[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.