the law of moses

8/12/2019 The Law of Moses

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THELAW OF MOSESBy

EDOUARD NAVILLEHonorary Professor of the University of Ge?teva,and Foreign Associate of the Institute of France,

Translated under the Author's Revision.

With Preface byHENRY WAGE D.D.,Dean of Canterbury.

London :CHAS. J. THYNNE,

Whitcfrairs Street^ E.Ci4.1922,


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Vi PREFACEscholars have answered that question in the affirm-ative. But most foreign scholars, and most plainmen in this country, answer it in the negative; andit has therefore become a vital matter to the ques-tion of the Inspiration and the sacred Authority ofthe Bible whether the critical theory is true. Forsome years past, the predominant view of Scholar-ship at our Universities has pronounced in itsfavour; and it is now becoming the fashion, evenin text books for schools, to assume and teachits truth. But some eminent scholars have con-sistently disputed it, and have maintained that, atleast in its broad outlines, the traditional beliefof Jews and Christians is true, and that the courseof Jewish history was what the authors of the New ,Testament, and a typical Jew like vSt. Stephen,believed it to have been.The evidence in support of this traditional belief

has been gradually accumulating, both abroad andin this country, and one of the most competent andablest representatives of it has been the venerablescholar to whom these pages are due, M. Naville,Honorary Professor of the University of Geneva,and Foreign Associate of the Institute of France.He has long been eminent for his Archaeologicalresearches in Egypt, which have thrown a vividlight on the sojourn of the Israelites in that coun-try, and since 1891 he has been Professor ofEgyptology in the ITniversity of Geneva. Of lateyears, he has devoted earnest attention to the ques-tions connected with the Pentateuch; and in 1915


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PREFACE viihe delivered an important series of Schweich Lec-tures on the Text of the Old Testament, in whichhe offered a radical opposition on various groundsto the whole critical view. This opposition hasculminated in the article of which an EnglishTranslation is, with his consent and co-operation,here presented. It was published in the Laus-anne Revue de Theologie et de Philosophie, ofAugust and October, 1920, and was reprintedseparately. M. Naville did me the honour tosend me a copy, and I drew attention to it in TheRecord last year. But it seemed to me so valu-able that I asked his leave to get it translated forthe English public; and he was not only kindenough to consent, but carefully revised the trans-lation himself, with my assistance.The English reader, therefore, has before him inthis Article a comprehensive and mature statement,by one of the most eminent Egyptian and Orientalscholars, of a view of the Pentateuch whichasserts the substantial truth of the uniform beliefof the Jewish and Christian Churches on thesubject, and which urges the unreasonableand unhistorical character of the critical viewnow dominant. M. Naville, it may be well toadd, is far from being alone on this question.To mention only one name, Dr. Koenig, theeminent and venerable Professor of SemiticLanguages at the University of Bonn, thoughadhering to the German view of the varioussources of the Pentateuch, maintains strenuously


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viii PREFACEthe general veracity of the early Biblical narra-tives from Abraham downwards. This very yearhe has published a work on the Theology ofthe Old Testament, in which he begins bydiscussing the trust-worthiness of the ancientsources of the history of Israel, and concludes(p. i6), by saying that confidence in those sources, as reflecting historical reality, is fully justified by a comprehensive, that is, a genuinely critical examination. It is ofgreat importance, in the present state ofreligious thought in England, that it shouldbe known that such views are maintained byscholars of the highest authority abroad, as wellas at home; and that what Bishop Butler said ofthe Christian religion may at least be similarlysaid of the old belief respecting the Bible : that

it is not after all so certain that there is nothingin it. There is, I believe, strong evidence ofits truth ; but it is certain no one can, uponprinciples of reason, be satisfied of the con-trary. H. WACE.

The Deanery, Canterbury, Jan., 1922.


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THE LAW OF MOSES.In former works I have upheld the principle

thajt when such a book as Genesis is in question,we must in the first place examine what is its aim,to whom does the author address himself, whatare the customs and habits of his time, what is thespirit which animates him, and in what environ-ment does he live. The study of these things,according to quite a different method than that ofthe critics, has led me to the conclusion thatGenesis could have been written by no one butMoses.Moses is the author of Genesis. It was for

him a duty and an obligation to relate to hiscontemporaries, and to leave to their descendants,the story of the deeds and events which formed apart of the very life of the people. They had tobe told where they came fro^m and how they cameinto existence. Then above all there had to bedrawn up the foundation charter of the Israelitishnation, resting on the alliance of Yahveh* with

* Here as in my former works I have preserved for Jehovahor the Lord the name of Yahveh, which is now in currentuse, although its accuracy has been contested since the discoveryof the papyri of Elephantine and the potsherds of Samaria.Quite recently Mr. Cowley has shown that the ancient form ofthe word is laho or lahou, and that the tetragram is ofpost-exilic origin.

(Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, April, 1930.)


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2 THE LAW OF MOSESAbraham, and renewed with his descendants Isaacand Jacob.The Israelites had to be taught, with sufficient

authority to produce firm conviction, that theywere a people apart, called by Yahveh to highdestinies ; that they were only strangers in Egypt,and that the territory which had been promisedto them was the land of Canaan.

It is very probable that they knew by traditionsomething about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, andabove all Joseph, to whom they owed their estab-lishment in Egypt. All that, however, was cen-turies ago. Then they were only a family ; sincethen they had become a great people, and doubtlessthey felt some attachment for the place where theirfathers had lived and where their own children hadbeen born. It is true they lived under a harsh andeven cruel regime, and that the desire for deliver-ance might have kept alive in them memories whichprosperity would have tended to efface, but therewas alwavs the hope that a change of sovereignmight bring about some improvement in theircondition. Was there then an adequate motive tomake them leave the country, and would they notregret it later on ?

It is obvious that Moses had some trouble inbringing them to a decision. To arrive at this hehad to produce for his compatriots what I havecalled their patents of nobility, defining theircharacter, and revealing to them their mission ofwhich they could only acquit themselves in theland of Canaan, There alone would the covenant


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MOSES THE AUTHOR OF GENESIS 3alliance with Yahveh be realised, and there Hispromise would be executed. There you may seethe aim of the book of Genesis, and the reason forits existence.Moses however had not only to constitute Israel

as a nation and a political individuality. He hadto define their mission which was above all areligious one. He was to be the founder of areligion, to formulate on definite lines the worshipof Yahveh as it was to be transmitted down theages. Now what did religion mean to a primitivepeople ? Doubtless, for us religion is above all anaffair of belief and sentiment ; it is almostalways based on a body of doctrines. For theprimitive peoples it was not so. There mightindeed be in their religion a spiritual element,which is much more marked in that of the Hebrewsthan in others ; but it is no less true that for themwhat constituted religion was the ceremonial, thatwhich was external and visible in their worship.

Again, in our days, if one takes for example aheathen population in Africa or elsewhere, itworships the Great Spirit, its ancestors, or somefetish ; there is its religion, that which is mani-fested only by a more or less materialistic cult orritual. It is thus that this people shows that it is notwithout religion. Its beliefs may be childish, butthey oblige it to perform outward acts which areits guarantee and manifestation. However rudi-mentary may be the religious sentiment and theconception of a divine being, the only thing whichtestifies to its existence is the outward homage


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4 THE LAW OF MOSESrendered to this divine being, which is oftennothing but a shapeless fetish. There is noreHgion without a form of worship, and one maysay that with a large number of peoples the formof worship alone is what constitutes the religion.

It seems then evident that, alongside of theDecalogue and of all the moral commandmentsconcerning the relations of men with God, and therelations of men between themselves, there had tobe a ritual law establishing what Yahveh de-manded as regards ceremonies, offerings, andsacrifices, that which he claimed from his wor-shippers as outward observance. This it was that,in the eyes of the neighbours of the Israel-ites, the peoples amongst whom they dwelt,marked them as worshippers of Yahveh and dis-tinguished them from the votaries of otherreligions. For the Israelites to be a distinct peoplethev had to have something more than a politicalindividuality ; they had to have their own religion,and this religion could not consist only in moraland spiritual precepts, however grand and elevated.In conformity with the idea which was prevalentin those days, and which even in our own timeis far from having disappeared, this religion hadto be visible, and find its expression in acts whichwould make a worshipper of Yahveh recognisable.Moses had then to give a law to theIsraelites. It was a formal obligation imposedupon him by circumstances. It was the mostimportant part of his task, from which he couldnot withdraw, and he understood very well indeed


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NECESSITY OF A CEREMONIAL LAW 5what must be the effect of this religious law onthe people itself, and on the opinion whichstrangers would form of the people. This is whathe says to the Israelites shortly before leavingthem : And now, O Israel, hearken unto thestatutes and unto the judgments which I teach you. . . Behold, I have taught you statutes andjudgments, even as the Lord my God commandedme, that ye should do so in the midst of the landwhither ye go in to possess it. Keep thereforeand do them ; for this is your wisdom and yourunderstanding in the sight of the peoples, whichshall hear all these statutes and say :Surely thisgreat nation is a wise and understanding people.For what great nation is there, that hath a god sonigh unto them as the Lord our God is whensoeverwe call upon him ? And what great nation isthere, that hath statutes and judgments so' right-eous as all this law which I set before you thisday? (Deuteronomy iv. i).The Revised Version takes account of thetechnical sense of each of the categories includedin the law. The Hebrew khoukkim is trans-lated by statutes which signifies all thecommandments which have no moral value inthemselves, but which nevertheless must not bebroken. The statutes which fill the book ofLeviticus include all the directions concerning theconstruction of the tabernacle and its furnishings,the investiture of the priests, their vestments, andall ceremonial observances such as sacrifices.

