Aaron and the transference of his official garments to Eleazo.r his son, to complete the renovation of the congregation by giving them a new high priest in room of one who was rather a representative of the congregation that had disappeared.. Hence, if this be the proper light in which to regard the relatiou subsisting between, t~e old con~gation and the new, it will supply an answor to the query why Moses. did not wnte the story of these years of wandering-which was simply beoause- the people were during that long interval no longer, qua people, the oongregation. of the Lord, though of course as individuals mauy of them may ·have found se.lvation ; it will afford an explanation of why the rebellion of Korah and his associates was inserted in the narrative-which was not simply to fill an otherwis& inconvenient gap, or beoause of its appallingly tragic character, but because Aaron, having not yet been placed under the ban of exclusion from Canaan, though the people were, might be said to belong to and represent God's kingdom on earth, so that an invasion of his high priestly functions by unauthorised persons like Kore.h and his companions had still a bee.ring on the hist.ory of the theocratio kingdom, though the ordinary annals of the dying people had none ; and it will reply to Kurtz's difficulty, tho.t " the history does not breo.k off immediately after the rejection, but embraces several events, as well as several groups of laws, which belong to the period subsequent to the rejection "-the events being of the character just described, and the laws being either for the priests or the people when they had rome into thti land of their habitations, i. e. for the new theocratio congregation. ThUB the thirty yearr! chasm does not invalidate, but rather marvelloUBly authen- ticate, the history in which it occurs. It may be added that if the writing had been, as Bohlen styles it, "a popular inventive legend," it is scarcely likely, if w& may judge from the apocryphal Gospels, that the writer would have left any gap which the spirit of romance could have filled. ill. THE FORTIETH YEAR. The number and importance of the transactions assigned to the brief interval of six months between Aaron's death, on " the first day of the fifth month'' of the fortieth year of the wanderings (eh. xxxiii. 38). and the commencement of Moses' address, on the first day of the eleventh month (Dent. i. 3), render it impossible, according to Kuenen (' The Religion of Israel,' Vol Leh. ii p. 131) and Colenso ('On the Pentateuch,' Part Leh. :xxii. pp. 144-- 146), to maintain the historic credibility of at least this portion of the narrative. But it is pertinent to observe in reply, (1) that it is not perfectly certain that all the incidents reported in ch.s. xxi.-:xxxvi. took place in the comparatively short. space referred to. The Aradite War, e. g., though succeeding in the history the- account of Aaron's death at Mount Hor (eh. xx:i 1-3), is by competer.t expositors (Kurtz, Keil, Lange, Gerlach, 'Speaker's Commentary'), and with much probability• believed to have occurred before that event, at the commencement of the march. from Kadesh, or while the ambassadors were negotiating with the king of Edom for a passage through his dominions ; and there is nothing in the narrative that absolutely enjoins us to hold tho.t every single transaction of which these chapters. speak was finished, and every word which they record uttered, before Moses began his exhortation on the first day of the eleventh month (cf. eh. l[l[Vll. 12 -14 with Dent. xxxii. 48, and eh. mv. 9-34 with Deut. iv. 41). But even if it; were required to compress them all wi.thin the space of half a year, it might be rema.rked, (2) that many of those occurrences for which successive periods are- somewhat arbitrarily demanded may easily enough have happened contempore.- DeoUBly. For instance, the struggle with the king of Bashim, though, according to l.lout. iii 4, 5, not at all a trifling skirmish, but a Boriu11B engagement which. THE BOOK OF NUMBERS. y
«-esulted in the capture of " threescore cities fenced with high walls, gates, and bars, beside unwalled towns a great many," and which, according to Colenso, mllBt have occupied at least a month, might well have been undertaken and concluded during the absence of the king of Moab' s messengers, whose double journey to the Ilabylonian town of Pethor, on the great river Etiphrates, a distance of 350 miles, which began after the slaughter of the Amorites, and before the attack on the Bashanite monarch (eh. xxii. 2), could scarcely have been completed in less than six weeks; and since the expedition against Miclian in which Balaam lost his life did not employ more than 12,000 men (eh. xxxi 3, 4), it will be difficult to show why many of the transactions reported as having taken place before the end of the tenth month may not have occurred during the progress of that event. Yet, if even this hypothesis be discarded, and it be deemed imperative that all the several incidents comprised in the history should find a place in distinct chronological succession within the limits of the six months specifted, it still is competent to maintain, (3) that until we can determine precisely the rapidity with which events moved in the closing months of Israel's pilgrimage, it will be impossible to assert with anything like dogmatic certitude that a young and vigorous people, trained in the wilderness, inspired by a great national hope, and led, as it were, by God him- self, would not have been able to carry them through in the time appointed.