should have the privilege of partaking with the priest of the sacrifices offered there, though this, according to the Law, was the privilege of the priest only ( of. Lev. vi. 18, 29; vii. 6). As the Law allotted these to the priest, but did not prohibit the giving of a portion of them to the attendant Levit(l, the prescription that the Lcvite was to have a share with the priest is not a repeal of the older enactment, but only an addition to it. '' According to Numb. xxx:v. 1-8, the Levites were to have cities assigned to them as their own, in all forty-eight, with fields attached for their cattle, and these were by lot given to them by Joshua (Josh. xxi.). Of any such relations, of special cities of the Levites, nothing is found in Deuteronomy; here the same appear, at least for the most part, as homeless, living scattered among the rest of the Israelites in the different towns; this is pre- sumed, and legal prescriptions refer to it (cf. eh. xii. 12, 18, etc.; xiv. 27-29; xvi. 11, 14; xviii. 6; xxvi.-12)" (Bleek). In these passages the Levite is represented as living within the gates of the people, and this is assumed to mean that he was there as a stranger who, having no home of his own, had to be dependent on the hospitality of others for a residence. But this does not seem to be the meaning of the rhrase. The Levites had, in accordance with the law in Numbers, fields and towns assigned to them; but they were not the sole occupants of these ; they were only a portion, in most cases only a minor portion, of the inhabitants. The town thus properly was not Levitical; it was a town of Israel, in which the Levites had residences, with fields appertaining. Hence the description. "the Levite within thy gates; " not that the Levite was homeless, but that his home was within the precincts of one of the cities of Israel (Keil, 'Comment. on Joshua,' p. 211; Kitto, • Cyclopffidia,' ii. 826). Even if the town had been occupied wholly by the Levites, they might still have been said to dwell within the gates of the people, inasmuch as the towns allotted to them were not in a region of their own as a tribe, but were taken from the portions of the other tribes throughout the country. It is further assumed in this objection that Deuteronomy makes the only source of maintenance for the Levites to be the share in the sacrificial feasts of the tithes which it assigns to them; whereas the right of the Levites to partake of the tithes received from the nation is distinctly recognized in Deuteronomy, as in the earlier law ( cf. eh. x. 9; xiv. 22; xviii. 2; xxvi. 12). 2. It is alleged that there are statements in the book which could not have been made by Moses, but betray the hand of a writer of a much later age. Ch. i. 1. The expression, "beyond the Jordan (t:t~!iJ i;V.f)," here and in ver. 5, is, it is alleged, plainly the writing of one whose position was on the west of that river, and therefore must have been written after the death of Moses. It mueit strike one, however, that it is very improbable that any one writing in the person of Moses, and wishing to be taken for Moses, would make a mistake of this sort, and on tho very threshold of his work betra7 himself 110 fool.ably. There ii!, however, no mistake in the casa. 'l'IIE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. :rxvii
Tho phrase," beyond the Jordan," was the established and current designa- tion of the country to the east of the Jordan where Moses then was; nor is there any reason to believe that this came into vogue only after the Isra.olites had occupied Canaan. Moses, therefore, dating his book from the place where it was written, indicates that place by its proper name, the no.me by which alone it was known. So also in referring to localities within Palestine, he describes them by the names given to them by the inhabitants of the country, a.nd by which they were properly known. Thus as the common name for "westward" was in Hebrew "seaward," and the name for" southward" was" towards the Negeb" (the usual appellation of the a1·id district to the south of Palestine), Moses uses these terms even when writing where the sea was not to the west or the Negeb to the south of the place where he was. This, indeed, has been urged as an argument against the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. But without reason; for when designations are once given to localities, they become proper names, and are used without respect to their original or etymological signification. It is simply absurd to ask, "Would Moses, writing at Sinai, have spoken of the Negeb as to the south of him when it was really to the north?" Moses says nothing of the sort. Writing in Hebrew, and for Hebrews, he uses the expression, "towards the Negeb," because that is the Hebrew for "south- ward." Suppose a person, writing in Edinburgh, to say of a certain event that it took place in Norfolk, or of a locality that it is in Sutherland; what would be thought of a ~ritic who should argue that neither statement could have been written in Edinburgh, because in relation to that city Norfolk (North-folk) lies to the south, and Sutherland (Southern-land) lies to the north? Or, suppose Cresar, when on the north of the Alps, to have dated one of his Commentaries from Transalpine Gaul, would any one have held this to prove that that book was spurious, and must have been written by some one south of the Alps? Oh. ii. 12. The remark, " As Israel ;did unto the land of his possession, which the Lord gave unto them," presupposes a time when the Israelites were already in possession of Canaan, and had expelled the peoples formerly dwelling there-a time, therefore, posterior to that of Moses. Here it is assumed that the land referred to is Canaan, and on this assumption it appears certain that the passage could not have been written by Moses. But is it Canaan that is here referred to? In eh. iii. similar phraseology is used of the district east of the Jordan, already captured by the Israelites, and assigned to the two and a half tribes; in ver. 18 it is described as the land which the Lord th~r God had given them" to possess," and in ver. 20 as their "possession" which had been assigned to them by Moses. As these tribes were part of Israel, the land of their possession might well be called "the land of the possession of Israel ; " and it is to this, doubtless, and not to Canaan, that Moses here refers. This is rendered certain by the fact that it is for the purpose of encouraging the people to go on to the conquest of Canaan, that the 1·eferenee to what had already been achieved by them is XXl'i!i INTRODUCTION TO