lenve pr,,or that the no.mes probably ought guarded. the frontiers, and kept the poe.ce to be reversed. Seraia.h wo.s aoribe. His of the kingdom, these men would be used offfoe was similar to that of a seoreto.ry of about the court and in Jerusalem, to execute slate with UI!. For &raiah we have Shaf!1ha the oommands of the king and his groat in 1 Chron. :niii. 16, Shillha in 1 Kings officers. Native Israelites would refuse iv. 3, and Sl1eva in eh. xx. 25. This illus- such s~rvile _work, Rnd the oonqucrod trates what h68 just been so.id 8B to the Ca,naa.nttes 1mght become dn.ngerous if nneertainty about proper names. They o.re trained and armed; while these foreigners, always most difficult to read, as the sense like the Swiss Guard iu Fmnce, would be gives no aid, and these various forms of a trustworthy and efficient. As for the true• na,me that does not oocur elsewhere really bom Israelites, they probably did not form bear witness to the high a,ntiquity of the the mass of the population, but, like the ma,nusoripts nsed by the soribes in settling FI'II.Ilks in Fmuoe, were the privileged and the text of the Old Testament; and a,lsoto dominant race. We read thut even from their self-restra.int in not ma.king them all Egypt, besides their own dependants, there forcibly agree. w_~nt up with ~srael u~groot mixture"'(El:od, Yer. lS.-The Cherethitea and the Pele- xu. SS, margm). Iu Numb. xi. 4 these ore thiteB. As we ha,ve already eeen (1 Sam. even contemptuously designated bv a word xxx. 14), the Cherethim were an insig- which answers to our "omni um ga,theru.m;" nificant tribe inhabiting the aouthem part yet even they, after the conquest of Pales- of the country of the Philistines. Nor is tine, would be higher in ra.n.k tha,n the that plaoe the only proof of this fRot; for subjuga,ted Ca,naanites, from whom, together thev are connected with the Philistines also ~ith auot~~r •• mixed multitude" spoken of in Ezek. :nv. 16 e.nd Zeph. ii 5. David 1n N eh. XUL 3, o.re descended the felahin of me.de their aoquaintanoe when at Zi.klag; the present Jay. David's armies would be and probably the Pelethim dwelt in the drawn from the Israelites, e.moug whom were same neighbourhood, e.nd were a still more now reokoued the mixed multitude which unimportant ole.n or family. Much in- went up from Egypt,and whioh was ennobled genuity has been expended in :finding for by taking part in the conquest of Ca.no.an. their names a Hebrew derivation, a.nd In the army" the mighties" would hold the Gesenius explains them a.s meaning " cutters chief place; while the meroenaries, recruited a.nd runnen," though for the latter signi- from Zikla.g and its neighbourhood, which fication he he.s to go to the .Arabic, where continued to be Da,vid's private property he finds a. verb Jal,ata, "to run away," "flee." (l Sam. :nvii. 6), would be most useful in But this craze of explaining the names of the discharge of all kinds of administrative aboriginal tribes a.nd their towns by Hebrew duty, and would also guard the king's words is not only absurd in itself, but bars person. In eh. ::a:. 23 for Cherethi we the way to aounder knowledge. For it is find Cheri, which word also occurs in 2 possible that, by the study of names not Kings xi. 4, 19. In the former passage the belonging to the Hebrew le.ngua.ge, we spelling is a mistake, the letter t having might arrive at so:ne correct ide68 &bout t.he dropped out, and it is so regarded by the races who had previously oocupied Palestine. Jews, who read" Cherethi." The version• Instead of this, the whole system of de- also translate there just as they do here, rivation is corrupted, and philology made namely the Vulga,te and LXX., "Cherethi ridiculous. What can be more ludicroUI! aud Pelethi;" and the- Syria.c by two nouns than to explain these Pelethim a.a " runners of somewhat similar sound to the Hebrew, away," unless it be the notion that the and which signify "freemen and soldiers." Rephaim took their name from the Hebrew In the latter place in Kings it is probable word for "a. gLost"? In his "mighties" that some other tribe supplied the body- David had a/owerful body-guard of native guard in Queen Atha.lia.h's time. David's Israelites, a.n Saul previously had formed BODI were ohiefrulers; Hebrew and Revised a similar force of three thousand men, not Version, priest,, Similarly, in oh. xx. 26, merely for the prot<:ction of his own person, "Ira. the Jairitewas David's priest," Hebrew, but to guard the land from marauding cohen; and in l Kings iv. 5, "Zabud was incursions of Amalekites and other free- Solomon's priest." Gesenius o.nd other• booting tribes. Such a body of men wa.s of suppose that they were domestio cha.plains, primary importance for police purposes end not ministering according to the Levitical the safety of the frontiers. How useful law, but invested with a sort of sacerdotal such a force would be we ca.n well under- sacredness in honour of their birth. But if 1!1.a.nd from the hi.Btory of the marches be- we look nga,in at 1 Kinge iv. 5 we :find tween England and Sootla.nd (see also note " Zabud was priest, the king's friend ; " a,nd on eh. iii. 22); bnt I imagine that the the latter words seem to be a.n expla.netion Cherethites and Pelethitea were used for of the title cohen, added because the word in humbler pnrposea. While "the mighties" this sense was already becoming obsolete. OH, TIII, 1-18,] THE SECOND BOOK OF SAMUEL. 22'1
In 1 Ohron. xviii. 17 the language is com- minister of Jehovah, whose duty it waH to pletely ohanged, and we reo.d, "and David's execute hie will according to the commrmds sons were ohief at the king's ho.nd." We given In the La.w; but when eo used it mo.y feel eure that the Chronicler knew graduo.lly became too sacred for ordinary what was tho meaning of the phrase in the employment. Still, there is a divinity about Books of So.muel, and tho.t he was also a.ware e. king, e.nd so his confidants and the tho.t it had gone out of nee, and therefore officers nearest to his person were still go.ve instead the right sense. Nvidently the called cohens; and we find the phrase linger- word aohen had e.t fl.rst o. wider significance, ing on for another century and a. half. For e.nd meant o. "minister and confidant." He Jehu puts to death, not only Ahab's great WILB the officer who stood next to his maeter, men and kinsfolk, but also " his cohene," and knew hie purpose and saw to its execu- the men who he.d been his intimate friend.a tion. And this was the meaning of the (2 Kings x. 11 ). term when applied to the confidential