CHAPTER XXII.

THE WAR ON MIDIAN.

165. We have now concluded our preliminary work of pointing out some of the most prominent inconsistencies and impossibilities, which exist in the story of the Exodus as it lies before us in the Pentateuch; and we have surely exhibited enough, to relieve the mind from any superstitious dread, in pursuing further the consideration of this question. I believe that to the great majority of my readers many of the above facts. will be new, as, I freely admit, they were to myself till within a comparatively recent period. It seems strange that this should be so; but the power of habit is great, or, as an able writer has otherwise expressed it from his own point of view, the Rev. A. W. HADDAN, Replies to Essays and Reviews, p. 348,—

One has great faith in the mere inertia of religious belief.

166. But that the case is really as I have stated it, viz. that the Clergy and Laity of England generally have not had these facts before their eyes at all, is proved to my own mind most forcibly by the simple circumstance, that in neither of the two volumes,

Aids to Faith' and 'Replies to Essays and Reviews,'

both brought out under especial episcopal sanction, for the very purpose of settling the doubts, which might be raised in the minds of many by the suggestions of the Essayists, scarcely any reference whatever is made to any one of the above primary difficulties, which beset the question of the historical accuracy of the Mosaic story. In the latter volume, to which we were to look for a calm, comprehensive, scholarlike declaration of positive truth upon all the matters in dispute,' I find not the slightest notice taken of any one of them; and a very large portion of more than one of the 'Replies' is, as it appears to me, unprofitably occupied in the mere censure—not to say, abuse-of the adversary. I opened this book with great interest, from the names of the authors, and the high sanction under which it had been issued, and eagerly sought in it for something of importance, bearing upon the question now before us. I must confess to have put it down with a painful sense of disappointment.

167. On turning, however, to the other volume, 'Aids to Faith,' I find Prof. RAWLINSON writing as follows, p. 252:

The authenticity of the Pentateuch has been recently called in question, principally on the following points :

(i) The chronology, which is regarded as very greatly in deficiency; (ii) The account given of the Flood, which is supposed to magnify a great calamity in Upper Asia into a general destruction of the human race; (iii) The ethnological views, which are said to be sometimes mistaken; (iv) The patriarchal genealogies, which are charged with being purely mythical;

(v) The length of the lives of the patriarchs, which is thought to be simply impossible;

(vi) The duration of the sojourn in Egypt, which is considered incompatible with the number of the Israelites on entering and quitting the country.

Each of the above points will be found noticed in its proper place in the course of this work. It will be observed, however, that the above writer has in (vi) touched upon one, and only one, of the serious questions, which have been discussed at length in the foregoing pages, and even that, as we have seen (141), he has treated only generally and superficially. The other 'principal points of objection,' which he considers, though not without weight in themselves, are of no importance whatever in reference to the present argument, which is already completed, without our having had as yet occasion to enter upon any examination of them.

168. From the above considerations it surely follows, that the account of the Exodus of the Israelites, as given in the Pentateuch, whatever real foundation it may have had in the ancient history of the people, is mixed up, at all events, with so great an amount of contradictory matter, that it cannot be regarded as historically true, so as to be appealed to, as absolute, incontestable matter of fact in Church formularies. For, let it be observed, the objections, which have been produced, are not such as touch only one or two points of the story. They affect the entire substance of it, and, until they are removed, they make it impossible for a thoughtful person to receive, without further enquiry, any considerable portion of it, as certainly true in an historical point of view. It is plain that, in its own essential statements of matters of fact, the narrative of the Exodus is full of contradictions.

