niese’s text of Josephus; (3) Abdastartos nine years; (4) Methuastartos twelve years; (5) Astarymos nine years; (6) Phelles eight months; (7) Eithobalos or Eth-Baal thirty-two years (forty-eight years according to Theophilus ad Autolyc. III.); (8) Balezor six years (seven years according to Theoph., eight years according to Euseb. and the Synk.); (9) Matgenos twenty-nine years (twenty-five years according to the Arm. Vers. of Euseb.); (10) Pygmalion forty-seven years.

[524]. I.e. seventy-two years after the foundation of Rome; Trogus Pompeius ap. Justin. xviii. 7; Oros. iv. 6. Velleius Paterculus (i. 6) makes it seven years later.

[525]. See 1 Kings xii. 18. For the forced labour or corvée see 1 Kings v. 13, 14.

[526]. The Vatican manuscript of the Septuagint has a wholly different list from that of the Hebrew text, Baasha the son of Ahithalam taking the place of Azariah as Vizier, Abi the son of Joab being commander-in-chief, and Ahira the son of Edrei tax-master, while Benaiah remains commander of the bodyguard as in David’s reign. The list is perhaps derived from a document that belonged to the early part of Solomon’s reign. The Syriac reads Zakkur for Zabud, the royal chaplain; but Zabud is supported by the Vatican Septuagint, which makes him the chief councillor. For the reading ‘army’ or ‘bodyguard’ instead of the senseless πατριᾶς in iv. 6, see Field, Origenis Hexaplorum quæ supersunt, i. p. 598.

[527]. See Hommel, The Ancient Hebrew Tradition, pp. 252 sqq.

[528]. The papyrus in which the history of the expedition is recorded is preserved in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, and has not yet been published. Mr. Golénischeff, its discoverer, however, has given me a verbal account of it.

[529]. There is no gold in Southern Arabia, and consequently Ophir must have been an emporium to which the gold was brought for transhipment from elsewhere. The mines were probably at Zimbabwe and the neighbourhood, where Mr. Theodore Bent made important excavations. For the site of Ophir, which may have been near Gerrha in the Persian Gulf, see Sayce in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, June 1896, p. 174.

[530]. 1 Kings v. 16. These taskmasters must be distinguished from the 550 (or 250 according to 2 Chron. viii. 10) who superintended the work in Jerusalem itself (ix. 23), on which no Israelites were employed, but only native Canaanites (ix. 21, 22). The Chronicler makes the overseers of the preparatory work 3600 in number (2 Chron. ii. 18), the corvée itself consisting of 150,000 men.

[531]. See my article in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1883, pp. 215-223, where I have staked the justification of my views on the discovery of the ‘stairs’ near the spot where the rock-cut steps have been found by Dr. Bliss (Ibid. 1896-97). Dr. Guthe first noticed that a shallow valley once existed between the Temple-hill and the so-called ‘Ophel.’

[532]. The columns were 18 cubits high (1 Kings vii. 15), though the Chronicler (2 Chron. iii. 15) makes them 35 cubits or 52-1/2 feet. The khammânîm or ‘Sun-pillars,’ dedicated to the Sun and associated with the worship of Asherah and Baal, are often referred to in the Old Testament (2 Chron. xxxiv. 4; Is. xvii. 8, etc.), and are mentioned in a Palmyrene inscription.

[533]. A translation of the hymn is given in my Hibbert Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, pp. 495, 496; see also p. 63.

[534]. Layard, Monuments of Nineveh, i. plate 7A.

[535]. See above, p. [196].

[536]. Herod. i. 181.

[537]. See Ball, The India House Inscription of Nebuchadrezzar in the Records of the Past, new ser., iii. pp. 104-123.

[538]. 1 Kings viii. 2. In vi. 38, however, it is said that the work was not completed until the eighth month of the year, the Phœnician Bul.

[539]. To these the Chronicler adds ‘Beth-horon the Upper’ (2 Chron. viii. 5). Possibly the two Beth-horons were fortified in connection with the reservoirs which Solomon is supposed to have constructed in order to supply Jerusalem with water. Baalath was, strictly speaking, in Dan (Josh. xix. 44). The Latin form Palmyra comes from Tadmor by assimilation to palma, ‘a palm.’ The change of d to l in Latin words is familiar to etymologists, and the initial p for t is paralleled by pavo, ‘a peacock,’ from the Greek ταὧς (Persian tâwûs). One of the Septuagint MSS. has Thermath for Tadmor, but in the ordinary text the whole passage is omitted.

[540]. Thus ‘Beth-horon the Upper’ is omitted in the verse, and the words ‘in the land’ (of Judah) have been transposed to the end of it, instead of coming as they should after ‘Baalath.’

[541]. Records of the Past, new ser., i. p. 115.

[542]. 1 Kings iv. 33. That books are meant, and not lectures such as were given to his subjects by the Egyptian king Khu-n-Aten, seems evident from verse 32, compared with Prov. xxv. 1.

[543]. ‘The enemies of Assur,’ says Assur-natsir-pal, he ‘has combated to their furthest bounds above and below’ (Records of the Past, new ser., ii. p. 136); ‘Countries, mountains, fortresses, and kinglets, the enemies of Assur, I have conquered,’ says Tiglath-pileser I. (Records of the Past, new ser., i. p. 94).