statistical information, allotments of territory, and an itinerary. It is thus the Constitutional History of Israel. With other peoples the constitution is a thing of gradual development, an unfolding which follows the progress of the nation through all its stages. But in the case of Israel its constitution is elaborated once for all in this its period of discipline in the wilderness; and the constitutional lore of its literature is massed together at this one point of its history.

I fear that in this volume the mode of presentation I have thought necessary to adopt will try the reader's patience. He will be disappointed, in approaching a great period of a nation's history, to find what seems a rivulet of narrative running through a wide meadow of documentary supplement. But a little attention will show him that this outer appearance is true to the logical character of the content. If the purpose of the sacred history was only the story of Israel in the wilderness, then certainly several incidents the relation of which I have put into small type might stand as part of the main historic narrative. But the history that stretches from Genesis to Chronicles must be looked at as a whole. In that whole the portion here under consideration appears as the constitutional organisation of the people; constitutional enactment becomes the governing interest, and the incidents gravitate to the enactments in which they find their importance.

tance.

Thus the reader must guard against supposing that the use of small type in this volume indicates inferior imporSome of the sections so presented are no doubt of minor interest. But under this form will appear the Law of the Ten Commandments from Sinai; the Covenant of the Second Table, with the incidents of popular rebellion, of Divine anger and propitiation, which led up to its institution; the Covenant of Holiness, with its impressive promises and warnings; in a mere legal assignment of Levitical and priestly functions will be found incorporated the stirring events of the rebellion of Korah; a whole Midianite war is narrated as a preliminary to a Law of Spoils. In this Constitutional History it would be more nearly correct to regard the supplementary sections as the main interest, and the narrative as secondary.

This thread of historic narrative follows a few incidents of the march from Egypt, incidents bringing out the miraculous rain of manna, and the miraculous provision of water in the dry wilderness. So we are brought to Sinai, the great centre to the law-giving portion of the history of Israel. This has been book three in my arrangement of the whole: The March from Egypt to Sinai. When the narrative of the journeyings recommences we have book four, The Thirty-eight Years' Wandering in the wilderness. Thus the turning-point in the whole period is the incident of the Spies, the murmurings arising out of which led to this backward march, until the

generation enervated by Egypt should be wholly consumed, and a new generation, growing up under the growing constitution of Moses, should be prepared to take possession of their Land of Promise. In contrast to former pictures of murmuring and mutiny we now get events which bring out the glad surprise of the new people as their strength is tried against the gigantic Sihon and Og, and the foes are utterly exterminated. The future history is partly anticipated by the further incidents which describe a portion of Israel as settling the conquered lands on the east of Jordan.

Two incidents stand out from the rest, in which the narrative takes upon itself the graphic fulness that belongs to epic poetry. The choice of the two illustrates how biblical history uses epic as a means of historic emphasis. The first of the two presents the actual deliverance from Egypt. We can follow as if they were contemporary events the deliberate attempt to exterminate a whole people; the marvellous preservation of the babe Moses; his life choice between Egyptian royalty and the championship of an enslaved people; his exile and solitude, made the scene of the revelation to him of the new Divine Name. All the natural symptoms follow of a private individual nerving himself with difficulty for an heroic task. Then the tone of the story rises to the chain of miracles which is to crush the obstinacy of an imperial power; the very elements of nature, as the Wisdom of Solomon reflects,

interchanging like musical modulations to compass the freedom of God's people. There is the final night, with its rapid transitions between panic and rejoicing; until the final culmination of the story is reached in the Song of Deliverance, Moses and the men of Israel, in augmenting stanzas, celebrating with growing fulness the inexhaustible wonder of the theme, while Miriam and the women fill up the intervals between stanzas with the dancing refrain of ecstasy:

Sing ye to the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously:
The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.

Forty years of toilsome travel and legislative history pass, and once more the strong light of epic picture is turned upon the same people in the Story of Balaam,the Balaam appropriately chosen in the prophetic drama of Micah to be Jehovah's witness to his dealings with his people. Balaam belongs to the scattered worshippers of Jehovah unconnected with the Chosen Nation; he is brought by the enemies of Israel, a stranger to all that has happened, to curse in the powerful name of his invisible God this rising people of the desert. He stands for this purpose on the solitary mountain peak, from which the encampment of the sons of Israel is visible on the plain below. But the sight he sees overpowers him, and the curse becomes a blessing. In strains of prophetic rapture he sings of a people dwelling alone, not to be reckoned

amongst the nations; their numbers are countless as the dust; their ordered camp in contrast with the rude tents of the nomad peoples is as aloes which the LORD has planted, as cedar trees beside the waters. It is God who has brought them out of Egypt, and the shout of a king is amongst them. There is no divination against the sons of Jacob; like the wild-ox they shall smite through their enemies. And a prophetic vision succeeds, a future in which the foes of Israel fall helpless all around, until the vision becomes dim by the very extent of its horizon:

Alas, who shall live when God doeth this?

Two vivid pictures, of slaves under the taskmasters of Pharaoh, of an irresistible people just about to enter upon its career of conquest, with the long-drawn process of constitutional development which has transformed the one into the other: this makes the form in which The Exodus is presented in the biblical history of the Chosen Nation.

The text, as always, is that of the Revised Version, with its marginal alternatives. For the use of it I express my obligations to the University Presses of Oxford and Cambridge. A Reference Table at the end of the volume connects the arrangement of this edition with the chapters and verses of the Bible.