(ver. 23) ; and of Asher, that he should "dip his foot in oil," and that his "~hoes should be iron and bra.ss" (vers. 24, 25). It must be allowed, however, that these descriptions are far from precise, and indicate nothing beyond a Yery general acquaintance with the form of the country as a ~-hole, and the character of the district assigned to each of these tribes. No'I'·, not to mention that Moses might have visited Canaan while a shepherd in the desert, it cannot be supposed that he would be so long on the confines of Canaan, and where he would come into intercourse with many who had explored that country from end to end, without making himself acquainted with it so far at least as the general topography of it was concerned, along with the natural peculiarities of its different districts. And as the division of the land and the location of the different tribes had been already ananged (Kumb. xxxiv.), it required no great intelligence on the part of Moses to foretell to Zebulun that he should draw wealth from the sea on the borders of which he ·was to be located, or to assign to Naphtali that he should possess a district fanned by the sea-breeze and turned to the genial south, or to announce to Asher tliat his should be rich and fertile soil and that his dwelling should be strong and secure (see the notes on these passages in the Exposition). Even, then, if we look on Moses as simply a man of superior intelligence, and take no account of him as a prophet, there seems no reason in what these verses contain for our concluding that they could not have been uttered by him. 2. It is alleged that in ver. 5 there is reference to a monarchical form of government as existing when this poem was composed. But this rests on an entire misconception of what this verse states. The king there spoken of is not one of the kings of Judah or Israel, neither is he Moses himself, but Jehovah, the true King of Israel from the first (see note). 3. Ver. 7 is alleged to contain a reference to the division caused by the secession of the ten tribes, and an aspiration for a reunion of the whole under the sceptre of Judah. This, however, rests on what is a misinterpre- tation of the verse. There is nothing here about the divisions of Israel, or about the sorrow of Judah over these and Judah's desire that they might be healed. The verse simply expresses a wish that Judah may ever have a safe and jubilant return from conflict, that he may always have strength to defend himself, and may obtain help from Jehovah against all his enemies whoever they might be. Such a wish might be uttered at any time; it is, in fact, correlative to what Jacob predicted long before concerning Judah's leadership of his brethren and successes in war (Gen. xlix. 8, 9), and no more refers to the peculiar state of things in Israel at any subsequent period of its history than does the utterance of the patriarch. It is, besides, absurd to take the words, " bring him unto his people,'' as equivalent to " bring his people back to him." 4. " The contents of most of the utterances, and especially the conclusion of the whole ode (vers. 26-29), make it indubitable that it was composed at e. time when the people of Israel, including the ten tribes, were on the whole 'l'HE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. xll
in a happy condition." "The original composition of this ode appears, a11 is most probable, to have been made in the period between the death of Solomon and tho beginning of the Assyrian Exile, most probably in 800 n.c., when• both kingdoms were governed by strong and powerful kings, Israel by Jeroboam II. and Judah by Uzziah." So Bleek (' Einloit,' s. 305), following here the leadership of Graf against his own earlier opinion that this ode is older than the blessing of Jacob. Ewald's view is that it was written about the time of Josiah; whil:st Hoffmann and Maurer bring it down to the date of the Exile. It may suffice here to cite, in opposition to the view of these critics, the words of Knobel, who, no less than they, main- tains the late origin of this poem: "There is no trace here of allusion to national misfortunes which befell the Hebrews in the Syrian, Assyrian, and Chaldean periods. The political no less than the religious condition of the people was satisfactory; at least, the author does not even remotely refer to any religious indecencies such as are so strongly denounced in eh. xxxiii. ; 1·ather does he commend Zebulun and Issachar for bringing 'sacrifices of righteousness' (ver. 19). All this forbids the placing of this ode in the time of the Exile (Hoffmann; Gesenius, 'De Pentat. Sa.mar.,' p. 7), or in the time of Josiah (Ewald, 'Gasch. Isr.,' i. 171), or in that of the second Jeroboam (Graf), or indefinitely in the period of the two kingdoms (Von Lengerke, 'Kenaan,' i. s. cxix. f.); it belongs to a much earlier time, though it did not, as the older critics thought, originate in that of Moses; . . . it declares itself to be of the time when David was a fugitive from Saul" (' Erklarung,' s. 339). This opinion of Knobel is just as arbitrary as any of those which he condemns; for none of them does the text give any real authority. Knobel's "own arguments," as has been justly observed," ought in consistency to have carried him further, and led him to place it much earlier. For it is impossible to explain how the disasters, a.postacies, and confusion of the latter part of Saul's reign, and still more those of the times of the judges, could have happened at a date not long before that, in which the song was penned" (' Speaker's Commentary,' vol. i. pt. ii. p. 926). It may be added that the differences of these critics as to the probable date of this poem sufficiently show the insecurity of the data on which their con- clusions rest; for unless the historical events and actual facts supposed to be alluded to in a poem are so described as not to be mistakable, it cannot be known that there are any such allusions in the piece at all. There seems no substantial reason, then, for doubting or questioning the genuineness of this sacred poem. Whether Moses wrote it or not, he must bo accredited with the authorship of it; and if he was the author of it, he probably also committed it to writing-else how could it have been preserved? That the concluding chapter of the book is not from the pen of Moses, but is the production of o. later age, is so evident from the contents of the chapter, that no one now thinks of disputing it. Philo, indeed(' De Vita Mosis,' iii. § 29), and Josephus(' Antiq.,' iv. 8, 48) do not hesitate to a.scribe INTRODUCTION TO