The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

General Editor for the Old Testament:—

A. F. KIRKPATRICK, D.D.

DEAN OF ELY

THE BOOK OF

DEUTERONOMY

In the Revised Version

With Introduction and Notes

by

SIR GEORGE ADAM SMITH

Principal and Vice-Chancellor, University of Aberdeen

Hon. D.D. Edinburgh, Dublin and Yale

Hon. LL.D. Aberdeen, St Andrews and Western Reserve

Hon. Litt.D. Cambridge:

Fellow of the British Academy

Cambridge:

at the University Press

1918

All rights reserved

PREFACE

by the

GENERAL EDITOR FOR THE OLD TESTAMENT

The present General Editor for the Old Testament in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges desires to say that, in accordance with the policy of his predecessor the Bishop of Worcester, he does not hold himself responsible for the particular interpretations adopted or for the opinions expressed by the editors of the several Books, nor has he endeavoured to bring them into agreement with one another. It is inevitable that there should be differences of opinion in regard to many questions of criticism and interpretation, and it seems best that these differences should find free expression in different volumes. He has endeavoured to secure, as far as possible, that the general scope and character of the series should be observed, and that views which have a reasonable claim to consideration should not be ignored, but he has felt it best that the final responsibility should, in general, rest with the individual contributors.

A. F. KIRKPATRICK.

Cambridge.

PREFACE

The Commentary which constitutes the bulk of this volume was practically complete by 1914. I regret that other duties have prevented me till now from finishing the Introduction. While writing this I have carefully revised the Commentary. I am greatly indebted to the General Editor of the Series for his patience with my work and for the many valuable suggestions he has made with regard to it.

The Deuteronomy of the late Professor Driver, in the International Critical Commentary, is the standard English work on the subject; its wide learning and wise judgement ensure its continuance as the basis of all subsequent studies of the Book in our language. It admirably gathers up and appraises the results of a long era of Biblical Criticism. But since the publication of its first edition in 1895 the analysis and the exposition of Deuteronomy—particularly in connection with the Singular and Plural forms of address to Israel—have run through a new stage, modifying the old problems and starting fresh ones. There have also been considerable additions to our knowledge of the relevant geography and archaeology. I have endeavoured to do justice to all these recent efforts and results, and to revise in their light the conclusions of the earlier criticism.

Such work as I have done in this volume I desire to dedicate to the memory of two great scholars, long and closely associated in the study and interpretation of the Old Testament, FRANCIS BROWN and SAMUEL ROLLES DRIVER, in gratitude for all that I have learned from them and for the friendship with which they honoured me.

