them to accept with joy the promised settlement in the land of Canaan, combined with submission to that system of religion and government which God meant to establish. If they still retained some veneration for Egyptian manners and idolatry, because they were the manners and the idolatry of a great and celebrated nation, the mode in which God delivered them from this land of bondage was calculated to counteract this effect; for they beheld Jehovah with a mighty hand inflicting the severest plagues on Pharaoh and all his people; making the elements and the creatures which they worshipped, * the instruments of their chastisement, and involving the animals, whom they adored as gods, in one common punishment with their deluded votaries: "Executing judgment" (as the sacred historian declares) "upon the gods of Egypt."+ Thus chastising superstition in the very country that was its source, and magnifying the majesty of God on the most conspicuous stage then in the world, in the country the most famed for arts and learning, and most frequented by men of genius and curiosity. son. * Vide on this subject Hutchinson's Essay towards a Natural History of the Bible, or Bryant's learned and ingenious treatise on the Plagues of Egypt. I consider the coincidence between these works as a strong confirmation of the truth of the arguments they adduce, for I am fully persuaded, Mr. Bryant did not know any such observations had been made by HutchinVide his preface. Idolaters, says Hutchinson, ascribed all power to the machine of the heavens, in the condition of fire, light and air: hence, at the establishment of the Mosaic economy, God appeared to Moses in the bush in the form of fire, &c.: hence the multiplied miracles in Egypt showed the superiority of Jehovah over all the gods of the Egyptians, in their pretended attributes and power: thus the river turned into blood, though emblematically sacred; the wind brought locusts to destroy the votaries of the wind; the air rendered pestilential; the dust of the earth noxious; the wind made the waters of the Red Sea stand on an heap; the plague of darkness showed the absolute power of God over the air; the murrain was on beasts, who were the representatives of the Egyptian gods, thus destroyed through the instrumentality of that air which was itself considered as divine; thus the first-born had, in many cases, as Hutchinson thinks, been sacrificed to the false gods, and were now in punishment destroyed by Jehovah. Vide Hutchinson, Vol. I. p. 126, and sequel. Mr. Bryant, without adopting the particular system of Hutchinson, or even (I am persuaded) knowing that he had thus supported it, was led on by his own reflections and researches to form the same opinion, and has established it, as it appears to me, irrefutably, by a variety of facts and illustrations; proving his principle, by showing its application to every one of the plagues inflicted on the Egyptians: for instance, in the circumstance recorded, that the "fish in the river died," see his proofs of the idolatrous veneration in which the fish of the Nile were held, p. 27 to 35; and on the plague of flies, which he also proves were objects of worship, from p. 65 to But, for full conviction, I refer my reader to the Work itself. 84. + Exod. xii. 12. It is further admitted, that the system of the Jewish ritual, in various respects, was calculated to proscribe and counteract * the idolatries and superstitions of Egypt. That all these judgments and all these precautions did not produce, upon the dull and carnal-minded Jews, such decisive effects as to root out all propensity to imitate or adopt the superstitions of Egypt, which they had seen admired and practised by this the most celebrated nation in the world, is not wonderful. But surely no human wisdom can presume to assert, that any other scheme of settlement or discipline could have been better calculated to prevent amongst the Jews the growth of idolatry and its attendant crimes. The defeat of the warlike Canaanites, who were+"great " and tall, and their cities walled up to heaven," by the unwarlike Jews, and this by means proving a supernatural interference, had a similar tendency to establish the superiority of Jehovah over all the celebrated idols of Canaan: nor can we conceive any mode of providence better calculated to preserve among the chosen people the observance of the divine institu tions. As to the trials the Jews were exposed to from the example of the neighbouring countries, and particularly from the corruptions of the Canaanites, many of whom they permitted to remain amongst them; it is evident, that wherever they were settled in an idolatrous world, they would have been exposed to similar danger, from the depraved examples of the surrounding nations. But it seems impossible to conceive any system more wisely calculated to check such contagion, than that which was adopted in the settlement of the Jews in the promised land. They were previously disciplined forty years, until the generation who had from their birth been infected by the contagion of Egyptian idolatry, and debased by the degradation of Egyptian slavery, had completely perished, and made way for a more pure, freeborn, and noble-minded race, who might be trained under the immediate miraculous control of God in the wilderness, to submit implicitly to the divine direction, and aspire after the divine Some instances of this are adduced, p. 149, in the note. Consult also Witsii Egyptiaca, Lib. III. cap. xiv. from sect. iv. to x.; Lowman on the Hebrew Ritual, Part I. ch. ii. & iii. and Part II. ch. v.; and Grotius on Exod. xx. and Lev. xviii.; but especially Maimonides More Nevochim, Pars III. cap. xlvi. to xlix. † Deut. i. 28. favour. They were defeated by the Canaanites when they attacked them without divine permission, to make them feel experimentally, that they must ascribe all their future success against them to the protection of Jehovah. The conquest of the promised land was effected by the miraculous assistance of God, who declared, that the Canaanites were to be exterminated in consequence of their idolatries and crimes, and commanded the Israelites to execute the divine sentence. They were punished by certain defeat when they violated, and crowned with certain victory when they obeyed, this direction of their God; until their settlement in the promised land was so far completed, that the few remaining Canaanites were totally in their power, and all necessity for supernatural assistance to their arms, in the execution of the divine command, had plainly ceased. Thus far Providence had, as it were, compelled them to proceed; still however observing in this, as in every other supernatural dispensation, a due analogy to the regular course of nature, and the moral agency of man. "The Lord thy God (says their legislator)" will put out these nations before thee by little and “little : thou mayest not consume them at once, lest the beast "of the field increase before thee; but the Lord thy God shall "deliver them unto thee; and destroy them with a mighty des"truction until they be destroyed."