It is these statutes, these commandments, which


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6 THE LAW OF MOSESwill at once strike foreign peoples, and distinguishin their eyes the worship of Yahveh. That is whythe Israelites are strongly urged to observe themwith the same fidelity as other parts of the lawsuch as the Mishpatim, judgments, to themeaning of which we will return presently. Thesecommandments are for them what the uniform isfor the soldier, the characteristic sign of the wor-shipper of Yahveh.The Israelites could not establish themselves inthe midst of the Canaanites without a religiouslaw, above all since they were taking possession ofthe country in the name of Yahveh, by virtue ofan alliance which their God had concluded withtheir ancestor Abraham, to whom Yahveh hadpromised the larid as a heritage, together with anumerous posterity. Even if one considers theaccount in Genesis as legends, it is impossible tomisconceive the true character of Israel, and toforget that the part it was called upon to playamongst the nations was to proclaim the worshipof Yahveh and to remain faithful to it. Now thisworship could only be recognised by those whowere not its followers by the ceremonies con-nected with it. It was from their point of view,as well as from the point of view of the peoplethemselves, the guarantee that they were truly theservants of Yahveh.

It is impossible to repeat too often that forthese ancient nations, and above all, for orientalones, religion meant rites and ceremonies inhonour of a being who was considered to be


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NECESSITY OF A CEREMONIAL LAW 7divine. That fact is all that we know of a largenumber of these religions. What do we know forinstance of the worship of l^aal or of Moloch exceptby its outward manifestations? \\ hat did one ofthese divinities represent for its worshippers? Inwhat consisted his relation with this being to whomhe was obliged to offer human sacrifices, in whichthe victims were sometmes members of his ownfamily ? All that is a domain which is tibsolutelyunknown to us, and into which we shall perhapsnever penetrate.The result of this is that apostasy means in thefirst place the abandonment of the ceremoniesbelonging to one Divinity in order to adopt thoseof another. There is no need to cite here thenumerous prohibitions made to the Israelites as toserving strange gods, forbidding them to pollutethemselves by offering sacrifices to them, or evento pronounce their names. Over and over again,even immediately after the death of Joshua, we findthe description of this apostasy as told for us inthe first chapters of the Book of Judges. Andthe children of Israel did that which was evil inthe sight of Yahveh, and served the Baalim : andthey forsook Yahveh, the God of their fathers,which brought them out of the land of Egypt, andfollowed other gods, of the gods of the peoplesthat were round about them, and bowed themselvesdown unto them : and they provoked Yahveh toanger. And they forsook Yahveh and servedBaal and the Ashtaroth (ii. 11-13). We aretold also that several nations had been left in


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8 THE LAW OF MOSESCanaan : And they were for to prove Israel bythem, to know whether they would hearken untothe commandments of Yahveh, which He com-manded their fathers bv the hand of Moses (iii. 4). They hastened however to forget Yahvehand to serve Baal and other idols. The return toYahveh which is often described at the epoch ofthe Judges and later, consists in taking away thehigh places, the statues of I^aal and Ashtaroth,and of all that was used in the worship of strangegods.One cannot picture Israel arriving in Canaanwithout a ceremonial law as well as a moral one.The existence of this ceremonial law, regulatingthe outward and visible cult, was all the morenecessary as this cult, this ritual, was devoted to adeit\' O'f whom there existed no image or repre-sentation w^hatever. Alone of all the peoples inthe midst of whom he was going to dwell, Israelw^ould have no figure of his god, nothing to showhis appearance. This, however, was one of theessential conditions of religion for his neighbours.An invisible god was something unique whichexisted only in Israel. And if the God of whomnothing revealed the existence had not had asanctuary, priests, and a distinct ceremonial whichhe exacted from his worshippers, there would havebeen nothing to show that the Israelites had a God,and that it was their mission to preserve hisworship, and to be the servants and worshippersof Yahveh./ The law of Moses is a whole ; the ceremonial


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NECESSITY OF A CEREMONIAL LAW 9law cannot be separated from the moral law, theyare intimately bound up together, and the com-mandments relating to the cult are the outwardmanifestation with which the worship of Yahvehmust be invested. The latter is the body of whichthe moral law is the soul. To maintain as theHigher Criticism does, that the whole of theceremonial law, and the greater part of the com-mandments, such as those referring to leprosy,originated with the Priestly Code, that is to saywere the work of a school of the post-exilic period,is to overthrow the whole edifice of the Mosaic law.


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II.

How COULD Moses give this law to theIsraelites ? To answer this question we must goback to the time in which Moses Hved, to the cir-cumstances in which he had to accompHsh histask, and to the people whom he had to lead andto make into a nation.The Israelites left Egypt where they had been

treated, above all latterly, as a people of slaves.So long as they were under the yoke of theirmasters they had no individuality as a people ora nation ; and the laws which ruled them had tobe those of the Egyptians. We know nothing asto their worship during their long sojourn on thebanks of the Nile ; it was perhaps a few vaguetraditions as to the alliance which Yahveh hadmade with their ancestors ; but otherwise they hadno ceremonial, and no sanctuary where they wentto render worship to Yahveh.Now they are about to establish themselves inCanaan in the land which was promised to themfor a heritage. Instead of being shepherds theyare to become a sedentary and agricultural people.No longer will they live in tents ; they are to havehouses, towns and the ownership of the land. Inshort, out of a tribe of nomads Moses had to makea cultured people; and, above all, everything thatconcerned religion had to be regulated, since itsmission was primarily a religious one.


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MOSES AN ORAL LAWGIVER irDoubtless Moses meant to wait until they

reached Canaan, before teaching the people onepart of his commandments, those, for instance,relating to property. When he realised that thesojourn in the wilderness was to be prolonged,when he knew for certain that he himself wouldnot enter into the promised land, he completed hiswork, so that his successor would onlv have tofollow the line that he had traced, and so that thepeople might establish itself in Canaan providedwith a body of civil laws corresponding to- thedegree of civilisation to which it had attained, andabove all in possession of a precise religious lawwhich should be the characteristic mark of Israel.Moses began his work as legislator shortly afterthe exodus from Egypt, and in the first place hehad to establish that which was the basis of theexistence of Israel, the cult of Yahveh. That iswhy, as soon as the people arrived at some distancefrom the land of the oppressor, in a region where,after the defeat of the Amalekites, he could believehimself safe, the legislator fixed the bases of thealliance of Yahveh with the people, the Deca-logue, which is called the Book of the Covenant,and which begins with these words : I amYahveh thy God, which brought thee out of theland of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.Soon afterwards he built the portable sanctuary,the Tabernacle, which .was to be considered as theplace where Yahveh dwelt, and where he wouldmanifest himself by making his voice heard, forthere was no image of the deity.


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12 THE LAW OF MOSESThe rest of the law was to be. given during the

course of the journey, and one cannot but bestruck by seeing how closely the written form inwhich this law is presented agrees with thecircumstances in which it was drawn up. Hereis a people on a journey, having no town ordwelling place other than their tents, no temple orpr.lace in which, like Hammurabi, Moses coulderect a great stone, bearing an entire code oflaws systematically arranged. Besides, it is pro-bable that a very small number of Israelites knewhow to write, and in the wilderness it was diflficultto procure what was necessary for that purpose.The law had then to be proclaimed aloud, it had tobe taught orally, and it was only after having donethis to the Israelites that Moses wrote it down.

Almost always a law is introduced with thesewords : And Yahveh spake unto Moses, saying,Speak or Command . . . ; or simplv : Yahvehspake unto Moses and said ... Thus thewhole law is above all to be proclaimed in speech.Afterwards, Moses will put down in writing whathe has said; he will not read a text prepared inadvance, for he is, as Dr. Kyle says, in the firstplace a speaking prophet, * and he could notbe anything else with the people he had to lead.This law was not a code prepared by a school of

jurists; it was not presented on one particularoccasion to the people; it came into being in thecourse of the journey, and sometimes the circum-

Moses and the .MonuiiKMUs, p. 67.