169. We cannot here have recourse to the ordinary supposition, that there may be something wrong in the Hebrew numerals. This suggestion will not avail here, however it might be applied in other cases

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to reduce within the bounds of probability the extravagant statements of Hebrew writers, such as that in Ju. xii. 6, where we are told that the Gileadites under Jephthah slew of their brethren, the Ephraimites, 42,000 men, or that in Ju. xx., where, first, the Benjamites slay of the Israelites, 40,000 men, v. 21, 25, and then the Israelites kill of the Benjamites 43,100, v. 35, 44, all these being men of valour,' that drew the sword,'-or that in 1 S. iv. 10, where the Philistines slew of Israel 30,000 footmen, or in 1 S. xiii. 5, where the Philistines had 30,000 war-chariots, or in 2 S. x. 18, where David slew of the Syrians 40,000 horsemen, or in 2 Ch. xxviii. 6, 8, where Pekah, king of Israel, slew of Judah in one day 120,000 'sons of valour,' and carried away captive 200,000 women, sons, and daughters,' or in 2 Ch. xiii. 3, where Abijah's force consisted of 400,000, and Jeroboam's of 800,000, and Judah slew Israel, v. 17, with a great slaughter; so there fell down slain of Israel 500,000 chosen men!!!'-it being remembered that, at the battle of Waterloo, there were killed of the allies, British, Germans, Hanoverians, Brunswickers, men of Nassau, Belgians, and Prussians,' altogether only 4,172 men. (ALISON's list. of Europe, xix. p. 372.) *

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* So JOSEPHUS in his Autobiography, ch. 6, states that the people of Scythopolis fell upon the Jews, 'their fellow-citizens and confederates, and slew them all, being in number many ten thousands. But,' he adds, 'we have given a more accurate account of these things in the books of the Jewish War.' On turning to the Jewish War, ii. 18. 3, we find the number stated as 'above 13,000.' Most probably, neither statement is correct; and, in fact, JOSEPHUS's numbers are very frequently as extravagant and unreal as those of the Scripture writers. It is an idle, or rather, it is a sinful, paltering with the trutn, to attempt to explain away so many cases of this kind by supposing on every such occasion an error of a scribe. This might avail to account for two or three such instances. But it is impos

170. But as regards the Pentateuch, not only is the number 600,000 on foot, besides women and children,' given distinctly in E. xii. 37, at the time of their leaving Egypt; but we have it recorded again, thrice over, in different forms, in E. xxxviii. 25-28, at the beginning of the forty years' wanderings, when the number of all that went to be numbered, from twenty years old and upward,' is reckoned at 603,550; and this is repeated again in N. i. 46; and it is modified once more, at the end of the wanderings, to 601,730, N. xxvi. 51. Besides which, on each occasion of numbering, each separate tribe is numbered, and the sum of the separate results makes up the whole.

Thus this number is woven, as a kind of thread, into the whole story of the Exodus, and cannot be taken out, without tearing the whole fabric to pieces. It affects, directly, the account of the construction of the Tabernacle, E. xxxviii. 25-28, and, therefore, also the reality of the institutions, whether of the Priesthood or of

sible for us not to perceive that a systematic habit of exaggeration in respect of numbers prevails among Hebrew writers of history, probably from not realising to their own minds the actual meaning and magnitude of the numbers employed. And this is more especially true of the Chronicler, witness the following statements which he makes in the course of his narrative, besides those above quoted. Thus Asa's force consisted of 580,000, Zerah's of 1,000,000, 2 Ch. xiv. 8, 9, Jehoshaphat's of 1,160,000, 'besides those whom the king put in all the fenced cities throughout all Judah,' xvii. 14–19; Amaziah marches against the Edomites, with 300,000, and hires 100,000 more out of Israel, xxv. 5, 6; Uzziah's force consisted of 307,500, xxvi. 13. The kingdom of Judah contained about 2,500 square miles, that is, in extent it was about half as large as the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex together; but in Jehoshaphat's time it contained, according to 2 Ch. xvii. 14-19, 1,160,000 warriors, that is, about 4,000,000 of inhabitants; in other words, it was eight times as thickly peopled as the three Eastern Counties in the present day, and yet a great part of Judah was very unfruitful.