concerning the character of God. From the human point of view the record is indeed a very barren one; but this only helps to show how when man becomes scarcely villfole, unless as n mere wanderer, the glory of God shines brilli1mtly as ever. 111. We have thus tried to imagine this pnBBage as being the sole surviving frag- ment of the four books which deal with the wanderings. But we know in reality that it is only a sort of appendix to the record of notable and solemn proceedings already given. It may even seem as if it would not have been much missed if it had been left out. As we think over it, however, we become conscious that A DISTINCT AND PECULIAR IMPRESSION 1B BEING PRODUCED ON OUR MINDS. Reading through the Book of Numbers, we wander with Israel from the day they leave Sinai down to the day they enter the plains of Moab by Jordan; and now in this passage we are all at once lifted as it were into an exceeding high mountain, and get a bird's-eye view of the wandering, shifting life of Israel during these forly years. It is well to be brought face to face with something that will remind us of the shifting character of human life. Even the lives that seem most stationary, as far as local circumstances are concerned, are full of change. It is not because a man is born, lives, and dies in one locality, perhaps even in one house, that his life is to be reckoned a settled one. Wherever we are, however rooted and grounded in appearance, we see one generation going and another coming, ourselves being a part of what we see. Here, in the record of tnese journeyings, was something true for all Israel; Moses and Aaron were brought down to the same level with the humblest of their followers. There are certain necessary outlines of change in the course of every human being who lives to the allotted term-birth, unconscious infancy, the common influences of childhood, the time to choose a temporal occupation, the day when father dies and when mother dies, the dropping away of kindred, companions, and friends, and so on till death comes at last. There is so much of life lived and so much of biography written under the fascinating glamour of mere mundane interests, that it is a good thing to go where, along with God himself, we may look down on the changing scenes of earth from the dwarfing and humbling heights of eternity. There is a time to listen to the botanist and the expert in vegetablii physiology, while they discourse to us on the wonders of the leaf ; there is a time to see what the painter can do with it, and what the poet; but from all these we must turn at last to God's own Isaiah, and hear him drawing out the great final leRson, "We all do fade as a leaf."-Y.
EXPOSITION. 'l'HE OLEAllANOE, THE BOUNDARIES, AND sup:plyi.ng (like the- A. V.) the word "in- 'l'HE ALLOTMENT OF CANAAN (eh. x:xxiii. habitants" in ver. 63. The Hebrew word, 50-x:x.x.iv. 29). Ver. 60.-And the Lord however, seems to have much the snme sense spake. It is quite obvious that a new sec- as the English phrase " clear out," and is, tion begins here, closely connected, not with therefore, equnlly applied to the lo.nd and tho Itinero.ry which precedes it, but with the the occupants of it. No doubt it implies delimitation which follows. The formula extermination as a necessary condition of the which introduces the present command is clem,mce. Their pictures. oi;i•.;i~. Sep• repeated in eh. xxxv. 1, and again in the last tuagint, rcit aco,rui, aurwv (their outlooks, verse of eh. xxxvi., thus giving a character or high places). The Targums of Onkelos of its own to this concluding portion of the and Palestine ho.ve " the houses of their Book, and to some extent isolating it from worship ; " the Targum of Jerusalem has the rest. " their idols." / The same word occurs in Ver. 61. - When ye are passed over Jordan. Previous legislation bad antici- Levit. x:xvi. 1, in the phrase n•:;i~ )~~. pated the time when they should have come which is usually rendered "a stone image," into their own land (cf. eh. xv. 2; Lovit. i. e. a stone shaped into some likeness of xxiii. 10), but now the crossing of the river man. If so, n•:;i~ by itself has probably is spoken of as the last step on their journey the same meaning; at any rate it can hardly home. be "a picture," nor is there the least evi- Ver. 62.-Ye sh~ll drive out. The He- dence that the art of painting was at nil brew word (from WJ;) is the same which is practised among the rude tribes of Canaan. translated "dispossess" in the next verse. The 81\me word, maslcith, is indeed found in T}1e Septuagint h11s in both cases a,ro;\1iri 1 Eiek. viil, 12 in connection with" g\'avin~" >IUMllll:IIB, r ir 434 THE BO◊Jt OF NUMBERS. [OB. xnm. 50-xx.xiv. 19.