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MOSES AN ORAL LAWGIVER 13stances of the moment brought it into being orprovoked its repetition. There is no systematicarrangement to be found in it, and no plan tracedin advance. It is what Moses said and sometimesrepeated, during the long years that the peoplespent in the wilderness. It is the orders thatYahyeh charged him to communicate to theIsraelites from time to time, sometimes on onepoint and sometimes on another ; and the com-mandments are mixed up with fragments of his-torv. Sometimes the event or the fact is relatedwhich has urged INloses to give certain instructions,to formulate a certain law, or to proclaim it again.Thus for example, Korah, a Levite, Dathan andAbiram rebel against Moses and Aaron, reproach-ing them with having arrogated to themselvesauthority to which they had no right, liftingup themselves above the assembly of Yahveli(Numbers xvi. 3). Korah, who was a Levite, hadgot together a few acolytes who disapproved ofAaron and his family being charged with sacer-dotal functions. After the punishment of the rebels,after a sign which shows that it is the family ofAaron which is chosen, Moses explains a secondtime, and with more detail, what are the functionsof those who offer the sacrifices, and the functionsof the Levites. This repetition was necessary, inorder that the people might remember this com-mandment, and to avoid the possibility of anotherrevolt of ithe same kind.

Israel had become a people m Egypt, a verynumerous and powerful tribe, but so long as they


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M THE LAW OF MOSESare still in the wilderness they are still a people ofnomads and must be treated as such. The lawcan only be given to it as to

a wandering tribewhich must remember it, and to which it must bere-told, because there is no text to which it canhave recourse. It is noticeable that what Mosessays is often very short. Even when it is aquestion of a particular subject, the commandmentis cut up as if the matter had been returned to onseveral occasions, perhaps at the moment when theobject of it was to be accomplished. Thus inLeviticus the chapter about the feasts (xxiii.) endswith these words : And Moses declared unto thechildren of Israel the set feasts of Yahveh. Ifwe now examine how Moses explained what thesefeasts were to be, we see that no less than fivetimes the chapter is interrupted by these words : And Yahveh spake unto Moses, saying. Speakunto the children of Israel ... Thus Mosesspoke five times on the subject of these feasts,perhaps at different periods, when the month anddav came when the feast would be celebrated afterthe Israelites had entered Canaan, for these feastscould not be celebrated in the wilderness.The law is then an oral law which theIsraelites had to remember, proclaimed little bylittle by Moses during the journey, and which hadto be repeated occasionally in order to impress iton their memory.The repetitions were necessary because Mosesdid not always address the same audience. He didnot always have before him the whole assembly


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MOSES AN ORAL LAWGIVER 15of the people gathered together to Hsten to him.According to the time, the people might be moreor less scattered, the pasturages tO' which they tooktheir cattle were not always very near, and some ofthe people might not have heard what had alreadybeen said once. Moreover, in the course of yearsinstructions which had been given to the fathersmight have been forgotten by the children, so thatit was necessary to repeat them, and as it isalmost always a quotation from memory, thedivergences between two versions of the same com-mandment are explained.This law, however, must be preserved, sothat it may be passed on to future generations.Moses will therefore write it down, but only afterhaving taught it to the people by word of mouth.The writing follows the word, and is nothing butthe reproduction of it. Often it is at the positiveorder of Yahveh that he writes : thus the victoryover Amalek (Exodus xvii. 14), then all the lawsconnected with the Decalogue (Exodus xxiv. 4;xxxiv. 27), or the marches of the Israelites fromEgypt to the frontier of Moab (Numbers xxxiii. 2).But there are many other cases where it is saidthat Moses wrote, particularly in Deuteronomy,when he insists on the duty of the people toobserve the law^ such as it is written in the book(Deuteronomy xxviii. 58), or when he threatensthem with the terrible curses which it contains(Deuteronomy xxix. 20, 21, 27). The literaryactivity of Moses is reported in the two lastchapters of Deuteronomy, where we are told twice


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MOSES AN ORAL LAWGIVER 17the Ark of the Covenant, this coffer was tobe a witness against the people (Deuteronomyxxxi. 6). If this book by its aspect andby its form had not had some distant connectionwith the ark, if it had not had to be carriedin the same manner, if it had only been a roll ofpapyrus as certain authors pretend, it is not to thebearers of the Ark that it would have beenentrusted. Of all the law it was only the Deca-logue which was placed in the Ark; it wasassumed to be written with the finger of God ontwo tables of stone which could not be very bigsince they were written on both sides.

Immediately after the arrival of Israel in thecountry beyond Jordan which had been given itby Yahveh, great stones were to be set up on-Mount Ebal, and all the words of the law were tobe written thereon, very clearly engraved. Joshuatells us how he carried out Moses' command (viii.;^2). It was the first monument that the Israeliteserected, and it established their taking possessionof the land in which henceforth this law wouldrule.

Here, as for Genesis, it is important to imagineoneself back in the time when this law was pro-mulgated, and to judge these writings, not accord-ing to the exigences of modern civilisation, notafter the principles laid dowm by university pro-fessors, but according tO' the condition in whichthe people lived for whom this legislation wasdestined.At this remote epoch and for a people like the

2


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MOSES AN ORAL LAWGIVER 19certain number go back to the epoch of thePtolemies, and so are anterior to the Christianera. These papyri have furnished the Iliad withabout a thousand lines which are not found inthe text which it has been agreed to call theVulgate. The literary value of these lines isextremely small, and they bring practically nonew reading. They are additions which haveoften been taken from parallel texts, and whichseem needless, or else simple repetitions some-times very little different. These repetitionsrevolt the critics who scrutinize texts minutely, bybasing themselves on the laws which a writerwould not think of infringing, and on theexigences of the written style. They do not,-however, shock the ear when they are read aloud,and the hearer often notices nothing : it is anexperiment which has been made : ''verba volant.In the Pentateuch, the repetitions are one of theprincipal arguments on which the critics rely niorder to affirm the existence of different authors.

In the time of Moses, when the art of writingwas little developed and was the privilege of alimited number, one may say that the veritablewritten document did not exist. Writing had batone use and aim ; it was the reproduction of thespoken word when such reproduction was neces-sary ; it reflected the spoken language, with all theirregularities and imperfections which literar/style has corrected or banished. Coming intoexistence long after the spoken word, it is stillonlv the surrogate of the latter, in the sense that it


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20 THE LAW OF MOSESis destined to fix what has been said, and to keepit in remembrance so that it can be reproduced byreading- aloud. It is not yet available for independ-ent creations conceived on a pre-arranged plan,which have not before been read aloud and heard.Moses had received a literary education.

Brought up as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, hewas instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.But doubtless he knew what is generally calledBabylonian cuneiform, to which the Semitic scho-lars now gives the right name of Akkadian, thelan^ua^e of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets. For at thecourt of the King of Egypt there must have beenofificials who could correspond with the nations ofAsia in their own language like the modernembassy interpreters.Moses may have made use of the Akkadianwriting in other countries than Egypt, for instance,in the land of Madian. M. de Vogije affirms thatthe Madianites spoke Aramaic or a very similardialect; but written Aramaic did not make itsappearance till the Qth century. It is at thatmoment that the Aramaic writing appeared forthe first time. Before that, in all the countrieswhere this Aramaic writing established itself,the Akkadian writing had preceded it and was theonly one in use. In consequence Moses andJethro, when they had something to write, bothmade use of the same kind of writing. It was alsoquite easy for them to understand each other, forit is certain that the Israelites had preserved thelanguage of their fathers w^hich distinguished


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MOSES WRITES AKKADIAN TABLETS 21them from the Eg^yptians. They spoke a languagewhich may be called Xramaic, but which was muchlike that we now call Hebrew or Aramaic. Thewritten language for them, as for the peoples ofCanaan, and for those of western Asia at thisepoch, was Akkadian cuneiform.Moses as a literary man, who had received aliterary education, and who if he had beenEgyptian would have had as the first title of hisepitaph The Writer, must have been a rareexception among his fellow countrymen. Writingcould not play a great part in a population ofshepherds. In consequence, every communicationwhich he had to make to the numerous companyhe led, had to be made by word of mouth. If hehad a law which thev must know, or a command-ment to transmit to theni from God, he had tospeak to them, and teach it to them, after whichhe recorded on tablets what he had said. Hewrote down his teaching by degrees as he gave it,and he mixed wFth it accounts of differentepisodes of the journey. When he repeated acommandment or an instruction, it is infinitelyprobable that he did so' from memory and not fromhis tablets. I think that a good part of Deuter-onomv is composed of quotations from memory,especiallv the Decalogue. Much has been madeof the fact that the Decalogue does not presentitself to us in the Pentateuch under a singleform, whereas one would have expected a priori that it would be preserved to us without alter-ation and without uncertainty. There is here a


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22 THE LAW OF MOSESliteralness which is not exempt from pedantry, anda complete misunderstanding of the way in whichthe law is given to the people. There is noquestion of presenting to it a text of unyieldingform such as a law in our own times, voted by aparliament, or a governmental decree in which theletter often outweighs the spirit. The Deca-logue is the supreme teaching given to thepeople, and which it is bound to keep in remem-brance. The important thing is that it shouldremember it and live in conformity with it, andnot that it should obey a regulation drawn up ne varietur.