GEORGE ADAM SMITH

University of Aberdeen

15 March 1918

CONTENTS

Introduction

§ 1.  Names

§ 2.  General Content, Structure, and Style

§ 3.  Standpoint, Doctrine and Spirit

§ 4.  Deuteronomy and the Law Book of Josiah

§ 5.  Questions of Unity

§ 6.  The Relations of the Main Divisions—The Code and the Discourses

§ 7.  The Cross-Divisions

§ 8.  The Forms of Address—Singular and Plural

§ 9.  Editorial Factors

§ 10.  Conclusions as to Unity

§ 11.  The Ages of the Book and of its Contents

§ 12.  Resulting Questions and their Answers

Notes

Appendix

Index

INTRODUCTION

§ 1. Names

Like other books of the Pentateuch, this, the fifth, owes its present name of Deuteronomy to the Septuagint. In ch. Deuteronomy 17:18 is the phrase, a duplicate, or copy, of this law (Heb. mishneh hat-tôrah haz-zôth). The Greek translators misrendered this by the words to τὸ δευτερονόμιον τοῦτο, ‘this second law-giving,’ and gave the title Δευτερονόμιον, Lat. Deuteronomium, to the whole Book; while some later Jewish writings refer to it as ‘Mishneh Torah.’ Though thus born in error, the name Deuteronomy is so far appropriate that the Book contains the second codification of the Law of Israel, the first being that which is found in the Prophetical Narrative of the Pentateuch, JE—Exodus 20:23 to Exodus 23:19 with Deuteronomy 34:11-12, and Deuteronomy 13:3-7; Deuteronomy 13:10-13 (see Chapman, An Introduction to the Pentateuch, in this series, p. 110). The Heb. text of the Book bears no title, and as in the case of other Books of the Pentateuch it was referred to by some of its opening words: These be the Words or briefly Words. But during its course the Book suggests for itself three general titles (about which however we must ask later whether they cover the whole or only parts of our Deuteronomy): (a) This Law (Heb. Tôrah, Deuteronomy 1:5, Deuteronomy 4:8, Deuteronomy 17:18 f. etc.) or This Book of the Law (Deuteronomy 29:21, Deuteronomy 30:10, Deuteronomy 31:26) or The Book of this Law (Deuteronomy 28:61), similarly in 2 Kings 22:8; 2 Kings 22:11, cp. Deuteronomy 23:24; (b) The Words of the Covenant (Heb. Berîth, see note on Deuteronomy 4:13) which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab (Deuteronomy 29:1), cp. the Words of this Covenant (Deuteronomy 29:9), the Covenant of the Lord thy God (Deuteronomy 29:12, cp. Deuteronomy 14:21; Deuteronomy 14:25), always as distinct from the Covenant in Ḥoreb (Deuteronomy 29:1, Deuteronomy 4:13; Deuteronomy 4:23, Deuteronomy 5:21, Deuteronomy 9:9; Deuteronomy 9:11; Deuteronomy 9:15), and so the Book is referred to as the Book of the Covenant in 2 Kings 23:2; 2 Kings 23:21; (c) This Commandment or Charge (Heb. Miṣwah, Deuteronomy 5:31 (Heb. 28), see note, Deuteronomy 6:1, Deuteronomy 7:11 etc.).—Further, the separate laws of the Tôrah or Berîth or Miṣwah are called statutes and judgements (Heb. ḥuḳḳîm and mishpâṭîm) either alone (Deuteronomy 4:1; Deuteronomy 4:5; Deuteronomy 4:8; Deuteronomy 4:14, Deuteronomy 5:1, Deuteronomy 11:32, Deuteronomy 12:1, Deuteronomy 26:16) or combined with, or varied by, commandments or charges and testimonies, or decrees (Heb. miṣwôth and ‘çdôth Deuteronomy 4:45, Deuteronomy 6:17; Deuteronomy 6:20).—The name ‘Fifth Book of Moses’ occurs only in our English and other modern versions (Chapman, I. P. p. 2).

§ 2. General Content, Structure, and Style

As some of its names imply, Deuteronomy is the record and contents of a Second Legislation or Covenant of Law delivered through Moses to Israel—second, that is, to the Legislation or Covenant of Ḥoreb—which he proclaimed and expounded to al the people at the close of their wanderings between Egypt and the Promised Land, when they were encamped in one of the gorges that break downwards from the north-west edge of the plateau of Moab into the valley of Jordan, over against Jericho. The Laws proper assigned to this occasion form the central bulk of the Book. They are introduced by long discourses, with Moses as the speaker, in form both historical and hortatory, and in purpose expository (see on Deuteronomy 1:5) of the facts and principles on which they are based; and they are followed by other discourses from Moses enforcing them on the obedience of the people. The Book—and with it the Pentateuch—closes upon further chapters of exhortation and narrative which carry events up to the death of Moses and prepare for the succession of Joshua. The time covered by Deuteronomy is thus—apart from the historical reviews in its discourses—very brief.

By several distinct headings or superscriptions (some accompanied by fragments of narrative) as well as by corresponding differences of subject-matter and form, the Book divides itself as follows:

Ch. Deuteronomy 1:1-4.  General Title (composite)

5.  Special Title to the following—

A.  Chs. Deuteronomy 1:6 to Deuteronomy 4:40.  The First Discourse Introductory to the Laws (all deuteronomic in style) divided into—

(a)  Historical Part, Deuteronomy 1:6 to Deuteronomy 3:29.

(b)  Hortatory Part, Deuteronomy 4:1-40.

