settling of the people in the promisetl land. It was this law which they who had built the altar so earnestly disclaimed having broken; it was zeal for this law which stirred the other tribes to such wrath against their brethren when they supposed it had been violated by them. 5. Great stress has also been laid on the fact that non-priestly men, like Samuel, David, and Solomon, offered sacrifices, contrary to the express law which enacts that this shall be done only by the priest. This law appears only in the middle books of the Pentateuch (Lev. i 9, eto.; v. 8, eto.); but it is assumed in Deuteronomy as existing, and the objection may therefore be considered here. In regard to it, it might be observed that, though the law constitutes the priest as the proper presenter of the sacrifice, it does not enact that no other but a priest shall at any time or under any circumstances present sacrifice. It was according to order that the priest should present the sacrifice; but order is not so imperatively binding that it may never under any circumstances be departed from. If laymen, then, on special occasions, assumed to themselves this priestly function, this does not prove that the law was unknown to them and did not exist in th~ir day; it only i.hows that on such occasions the law might be suspended and neglected without offence. Especially was this allowable when, by a special mani- festation, God came to his servants, and so virtually consecrated the place where he appeared and authorized his servants, though not priests, to offer sacrifice and worship him; as in the case of the people at Bochim (Judg. ii. 1-5), of Gideon (Judg. vi. 20-22, 25), and Manoah (Judg. xiii. 16-23), In other cases it may be asked-Did these non-priestly men really themselves make sacrifices? It is said," They sacrificed to the Lord," or "They offered sacrifices ; " but does this mean that with their own hands they slew the victims and offered the blood upon the altar? Are not such statements to be understood according to the old juridical brocard, "Qui facit per alium facit per se "-as simply intimating that the persons named pres~nted sacri- fice in the legal way by means of the priest? In the case. of Solomon this mUBt be the interpretation put upon the phrase; for as that monarch, at the dedication of the temple, "offered unto the Lord two and twenty thousand oxen, and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep" (1 Kings viii. 63), it would be monstrous to suppose that he killed all these animals himself and presented them with his own hand on the altar. Besides, be it observed that there was an offering and an offering; the man who brought the sacrificial victims offered, and the priest who presented to the Lord offered. This is evident from the very terms of the law in question ( cf. Lev. i. 3, etc.; ii. I; vi. I, 4; eh. xii. 14 xviii.; 3, 4, etc.). We interpret fairly, then, when we understand the assertion that Samuel, David, and others offered sacrifice, as meaning nothing more than that they brought the victims which were offered in sacrifice according to the law. From this survey it appears that there is nothing in the contents of this book or in the conduct of notable individuals in relation to its enaotments that effeotually wlitates againat the conclusion, so strongly vouched for by THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. x:nili
the genera.I character of the book as well as by particnlar statements in it, a.e to its being the writing of Moses.
§ 5. RELATION TO JEREMIAH. It must strike every one who compares Deuteronomy with the writings ascribed to the prophet Jeremiah that the author of the one book must have been very familiar with the other. The resemblances between the two are numerous and marked. Words a.re used in both which a.re found nowhere else; passages in the one are identical with, or closely similar to, passages in the other; sentiments prominent in the one are prominent also in the other; and, in general tone and form of thought, the tw-, remarkably resemble each other. . To account for these points of resemblance, it seems sufficient to suppose that the prophet, from much familiarity with the Book of Deuteronomy, had so transported into his own mind its phraseology and sentiments that these naturally flowed from his pen when he himself began to write. That Jeremiah would be well acquainted with Deuteronomy can be readily believed. As a priest, the study of the Law in all its parts mnst have been his occupation from his youth upward; and called a.s he was to act as a reprover and admonisher of the people in dark and disastrous times, Deuteronomy would be the part of the Pentateuch to which he would most frequently turn, both that he might feed his own mind:with thoughts appropriate to his position, and that he might have suggested to him what it would be fitting to address to the people. In his time also the Book of the Law was discovered and drawn from its obscurity into prominent notice, and a. fresh impulse given to the study of it both among the rulers and teachers of the nation and through the community at large. That book was probably the entire Penta.tench, possibly the original copy placed in charge of the priests by Moses, and which had been allowed for many years to fall out of sight; but the part which seems to have excited most interest and been most attended to was undoubtedly Deuteronomy ( cf. 2 Kings xxii. 13, 16, 17 and xxii. 2-25 with eh. xxviii. and xxix.; xii. 2, 3; and xvi., xviii.). This book, therefore, must have been constantly before the mind of Jeremiah during his ministry in Judrea, and if so, it is no wonder that its words and phrases and sentiments should be found so frequently recurring in his writings. To some it has appeared that more than this is to be inferred from the resemblances which the writings of Jeremiah bear to Deuteronomy; and they have advanced the opinion that this book itself is from the pen of the prophet of Anathoth. For this opinion, however, the support is of the slightest. A number of words common to both writings, a similarity of phraseology, an occasional identity of sentiment and mode of thought, can never be held to furnish adequate proof of a.n identity of authorship, for it 111 always. open to the inquirer to account for these coincidences by a DEUTERONOMY. d xxxiv INTRODUCTION TO