Certainly Moses, if anyone, ought to know theDecalogue by heart. Several times over he quotesone of the commandments and comments upon it,showing how it should be applied and how itanswers to the circumstances of the moment. Inthe hour of his death, when he is going to leave theIsraelites for ever, and when he insists with greatforce on the duty laid upon them to observe thecommandments, it is natural that he should beginby repeating to them the Decalogue. For thatthere is no need for him to fetch from the ark thetwo tables of the law so as to re-read them wordfor word, as modern critics would have him do.He quotes them as they come into his mind,as he knows and understands them. If we com-pare the two versions of Exodus and Deuteronomywe see that the foundation is absolutely the same,and the order also. What is different is what Iwould call the developments or additions to the


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THE DECALOGUE 23commandment, that which justifies it or shows itssense and aim, and which also facilitates theremembrance of it. This is not a part of the com-mandment itself, and this is why there may bevariations, according to the moment when theDecalogue was quoted.

I repeat, the Decalogue of Deuteronomy bearsall the characteristics of a quotation made frommemory. We are quite wrongly told that thetext of the Decalogue according to Deuteronomydiffers notably from that of Exodus. There isno difference in the commandments themselves ;they are identical in form and in spirit. Thaitwhich is not the same in the 4th, the one about theSabbath, is what I have called the developments.In Exodus, the Sabbath goes back to the Creation;in Deuteronomy the seventh day has a high moralaim ; it is to recall the deliverance from theEgyptian bondage, and out of gratitude theIsraelite will give rest to all under his authority,the servant, the stranger, and even the cattle. Inthe 5th, Moses emphasises the words: Honourthy father and mother, adding, as Yahvehthy God hath commanded thee. But how, I ask,does that change the sense of the commandment ?It is impossible for me to attach any importance tothe fact that in the 4th commandment rest is to begranted, not only to the cattle in general, but tothe ox and the ass, or that in the loth, Deuter-onomy puts the woman before the house, or thatthe four last commandments are connected by theconjunction and. These are trifles thait are not


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24 THE LAW OF MOSESworth the trouble of attention, being an ordinaryeffect of the spoken language. Moses speaks, headdresses men, the great mass of whom have neverhad a written text before their eyes. Ihe prophetreminds them of the words of Yahveh which hehas often repeated in whole or in part, but whichprobably only a small number of them heard onSinai. The essential is that they should rememberthe commandment itself : Six days shalt thoulabour and do all the work that thou hast to do,but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the I .ord thyGod. As to the commentary that Moses adds toit, it may have varied according to the occasion.Exodus reports one which is much more extended(xxxi. 12-17). The Israelite knows that he mustcovet nothing which belongs to his neighbour, andwhen Moses quotes the things to which this pro-hibition refers, what does it matter that he beginswith the w^oman or the house, and that only oncehe mentions the field ?

In short, if we carry ourselves back to the cir-cumstances of the times, it stands out clearly thatMoses could not give the law to the Israelitesotherwise than as it is presented to us in the fourlast books of the Pentateuch. It w-as a series oforders, instructions or lessons, often wnthout anyimmediate connection, a teaching given forth infragments during the course of the journey, andwritten in Akkadian on tablets in order to pre-serve the remembrance of it. The law was at firstthis collection of tablets entrusted to the bearersof the Ark, by the side of which it was placed.


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26 THE LAW OF MOSEStime. It was indeed for him the law of Moses.He tells us so several times, and in particular itwas the law of Moses that he read before the peopleassembled at the request of Nehemiah (Nehemiahviii. i). The theories of the Higher Criticism havenot yet brought us to reject his evidence.


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III.

The law of Moses is designated by a generalNAME, torah, which has a very extended mean-ing, and by which the Jews understand the fivebooks of Moses, although Genesis contains no lawproperly so called. This word is applied to thePentateuch because these five books include in awhole everything connected with the law. Torahproperly speaking, means instruction. In-struction means in the first place the action ofinstructing someone in something, but it is alsoused to designate the indications furnished as tothe conduct of an affair. Thus into the use of thisword an idea of finality is introduced, and that iswhat exactly characterises torah . .* It is certainthat in many cases the juridical or legal characterof the word hardly appears ; thus for example thelong chapters in Leviticus which describe leprosy,the signs by which it may be recognised, and themeans of purification, are called the law (torah) ofthe plague of leprosy, or the law of the leper in theday of his cleansing. There the word torah corresponds rather to what we should calldirections or instructions. In other cases, on thecontrary, when the word torah is in the plural,the obligation which characterises the law stands

* Lucien Gautier, La Loi dans I'ancienne Alliance, p. i6.


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28 THE LAW OF MOSESout clearly from the object to which the word isapplied.The torah, however, is subdivided into cate-gories of which the limits are well fixed, each onewith its distinctive name, which is preserved in theEnp;lish Revised Version.These different categories are the object of arecent work by Dr. M. G. Kyle.* With the helpof a lawyer, the learned author has determined the

technical legal meaning of the different wordsused in the Pentateuch, which are translatedindifferently by law, statute, or some other wordwhich does not take into consideration the dis-tinction made in the Hebrew. There are in thefirst place a certain number of words in generaluse, first of all torah which is usually trans-lated by law. In the same way as in English, the law may mean the whole of the orders towhich we must submit, while a law is onlv apart, and often quite a limited one which bearsupon a definite object, and of w^hich there is agreat number.The words of Yahveh have often the signi-ficance of a commandment or a law. Dr. Kyleonly gives a quite general meaning to this word,but I wonder if one ought not sometimes to see init the supreme commandment, the strongest ex-pression of the will of Yahveh. The ten com-mandments, which are the crowning edifice of thelaw, are called in Hebrew the ten words

The Problem of the I'ontateuch, Oborlin, Ohio, 1920.


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CATEGORIES OF LAWS 29(Deuteronomy x. 4), and were assumed to havebeen pronounced by Yahveh himself (Exodus xx.i), and also written with the finger of God(Exodus xxxi. 18). It must be rememberedthat with nations like the Israelites there is agreat lack of abstract words, which have tobe replaced bv something which can be per-ceived by the senses. An abstract idea is rarelyseparated from its outward manifestation by theword. A positive and decided will must, for theancients, reveal itself by a commandment or anorder. God willed that there should be light isexpressed by : and God said : Let there belight In the same wav the ten words arethe ten expressions of the formal and positive willof God, which cannot undergo any change.The words covenant and testimony arealso employed according to Dr. Kyle as compre-hending the law as a whole. However, in mostcases these two words only designate the Deca-logue ; thus the name of tables of testimony is given to the two tables of stone on which theten commandments were inscribed.

But there are words with a very definite technicalsense, which Dr. Kyle seems to us to have exactlycharacterised. We have in the first place what theEnglish version translates bv judgments,according to the literal sense of the Hebrew miskpat, which means that which is pro-nounced, the sentence of a judge. Each ofthese maxims must have been originally pro-nounced by what were known as the judges. This


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30 THE LAW OF MOSESpronouncement made a precedent, and thusestablished a customary law which had all themore effect and authority since there was then nowritten law and no real judicial authority. Moses,speaking of the choice of the judges whom he hadset up over the people, thus describes the instruc-tions that he gave them : And I charged yourjudges at that time saying. Hear the causesbetween your brethren, and judge righteouslybetween a man and his brother, and the strangerthat is with him (Deuteronomy i. i6). Accord-ing to that the judges would have had above allto decide the lawsuits brought to them. In casesof special difficulty they were to refer to Moses, orlater on to the priests and Levites.

If we pass in review the list of all the judg-ments which is presented to us immediatelyafter the Decalogue, we see that their characteristicfeature is a moral element. They concern thatwhich is good or bad in itself, mala in se. Thefailure to observe one of them is the violation of amoral law, it is a sin. That is why it is necessaryfor the pronouncements to be impartial, and forthe judges to let themselves be influenced neitherby presents nor by respect of persons, but only bya sense of justice. Thus the choice of these menwho are to judge the people with righteousjudgments, is for Moses a duty of which he feelsall the gravity, upon which his father-in-lawJethro insists when, advising Moses to relievehimself of a part of his task which otherwise wouldbe beyond his strength, he says to him : Thou


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CATEGORIES OF LAWS 31shalt provide out of all the people able men, suchas fear God, men of truth, hating avarice ...(Exodus xviii. 21).As Dr. Kyle says, the technical meaning of theword judgments appears all through thePentateuch ; it designates a group of laws whichcannot be confused with any other, and whichmay be easily distinguished, even when it ismixed with others or when it has no special title.One might add that it is not only a question ofthe principles to be applied in case of lawsuits,but also of those to which those who govern arebound to conform ; for what are called judges inthe Old Testament are the men who, before themonarchy, were temporarily at the head of thepeople and had to lead it.The judgments are for the most part in thechapters of Exodus (xxi.xxiii.) which follow theproclamation of the Decalogue. It may beadmitted then that a part of them constituted theancient custom of the Israelites and was incor-porated in the law. But there are others whichhave in view the establishment in Canaan, whenithe people will have become settled, such as allthose that refer to property, houses, or fields.Another category of legal dispositions, whichthe English version renders by statutes (Hebrew, khok or khoukkah, generallyused in the plural khoukkim ), consists of allthe statutes and laws which regulate persons andthings, and also the worship ; it is those which wejshould call the personal and real statutes, and the


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32 THE LAW OF AIOSESceremonial. It is the largest part of the Mosaiclaw. It is forbidden to infringe them because itis the established law, but they are not, like thejudgments which rest on a moral element and arefounded on justice. The '' Khoiikkim are civillaws; we might almost say that these laws touchupon the administrative domain; but above all, ina state which was to be a theocracy, they regulateeverything which concerns the worship, feasts,ceremonies, ritual, and sacrifices. Here thetechnical meaning of the word is clearly defined,and it is impossible to confuse the khoukkini 'with the mishpatim, or with the commandments.The mishpatim, judgments, and the kkouk-kim, statutes, are the word of which the technicalcharacter is the most marked.