Ch. Deuteronomy 4:41-43.  Fragment on Cities of Asylum (deuteronomic).

44–49.  Special Title (composite) to

B.  Chs. 5–11  The Second Discourse Introductory to the Laws (all deuteronomic), divided into

(a)  Prologue, 5

(b)  Hortatory Part, 6–11 but including

(c)  Historical Review, Deuteronomy 9:7 b – Deuteronomy 10:11.

Ch. Deuteronomy 12:1.  Special Title (composite) to

C.  Chs. 12–26  The Laws—‘The Statutes and Judgements’ (mainly deuteronomic in style). For the divisions into which these fall and for the contents of each division see below, pp. 154–156.

D.  Chs. 27–30  Closing Discourses (deuteronomic) divided into—

(a)  Instructions for the Immediate Future, 27 (showing no connection save in vv. 9 f. with what precedes or follows).

(b)  Epilogue to the Laws, 28

Ch. Deuteronomy 29:1.  Editorial Note.

(c)  Further Discourse or Discourses, 29–30

E.  Chs. 31–34.  Last Days and Discourses of Moses (composite, from all the documents of the Pentateuch, with two poems from unknown sources, Deuteronomy 32:1-43; Deuteronomy 32:33).

It is now generally acknowledged, even by most conservative critics1[1], that this last Division forms a later, editorial supplement to Deuteronomy, belonging less to it than to the Pentateuch as a whole, and designed to connect the Pentateuch with the Book of Joshua. The analysis of these chapters, 31–34, compiled as they are from pieces of all the Pentateuchal documents, may be left to the notes upon them in the commentary.

[1] See the striking admission by Professor Orr quoted on p. 332 of this volume.

But chs. 1–30—save for a number of laws, some titles and other fragments—are composed throughout in the same style, one of the most palpable, distinctive and memorable in the Old Testament. No other Hebrew prose, except parts of Isaiah 40-55, is so elevated and so sustained or has such a swing and such a sweep. Not only in exhortation but in narrative and even in the statement of single laws (when these are not quoted verbatim from somewhere else) this style is what we call rhetorical. But the rhetoric is its own: rich in resonant words and phrases, many of which do not occur elsewhere, fond of the more emphatic forms of words, lavish in emphasis and absolute statement, and sometimes leaping to hyperbole; now stern, now tender, now exulting, but always urgent and always expansive, accumulating verbs and epithets and especially reiterating a series of formulas, most of them fervent and intimate, which also are peculiar to itself. Some of the frequent repetitions of these formulas which our canonical text presents, are doubtless due to redactors or scribes, as may be seen from a comparison of the Hebrew with the Ancient Versions. But that by far the most of them are original is proved by the fact that neither the same nor a similar reiteration is found in any other prose, upon which the influence of Deuteronomy has not fallen2[2]. Emphasis, accumulation, and repetition are however not the only marks of this urgent and sonorous style. The religious fervour and the passion to instruct which are its driving forces frequently fall back from their prevailing absolutism in order to explain, refine and qualify. For the Book never forgets its declared purpose to clear up or expound. But this purpose and all these various impulses, forward, backward and aside, are carried upon the same powerful unbroken rhythm—unbroken even when the syntax breaks beneath them—which invests the Book with its singular dignity and charm. The music overwhelms all feeling of redundancy. Deuteronomy is like a flowing tide on a broad beach, the long parallel waves dashing, withdrawing and dashing again.

[2] Steuernagel’s allegations of merely scribal repetitions, Der Rahmen des Dettteronomiums (1894), Die Entstehung des deuteron. Gesetzes (1896) and Deuteronomium-Josua (1894 in Nowack’s Handkommentarz. A. T.), are extravagantly numerous.

