CHAPTER VIII.

THE ISRAELITES DWELLING IN TENTS.

53. Take ye every man for them which are in his tents. E. xvi. 16.

Here we find that, immediately after their coming out of Egypt, the people were provided with tents,— cumbrous articles to have been carried, when they fled out in haste, 'taking their dough before it was leavened, their kneading-troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders,' E. xii. 34. It is true, this statement conflicts strangely with that in L. xxiii. 42, 43, where it is assigned as a reason for their dwelling in booths' for seven days at the Feast of Tabernacles, 'that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.' It cannot be said that the word 'booths' here means 'tents'; because the Hebrew word for a booth, made of boughs and bushes,, which is the word here used, is quite different from that for a tent, b, used in E. xvi. 16. And, besides, in the context of the passage in Leviticus, we have a description of the way in which these booths were to be made. Ye shall take you the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm-trees, and the boughs of thick

trees, and willows of the brook,' v. 40. This seems to fix the meaning of the Hebrew word in this particular passage, and to show that it is used in its proper sense of booths'; though in 2 S. xi. 11, and one or two other places, it is also used improperly for 'tents.'

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54. There is not, however, the slightest indication in the story that they ever did live in booths, nor is it conceivable when they could have done so. It is true, we are told that, on the first day, when they went out of Egypt, they 'journeyed from Rameses to Succoth,' E. xii. 37, where the name Succoth means 'booths.' But it cannot surely be supposed that, in the hurry and confusion of this flight, they had time to cut down 'boughs and bushes' to make booths of, if even there were trees from which to cut them. It has, indeed, been suggested, that in L. xxiii. 43, it should be translated, that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in Succoth, when I brought them out of the land of Egpy),'-as if the Feast of Tabernacles commemorated the transition stage from the Egyptian to the wilderness life, when they had left houses, but had not yet come to live in hair or skin tents. I cannot say that this explanation satisfies my own mind. They did not, surely, dwell in Succoth, E. xii. 37, xiii. 20. But, however this may be, we are required to believe that they had tents, at all events, as these are repeatedly mentioned; whereas booths are only spoken of in this single passage of the book of Leviticus.

55. Now, allowing ten persons for each tent, (and decency would surely require that there should not be more than this,-a Zulu hut in Natal contains on an average only three and a half,)—two millions of people

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would require 200,000 tents. How then did they acquire these? Had they provided this enormous number in expectation of marching, when all their request was to be allowed to go for three days into the wilderness,' E. v. 3? For they were not living in tents in the land of Egypt, as we gather from the fact that they were to take of the blood of the paschal lamb, and ' strike it on the two-side posts, and on the lintel or upper door-post,' of their houses, E. xii. 7, and none of them was to go out at the door of his house until the morning,' v. 22.

56. But, further, if they had had these tents, how could they have carried them? They could not have borne them on their shoulders, since these were already occupied with other burdens. And these burdens themselves were by no means insignificant. For, besides their kneading-troughs,' with the dough unleavened, bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders,' as well as all other necessaries for daily domestic use, for sleeping, cooking, &c., there were the infants and young children, who could scarcely have gone on foot twenty miles a day as the story requires; there were the aged and infirm persons, who must have likewise needed assistance; they must have carried also those goods of various kinds, which they brought out of their treasures so plentifully for the making of the Tabernacle; and, above all this, they must have taken with them grain or flour enough for at least a month's use, since they had no manna given to them till they came into the wilderness of Sin, 'on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt,' E. xvi. 1.

57. There were the cattle certainly, which might

have been turned to some account for this purpose, if trained to act as pack-oxen. But then, what a prodigious number of trained oxen would have been needed to carry these 200,000 tents! One ox will carry 120 lbs., and a canvas tent, that will hold two people and a fair quantity of luggage,' weighs from 25 to 40 lbs. (GALTON's Art of Travel, pp. 33, 177). Of such tents as the above, with poles, pegs, &c., a single ox might, possibly, carry four, and even this would require 50,000 oxen. But these would be of the lightest modern material, whereas the Hebrew tents, we must suppose, were made of skins, and were, therefore, much heavier. Besides this, these latter were family tents, not made merely for soldiers or travellers, and required to be very much larger for purposes of common decency and convenience. One ox, perhaps, might have carried one such tent, large enough to accommodate ten persons, with its apparatus of pole and cords: and thus they would have needed for this purpose 200,000 oxen. But oxen are not usually trained to carry goods upon their backs as pack-oxen, and will by no means do so, if untrained.

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CHAPTER IX.

THE ISRAELITES ARMED.

58. The children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt. E. xiii. 18.

The word

which is he rerendered harnessed,' appears to mean 'armed' or 'in battle array,' in all the other passages where it occurs. Thus, Jo. i. 14, ‘But ye shall pass before your brethren armed, all the mighty men of valour, and help them.' So, Jo. iv. 12, 'And the children of Reuben, and the children of Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh, passed over armed before the children of Israel, as Moses spake unto them.' And, Ju. vii. 11, 'Then went he down, with Phurah his servant, unto the outside of the armed men that were in the host.' It is possible also that the Hebrew word □en, which occurs in N. xxxii. 17, and is rendered armed' in the English Version, but which GESENIUS derives from, to make haste,' and renders hastening' or in haste,' may be also a corruption from en, by the accidental omission of a letter.

59. It is, however, inconceivable that these downtrodden, oppressed people should have been allowed by Pharoah to possess arms, so as to turn out at a moment's notice 600,000 armed men. If such a