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polluted leper. This was done: and during the seven days of her exclusion the camp remained stationary.

The distance from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea, on the southern border of Canaan, was usually reckoned not more than eleven days' journey; but as it was "the time of the first ripe grapes "when the Hebrew host arrived at Kadesh, they must have spent five or six months on this journey.

When they reached that place Moses apprised them that they were now on the borders of their promised inheritance, and exhorted them to be of good courage in the acts of war by which they were to take possession. The elders gave the very judicious advice that, before any warlike operations were commenced, twelve persons, one from each tribe, should be sent to explore the country; and this counsel, having been sanctioned by the Divine command, was carried into effect. In those days, and long after, the office of a spy was counted highly honourable, and, as a post of danger and difficulty, was sought by heroes of the highest rank.* So, in the present instance, the persons chosen for this arduous service were all men of note, "rulers" in their several tribes. The charge which Moses gave them before they departed deserves great admiration from the skill with which, in a very few words, it states the points to which it was requisite they should direct their especial attention. "Go up southward, and go up to the mountain [Lebanon], and see what the land is, and the people that dwell in it, whether they be strong or weak, few or many; and whether the land in which they dwell be good or bad; and whether they dwell in open or fenced cities; and whether the soil be fat or lean; whether there be wood or not. And be ye of good courage, and bring of the fruit of the land."+

The spies appear to have accomplished their purpose without molestation. They traversed the whole extent of the country to Lebanon. On their return southward, they passed through the valley of Eshcol, where they were so much struck by the size and beauty of the vines,‡ that they broke off a branch to take with them to the camp, and to prevent the attached clusters from being bruised, bore it between two on a staff.

After an absence of forty days they returned to the camp. The grapes, the pomegranates, and the figs, which they brought with them as specimen fruits of the promised land, must have formed a most gratifying sight to the Hebrews; for although similar fruits were not unknown in Egypt, they are far inferior both in appearance and quality to those of Palestine. It has indeed been disputed, on the authority of some ancient writers, that Egypt afforded any vines; and if this had been true, we should have had a still stronger illustration of the delight with which the Hebrews must have beheld and tasted the fruit of the very excellent vines of Palestine. But that the vine was known in Egypt, and the juice of the grape expressed, is evinced by Gen. xl. 9-11, as well as by the paintings and sculptures of that ancient country, in which vineyards and vine-arbours are often represented, and the scenes of the vintage-the gathering of the grapes, and the treading in the wine-press-are very strikingly depicted, so as to convey interesting illustrations of the various allusions to the vintage which the sacred books contain.

The description which the spies gave to their eager listeners of the country through which they had passed, was highly favourable, especially when regarded as proceeding from men who had been brought up in one of the most fertile countries in the world. They described it as a good land,-" a land flowing with milk and honey." If this account of the land, accompanied by the sight of its pleasant fruits, excited the people to advance and take possession, their zeal was too speedily damped by the further account of the great stature,(') strength, and courage of the inhabitants, and of the lofty position and strong fortifications of their cities.

A recent traveller informs us that on coming from Arabia, where the villages are, for the most part, found in valleys, he was much struck by seeing the villages and towns of Palestine standing loftily upon the hills. The same circumstance seems to have been strongly remarked

See Homer, passim.

Num xii. 17-20.

See the cut at the head of this chapter.

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Israelites themselves, they were exposed to the same conditions which influenced the development of the Egyptian figure; and it may be remarked that the same circumstances which tended to promote their increase in Egypt, tended not less to check their growth. To this we may add that, even at the present day, very few men among the Jews rise above the middle European stature, while a more than ordinary proportion fall below it. The same absence of tall or large figures is also observed among the Arab tribes, which makes them appear rather a small race, although they generally seem to reach our medium standard. From this we think it may result that the appearance among the Canaanites of a much larger proportion of tall and large built men than they had been accustomed to see, would not inadequately account for the report of the Hebrew spies, after due allowance has been made for the exaggeration which their fears produced.

