sons of Rephaiah, the sons of Arnan, the sons of Obadiah, the sons of Shetaniah,' and then Shecaniah's descendants are given for four generations.

The question now is, with whom was this Shecaniah contemporary? KUENEN writes, p.292:

'The genealogy of David's descendants, according to the most probable opinion, is carried on to the sixth generation after Zerubbabel. From these phenomena it appears that the writer may have lived at the earliest in the fourth century before our era: they do not, however, forbid us to place him at a still lower date.'

This view seems to be confirmed by the fact that, in Ezr.viii.2, HATTUSH is mentioned, as one of the 'sons of David,' who went up with Zerubbabel to Jerusalem, B.C. 456. And in the passage of Chronicles now before us, 1Ch.iii.22, we have among the descendants of Zerubbabel, i.e. among the sons of David,' HATTUSH, the grandson of Shecaniah, and brother of that Neariah, whose grandsons are given as the last of the genealogy of Shecaniah's descendants above referred to, -probably, because they were living, (though, it may be, only as young children,) at the time when the author wrote, who in that case must have lived after B.C. 400. Some, however, maintain that, in v.21, 'the sons of Rephaiah, &c.' denote certain Davidic families, which the writer could not more closely connect with those before named, but which may have been contemporary with Zerubbabel, or even with men of earlier generations. But, as KUENEN observes, p.293, the whole genealogy v.10-21(a), 22-24, is consecutive: why, then, should we suppose it to be otherwise only in the latter part of v.21?

The LXX read everywhere in v.21, ją 'his son,' instead of 'sons of;' and So ZUNs deduces that the genealogy is given down to 270 B.C. Others assume that v.21 is interpolated or corrupt.

236. For our present purpose, however, it is sufficient to observe, as above noted (235), that the author of the book of Chronicles must have been, to all appearance, a Priest or Levite, who wrote about B.C. 400, nearly two hundred years after the Captivity, B.C. 588, and six hundred and fifty years after David came to the throne, B.C. 1055.

This must be borne in mind, when we come to consider the peculiarities of this book, and the points in which the narrative differs from, and often contradicts, the facts recorded in the books of Samuel and Kings. We have already had occasion to point out some of its inaccuracies; and we shall see, as we proceed, further reason for believing that the Chronicler's statements, when not supported by other evidence, are not at all to be relied on.

237. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah cannot, of course, have been written till after the transactions in which these eminent persons took so active a part. Ezra arrived at Jerusalem B.C. 456, and Nehemiah's last act of reformation was in B.c. 409. But in Neh.xii.11 we are given the genealogy of Jaddua, who was High-Priest in Alexander's time, B.C. 332.

The book of Esther refers to events in the reign of Ahasuerus, supposed by some to have been the same Artaxerxes by whom Ezra was sent to Jerusalem, but more probably his father Xerxes, who reigned in Persia from B.C. 486 to B.C. 465, from which we see the earliest date at which this book could have been written.

198

CHAPTER V.

SIGNS OF LATER DATE IN THE PENTATEUCH.

238. RETURNING now to the consideration of the Pentateuch, we have already seen reason to conclude that the account of the Exodus, generally, as there narrated, could not have been written by Moses, or by any one of his contemporaries. The following instances will tend still further to confirm the above conclusion, by showing, as we might expect, that the Pentateuch, as a whole, taking with it also the book of Joshua, was written at a much later date than the age of Moses and the Exodus.,

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239. (i) In E.xxx.13, xxxviii.24,25,26, as already remarked, we have mention made of a shekel after the shekel of the Sanctuary,' before there was, according to the story, any Sanctuary in existence. This is clearly an oversight,-as is also the command to sacrifice turtle-doves or young pigeons' in L.xiv.22, with express reference to their life in the wilderness, arising from a writer in a later age employing inadvertently an expression common in his own days, and forgetting the circumstances of the times which he is describing.

These passages show decisively the unreal character of the story, since in the first and last of them the phrases in question are put into the mouth of Jehovah Himself. The story, therefore, could not have been written by Moses, or by one of his age, unless it be supposed that such a writer could be guilty

1

of a deliberate intention to deceive. But it is quite conceivable that a pious writer of later days, (when the Tabernacle or the Temple was standing,) might have inserted such passages in a narrative already existing, which had been composed as a work of imagination, in the attempt to reproduce, from the floating legends of the time, the early history of the Hebrew tribes, for the instruction of an ignorant people.

