GAZA.-Josh. xv. 47.; Judges i. 18: xvi. 21.; Jer. xlvil. 5.; Zeph. 11. 4. ; Zech. ix .5.; Acts. vill. 26

Ver. 19. And she made him sleep upon her knees.

It is very amusing to see a full-grown son, or a husband, asleep on his mother's or wife's knees. The plan is as follows: the female sits cross-legged on the carpet or mat, and the man having laid himself down, puts his head in her Cap, and she gently taps, strokes, sings, and sooths him to sleep.-ROBERTS.

Ver. 21. But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison-house.

With the Greeks and Asiatics, the way of putting out the eyes, or blinding, was not by pulling or cutting out the eyes, as some have imagined; but by drawing, or holding a red-hot iron before them. This method is still in use in Asia. According to Chardin, however, the pupils of the eyes were pierced and destroyed on such occasions. But Thevenot says, that "the eyes in these barbarous acts are taken out whole, with the point of a dagger, and carried to the king in a basin." He adds, that, "as the king sends whom he pleases to do that cruel office, some princes are so butchered by unskilful hands, that it costs them their lives." In Persia it is no unusual practice for the king to punish a rebellious city or province by exacting so many pounds of eyes; and his executioners accordingly go and scoop out from every one they meet, till they have the weight required.-BURDER.

The custom of daily grinding their corn for the family, shows the propriety of the law: "No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge, for he taketh a man's life to pledge;" because if he take either the upper or the nether millstone, he deprives him of his daily provision, which cannot be prepared without them, and, by consequence, exposes him and all his house to utter destrucion. That complete and perpetual desolation which, by the just allotment of heaven, is ere long to overtake the mystical Babylon, is clearly signified by the same precept: "The sound of the millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee." The means of subsistence being entirely destroyed, no human creature shall ever occupy the ruined habitations more. In the book of Judges, the sacred historian alludes, with characteristic accuracy, to several circumstances implied in that custom, where he describes the fall of Abimelech. A woman of Thebez, driven to desperation by his furious attack on the tower, started up from the mill at which she was grinding, seized the upper millstone, () and rushing to the top of the gate, cast it on his head, and fractured his skull. This was the feat of a woman, for the mill is worked only by females: it is not a piece of a millstone, but the rider, the distinguishing name of the upper millstone, which literally rides upon the other and is a piece or division of the mill: it was a stone of "two feet broad," and therefore fully sufficient, when thrown from such a height, to produce the effect mentioned in the narrative. It displays also the vindictive contempt which suggested the punishment of Samson, the captive ruler of Israel. The Philistines, with barbarous contumely, compelled him to perform the meanest service of a female slave; they sent him to grind in the prison, but not for himself alone; this, although extremely mortifying to the hero, had been more tolerable; they made him grinder for the prison, while the vilest malefactor was permitted to look on and join in the cruel mockery of his tormentors. Samson, the ruler and avenger of Israel, labours, as Isaiah foretold the virgin daughter of Babylon should labour: "Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; there is no throne, (no seat for thee,) Ŏ daughter of the Chaldeans... Take the millstones and grind meal," but not with the wonted song: "Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness," there to conceal thy vexation and disgrace.ΡΑΧΤΟΝ.

Ver. 25. And it came to pass, when their hearts were merry, that they said, Call for Samson, that he may make us sport.

"By this time all the kaavy in that house was exhausted, the drinkers therefore removed to another, and Staus, the

prisoner, was told to follow; his legs were then tied together, and he was told to jump, while they laughed and shouted, See, our meat is jumping. He asked if this was the place where he was to die. No, his master replied; but these things were always done with foreign slaves. Having seen him dance, they now ordered him to sing; he sung a hymn; they bade him interpret it, and he said it was in praise of God. They then reviled his God; their blasphemies shocked him, and he admired in his heart the wonderful indulgence and long-suffering of God towards them." (Southdey's Brazil.) Don Gabriel de Cardenas gives an account nearly similiar of the treatment of prisoners by the Iroquois Indians. He describes the sufferings of ather Bresano, a Spanish priest, who had the misfortune to be captured by them. As soon as he arrived at the place of assembly, they inflicted many wounds, and treated him in the most cruel manner; as soon as the warriors appeared, he was commanded to sing like the other prisoners; he was also commanded to dance: in vain he excused himself on the plea of inability. Forced into the middle of the circle by these barbarians, he was by one ordered to sing, by another to dance; if he persisted in keeping silence, he was cruelly beaten, and when he attempted to comply with their requests, his treatment was nearly the same. For upward of a month during their revels, he endured the most exquisite sufferings, which were to have been terminated by his being burnt to death, had not one of the chiefs mitigated his sentence, and delivered him to an old woman in place of her grandson, who had been killed some years before.-BURDER.