The people were filled with alarm by this account. They appear to have been unprepared to expect that any formidable obstacles would be opposed to their taking possession of the land promised to their fathers; and, utterly unmindful that the promises of their Divine King, confirmed by their past experience of his power, assured to them the victory in every conflict undertaken with his consent, they regarded as hopeless the enterprise before them, and abandoned themselves to despair. With extraordinary infatuation and cowardice, they believed themselves certain to fall by the sword of the Canaanites, and that their women and children would be enslaved. They even went so far as to suspect that this was really the Divine intention concerning them, and that it was only because the Lord hated them that he had brought them out of the land of Egypt. Caleb and Joshua, who had acted as spies for the two leading tribes of Judah and Ephraim, vainly endeavoured to counteract the effect which the report of the other ten had produced. Vainly did they assure the people that the obstacles were by no means so formidable as they had been led to apprehend; and as vainly did Moses direct their attention to the almighty power of that arm by which they had hitherto been guided and delivered. They would not be encouraged. This immense host spent the following night in tears, crying at times, "O that we had died in Egypt!" or "O that we might die in this wilderness!"

The general discontent and alarm soon ripened into a most dangerous insurrection, and at last they formed the monstrous resolution of appointing a leader to conduct them back to their bondage in Egypt. They, indeed, went so far as actually to appoint a leader (perhaps one of the ten spies) for the purpose.* "Verily this race were well worthy the rods of their Egyptian taskmasters, to whom they were so willing to return," we might say, did we not consider that it was by these rods that their spirits had been broken. Spiritless, however, as they were,-unfit as they were for action, and unwilling to be guided, the gross infatuation of their present course is most amazing. When they turned to fulfil their desperate purpose, could they expect that cloud would continue to guide them, the manna to feed them, and the "flinty rocks to pour forth water for them? And, if they were unmindful of these things, what reception could they expect to meet from the Egyptians-all whose first-born had been slain, and whose fathers, brothers, and sons had perished in the Red Sea on their account? They might well expect that, if their lives were spared by that unforgiving people, their bondage would be made far more bitter, and their chains far heavier than they ever had been. When their intention was announced, Moses and Aaron fell to the ground on their faces before all the people. Caleb and Joshua rent their clothes with grief and indignation, and renewed their former statements and remonstrances; but so mad were the people that they were about to stone these faithful men, and probably Moses and Aaron, who lay prostrate before them, as well, when-in that moment of intense excitement-the glory of JEHOVAH appeared in the cloud above the tabernacle, arresting every purpose, and infusing a new and present fear into every heart.

From that cloud their doom was pronounced. At the vehement entreaties of Moses their lives were not swept away at one immediate stroke. But still, it should be even as they had said. All that generation-all the men above twenty years of age when they left Egypt,

Neh. ix 17.

-should be cut off from their portion in that rich inheritance which they had so basely intended to forego; they should all die in that wilderness-all leave their bones amidst its sands and solitudes, among which it was their doom to wander forty years (dated from the

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time of leaving Egypt), until none of them remained alive. From this extraordinary doom, which fixed to every man the extreme limit of his possible existence, and avowedly gave time no object but their deaths, Joshua and Caleb were excepted. Thus the two on whom they were about to inflict death, were destined to survive them all, and to become the chiefs and leaders of the new generation, on whom the inheritance of the promises was to devolve. The other ten spies, whose discouragements had formed the proximate cause of the insurrection, were smitten by some sudden death, in which the people recognised a punishment from God.