240. (ii) And Jehovah turned a mighty strong west-wind, which took away the locusts, and cast them into the Red Sea. E.x.19.

For west-wind the original Hebrew of this passage has wind of the sea, that is, of course, the Mediterranean Sea, from which westerly winds blew over the land of Canaan, but not over Egypt. This expression, obviously, could not have been familiarly used in this way, till some time after the people were settled in the land of Canaan, when they would naturally employ the phrases, wind of the sea,' 'seaward,' to express 'west-wind,' westward,' 1 K.vii.25, 1 Ch.ix.24, 2 Ch.iv.4, though they had also other ways of expressing the west, Jo.xxiii.4, 1 Ch.xii.15, Is.xlv.6. It is evident that neither Moses, nor one of his age, could have invented this form of expression, either while wandering in the wilderness, or even when, in the last year, according to the story, they had reached the borders of the promised land, and the Mediterranean lay then actually to the west of their position. Still less could he have used the phrase 'wind of the sea' to express a westerly wind, with reference to an event occurring in the land of Egypt, where the Mediterranean lay to the north, and the Red Sea to the east. And the same expression occurs in many other places of the Pentateuch, as G.xii.8, xiii.14, xxviii.14, E.xxvi.22,27, xxvii.12, xxxvi.27,32, N.ii.18, iii.23, xi.31, xxxiv.6, xxxv.5, D.i.7, iii.27, xxxiii.23.

241. It may, perhaps, be said that the Hebrews retained their

own language, and their old forms of expression, after they went down to Egypt, and so used mechanically, as it were, the word 'sea' for 'west,' though so inappropriate. If this were the only difficulty to be met, such an explanation might be admitted. As it is, the phenomenon in question is but one of many like phenomena, as e. g. that in G.xli.6,23,27, the eastwind is spoken of as a parching wind, which, says GESENIUS,it certainly is in Palestine, but not in Egypt, whence the LXX in that place [do not express east-wind, but write merely dveμóp@opos, 'parched by the wind,' as also in E.x.13 they]* write vóros, 'south-west wind,' instead of €3pos, ‘eastwind,'

and is very strongly suggestive of a later date of composition, for those parts, at least, of the Mosaic narrative in which it

occurs.

One of my Reviewers, indeed, (Guardian, Feb. 11, 1863,) says on this point

In truth, the east-wind in Egypt is very parching, as the travellers and commentators passim attest,-blowing, as it does, across the sandy steppes of Arabia, a district of the driest air and soil in the world.

But a traveller, well-acquainted personally both with Egypt and Syria, writes to me as follows:

The east-wind in Egypt is the reverse of what it is elsewhere; it is the most wholesome and refreshing breeze that blows. The west and south-west winds are to the Egyptians-what the east and north-east winds are to us-dreaded phenomena.

* I have inserted this clause in brackets, in order to supply an evident deficiency in the language of GESENIUS, as quoted in my first edition, and which I here give in the original German from a MS. work of GESENIUS on the Pentateuch, ‘Auch in Beziehung auf Ägypten kommt einiges vor, welches gegen einen Augenzeugen zu sprechen scheint, z.B. dass der Ostwind ein sengenden Wind genannt wird, G.xli.6, was es zwar in Palästina ist, aber nicht in Ägypten, weshalb auch die LXX an jener stelle vóros, nicht epos, schrieben.' The LXX have written νότος for 'east-wind,' in seven places, E.x.13,13,xiv.21, N.xxxiv.15, Job xxxviii.24, Ps.lxxviii(lxxvii).26, Ez.xxvii.26; in other places they represent it by xavowv, Job xxvii.21, Hos.xii.1, ǎveμos kavσwv, Jer.xviii.17, Ez.xvii.10,xix. 12, Hos.xiii.15, πveuμa κaúʊwv, Jon.iv.8, τveûμa Blaιov, Ps.xlviii.(xlvii).7.