Where such exact order and instruction existed, it may not be doubted that in military affairs, upon which, in the tirst years of emancipation, so much of future power and success was to depend, measures no less appropriate were taken, and that, with the Egyptian model universally known, similar institutions or others equally efficient were adopted b\' the Israelites. Great tribal ensigns they had, and thence we may infer the existence of others for subordinate divisions. Like the Egyptians, they could move in columns and form well- ordered ranks in deep fronts of battle; and tliey acted upon the best suggestions of human ingenuity united with physical daring, except when expressly ordered to trust to divine interposition. The force of circumstances caused in time modifications of importance to be made, where doctrine had interfered with what was felt to hinge on political necessities; but even then they were long and urgentlj' wanted before they took place, al- though the people in religion were constantly disregard- ing the most important points, and forsaking that God who, they all knew and believed, had taken them out of bondage to make them a great nation. Tluis, al- though, from the time the tribes of Reuben and Manas- seh received their allotment east of the Jordan, the pos- session of horses became in some measure necessary to defend their frontier, still the people persisted for ages in abstaining from them, and even in the time of David would not use them when the}- were actually captured; but when the policy of Solomon had made extensive
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conquests, the injunction was set aside, because horses became all-imiiorlant. From the Captivity till after the destruction of Jerusalem, the remnant of the East- ern tribes were in part warlike equestrian nomads, who struck terror into the heart of tlie fonniiiable Persian cavalry, won great battles, and even captured Partliian kings. When both the kingdoms of Judah and Israel were again contiiied to the mountains, they reduced their cavalry to a small body; because, it may be, tlie nature of the soil within the basin of the Libanus was, as it still is, unfavorable to breeding horses. Another instance of unwillingness to violate ancient institutions is found in the Hebrews abstaining from active war on the Sabbath until the time of the Maccabets.
There are, however, indications in their military trans- actions, from the time Assyrian and Persian con(iuerors pressed upon the Israelitish states, and still more after the Captivity, which show the iutluence of Asiatic mili- tary ideas, according to which the masses do not act with ordered unity, but trust to the more adventurous in the van to decide the fate of battle. Later still, under the Maccabees, the systematic discipline of Macedonian im- portation can be observed, even though in Asia the Greek method of training, founded on mathematical principles, had never been fully complied with, or had been moditied by the existence of new circumstances and new elements of destruction ; such, for example, as the use of great bodies of light cavalry, showering mill- ions of arrows upon their enemies, and lighting elephants introduced by the Ptolemies.
But all these practices became again modified in Western Asia when Koman dominion had superseded the Greek kingdoms. Even the Jews, as is evident from Josephus, modelled their military force on the Im- perial plan ; their infantry became armed and was ma- noeuvred in accordance with that system which every- where gave victory by means of the firmness and mo- bility which it imparted. The masses were composed of cohorts, or their equivalents, consisting of ceiituriai and decuria^, or subdivisions into hundreds, fifties, and tens — similar to modern battalions, companies, and squads; and the commanders were of like grades and numbers. Thus the people of Israel and the nations around them cannot be accurately considered, in a mili- tary view, without taking into account the successive changes here noticed; for they had the same influence which military iiniovations had in Europe between the ieras of Charlemagne and the emjjeror Charles V, in- cluding the use of cannon — that invention for a long time making no greater alteration in the constitution of armies than the perfection of war machines produced upon the military institutions of antiquity.
The army of Israel was chiefly composed of infantry, as before remarked, formed into a trained body of spear- men, and, in greater luimlicrs, of slingers and archers, with horses and chariots in small proportion, excepting during the periods when the kingdom extended over the desert to the Red Sea. The irregulars were drawn from the families and tribes, particularly Ephraim and Benjamin; but the heavy- armed derived their chief strength from Judah, and were, it ajipears, collected by a kind of conscription — by tribes, like the earlier Roman armies — not through the instrumentality of selected olKcers, but by genealogists of each tribe under the su- perintendence of the princes. Of those returned on the rolls, a proportion greater or less was selected, according to the exigency of the time; and the whole male popu- lation might be called out on extraordinary occasions. When kings had rendered the system of government better organized, there was an officer denominated ^13Tr, Khotei; a sort of muster- master, who had re- turns of the effective force or number of soldiers ready for service, but who was subordinate to the "SIO, so- pher, or scribe, a kind of secretary of state. These of- ticers, or the shoterim, struck out or excused from ser- vice : (1) those who had built a house without having