The people were thus made sensible of the folly of their past conduct. But this conviction had not, in the first instance, any salutary operation. For they attributed this doom to the cowardice they had displayed, rather than to its real cause, their distrust of the sufficiency of their Divine King to perform the promises he had made. Therefore, with some hope, perhaps, of reversing the sentence which had been passed upon them, they valorously determined to attack the enemy forthwith-for the border Canaanites had already taken alarm, and, without taking any offensive measures against so apparently formidable a host as that of the Hebrews, remained in a state of preparation on the hills, ready to guard the passes of the country. Moses earnestly dissuaded them from this enterprise, as contrary to the declared intention of God, as well as against his command, that they should withdraw from the frontier and retire into the desert. But they persisted; perhaps from a latent desire, in their present fit of desperation, to try whether they might not be able even on their own resources, to arrest the doom which had gone forth against them. They were repulsed by the Canaanites with great slaughter. The ebullition of courage under which they had acted would have been but of short duration, even had it been attended with better success in the first instance. By their repulse, they were very forcibly instructed that they were,

of themselves, unequal to the conquest of the country; and were hence induced to yield a sullen acquiescence in a measure, with which they would hardly have been satisfied unless this salutary conviction of their own weakness had been realized.

Thus they turned from the borders of " the pleasant land" to wander for thirty-eight years in the Arabian wildernesses.

The history of these years is very briefly told in the original narrative. In Numbers xxxiii. there is a list of the principal stations of the Israelites, from the time they left Egypt till they arrived on the banks of the Jordan. It, therefore, includes the places of their principal encampment during these years of wandering. Much pains have been bestowed by some writers on the investigation of this list, and in the endeavour to trace the various names which are there given. The result scarcely seems worth the labour. The names cannot be traced; and if they could, it appears of little consequence to know at what places the Hebrew host encamped while they were wandering to and fro in the deserts, between the Sinai mountains and the borders of Canaan, without any definite purpose, save to consume the time and the people, or to seek an exchange of pasture ground.

During the long interval of the wandering, several new laws were promulgated. Only two of the incidents which occurred during this period are deemed of sufficient consequence to be recorded; and of these, neither the time nor place is named.

The first was the case of the sabbath-breaker, already alluded to, (p. 266), who was found gathering sticks on the sabbath-day. Although this crime had been forbidden, no punishment had been annexed to it; and therefore the man was kept in custody till the Divine commands could be taken. The order received was that he should be taken without the camp, and there stoned to death. This was done.

The other was an affair of far greater importance; as it indicated a wide-spread dissatisfaction among the hereditary chiefs of the people, ending in a most formidable conspiracy to wrest the priesthood from Aaron, and the civil power from the hand of Moses.

One Korah, a family-chief of the same branch of the Levitical tribe to which Moses and Aaron belonged, seems to have been the head of this conspiracy. The other leaders were Dathan, Abiram and On, all of the tribe of Reuben; who were probably induced to come forward on the ground of the right of primogeniture-the extinction of which by Jacob they would not seem to have recognized to the extent which the existing distribution of civil and sacerdotal authority indicated. No less than two hundred and fifty more of the principal and most influential chiefs of different tribes were drawn into this combination; and it seems to have been popular with the people as soon as its object was avowed.

That object appears to us to have been misunderstood by all the writers to whose statements on the subject we have had occasion to refer. We find it stated as an attempt of the conspiring chiefs to usurp the sacerdotal functions, or else the civil and sacerdotal functions as jointly exercised by Moses and Aaron. But we cannot see on what claim of this sort, chiefs of tribes so opposed in interests as those of Levi and Reuben, were likely to agree, and not only they, but chiefs of probably all the different tribes as well. If the pretension was the priesthood, who was the claimant ? Not Korah; for then would the Reubenites, who had the hereditary claim, have supported his claim? Not the Reubenites; for then was the proud Levite likely to support this new claim to a dignity which was already in his tribe? And then, if the object had been the possession of paramount civil power by either of these parties, was this an object which the two most powerful tribes, Judah and Ephraim, were likely to support, or which they were not far more likely to oppose. We consider that it was, altogether, an attempt to overthrow the general government as established by the law; and that this took the form of an attack of the priesthood, chiefly because that that was the more obvious and established feature of the general government. The authority of Moses was probably felt to be merely an incident, for the transmission of which the law made no provision. Although, therefore, even his authority was not unassaulted, it was less the ostensible object of the combination than that of his brother. Under this view it will not appear that any one of the confederated parties aspired to the priesthood; but that there was a general conspiracy among

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