Our more immediate duty is to define the distinctions between this style and those of the other documents of the Pentateuch—J, E, P and H. The distinctions are both general and detailed. General because while the other documents are mainly histories with legislation coming in by the way—or as in H a small code and its epilogue only—Deuteronomy 1-30 is a discourse or discourses from end to end, the speech of a man face to face with his hearers, dealing with the Law from first to last and recalling, almost exclusively, such events as they have shared with him, which your eyes, which our eyes have seen. Though the other documents are also designed for the people this one is exceedingly more direct and more intimate. Nor has any of the other documents the rhythm of Deuteronomy. J and E have each its own incomparable power of narrative; P its formal, often statistical but generally solemn fashion of statement. But none have the diapason, the long sweeping waves of oratory, which haunt us from Deuteronomy. As for details, Deuteronomy, like its neighbours in the Pentateuch, has a vocabulary and favourite phrases of its own, distinct from theirs. Its names for certain places and things, touched on by all, are different from the names which some of them give. Its characteristic words and formulas are used by them either never or with such infrequency as to offer a marked contrast to their lavish employment in Deuteronomy. In parallel passages Deuteronomy substitutes rarer or more sonorous or more emphatic forms for those with which JE and P are content. All this will become the more significant to us as we perceive how dependent Deuteronomy is, both in its historical reviews and in its code, upon the history and laws of JE, and especially of E. Even when it repeats statements or expressions found in JE it expands these or gives a turn to them in a way that is all its own and tuned to its peculiar rhythm. Common instances are its formal or hortatory additions to some of the laws; but its narratives are full of them. In these it increases the adjectives or turns them into superlatives, replaces a plain phrase by one more concrete and vivid, strikes an emphasis, or lifts a simple statement of fact into a hyperbole. Nothing could more clearly reveal the distinctiveness of the style of Deuteronomy than these, its own, alterations of another style to the accent and rhythm peculiar to itself. As for its particular differences from the style of P, each document has a number of single words never or rarely found beyond it and each has its own characteristic formulas. Whether in general or in particular no two writings, dealing in part with the same material, could offer a more decided contrast to each other in style and language1[3].

[3] A small group of words characteristic of P is found in ch. 4 and will be treated later.

It is unnecessary to give a full list of the terms, formulas, and other phrases, which are either confined to Deuteronomy or are otherwise characteristic of its style. They are all pointed out in the notes to the text, and the more marked of them are gathered in the paragraphs of this Introduction which deal with the resemblances and differences among the divisions of the Book itself, §§ 6 and 72[4]. Here let some illustrations suffice. As to the difference of place-names, Deuteronomy has with E Ḥoreb for the Sinai of J and P (for references see on Deuteronomy 1:2), Pisgah for P’s Nebo (Deuteronomy 3:17; Deuteronomy 3:27), and with P Ḳadesh-Barnea (see on Deuteronomy 1:2) for the simple Ḳadesh of the others. Deuteronomy has different names for the same things: with JE shebeṭ, tribe (see on Deuteronomy 1:13), for P’s maṭṭeh (over 140 times in P); yerushah, possession (see on Deuteronomy 2:5), for P’s ’ăḥuzzah (about 40 times); ḳahal, the national assembly or congregation (Deuteronomy 5:22, Deuteronomy 9:10, Deuteronomy 10:4, Deuteronomy 18:16, cp. Deuteronomy 23:1-3), for P’s favourite ‘edah (over 100 times), though P occasionally uses also ḳahal; and tables of the covenant (Deuteronomy 9:9; Deuteronomy 9:11; Deuteronomy 9:15) and ark of the covenant (Deuteronomy 10:8) for JE’s simple tables of stone and the ark, and P’s table of the testimony and ark of the testimony. In the law of the Cities of Refuge P (Numbers 35) uses for accidentally the term bishegagah but Deuteronomy (19) the term bibelî dacath. Deuteronomy’s fondness for accumulating epithets and verbs is sufficiently illustrated by these instances: by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors (Deuteronomy 4:34); the great God, the mighty and the terrible (Deuteronomy 10:17); his charge, and his statutes, and his judgements, and his commandments (Deuteronomy 11:1); to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes (Deuteronomy 10:12 f.) and similar combinations; thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up (Deuteronomy 6:7); take heed to thyself and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes saw and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life (Deuteronomy 4:9); or the many shorter combinations such as, Remember, forget not (Deuteronomy 9:7), know therefore and lay it to thine heart (Deuteronomy 4:39), observe and do (Deuteronomy 4:6; Deuteronomy 4:6 other times),fear not neither be dismayed (Deuteronomy 1:21, Deuteronomy 31:8 and the deuteronomic Joshua 8:1; Joshua 10:25) and dread not neither be afraid (Deuteronomy 1:29, Deuteronomy 30:3, Deuteronomy 31:6), and to eat and be full (Deuteronomy 8:10; Deuteronomy 8:12, etc.). All this is no mere development of the parallelism characteristic of Hebrew poetry and practised by some of the prose; it is something different and individual. Even apparent redundancies like go in and possess the land whither ye go over to possess it (Deuteronomy 11:8) are carried off by the rhythm of the original and do not sound superfluous.