* And in another place we perceive an effect of leaving some remnants of the Canaanites, perfectly analogous to the course of nature, assigned as a reason why God permitted it: "That the generations of the Children "of Israel might know, to teach them war: as many as had not "known all the wars of Canaan."+ Thus the Canaanites were expelled as rapidly as the nature of things could admit. The Jews were strictly commanded to complete their expulsion, fully empowered to do so, and warned of the guilt of neglecting it; the temptation it would expose them to, and the certain punishment that would await their transgression: but they disobeyed the divine command." It came to pass, when Israel was strong, that they put the "Canaanites to tribute, and did not utterly drive them out." Or, as their historian Josephus § more fully explains it, "Con 66 *Deut. vii. 22 & 23. + Judges iii. 1 & 2. Judges i. 28. Vide the entire second and third chapters of Judges. 66 "tenting themselves with the tributes which were paid them, they grew effeminate as to fighting any more against their "enemies; but applied themselves to the cultivation of their "lands, which, producing them great plenty and riches, they "neglected the regular disposition of their settlement, and in"dulged themselves in luxuries and pleasures." And now the Lord sent an angel unto them, who reminded them of the divine command:* " I said, ye shall make no league with the in"habitants of this land; ye shall throw down their altars: but ye have not obeyed my voice: why have ye done this? "Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before "you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods "shall be a snare unto you :" or, as it is more fully expressed in another passage,† where the sacred historian relates, that on account of their evil ways, "the anger of the Lord was hot "against Israel: and he said, Because this people hath trans"gressed my covenant which I commanded their fathers, and "have not hearkened unto my voice; I also will not henceforth "drive out from before them, of the nations which Joshua left, "when he died: that through them I may prove Israel, whether "they will keep the way of the Lord, to walk therein as their "fathers did keep it, or not. Therefore the Lord left those "nations, without driving them out hastily; neither delivered "he them into the hand of Joshua." Thus God continued his miraculous agency only so long as was indispensably necessary to introduce and settle the Jewish nation in the land of their inheritance, and establish this dispensation, so as to answer the purposes of the divine economy. After this, he gradually withdrew his supernatural assistance; he left the nation, collectively and individually, to act according to their own choice, not unnaturally and violently counteracting their moral character, and destroying their free agency. The people, at the rebuke of the Lord, mentioned above," lifted up "their voices and wept, and they sacrificed there unto the "Lord." "But," says Josephus, "though they were in heavi"ness at these admonitions from God, they were still very "unwilling to go to war." Yet though thus left to themselves, the effect of the wonders they had already seen, and the discipline they had been trained under, produced on that generation † Ib. ver. 20-23. * Judges ii. 1. 3. a decisive and permanent effect; "For the people served the Lord "all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders that out"lived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord "that he did for Israel.". Indeed we cannot desire a stronger proof of the zeal of the whole nation for the observance of the divine Law, than the transaction between the two tribes and a half who were settled beyond Jordan, and the remaining tribes; on the termination of the general war against the Canaanites, and the dismissal of the several tribes to their respective inheritance. Here we see the two tribes and a half building an altar at the passage of Jordan, a pattern (or after the pattern) of the altar of the Lord.* The remaining congregation, alarmed at the idea of this being a rebellion against God, who had commanded that there should be only one altar for all his people, prepared to punish it by instant war, but first send ambassadors to expostulate: "Thus saith "the whole congregation of the Lord, What trespass is this that "ye have committed against the God of Israel, to turn away "this day from following the Lord, in that ye have builded you "an altar, that ye might rebel this day against the Lord? Is "the iniquity of Baal Peor too little for us, from which we are "not cleansed until this day, although there was a plague in the congregation of the Lord? and it will be, seeing that ye rebel "against the Lord, that to-morrow he will be wroth with all "the congregation of Israel." And the two tribes and a half answered: "The Lord God of gods, the Lord God of gods "knoweth, and Israel he shall know, if it be in rebellion, or if "in transgression against the Lord (save us not this day) that we have built us an altar; but that it may be a witness "between us and you, and our generations after us, that we "might do the service of the Lord before him; that your "children may not say to our children, Ye have no part in the "Lord. God forbid that we should rebel against the Lord, and "turn this day from following the Lord, to build an altar for "burnt-offerings, for meat-offerings, or for sacrifices, besides the "altar of the Lord our God before his tabernacle." So deep was the impression which the judgments of God had made on the whole nation; so watchful their anxiety to fulfil the Law, and avoid the wrath of Jehovah, at once their Sovereign * Joshua xxii. |