Ver. 27. Now the house was full of men and women; and all the lords of the Philistines were there and there were upon the roof about three thousand men and women, that beheld while Samson made sport.

The method of building in the East, may assist us in accounting for the particular structure of the temple or house of Dagon, and the great number of people that were buried in its ruins, by pulling down the two principal pillars upon which it rested. About three thousand persons crowded the roof, to behold while the captive champion of Israel made sport to his triumphant and unfeeling enemies. Samson, therefore, must have been in a court or area beneath; and consequently, the temple will be of the same kind with the ancient revn, or sacred enclosures, which were only surrounded, either in part or on all sides, with some plain or cloistered buildings. Several palaces and dou-wanos, as the halls of justice are called in these countries, are built in this fashion, in whose courts, wrestlers exhibit for the amusement of the people, on their public festivals and rejoicings; while the roofs of these cloisters are crowded with spectators, that behold their feats of strength and agility. When Dr. Shaw was at Algiers, he frequently saw the inhabitants diverted in this manner, upon the root of the dey's palace; which, like many more of the same quality and denomination, has an advanced cloister over against the gate of the palace, made in the form of a large pent-house, supported only by one or two contiguous pillars in the front, or else in the centre. In such open structures as these, the great officers of state distribute justice, and transact the public affairs of their provinces. Here, likewise, they have their public entertainments, as the lords of the Philistines had in the temple of their god. Supposing, therefore, that in the house of Dagon, was a cloistered building of this kind, the pulling down of the front or centre pillars which supported it, would alone be attended with the catastrophe which happened to the Philistines.-PAX

decline;" "I must not go till the declining time."-ROB

ERTS.

Ver. 27. And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way; and, behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold. 28. And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going but none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place. 29. And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel. 30. And it was so, that all that saw it said, There was no such deed done nor seen, from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day: consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds.

The interpreters say little or nothing of the real views of the Levite, in thus cutting to pieces the body of his concubine, and sending a part to each tribe of Israel. They only say that the Levite was induced to this seeming outrage, merely "to excite a general indignation against the authors of so black a crime; that he committed no sin in thus maltreating a dead body, though it was his own concubine's; as being so far from having any intention to offer it the least indignity, that he only considered the reparation of the ignominy with which his concubine had been treated: and that, after all, the success fully justified his action and conduct." It is certain that the Levite's motives were good and regular he intended to unite the whole nation in vengeance of a crime in which it was interested, and which covered it with infamy; but it was not, as some have thought, the horror of the spectacle which the Levite held forth to the view of everybody, which produced this effect, and constrained their minds; that is, it was not the sight of these human limbs, thus cut and torn to pieces, which made the Jews conspire, and obliged them to take a striking vengeance of so black a crime.

The bare relation of an outrage so enormous, was sufficient to put the whole nation to the necessity of exacting punishment for an infamy of this nature: natural equity spoke for the Levite; the most sacred rights were violated to the utmost; never was adultery more glaringly committed, or more insolently countenanced: it had involved a whole tribe; a general and universal punishment, therefore, was indispensably necessary; the text of scripture is express in a hundred places; and the Israelites could not be ignorant. But they might be checked by the extent of the punishment; by the great number, the credit, the forces and power of the offenders; by the natural commiseration which is felt for those who are of the same blood; in a word, by an aversion to destroy a city, and to involve it utterly in the vengeance due to it. To oblige the nation to hear none of these reasons, the Levite sought and seized a method which might bind it, and by no means allow it to avoid his pursuits; which, in short, might put them to the indispensable necessity of espousing his and his concubine's interests, or to speak more properly, of taking up the cause of both. The only part, then, which he had to take, was to cut in pieces either the body of his wife, as he did, or else that of an ox, or other like animal, which had been either devoted, or offered in sacrifice, and to send a part of it to each tribe. In consequence of this, every tribe entered into a covenant and indissoluble engagement with them, to see justice done him, for the injury he had received. This is what the interpreters of scripture seem not to have known, and which it is necessary to explain. The ancients had several ways of uniting themselves together by the strictest ties, and these ties lasted for as long as the parties had stipulated. Among these, there were two principal; both admirably well described in the sacred books. The first is hat sacrifice of Abraham, the circumstances of which are mentioned, Gen. xv. 9, &c. The second is as follows:-A