In one or two cases we find the two words unitedto express a kind of ordinance which has some-thing of the character of both categories. Thusthe institution of the cities of refuge is a khoukkatmishpat, statute of judgment

(Xumbers xxxv.29). The choice and designation of the cities isan administrative ordinance of \l:e class that we

should call secular. But this institution of thecities of refuge has a special aim, that of makingjustice prevail and of preventing it from beingviolated by a penalty wrongly inflicted in case ofhomicide. It was thus that the institution of thecities of refuge partook of the character of themishpat, judgment, as well as of the simplestatute.The case of the daughters of Zelophehad


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CATEGORIES OF LAWS 33(Numbers xxvii. i-ii) is particularly interestingbecause it shows the origin of the mishpatim.These young women present a claim to Moses.Their father had died in the wilderness, he had(taken no part at all in the revolt of Korah, and yetas he had had no son his name would not continuein the tribe, and his daughters would have noheritage. The case is a hard one for Moses wholays it before Yahveh. Yahveh replies by pro-nouncing that the claim of the daughters ofZelophehad is a just one, and for the occasion Heprescribes to Moses a series of regulations con-cerning inheritance. This law of inheritance isreally a judgment, since it is founded on what thesupreme judge pronounced in circumstances when.the right course of action was doubtful. At thesame time it is a statute which is to continue forever.Having fixed the technical meaning of the words

used in Mosaic legislation. Dr. Kyle examines thespecial character of each of the categories of laws,of which, like Mr. Wiener, he recognises three.These are first of all the ones he calls mnemonic,that is to say which must be committed to memory,and which have in general a concise and clearform, not lacking elegance. We find in them evena tendency to poetic parallelism. This category iscomposed of commandments and of what we havecalled judgments, which have some resemblancewith the customary law, and which the judge mustknow bv heart.A second category is composed of what Dr. Kyle3


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34 THE LAW OF MOSEScalls descriptive laws, that is to say thosewhich regulate certain institutions, and above all,the ceremonial. Kautzsch, who attributes theselaws to one of the authors of the documentary-theory, thus defines the style : Unlimitedbreadth, research of even minute details, legalformulas, and a real schematism. This judgmentseems slightly exaggerated, but it is certain that ithas justification, for instance, in the description ofthe tabernacle. The descriptive character whichmarks these laws as a whole cannot be denied.The last category is what he calls the hortatory

laws, the exhortations formulated in the tone ofthe

legislator who addresses himself to the people,and who, in the most forcible language, chargesthem to observe the laws, pointing out the happyconsequences which will result from doing so, oron the contrary the terrible misfortunes which willbe brought about by disregarding these laws.Almost the whole of Deuteronomy belongs to thiscategory.This division is not absolute, and certain lawsmight justly be classed in two of these categories ;the lines of demarcation are not rigorously drawn ;but that is the exception. Thus several of the lawsrepeated in Deuteronomy have not the oratoricaltone of other parts of the book, of which neverthe-less they form a part. Here it is a question of ageneral characteristic of which the dominantfeatures are easily recognisable.

It is clear that these different kinds of laws areconceived in a different stvle and with a vocabularv


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CATEGORIES OF LAWS 35which is not the same, not only in so far as theybear upon objects of very dissimilar nature, but alsobecause they are not always addressed to the samepeople. The same orator, whether he is a politician,a judge, or a preacher, uses quite a different style,and does not make use of the same words accord-ing to the audience he is addressing. This varietyof

styleand vocabulary is one of the principalarguments on which the documentary theory relies.Each of these styles is said to be the peculiarity of

a different author. The division into three accord-ing to the nature of the laws, as Dr. Kyle presentsit, fits in exactly with the three great documentsthe existence of which is assumed by the theory.The mnemonic laws, the commandments, the judgments, are attributed to respectively J.E.,to the Elohist and to the Yahvist ; the descriptivelaws, that is to say, all the secular ordinances andthe ceremonial, Belong to the Priestly Code, apost-exilic document ; and lastly, the laws ofexhortation are comprised in Deuteronomy, a workof the time of Josiah or only slightly before.Dr. Kyle, who, as he tells us, in b'^ginnlng thisstudy had no idea of refuting the documentarytheory, is led to the conclusion that these differencesof style and vocabulary are absolutely explainedby the very nature of the laws, by their aim, andby the character of those for whom they weredesigned, and that in consequence there is no needto have recourse to the hypothesis of the document-ary theory, which may be put on one side as a


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36 THE LAW OF MOSESquite useless supposition.* Thus, by followingquite a different road from ours, Dr. Kyle hasalso arrived at the unity of authorship for theMosaic law.

* Dr. Kyle combats the documentary theory in a series oflectures given at Princeton, and collected in one volume underthe title of Moses and the Monuments, Light from Archaelogyon the Pentateuchal Times, Oberlin, Ohio, 1920.


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38 THE LAW OF MOSESHim a people of inheritance as at this day (Deuteronomy iv. 20). Passages such as these inwhich this fundamental idea is expressed mightbe quoted in great numbers.

In order that Israel might acquit itself of itsmission it was necessary for it to establish itselfin the promised land, and to do so it had to leaveEgypt ; and that is why it is so often said of Yahvehthat he brought his people out of Egypt. It is thefirst guarantee which He gave his people of hissettled intention to fulfil his promise, and the moststriking visible sign which He gave of his power,in promising them to surmount all the obstacleswhich might prevent them from quitting the landof bondage.The summit of the mosaic law, or, if you like, thehead which dominates the whole body, is the ten words, the Decalogue. Moses begins by pro-claiming the fundamental truth which is at the baseof the whole of the Old Testament. There is butone God, Yahveh Elohim, and there is none other.But it is not only for Israel that there is but oneGod, it is for all humanity. Moses has alreadyproclaimed it when he told of the creation of man.From the moment of man's appearance, the nameof his God is Yahveh Elohim. It is true thataccording to the critics it is not so. The text ofthe 2nd chapiter of Genesis must be amended. Itshould be Yahveh alone. Elohim is a recentaddition due to an unknown personage who iscalled the editor. Nevertheless, in the time ofNehemiah, when the Levites make a prayer in


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40 THE LAW OF MOSESabove, or that is in the earth beneath, or that isin the waiter under the earth : thou shalt not bowdown thyself to them nor serve them. Theseidentical words occur again when Moses repeatsthe commandment. It is evident that he had inhis mind all the animals worshipped by theEgyptians, the birds of Horus or of Thoth, therams or the bulls of Amon or Apis, the crocodilesof Sebek, and many others.

It is certain that a visible form of the divinity-was the basis of the pagan religions, it was even aneed, they could not understand a cult or worshipbeing addressed to an invisible being. And that iswhat the Israelites had the greatest difficulty inaccepting. In their history they are seen ceaselesslyfalling into idolatry. And already in the episodeof the Golden Calf, what urges them to violate thecommandment is the need of having a god whichthey can see with their eyes : Make us godswhich shall go before us, they sav to Aaron.The latter has no intention of abandonins: the cultof Yahveh, for after having built an altar he criesand says : To-morrow shall be a feast untoYahveh. But he yields to the desire of the peopleto have an idol, to embody Yahveh, and he choosesthe form that a good number of them must havehad before their eyes, the bull Mnevis of Heliopolis.The third commandment is alsO' in agreementwith the ideas of the time, respecting the divinity towhom one must have recourse by oath. This godis the being by whom one must swear, his namebeing the guarantee of the truth of the words of


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THE DECALOGUE 41him who invokes him. We find in Egyptianinscriptions oaths in the name of Amon or of Ra.Even among the Hebrews, it is evident that toswear by Yahveh is one of the distinctive signs ofhis worshippers : Thou shak fear the Lord thyGod . . . and by His name shak thou swear (Deuteronomy x. 20). In that time, says ISaiah(xix. 18, 19) There shall be five cities in the landof Egypt that speak the language of Canaan, andswear to Yahveh of Hosts. ... In that day shallthere be an akar to Yahveh in the midst of theland of Egypt. ... Thus the oath and the altarare the two characteristics of the cult of Yahveh.