[4] Lists will be found in the Introduction to Driver’s Deuteronomy, in Appendix IV. to Chapman’s Introduction to the Pentateuch (in this series), in Estliu Carpenter and Harford-Battersby’s The Hexateuch, i. 200, and in Holzinger’s Einleitnng in den Hexateuch, i. (1893). See also Steuernagel’s ‘Einleitung’ to his Deuteronomium-Josua (cited the last note but one), § 8, ‘Zur Sprachstatistik. des Deuteronomiums,’ and Bertholet’s brief but judicious remarks in his Deuteronomium, ‘Einleitung’ iv.

Of the characteristic formulas of Deuteronomy and their frequency these specimens are sufficient: Jehovah, our, your, or thy God over 300 times in Deuteronomy alone, against fewer than 50 in the rest of the Pentateuch (see on Deuteronomy 1:6); which I am commanding thee or you, 33 times in Deuteronomy and elsewhere only once, Exodus 34:11; in thy gates for in thy cities, 27 times in Deuteronomy and elsewhere only once, Exodus 20:10, where it is probably an editor’s echo of Deuteronomy; and the following which are not found at all in the other parts of the Pentateuch: Hear O Israel 4 times, observe to do 12 times, that it may be well with thee 7 times, the combination stranger, fatherless, and widow 8 times, to cleave to Jehovah 4 times, a holy people 5 times, a peculiar people thrice, the ashtoreths of thy flock (Deuteronomy 7:13 note) 4 times and the infinitive hêtîb used adverbially 5 times; with these more emphatic forms ’êkah, how (for ’ek), 5 times, and not elsewhere in the Pentateuch, lebab, heart, and ’anokî, I, both very frequently used as against a very few instances of the shorter forms lçb and ’ănî which the notes will explain; and the use of the more sonorous termination to the imperfect, ûn. If to all these there be added the list of religious and ethical terms peculiar to Deuteronomy which are given in § 3 and its other unique or very rare terms selected on pp. xlix f., liii ff., a very striking impression will be received of the individuality of the style of Deuteronomy. And yet not the full impression or idea, for this only comes (as has been said) after a detailed observation of Deuteronomy’s characteristic expansions and alterations of the phraseology of JE, on which both for narrative and for law it so largely depends.

