Compare also ay nay, v.12, lead thy captivity captive, with any, Thou hast led captivity captive,' Ps.lxviii.18(19).

470. From the above it seems to be certain that either the Psalmist was acquainted with the Song of Deborah, and borrowed expressions from it, or that the writer of that song drew his ideas from the Psalms of David. The resemblance in the first pair of passages might be regarded as accidental. But it seems impossible that this should be the case with the latter pair, where phrase after phrase is repeated, identically the same, in the same order. Which, then, of these two poems was first written?

471. We reply, without hesitation, the Psalm. For it is far more probable that a later writer might change Elohim into Jehovah, than David change Jehovah, the covenant-name of the God of Israel, into Elohim; more especially in the last clause, in which he has actually written before Elohim, the Elohim of Israel,' where the other has before Jehovah, the Elohim of Israel.' Our argument, in short, is this. Of the two

phrases, Elohim, the Elohim of Israel,' and Jehovah, the Elohim of Israel,' it seems certain that the former was the original expression, and that the latter was derived from it. But the former belongs to the Psalm, which was, consequently, older than the Song.

Besides which, v.7,8 of the Psalm are manifestly part of the context. There is an appearance also in the Song of an expansion of the words of the Psalm; thus the expressions 'from Seir,' from the field of Edom,' of the Song, seem

equivalent to the simple words, in the wilderness,' of the Psalmist; and so also the phrases 'The clouds also dropped water,' 'The mountains melted,' are merely amplifications of the older language.

472. We conclude, then, that the Song of Deborah' was written after Ps.lxviii, that is, after the middle part of David's life, perhaps, towards the close of it, two or three centuries. after the time of Barak and Deborah, by a writer who, except in the free use of the word Jehovah, has produced an admirable imitation of an ancient song, a 'Lay of Ancient Israel,' and thrown himself thoroughly into the spirit of the age which be describes.

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CHAPTER XX.

THE JEHOVISTIC NAMES IN THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL.

473. We now pass on to the First Book of Samuel. Here, throughout the first chapters, we do not meet with a single name compounded with Jehovah; though we find Elkanah and Elihu, i.1, (not Eli, y, i.3,) Samuel, ii. 18, Eleazar, vii. 1. In vi.18 we read 'which stone remaineth in the field of Joshua the Bethshemite unto this day;' where the name Joshua is compounded with Jehovah, but evidently belongs to a man living in the time when this passage was written, which is shown by the expression 'unto this day' to have been a considerably later time than that of the event in question, that is, than the time of Samuel.

474. Then we read, when Samuel was old, he made his sons judges over Israel; now the name of his first-born was Joel, and the name of his second, Abiah,' viii.1,2. It is certainly remarkable that the name of Samuel's first-born son should be Joel, which Gesenius explains to mean 'Jehovah is Elohim,' and which, in fact, is merely a contraction of the compound name, JehovahElohim. This suits singularly with our view that Samuel was introducing the new name, at the very time when his son had this name given to him. In 1Ch.vi.28 we are told that the name of Samuel's eldest son was Vashni. If we could rely on this information, it would suggest that Vashni was the name originally given to him, as handed down in the family records, to which the Chronicler is supposed to have had access; and that, though his father gave him afterwards the name Joel, when he decided to adopt the new Name for the God of Israel,

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yet it was not that by which he was commonly known. The name of Samuel's second son was Abiah, i.e. Jehovah is my father.' Then we find Abiel, ix.1; but Aphiah in the same verse is in Hebrew ', and is not compounded with Jehovah.

475. We next meet with Jonathan, Jehovah gave,' the son of Saul, xiii.2. Now Saul himself was a young man, ix.2, when he sought his father's asses, and first made acquaintance personally with Samuel; and at that time Samuel was old, and had already made his sons judges over Israel, viii.1,2. Hence the Name Jehovah had been published certainly, judging only from their names, for twenty or thirty years at least; and there is no reason why Saul's son should not have borne a name compounded with it, after the example of the Prophet's two sons. This is said, supposing that Jonathan was already grown up, to be a youth of, at least, seventeen or eighteen, when he was placed in command of a thousand of his father's troops, xiii.2, two years after Saul came to the throne.

476. But, even if he had been then only seventeen years old, (which we can hardly suppose,) he would have been twenty-five at the birth of David, and fifty-five, when he fell at Gilboa, and when David, aged thirty, mourned over him thus: "I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant hast thou been unto me; thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women,' 2S.i.19-27. This song is undoubtedly genuine. And it can scarcely be believed that so romantic an attachment would have existed between David and one old enough to have been his father. In fact, the chronology of the earlier part of Saul's life is very confused and uncertain. The account in 18.ix, of Saul's first meeting with Samuel, would seem to imply that he was then but a young man, who could not have had a son fourteen years old. Nor is it possible to read the account of the death of Saul, and the words of David's lamentation over him,- Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided; they

were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions,' 2S.i.23 - and believe that Saul was then about seventy-five years old, (as he must have been if Jonathan was fifty-five,) and that he was about seventy, when he hunted David in the wilderness.

477. It seems plain, then, that the account of Jonathan's exploit in 1S.xiii.2, &c. must refer to a much later part of Saul's life than it there appears to do. And now there is nothing to prevent our supposing that Saul was really a young man, when he had his first interview with Samuel, as the story throughout seems to imply, and, probably, unmarried. If, however, we suppose that Jonathan was born after Saul's intimacy with the Prophet, perhaps, even after he had come to the throne,

we shall have Jonathan and David more nearly contemporaries, and it will be much more natural and probable that David should have married Jonathan's sister Michal. In that case, it would be easy to account for the name of Jonathan having been given to Saul's eldest son, after Saul's communications with Samuel,more especially since Saul himself had prophesied' amidst the company of Prophets, x.10, in other words, had joined in chanting their Psalms, in which, most probably, the Name itself, Jehovah, occurred.

478. We next meet with the name of Ahiah, the son of Ahitub, Ichabod's brother,' xiv.3. Ichabod, we are told, was born at a time, when all Israel already knew that Samuel was established to be a Prophet of Jehovah,' iv.21,-when, therefore, Samuel was grown up to manhood. We have no means of knowing how much older Ahitub was than his brother: but we may assume that he was not much older, and was, consequently, in the generation junior to that of Samuel,-of about the same age, in fact, as Samuel's own sons. From the close relations, in which Samuel lived with Eli and his family, it can scarcely be doubted that both Ahitub and Ichabod, after their parents' death, came much under his influence,- probably, were trained