bullock was offered in sacrifice, or devoted: it was cut in pieces and distributed; all who had a piece of this sacrificed or devoted bullock, were from thenceforward connected, and were to concur in the carrying on the affair which had given place to the sacrifice. But this sacrifice or devoting, and this division, was variously practised, which also produced engagements somewhat different. If he who was at the expense of the sacrifice or devoting, were a public person, in a high office-a king, for instance, a prince, or judge that is to say, a chief magistrate, or had the principal authority in a city, or state; he sent, of his own accord, a piece of the victim or animal devoted, to all who were subject to him; and by this act they were obliged to enter intc his views, to obey him, and to execute his orders without examination, or pretending difficulty or incapacity. If, on the contrary, the sacrifice were offered by a private person, devoted portions, entered into a strict engagement to espouse those only who voluntarily took a piece of the sacrificed or the interest of him who sacrificed or devoted, and to employ therein their fortunes and their persons. Connexions of this kind derived their force from the deities in honour of whom the sacrifice was offered, or the devotion made: from the true God, when the devotion was made by the Jews; from idols, when the sacrifice was offered by the gentiles. The devotion was adopted by the Jews, and the sacrifice by the pagans. This difference betwixt them, produced a second: the Jews were content to invoke and take to witness the Lord; whereas the pagans never failed to place in the midst of them, upon an altar of green turf, the deities who presided over their covenant; and these kind of deities were called common, because in fact they were the common deities of all who are thus united, and received in common the honours which they thought proper to pay them.

These facts place the Levite's intents in their full light. His cutting in pieces the body of his concubine, was an anathema, a devoting which he made to the Lord; and his sending a part of the pieces to each tribe, clearly signified that he considered all the tribes as subject to the same anathema. God authorized these kinds of consecrations. The scripture is full of examples, which represent sometimes persons, sometimes whole nations, whom he had himself smitten with a curse. He would have no sacrifices. however, of human victims; but he approved of devotions to death and yet, to consider both in certain points of view, they amounted nearly to the same thing. Again, devotion to death was a much stronger obligation than the promise of a sacrifice. A sacrifice vowed might be dispensed with, and redeemed; whereas, so soon as the anathema was pronounced, the party was for ever bound, and there was no room for redemption, Lev. xxvii. 28, 29. It is certain that the Levite had a right to devote his wife to death, while she lived; much more reasonably, then, might he devote her body when dead. It is so much the more probable that he really did so, as there was no other method of devotion and anathema that could induce the whole nation to be bound to declare itself in his favour. This anathema, as has been already remarked, extended not only to the body of his wife, but also to the twelve tribes, whom he involved in it, in case they took not effectual means to avenge both the indignity which the Benjamites of Gibeah would have offered him, and the horrible outrages which they had committed upon his concubine. What confirms this opinion, is, that in fact the twelve tribes assembled subscribed to this devotion. First, by taking up arms, as they did. Secondly, by swearing before the ark, not to return to their tents or into their houses, till they had punished the offenders, Judges xx. 8, 9. Thirdly, by putting to the sword all that remained in the city of Gibeah, both man and beast, and burning all the cities and towns of Benjamin, Judges xx. 48. Fourthly, by swearing with an imprecation, not to give their daughters in marriage to the children of Benjamin, and by cursing him who should do so, ch. xxi. 1-18. Fifthly, and lastly, by engaging themselves by a terrible oath, to kill every Israelite who should not take arms against the Benjamites, ib. ver. 5.

These are all of them marks of anathema and devoting; and it would be to shut one's eyes to the light, not to discern in them the most express anathemas and devotions. Some, perhaps, will object, that a private individual, as was this Levite, could not, of his own authority, subject to the anathema his whole nation. It is true, this Levite could devote

to death only his wives, his children, and his slaves, and submit to the anathema only his fields, vineyards, houses, household stuff, and, in short, his goods and what belonged to him. His authority extended no further. Only a judge of the Israelites, or their king, or perhaps the high-priest, could do this. So that the Levite had no intention to devote his whole nation, as he devoted the body of his concubine. He included his authority within its natural bounds; he contented himself with declaring, by the sending the flesh and limbs of his concubine, that the whole nation was subject to the anathema: this anathema was pronounced by Ged himself, and clearly declared in the law; if just measures were not taken to punish in a body the infamous crimes of the Benjamites, these crimes no way yielded to those of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, so solemnly anathematized. A like fate, therefore, was to await them.