In regard to this, it is probable that the Hebrewsof the time of Moses did not differ much from theOrientals of to-day. Everyone who has livedamong them has certainly been struck by the factthat the idea of truthfulness is very weak amongthem ; the lie is not judged and condemned withthe severity it deserves, even when it is precededby an oath. It is not rare to hear an Arab pro-nounce these words:Allah el Azim, byAlmighty God, at the very moment he is goingto tell a lie. It is evidently that which the com-mandment was to forbid : thou shalt not callYahveh to witness in the moment when thou artabout to lie. Such is, it seems, the originalmeaning of the commandment, the literal applic-ation of which is justified in our days as much asin those.The following commandment is the institution

of the Sabbath. It terminates the series of those


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THE DECALOGUE 43shippers should show that they recognise him fortheir God and that they will submit to him, bystrictly observing the Sabbath.The following commandments contain the prin-ciples which are to regulate the relations of menamong themselves, the duty of honouring parents,the prohibition of murder, adultery, and theft.The next one forbidding false witness is well inkeeping with the customs of the time. At thattime when judicial institutions did not exist, whenthere were not the thousand ways of establishinga crime which are now at our disposition, theproof had almost always to be oral testimony,a declaration charging the accused with the fault.From this it follows that the spoken word had thena much more serious character than in our days.False evidence might have fatal consequences forthe man against whom it was directed. And thatis why it is put into the same rank as the threeother offences which precede it. The Hebrewswere not alone in regarding it in this way. In thegreat civil and penal code of Hammurabi, withwhich it is quite possible that Moses wasacquainted, the three first articles punish falsewitness with severe penalties.The tenth commandment, as far as we know, ispeculiar to the Mosaic law. It prescribes thatfeelings which might lead to murder, adultery, ortheft should be controlled. It is, if I may beallowed the expression, a sort of moral prophy-lactic; to abstain from covetousness is to preserveoneself from the crimes to which it leads.


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44 THE LAW OF MOSESThere then is the foundation of the religion of

Israel, the ten words of Yahveh which establishthe principles on which its religious and moral lifewill rest. Ordinary commonsense tells us that ifMoses is to be the religious legislator of Israel, ifthe people is to reach Canaan in order to establishitself there and practise the worship of Yahveh,that is the way to begin : to teach the Israelitesthat Yahveh is their God, and to obtain from thema promise to serve him. These solemn words areinscribed on tablets of stone which will be carriedwith what in the wilderness serves as a sanctuary,for the Decalogue is the vital point of the wholelaw.

In this regard, putting aside every kind of re-ligious consideration, the account in Exoduscorresponds exactly to what must have taken place.Moses wished to establish the religion of Yahveh,and he wished the people of Israel to be votariesof it. Already in Egypt, when he was strivingwith the king that he might let the people go, themotive he put forward was the worship to be ren-dered to their God : Thus saith Yahveh : LetMy people go that they may serve Me. We willgo three days journev intO' the wilderness andsacrifice to Yahveh our God (Exodus viii. 20and 27). So, after the deliverance, when thepeople has nothing more to fear from either Egyptor Amalek, he immediately begins to lay thefoundations of this religion, and first of all, thecorner stone of the edifice, the ten commandments.That a text of so great value should be written and


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THE DECALOGUE 45preserved with greater care than the rest of thelaw, is perfectly natural.What immediately follows the ten words is aseries of what is called in Hebrew the judgments(mishpat), that is to say, the principles of lawand equity which the judges were to applyin lawsuits or in doubtful problems, and whichinvolved a moral idea. After that come thestatutes, the khoukkim, * which are some-times civil laws, instructions about leprosy, andabove all about the ceremonial, the building of thetabernacle, the setting apart of the Levites aspriests and of the family of Aaron for offering thesacrifices, and all the ritual concerning the sacri-fices. All this was taught and written successivelyin the course of the journey, and often owing tothe circumstances of the moment.We have insisted above that, for the ancients,a religion often only consisted of a more or lesscoarse ceremonial, and that a religion could not beconceived without an external form of worship.The ceremonial was necessary to Moses, it was asit were the garment of his religion, by which itmight be recognised. He could not do withoutit, and that is why he composed and instituted itcompletely. And the fact which shows the valuewhich he attached to the ceremonial is that he urgesits observance in just as strong terms as he doesthe rest of the law. One might quote a largenumber of passages, above all in Deuteronomy, in

* The Vulgate generally translates khoukkim by caere-monias and sometimes by

mandata, or praecepta.


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46 THE LAW OF MOSESwhich, when Moses insists on what is the first dutyof the IsraeHtes : to keep the commandments of thelaw; this law he divides into several parts, veryoften into two, the statutes (khoukkhn) and thelaws, judgments, {mishpatim). Thou shaltexecute my statutes. Thou shalt observe my lawsand do them (Leviticus xxv. i8). Now OIsrael, hearken unto the statutes and the laws orjudgments (see also Deuteronomy iv. 5, 8, 14;V. I ; xi. 32 ; xii. i ; xxvi. 16). In these passages,the statutes always precede the judgments ;it is an indication of the value they have in theeyes of th espeaker. We find the same thing aboutEzra : Ezra had set his heart to seek the lawof the Lord and to do it, and to teach in Israel thestatutes and judgments also (Ezra vii. 10). Inthe letter of Artaxerxes it is said that Ezra isintructed in the knowledge of the commandmentsand statutes of Yahveh (Ezra vii. 11).Sometimes we find commandments andstatutes (Deuteronomy x. 12; xxvii. 10;xxviii. 45). At other times the law is divided intothree parts, the testimonies (R.V.) (edoth)being added to the two others,the statutes and the judgments (Deuteronomy iv. 44; vi.20), or the commandments, literally the orders(Deuteronomy vi. i; vii. 11; viii. 11; xxx. 16).Once (in Deuteronomy xi. i) we find four words : his charge (lit., that which thou hast toobserve), and his statutes and his judgments andhis commandments.Thus we see that the law forms a whole, and


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DEUTERONOMY 47although it may have come down to us in separatepieces, it none the less constitutes a whole, a bodyof which the Decalogue is the head.The first form of this law is reproduced inExodus, Leviticus and the book of Numbers; thosebooks contain the first tablets written by Moses,the account of the journey in the Wilderness, inthe course of which he proclaimed the law ofYahveh to the Israelites, all of which is partiallyrepeated in Deuteronomy. As we have said, weaccept the rabbinical tradition on this point : it isEzra who put these tablets in this order, andclassified them in books. This work was donebefore he left Babylon to go back into the land ofCanaan. Elsewhere we have maintained that Ezratranslated the law of Moses into Aramaic, andthat later on the rabbis turned it into the verna-cular tongue of Jerusalem by adopting the squareHebrew, the alphabet which was peculiar ito them.

It is clear that from these two modifications,changes of detail have been produced in certainwords, or certain geographical names, whichwould not have been understood at the period whenthe last version was written. Here and thereexplanatory glosses may have been introduced,and the arrangement of the tablets may perhaps notbe absolutely chronological. But all that does notaffect the whole, which is the work of Moses, hiswords and his writings, the latter presented in theonly form they could assume in the time of Mosesand in the special circumstances in which he foundhimself.


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48 THE LAW OF MOSESThis work is completed and strengthened bywhat is now the fifth book of the Pentateuch, thebook of Deuteronomy ,which, according to whatHebrew scholars teach us, is called the repeti-

tion of this law. * Here again if we carry our-selves back to the period, if we replace the bookin the environment and the conditions in whichit is said to have been composed, we shall findcomplete agreement. The particular form ofDeuteronomy is perfectly explained, and wasrendered necessary by the circumstances.

In all the commentaries on Deuteronomy, andin all the theories about its origin and date, noattention is paid to the fact that the Mosaic legis-lation is an oral legislation : it was proclaimed byMoses to an Israel which was an assembly ofhearers. This law was listened to by the Israelites,as we are told, a hundred times over ; it was thusthat they learned to knov/ it, and they had to keepit in remembrance. Doubtless Moses will draw itup on tablets which wnll be entrusted to the careof the Levites and of which they will depositsomewhere, as has been the case for a greatnumber of cuneiform tablets which have been pre-served to us, but the Israelite had no copy in histent nor later on in his house. What he knew ofthe law was what was engraven on his memory.Now, it is well known that this faculty is muchmore developed in men who have no writing thanwith those who can have recourse to notes. The

Driver, Deuteronomy, Introduction, p. i.


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DEUTERONOMY 49memory of nomads such as those of Arabia issimply amazing.

