brew women in celebrating the more than mortal triumph that had been achieved, is the image which an artist might choose in order to represent the characteristics of her people. The timbrel, the dance, and the song are not the only features in the scene we seem to see in her; there are the flashing eyes, the inspired voice, and the impulsive aspiration towards the Power by which the wondering people had been and were again and again preserved. Yet, to complete the picture, the pride and the punishment of Miriam 14 should be shaded in the darker background.

The course by day and the encampment by night soon became the objects of chief concern to the wanderers from the Red Sea; and though they did not yet prove faithless, it was more than they were able to comprehend, that they should continue in the midst of perils and sufferings. Now, they would return whence they came; anon, they were "almost ready," run the touching words,15 to stone their leader for his fidelity; and the fall of manna and the stream from the rock seemed rather leading them to ruin than to salvation. But the time was come when the people, whose resolution was not so deficient as their knowledge, were to be brought under more intelligible subjection to their and their fathers' God. The uncertainty under which they labored forward and wavered backward in the wilderness was dissipated by the thunders, the lightnings, the thick cloud, and the voice of the trumpet, exceeding loud, from Sinai. Moses descended from the mountain with the com14 See Numbers, Ch. XII. 15 Exodus, XVII. 4.

mandments of fear towards God and justice towards man, and was believed. He went up a second time, and, after forty days and nights of seclusion, reappeared with the tables upon which the commandments were engraved, to find the people naked and sacrificing to a molten calf. Casting, with instant determination, the tables from his hands, he called to his side all who would yet be true; and when the Levites alone obeyed his summons, he ordered them to fall upon their faithless countrymen. As soon, however, as the people repented, he promised his intercession; and while they waited, anxious to learn the punishment they had to bear, Moses "returned unto the Lord," and prayed for their forgiveness. He then ascended Sinai for the third time, and on his return, with the tables engraved anew, the tabernacle was prepared by the rejoicing nation to receive them and the Glory by which they were visibly sanctified.

These familiar events are recounted only to explain the relations between Moses and his followers. Of ordinary appearance, it would seem, and without the least pretensions on his own part to extraordinary personal power,16 this wonderful man, though always respected and almost always obeyed, employed his authority as humbly as if he had been a child, instead of a ruler amongst his countrymen. He not only knew,

16 Josephus says, "He was of agreeable presence, and very able to persuade the people." Antiq., III. 1. 4. So in III. 15.3 : -"This man was admirable for his virtue, and 30

VOL. I.

powerful in making men give credit to what he believed." Whiston's transl. Cf. a fragment from Artabanus in Cory's Anc. Fragments, p. 190.

but confessed, his dependence, rather than allow his people to be deceived in thinking they owed their deliverance from any difficulty to him. When, for instance, they were lamenting the days in which they had sat by the flesh-pots and eaten the bread of Egypt to the full, and at the same time were reproaching Moses and Aaron for having led them into the wilderness, Moses, while assuring them of protection, asked, "What are we, that ye murmur against us?" The humblest man who drank the water from the rock, or watched with awe the form retiring high up within the mountain-cloud, was not so meek or so unambitious as his leader, to whom such powers were given and such visions shown. But it is plain that the Jews were held under restraint, and that the exercise of the power above them was, humanly speaking, in Moses' hands.18

None knew better than Moses, however, that the worship of the true God could not be the offering of a race which was either enslaved or barbarous. Even before arriving at Sinai, he began to teach the people the work they had to do, themselves, by selecting some “able men, such as fear God," to act as judges in the cases to which he could not personally attend.19 Another body was afterwards formed, of "seventy men of the elders of Israel," to whom still weightier offices were committed; 20 the right of appeal to Mo

17 Exodus, XVI. 7.

20 Numb., XI. 16-17, 24, 25. Cf. Deut., XVI. 18. It is here that the origin of the Sanhedrim is Deut., sometimes supposed to be discover

18 And he was king in Jeshurun." Deut., XXXIII. 5. 19 Exod., XVIII, 13-26. I. 12-17.

able; but the more probable opinion

ses, and in after times to the priests, being preserved. The institution of the priesthood soon succeeded to that of the judicial magistracies. Aaron and his sons had long been set apart to conduct the ceremonies at first required from the people; but as these increased in number and in solemnity, the Levites, the tribe which had taken Moses's side against the others, were chosen to perform the sacrifice and attendance which the sanctuary required; but in such inferiority were they placed with regard to the family of Aaron, that a sedition shortly arose amongst some of them, ambitious of higher honors. The preëminence of the original priesthood was preserved by dreadful visitations upon their opponents; 21 while the Levites became, in time, as much a civil 22 as an ecclesiastical body in the nation. They and the superior priests were both provided with support from public contributions,23 but were also expressly excluded from any part in the promised land, lest they should be

refers the institution to the period following the Captivity. Jennings's Lectures on the Jewish Antiquities, Book I. ch. 1.

21 See Numbers, Ch. XVI.

22 Besides the officiating priesthood, the Levitical class furnished the greater number of the judges, the scribes, the genealogists and registers of the tribes, the keepers of the records, the geometricians, the superintendents of weights and measures; and Michaelis thinks, from the judgment in cases of leprosy being assigned to them, the phy

25

come too wealthy or too powerful.24 In connection. with certain powers of jurisdiction which the Levites possessed, they were appointed to the charge of six cities for refuge in the land to which they were journeying, where any one who killed a person unawares was to find protection against the ferocity with which he was sure of being pursued.27 The priesthood was thus appointed to serve, rather than to rule, the people.

Before these various offices, ecclesiastical and civil, appear to have been entirely established, the nation generally was classified and organized. The mass, as it must at first be styled, though it gradually became the great assembly of the people, was their Congregation, in which the divisions of Tribes and the subdivisions of Families were comprised. At the head of each of these bodies were chiefs whose titles are variously given as Fathers of Families, Heads, Elders, and Princes; of whom the highest in rank were the Princes of the Tribes, one to each of the twelve.289

24 Numbers, Ch. XVIII. Cf. derer. Pastoret, Hist. des Législ., Deut., Ch. XIV.

25 Especially in cases of homicide, when the murderer was undiscovered. Deut., XXI. 5.

26 Numbers, XXXV. 10–15. 27 See what was thus to be avoided, Judges, VIII. 18-21. The principle of life for life prevailed far and wide in antiquity. In Athens, a lance was placed on the grave of a murdered man, in sign of the revenge it was the duty of the surviving relations to take upon the mur

Tom. VI. p. 111. The slave's murder was avenged by his master. Hermann, Pol. Ant., Sect. 104, note 5. One of Lysias's orations (Cont. Agorat.) contains the singular story of a dying man who besought his wife, then pregnant, to bid his son, if one were born after him, to revenge his assassination.

28 The divisions may be more precisely sketched, with their chief personages, as follows:- I. The twelve Tribes, each with its Prince