God had expressly forbidden adultery, and had placed it in the number of those crimes, of which the simple fact rendered the offenders accursed. They were not only to be put to death, (Lev. xx. 10; Deut. xxii. 22, &c.,) but also to perish from among God's people, Lev. 19; that is, they were to be cut off from the synagogue; they could no longer pretend to the promises of the covenant, or the prerogatives of true and faithful Israelites; in a word, they were to be excommunicated and anathematized. The nation, therefore, could not leave unpunished the crimes of the inhabitants of Gibeah, without charging themselves with the crime, and whatever was attached to it. The Levite, by announcing the crime, by declaring the obligation which there lay to punish, and by placing in full view the anathema which they incurred who should refuse to league, to contribute to the effectual punishment, did nothing more than he might do; nothing inconsistent with his condition, his rank, his quality, his dignity: he was even obliged to do so by his function of Levite: he explained the text of the law, 2 Esdras viii. 9. There was, properly speaking,

no other method than that which he took, to specify the greatness of the crime of the inhabitants of Gibeah; and he confined himself to that. The whole nation instantly understood it as a universal anathema, without being informed of the nature of the crime which had incurred it. Thus, it is remarkable, that all the tribes expressly assembled at Mizpeh, to know of the Levite what was the mat. ter. He answered, "That the Benjamites of Gibeah had threatened to kill him, unless he consented to their infamous passion; that, moreover, they had injured his concubine with so mad and incredible a brutality, that, in short, she had died of it." Judg. xx. 3-5. Upon this, every one was convinced of the reality of the anathema, and they not only all obliged themselves by oath not to return to their houses, without chastising the inhabitants of Gibeah, in a manner suitable to the extent and blackness of their crime, ver. 10; but also to treat, in like manner, all those of the nation who should not marth with the army of the Lord against the Benjamites of Gibeah, ch. xxi. 5; which was, in fact, executed with regard to the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead, who were all put to the sword, without regard to sex or age, ver. 10. Thus is the anathema sufficiently made out.-CRITICA BIBLICA.

CHAPTER XXI.

Ver. 19. Then they said, Behold, there is a feast of the LORD in Shiloh yearly, in a place which is on the north side of Beth-el, on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Beth-el to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah.

"On the east side." The Hebrew has, "towards the sunrising." Does a person ask the way to a place which lies towards the east, he will be told to go to the rising place, to the rising sky. If to the west, walk for the departed place, the gone down place.-ROBERTS.

CHAPTER I.

Ver. 11. Are there any more sons in my womb?

Sc said Naomi to the widows of her sons who were following her. When a mother has lost her son, should his widow only come occasionally to see her, the mother will be displeased, and affect to be greatly surprised when she does come. "Do I again see you!" "Is it possible!" "Are there any more sons in my womb ?" But the mother-in-law also uses this form of expression when she does not wish to see the widow.-ROBERTS.

Ver. 17. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.

The dreadful practice of widows burning themselves on the funeral pile with the dead bodies of their husbands, has made the declaration of the text familiar to the native mind. Hence a wife, when her husband is sick, should he be in danger, will say, "Ah! if he die, I also will die; I will go with him; yes, my body, thou also shalt be a corpse." A slave, also, to a good master, makes use of the same language. Husbands sometimes boast of the affection of their wives, and compare them to the eastern stork, which if it lose its mate in the night is said immediately to shriek and die.-ROBERTS.

CHAPTER II.

Ver. 2. And Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi, Let me now go to the field, and glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace. And she said unto her, Go, my daughter.

The word glean comes from the French glaner, to gather ears or grains of corn. This was formerly a general custom in England and Ireland: the poor went into the fields, and collected the straggling ears of corn after the reapers; and it was long supposed that this was their right, and that the law recognised it: but although it has been an old custom, it is now settled by a solemn judgment of the Court of Common Pleas, that a right to glean in the harvest-field cannot be c.aimed by any person at common law. Any person may permit or prevent it in his own grounds. By certain acts of Henry VIII., gleaning and leasing are so restricted, as to be, in fact, prohibited in that part of the united kingdom.-BURDER.

Ver. 4. And, behold, Boaz came from Bethlenem,

and said unto the reapers, The LORD be with you. And they answered him, The LORD bless thee.

He went into the field to see how his workmen per formed their service, and to encourage them by his