The Pulpit Commentary — Numbers — Section 3

attributed to the want of completeness and accure.cy of the history" (vick • IntrocL to the Old Test.,' Vol. I. p. 251). Bohlen, with much bolder ingenuity, blots the thirty-seven years out altogether, regarding the number forty of which th0 narrative speaks, especially when conjoined with the story of the whole generation perishing, as conclusive evidence of its mythice.l complexion, "The epico-traditional period of forty years was prescribed to the author of the Book of Numbers, and h0 does his best to fill it up with the few events which were at his command, even specifying the days and months when they occurred" (' Introd.,' VoL I. p. 86; cf_ Kuenen, 'The Religion of Israel,' Vol. I. p.131). Ewald, with less audacity, a.scribes it to an almost total obscuration of the national memory in the time of his Elohist concerning e. dark period of their history which they were anxious to forget.. 4' When the people were already established in Canaan, and looked back upon th0 long period of their wanderings in the desert after their exodus, undoubtedly th0 view became fixed among them that the time passed in the desert had been forty years-a round number, the adoption of which may be inferred from the Book of ·Origins. But when its author sought to assign to the several still remembered. events of this long period their proper dates-their years, months, e.nd days-we see at once how difficult it was even then to effect this in any historice.l sense." Accord- ingly, he explains that "all those events which could not belong to the close of th0 wanderings were placed in the first two years, and all the remainder in the last year of the forty,'' leaving the entire middle of these forty years "a completely blank space, of which nothing further is said than that the generation which cam.0 up from Egypt had to die in the desert for its backslidings, in order to make room. for a better" (' History of Israel,' Vol. Il. p. 186), And perhaps no better or mortt fascinating theory could be adopted for the solution of this singular phenomenon,. if it were perfectly certain that the present narrative would resist every endeavour 1;o regard it e.s contemporaneous history, and that on such an assumption the Temarkable lacuna could not be reasonably accounted for. The hypothesis of Havernick may indeed be dismissed as improbable e.nd unsatisfactory, that "little transpired during that long space of time that was sufficiently remarkable e.nd important to deserve mention, or of which even a remembrance was preserved,. ('Introd. to Pent.,' § 27). Even the explanation offered by Kurtz scarcely com- mends itself e.s perfectly sufficient, that, "so far as the wanderings in the desert are concerned, nothing of a stationary (or retrograde) character we.s regarded 11.11 forming pa.rt of the history to be recorded, but only that which was progreaBive," and that "the thirty-seven years were not only stationary in their character,-yee.rs of detention, and therefore without a history,-but they were also years of dispersion,. {'Hist.of Old Covenant,' Vol. III. p. 309). The true solution rather lies, we appre- hend, in the direction of the thought hinted at by Gerlach, that " it is the manner -of sacred history to relate only the events of most weight and consequence in the progress of the kingdom of God," or, as we should prefer to state it, to record events only in so far as they have a bee.ring on the kingdom of God, "e.nd so it passes over in silence the long time which was spent in the wilderness by th0 generation destined to die there" (' Commentary on Numbers,' oh. xx. ). So to speak, at Ke.dash, in consequence of the people's unbelief and condemnation, the continuity of God's kingdom in Israel was interrupted, and was not again resumed till the old race, having perished for their sins, was supplanted by a new; and this view would seem to be countenanced by the remarkable coincidence, that almost immediately .after the reassembling of the tribes at Kadesh, Miriam, probably the sole survivor <(If the doomed race, dies, and that soon after steps are ta.ken, by the removal of a2 Iv TIIE AUTHENTICITY AND AUTHORSllIP OF