All the same Moses might have reason to thinkithat the remembrance of this law had become moreor less effaced amongst the Israelites. Besides, atthe end of the long journey in the wilderness, hewas speaking to a generation which was no longerthat which had been present at the scene on Sinai ;that of the men of war, which we suppose meansthose old enough to carry arms, had disappeared(Deuteronomy ii. 14). Imagine the feelings thatfilled Moses' soul at the moment when he ad-dressed them for the last time. Israel was at lastabout to enter into the land which had beenpromised them, they had already conquered a smallpart of it. Moses himself was not to enter in; heknew that the crowning point of his career wasrefused to him, and that he would only see thisgood land from a mountain top. Israel would behenceforth left to itself. They would have nolonger the guide they had followed for forty years,who had founded its religion, the worship ofYahveh, thiis worship which was the exclusiveproperty of the people and the reason for itsexistence.

It is easy to understand what anxiety must havehaunted him. It is true that Joshua was to be hissuccessor, but would he be strong enough, wouldhe have enough authority, to keep the people in theway which had been traced for it, in the worship ofYahveh ? For if Israel abandoned this worship't would perish, it would be absorbed by the

4


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50 THE LAW OF MOSESneighbouring peoples, it would cease to be theelect of Yahveh, separated from the other nationsby the law and the ordinances which had been laiddown. And thus, what one might almost call thej>et child of Moses, which he had snatched fromthe oppression of the Egyptians, which for fortyyears he had led through numberless difificulties,but which was now to enter into possession of itsheritage, this favourite child, Israel, would marchto certain ruin.Thus Moses feels urged to address his last in-

structions to the children of Israel, and he does itwith a warmth of language inspired by the factthat he is going to leave them. The words ofMoses,for so the book is called,begin with arapid historic glance over the last forty years, overthe experiences through which he and the peoplehave passed. He repeats the Decalogue, andcomments on it, he adjures the Israelites in thestrongest terms to keep the commandments ofYahveh, and not to be unfaithful to him as theywere when they made the golden calf and on otheroccasions. Sometimes he quotes a commandmentor a law which he follows up with an exhortationor a promise, at other times he calls to mind anepisode of the journey in the wilderness. In allthis first part of the book which goes as far asChapter ii, there may be recognised the oratorwho gives play to his feelings, who does notfollow a regular plan, but who is possessed by theidea that for the Israelites the observation of thecommandments of Yahveh is a question of life and


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DEUTERONOMY 51death. He lets himself be guided by the strengthof his feelings ; he repeats himself, he comes backcontinually to the future that is before the Israel-ites : Behold, I set before you this day a bless-ing and a curse; the blessing if. ye shall hearkenunto the commandments of Yahveh your God,which I command you this day : and the curse, ifye shall not hearken unto the commandments ofYahveh your God ... (Deuteronomy xi. 26).In the whole of this part it is clear that when hequotes the commandments he does so from memory.This is so particularly in the case of the Decalogue ;he does not go and fetch the two tables of the Law,of which he says thait he put them into the Arkand that they remained there (x. 5). This is theexplanation of the slight divergencies that thereare between the text of Exodus and that ofDeuteronomy.

In the rest of the book, in what is properly thelegislative part of it, Moses is more exact; onemight think that he has recourse to his tablets(xii. 28). As always, these are laws proclaimedbefore the united assembly. Here then there arenotable divergencies, which are explained by themoment when the laws were promulgated. AtSinai, they were still far from the promised land,the organisation of the worship was their mostimportant pre-occupation. In the land of Moab,at the end of the journey, it was an accomplishedthing; there was no need then to repeat thedescription of the tabernacle, any more than otherlaws or instructions such as those which concern


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DEUTERONOMY 53Another law, eagerly invoked by the critics to

establish the recent date of Deuteronomy, is whathas been considered as the centralisation of theworship, and the commandment to have only onesanctuary. The commandment is thus conceived(xii. 5) : ... unto the place which Yahvehyour God shall choose out of all your tribes to puthis name there, even unto his habitation shall yeseek, and thither shalt ithou come : and thither yeshall bring your burnt offerings and your sacri-fices. . . . Ye shall not do after all the things thatye do here this day, every man whatsoever is rightin his own eyes. . . . But when ye go overJordan, and dwell in the land which Yahveh yourGod causeth vou to inherit. . . . Then it shallcome to pass that tthep lace which Yahveh yourGod shall choose to cause his name tO' dwell there,thither shall ye bring all that I command you.. . . Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thyburnt offerings in every place that thou seest : butin the place which Yahveh shall choose in oneof thy tribes, there thou shalt offer thy burntofferings, and there thou shalt do all that I com-mand thee.

Already in Exodus (xxiii. ig) we find the orderto bring as offerings the first fruits of the earthto the house of Yahveh thy God, and thefollowing: In the holy place shalt thou pourout a drink offering of strong drink unto Yahveh(Numbers xxviii. 7). The essential conditionfor the execution of the commandment inDeuteronomy is that there should be a place


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54 THE LAW OF MOSESI .chosen by Yahveh where his name should dwell.Moses, when he spoke thus, seemed not to doubtthat when every Israelite had his dwelling, thereshould be one for Yahveh. Now this did not cometo pass before the time of Solomon. Until then,the Ark was always wandering. Nathan says toDavid : Thus saith Yahveh : . . . I have notdwelt in an house since the day that I brought upthe children of Israel out of Egypt, even to thisday, but have walked in a tent and in a tabernacle(II. Samuel vii. 6). Thus what Moses foresaw hadnot yet been accomplished. Yahveh had no houseuntil Solomon built the temple. And in order toestablish without dispute that this was the placewhich Yahveh had chosen from among the tribes toput his name there, that this was his house, Solo-mon, imitating the custom of the kings of Egyptand Assyria, put in the foundations a copy of thewhole or part of Deuteronomy. There was nobetter way of marking that his temple was

thehouse of which Yahveh had said to David and toSolomon his son : In this house, and in Jerusa-lem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes ofIsrael, will I put my name for ever (II. Kingsxxi. 7). There was the book of the law which wasfound by Hilkiah the High Priest, when greatrepairs were made to the temple under Josiah.

It was not on one occasion only that Mosespronounced the discourses which form Deuter-onomy. Several times it is said that he called theassembly together that it might hear the command-ments. After the properly legislative part,

come


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DEUTERONOMY 55the blessings and the cursings, then the renewalof the Covenant, terminating b\' calling upon themsolemnly to choose between life and death, betweenblessing and cursing. Afterwards Moses callsJoshua, and hands over to him the leadership ofthe people, then he finishes writing the words of thelaw, and entrusts the book to the Levites, who areto take charge of it and to put it beside the Ark.After this he recites a song which describes inmagnificent terms the future relations of Yahvehwith Israel. This song takes its inspiration fromthe commandments, and above all from this one : There is none other God but Me, and by itspoetic form it would be easily retained in thememory .As with Jacob, his last words are the blessingthat he addresses to those whom he could consideras his family,his sons are the twelve tribes thathe names individually,then he ascends themountain where afterwards not even his body isfound.

I will not dwell upon the manner in whichDeuteronomy was written, as it is not really of anygreat importance. As a whole the book is hisword, of which he wrote out the greater part, as hehad done for all the legislation on the course ofthe journey in the wilderness. Certain portionslook as if they were the title or the summary ofwhat is going to follow, and may have been addedby whoever put in order the tablets of Moses. Itis evident that the last chapter was not written by


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56 THE LAW OF MOSEShim, and perhaps not even that describing theblessing of the people.Nevertheless we do not hesitate to affirm thatDeuteronomy is by Moses. Eichhorn already main-tains that the book can have no other author. Ifwe throw a general glance over Moses' achieve-ments as leader and head of the people and aslegislator, we see that the discourses in Deuter-onomy are the natural and normal finish of hiscareer. After having taught for years a law ofwhich he felt the value, and the observation of whichwas a vital question for Israel, when he was aboutto abandon this people and leave it to itself, Mosescould not do otherwise than remind it in patheticterms that its very existence depended on theobservation of the commandments of Yahveh. Hehad to leave this remembrance to the Israelites towhom he had devoted himself all his life. It wasthe' last duty that he had to fulfil. One mightjustly be astonished if his life had not ended bysuch a farewell. The critics find that the languageof Moses on this occasion differs from his usualmanner of speech, and that it more resembles thetone taken by the prophets. Does the father of afamily when giving his last commands, on hisdeath bed, to those dear to him, speak in the sameway as he did during his life-time when he wasgiving them directions as to their conduct? Moseswas in an analogous situation : Deuteronomy isthe word of a dying man.

If we recall the career of Moses, all the vicissi-tudes through which he had passed, the task he


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DEUTERONOMY 57had had to fulfil, the difficulties he had had toovercome; if we reflect that the ruling passion ofhis life was the establishment in Canaan of thepeople of Israel and the institution of the w^orshipof Yahveh, we cannot help recognising to w^hat adegree Deuteronomy is in harmony with whatMoses was, and that this end was a fitting close tohis life. Deuteronomy is indeed Mosaic, and wehave seen that the same thing is true for the fourother books. That is why in spite of the sarcasmof the critics, I do not hesitate to declare that thePentateuch is the work of Moses.


