NUMBER 563
Isaac and Esau marry at the age of forty (Gn 25 26%) ; peering to Ex 2" ‘Moses went out unto his brethren when he was grown,’ but according to Ac 7* ‘when he was full forty years old’; Caleb says (Jos 14”), “ Sorty years old was I when Moses sent me,’ etc., and Ish-bosheth was forty years old when he began to reign (2S 910), Again, we meet with 3 times forty years in Gn 6%, and in the life of Moses, Ex 77, Ac 7+, Dt 347; οἵ, ἔτεα és ἐείκοσι kal ἑκατὸν τοὺς πολλοὺς τῶν ᾿Ιχθυοφάγων ἀπικνέεσθαι (Herod. iii. 23). Further, reigns and other periods of forty years present themselves in Jg 34 5% 3! 3% 13', 1S 4'8, 2S 54, 1 K 2" 114 (| 1 Ch 2977, 2 Ch 9%) 24), and a reign of forty years is attributed also to Saul in Ac 137! and Jos. Ant. VI. xiv. 9. Then we have the ‘forty’ years of the wilderness wanderings, Ex 16%, Nu 14%". 3213, Dt 278? 294, Jos 5%, Am 219 5, Ps 95", Neh 92, But in other instances than these the number ‘fori ἐν ᾿1β used with not less surprising frequency, see Ex 9418 2619 34% (cf. Lv 12%), Nu 13”, Dt 9% 12-1835 1010 953, Jg 12% 18 1716 (in 2S 167 ‘forty’ as a familiar number has certainly been
written in place of ‘four’; ef. the \O35| of the
Pesh. and the τέσσαρες of Jos. Ant. vil. ix. 1), 1 Καὶ 5° 7® 198, 2K 8%, Ezk 45 29-13 413 462, Jon 3%, Neh 5", 1 Ch 12%; τεσσεράκοντα Mt 42, Ac 13 2318. 2), Jth 14, Bel (LXX)?2, Apoe. Bar 764, 2 Es 14%; syanx ‘forty years,’ Mésha' inscrip. 1. 8; ef. the ‘forty’ days of the Egyptian embalming (Gn 50*; Diod. Sic [ed. Bekker], 1. 91: πλείους τῶν τριάκοντα) ; Herod. 1, 202 (ὁ ᾿Αράξης στόμασι ἐξερεύγεται τεσσεράκοντα), ii. 29 (ὁδοιπορίην ποιήσεται ἡμερῶν τεσσεράκοντα), iv. 73 (among the Scythians ἡμέρας τεσσεράκοντα οἱ ἰδιῶται περιάγονται, ἔπειτα θάπτονται. Many other in- stances from Greek and Roman writers have been collected by Hirzel (1.6. pp. 6ff., 57f.). Further, Brugsch (Steininschrift*, ete. p. 313) remarks that ‘forty years’ means in the Persian language even at the present day nothing more than ‘ many years.’ ‘The well-known animal which we call centipede (Ger. Tausendfuss) bears amongst the Persians the name Tschihil-pdi, i.e. ‘‘ forty foot,” and the Turks call the same creature Kyrk ajakly, i.e. “ forty- footed ”’ (Hirzel, U.c. p. 41). Note, also, the ‘ fort thousand’ in Jos 4%, Jg 58, 2S 10%, 1 Καὶ 4%, 1 Ch 12%, 1 Mac 124), 2 Mac 5%, Jos. Ant. VII. xiii. 1. The way to understand this use of the number ‘forty’ is indicated in the OT itself. A whole eneration, with few exceptions, was doomed to ie in the wilderness (Nu 1453: 26%), and this sojourn in the wilderness of the Sinaitic Peninsula lasted for (about) ‘forty’ years (Nu 14% 20%". 3218 33%, Dt 27 ete.). Consequently forty years is the approximate expression for the duration of a generation (called in Heb. τ; Arab. ddrun, lit. meplodos). Besides, from the frequent notices that such and such a one married at the age of forty or entered upon an office at that age (Gn 25” ete.) and that a somewhat prolonged life consisted of three times forty years, we gather that the notion pre- vailed that the full ἘΕΞΘΉΞΟΝ of human life was reached about the fortieth year, the so-called ἀκμή. In any case, this thought is expressed in the words ‘till he reached his full strength (‘asuddahu) and attained the age of forty years’ (Koran, xlvi. 14)—words which explain the tradition that Mohammed received his call to be a prophet at the age of forty, as well as account for the very fre- quent employment of ‘forty’ by the Arabs as a round number (Hirzel, /.c. p. 39). The idea of the ἀκμή of human life is the source from which Hirzel (1.6. p. 62) derives the explanation of the remark- able prevalence of ‘forty.’ Perhaps, however, it ought to be added that Lepsius (Chronol. der
Egypter, p. 15) assumes that the Heb. ‘arba'im ΡΥ have ound favour on account of its assonance with rabbim, ‘many.’ But the view of Pott
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ὑδέ
(Zahlmethode, p. 99), that ‘forty’ as the product of 20 x 2 abeeniet preference because of the earlier predominance of ‘twenty,’ cannot be established at least for Semitic peoples. Too slender a basis belongs also to the theory of J. Grimm (Rechts- alterthiimer, p. 219), that ‘forty’ arose from 3x 13+1 (see, more fully, Hirzel, /.c. p. 61), and as little are there clear grounds for the supposition that ‘four, as the number of the square, of the
uarters of the globe, and of the four parts of the ay (ἢ, is the number of completeness’ (Bir, Symbolik des mos, Cultus, i. 155 f.).
The approximate sense we have claimed for ‘forty’ ἘΣ recently been denied by J. Ο. A. Kessler (Chronol. iudicum et primorum regum, 1882, p. 12) in the words, ‘fides historica numeri 40 annorum non dubia est; nam spius huius spatii
artes commemorantur (Dt 24, 2S 5°, 1 K 24,1 Ch
) et in eo singuli anni vel menses numerantur (Ex 19', Nu 10" 20', Dt 15). But these data would invalidate the approximate value of the number ‘forty’ only if the portions of time enumerated made up exactly a duration of forty years; cf. the τεσσεράκοντα ἔτεα of the reign of Battos of Cyrene, which, according to Herod. iv. 157-159, were made up of 2+6+32 years, and which are wrongly regarded by Hirzel (1.6. p. 50) as a fictitious number. Would the Hebrews and other peoples have used the number ‘forty’ so frequently if it had not been a roundsum? Julius Oppert, again (Salomon et ses successeurs, 1877, p. 11), fas adduced many historical parallels in defence of the exact- ness of the ‘480 years’ of 1 K 6. He considers that the Roman epublic lasted from 510-30 B.c., and the Parthian Empire from 256 B.c.-225 A.D. Now, let us grant that both these calculations are absolutely certain, although one may cast doubt both on the year B.C. 30 as the last year of the Republic of Rome and on the date assigned for the beginning of the Parthian Empire ; nevertheless, doubts are awakened when the statement is read in the Hebrew Scriptures that two events were separated by an exact space of 480 years, for, in view of the series of passages we have cited, it must be evident that ‘forty’ in Hebrew usage bore an approximate sense, and, besides, twelve eae are counted in 1 Ch 5% (Eng. 65:8]