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It now remains for us to examine briefly whaitthe critics have put in the place of the legislationsuch as it is presented to us in the four last booksof the Pentateuch.We must first of all realise this fundamental fact :for them there is no Mosaic legislation at all. Thismajestic edifice which we believed to have beenraised by Moses, is nothing but a construction ofrecent date, to which has been given an antiquepatina, a varnish of old age, in order that it mightinspire respect in those who considered it, and whothus attributed to it a much more remote originthan it has in reality.And here more even than in the case of Genesis,I can only reject absolutely this way of dealingwith documents, and, as Fustel de Coulanges says,of judging facts from an entirely personal andmodern point of view, according as they agreewith what the critic regards as possible or likely.What distinguishes the F^rench historian's schoolfrom the Higher Critics is a fundamental diver-gence in method, and a totally different view ofthe laws of history.The Mosaic legislation is contained in fourbooks. In the first it is said several times over thatMoses wrote down first of all the victory overAmalek, and then the commandments on tables ofstone and the laws for the use of the judges, called


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THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE 59 mishpatim. At the end of Leviticus (xxvii. 34)it is said : These are the commandments whichYahveh commanded Moses for the children ofIsrael in Mount Sinai. There is the same thingat the end of Numbers (xxxvi. 13) : These arethe commandments and the judgments, whichYahveh commanded by the hand of Moses unto thechildren of Israel in the plains of Moab. As toDeuteronomy, it is already said in the title thatthese are the words which Moses addressed toIsrael beyond Jordan, and at the end of the bookit is said that Moses finished writing the laws andgave it to the Levites that it might be placed besidethe Ark.We have mentioned above different occasionswhen it is said that Moses wrote, but what one findsfar more often is that Moses spoke to the childrenof Israel at the order of Yahveh. This is repeatedto satiety all through the four books. Sometimesin the same chapter we find two or three times ina short space the words : Yahveh spake untoMoses and said : Speak thou ... or Thou shaltsay ... In this long sequence of laws there isnot a single commandment or a single instructionwhich is not declared tO' have come from the lips ofMoses who himself taught it to the people. Noother person is ever mentioned as having made orproclaimed laws. The Decalogue alone had beenpronounced by Yahveh himself. One wondershow it could have been more clearly stated thatMoses was the author of this legislation. Onecould understand doubt if it had only been said


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6o THE LAW OF MOSESonce or twice in passing, but from one end to theother of the books it is repeated profusely.Sometimes people speak of the tradition whichattributes these books to Moses. This word canat the utmost be applied to Genesis, the author ofwhich is not named; but in this case it is a questionof a written assertion which is constantly repeated.And later on when the law is referred to, it is calledthe law of Moses. At the moment of his death,David makes a last recommendation to Solomon : Keep the charge of Yahveh thy God, to walkin his ways, to keep his statutes (Vulg., caere-monias), and his commandments (praecepta), andhis judgments {judicia), and his testimonies{testimonia), according to that which is written inthe law of Moses (I. Kings ii. 3). It is in con-formity with the law of Moses that Jehoiadapurified the temple (II. Chronicles xxiii. 18). Itis the commandments which Yahveh gave toMoses that Hezekiah sets out to observe (II. Kingsxviii. 6), and according to which he celebrates thePassover (II. Chronicles xxx. 16). Manasseh isunfaithful to the law of Moses (TI. Kings xxi. 8).Josiah, on ithe contrary, returns to Yahveh . . . according to all the law of Moses, (II. Kingsxxiii. 25) after Hilkiah had found in the temple thebook of the law of Yahveh given by Moses (II.Chronicles xxxiv. 14). Zerubbabel on returningto Jerusalem built the altar of burnt offeringaccording to that which was written in the law ofMoses (Ezra iii. 2). Ezra was a scribe ready inthe law of Moses (Ezra vii. 6). He is asked to


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THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE 6rbring from Babylon the book of the law of Mosesgiven to Israel by Yahveh, which he reads

after-wards before the congregation (Nehemiah viii.).Daniel also in his prayer twice alludes to ithe lawof Moses (ix. ii, 13).

This evidence, taken from the epoch of Mosesand later, seems fairly conclusive, if we are willing to take the texts as they were written, in theproper and literal sense. They would certainlybe considered more than sufficient for any docu-ment which was not, like the Pentateuch, sup-posed to be re-made according to a systemto which it must be adapted. This evidence,as it stands, is rejected in entirety by theHigher Criticism, which says we have in nocommandment the word of Moses written byhimself or by one of his hearers. Moses the legis-lator and his work is the creation of a certainnumber of authors of very different dates. Firstof all there is the Judaic author J, the Yahvist wholived in Judea, according to some in the 9th cen-tury, according to others in the 8th. His writing,which is chiefly historic, contains only very fewlegislative dispositions, an abridgment of the in-structions relating to the Passover, and a few ofthe laws called judgments. The Elohist E, anEphraimite of the 8th or 7th century, according tathe authors of the theory, reports the Decalogueand all the laws {mishpatim) which were enacted atthe same time. He describes at full length thescene on Sinai when the commandments wereproclaimed. The legislative part of his writing,


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62 THE LAW OF MOSESalthough not long, has none the less a great im-portance as it is above all the Decalogue.Not being able to distinguish E's part of thetext from whait belongs to J, the critics haverecourse to a new author designated JE, whosework is sometimes known as the propheticalnarrative (Bennett). He is supposed to havelived about 630 B.C. A greater number of com-mandments and laws is brought to us by the dis-courses of Moses in Deuteronomy. Most of thecritics attribute it to a pious Jew who, afflicted bythe idolatry of the people under Manasseh, com-posed a religious and ceremonial law which heplaced under the name of Moses. He hid thevolume in the temple where it was found byHilkiah in the reign of Josiah.The greater pant of the legislation, in particularall the ceremonial, is the work of a school ofpriests or jurists living at Jerusalem after thereturn from exile, and having the new temple inview. This is what is called the Priestlv Code.From this it follows that there is nothing writtenof what is still called the Mosaic legislation pre-vious to the few fragments reported by the judaicauthor of the 9th century. We must not then payany attention to the passage in the Book of Kingswhere David recommends Solomon to keep all thatought to be kept {


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THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE 63the critics to accept a passage so utterly contraryto their system.Let us now briefly examine each of thesewritings, except J and J E in which the legislativeportion is of little importance, and we will do soby founding our remarks on the principle formu-lated by a critic, Dr. Briggs* which differsvery little from our own : the writing must bein accordance with its supposed historical positionas to time and place and circumstances. That iswhat we have always maintained, the texts mustbe put back into the times when the author lived,into his environment with its manners and cus-toms. In spite of the counsels of Dr. Briggs, itseems to us that the Higher Criticism has hardlyfollowed this method.

Let us begin with the Elohist. It is to him thatwe owe the Decalogue and all the laws proclaimed.at the same time. He is an Ephraimite authorliving after the ki-ngdom of the Ten Tribes hadbeen separated from Judah. He must then havelived at Samaria which was the capital of thekingdom, or at Bethel where Jeroboam had set uphis worship. He was of those for whom theinhabitants of Jerusalem had nothing but anti-pathy. How did this Ephraimite succeed ingaining possession of the text of that part of thelaw which dominated all the rest by its elevation,and which was the real base, the corner stone, ofthe religion of the Hebrews? And the text of the

The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, p. 4.


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64 THE LAW OF MOSESEphraimite has even been considered as theoriginal text, since that of Deuteronomy is onlythe repetition of it. Where did he get it? Cer-tainly not in the Samaritan Pentateuch, which,according to the system, ought not to have existedany more than that of the Hebrews. One cannotsuppose that he had had access to the tables ofstone placed in the Ark, if they had beenpreserved.Thus according to the Higher Criticism, theinhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests of thetemple, of the house that Yahveh had chosen to-place his name there, owed the first written textof the Decalogue and the moral laws, not to oneof their own people, not to one of the Levites setin authority to keep the law, but to a stranger, aninhabitant of the schismatic kingdom where theyworshipped the golden calf or Baal. For as thetext would be of a late epoch, it would date fromthe century in which Josiah lived or little before.Before this the Israelites had no written lawexcept the few fragments reported by the judaicauthor, in which there are several observations asto the Passover and a sort of s mmary in whichare mixed one or two of the commandments, somelaws and ceremonial ordinances (Exodus xxxiv.1-18). And in writing these commandments whataim had the Ephraimite in putting forward alegislator whom he calls Moses? Whom is headdressing? Whom does he wish to influence,and what authority could he have over hishearers? How could he have succeeded in making-


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VIEWS OF THE CRITICS 65people accept his laws as categorical command-ments to which it was their imperative duty tO'submit? It is impossible to find a reply to suchquestions.

Instead of these unlikely and strange supposi-tions of the Higher Criticism, is it not much morereasonable to accept simply what the 'text says ?Moses wrote the Decalogue on tables of stonewhich were placed in the Ark. As for the rest ofthe law, he also wrote that according to themanner of the time, on tablets which he handedover to the Levites to place beside the Ark.We have seen that Deuteronomy, the last dis-cou

the law of moses

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