The dependence of Deuteronomy on JE is too constant throughout long stretches of the discourses and too frequent in the Code to be summarised here; for the evidence of it the reader is referred to the notes on the text and especially to those on Deuteronomy 1:7; Deuteronomy 1:9-18; Deuteronomy 1:25; Deuteronomy 1:28; Deuteronomy 1:34-40; Deuteronomy 2:1-8 a, Deuteronomy 2:15; Deu 2:26-37; Deuteronomy 3:17; Deuteronomy 3:27 Pisgah; Deuteronomy 4:15, Deuteronomy 5:2 f., Deuteronomy 9:8, etc. Ḥoreb, Deuteronomy 9:9-10 a, Deuteronomy 9:12; Deu 9:16 f., Deuteronomy 9:21 f., Deuteronomy 10:1-4; and for the laws Deuteronomy 14:21 b, Deuteronomy 15:12-18 (perhaps), Deuteronomy 16:1-17; Deuteronomy 16:19, Deuteronomy 19:15-21 (perhaps), Deuteronomy 22:1-4, Deuteronomy 23:19, Deuteronomy 24:7; Deuteronomy 24:12 f., part of Deuteronomy 25:19, Deuteronomy 26:5-19[5]. The basis of these is mainly E, but J also has been used, and we shall have to consider later the question whether the writer, or writers, of Deuteronomy were acquainted with J and E before (Dillmann) or only after (Horst, Bertholet) the amalgamation of these two documents. But be that as it may, Deuteronomy in the re-statement of their records of fact and of law, besides introducing its characteristic formulas, reveals most clearly the features of its peculiar rhetoric—expansiveness, fondness for accumulating epithets and impulse to hyperbole. Its hortatory additions to the laws common to itself and E and its attachment of the words of the covenant to JE’s plain tables of stone and the ark have already been mentioned. The following are still more striking: the characteristic expansions in ch. 5 of Exodus 19:15; Exodus 19:17; Exodus 19:19; Exodus 20:1-21, in Deuteronomy 9:17 of Exodus 32:19 b and in Deuteronomy 9:21 of Exodus 32:20 (see too Deuteronomy 9:26-29); the turning of E’s phrase great nation, Exodus 32:10, into a nation mightier and greater than they, Deuteronomy 9:14, and of the thousands of Exodus 20:6 into a thousand generations, Deuteronomy 7:9; or the concentration and enhancement of E’s thick cloud and thick darkness, from separate passages, into the darkness, cloud, and, thick darkness of Deuteronomy 4:11; or the addition, Deuteronomy 8:15, of the emphatic of flint—a word not found before Deuteronomy—to JE’s simple rock; or the raising of E’s more sober statements into these hyperboles—like the stars of heaven for multitude (Deuteronomy 1:10, Deuteronomy 10:22, Deuteronomy 28:62), cities fenced up to heaven (Deuteronomy 1:28, Deuteronomy 9:1), and into the heart of heaven (Deuteronomy 4:11)—with which we may take the magnificent Deuteronomy 8:4, thy raiment waxed not old neither did thy foot swell these forty years, and in Deuteronomy 10:14 the superlative heaven of heavens used there for the first time in the Old Testament.

[5] See Driver’s Deuteronomy, § 2. On p. xv he says: ‘in the retrospects, the narrative of Ex. Nu. is followed step by step, and clauses, or sometimes entire verses, are transcribed from it verbatim, placing beyond the possibility of doubt the use by the writer of the earlier narrative of the Pent.’ See also Driver’s notes on the parallel passages of Exodus in his Exodus; and Chapman’s Introduction to the Pentateuch, pp. 86–95, 112–117, the former passage being an analysis of the accounts of the mission of the spies with the conclusion, p. 95, that Deuteronomy’s account is based on JE’s and shows no trace of acquaintance with P’s.

But indeed no lists of details are required to impress the general fact on the reader either of the Hebrew or of our English Versions. The individuality and distinction, the original force, buoyancy, volume and rhythm of the style of Deuteronomy 1-30 are pervasive and conspicuous throughout; and in particular its difference is indubitable, both in form and temper, from the styles of the other constituents of the Pentateuch.

§ 3. Standpoint, Doctrine, and Spirit

This conspicuous distinction of style both from JE and P is coincident in Deuteronomy with a representation of facts in the early history of Israel and with a statement of the laws (ascribed by all alike to Moses), both of which differ at many points from the parallel narratives and laws in those other documents. Some of these divergences are slight, others more grave. But a few are wide enough to imply a difference of standpoint and attitude which is fundamental.

It may be of little—yet not negligible—importance that (as we have seen) Deuteronomy gives to certain places other names than some of its fellow-documents do. The divergences of fact are more significant, especially those from JE, in view of Deuteronomy’s general dependence on JE and particularly on E. It is true that a number of these divergences are not actual discrepancies; for example, in the account of the institution of the tribal heads, Deuteronomy 1:9-18, the omission by Deuteronomy of any mention of Jethro, to whom E attributes the suggestion of the plan while Deuteronomy attributes it to Moses; the addition of Joshua’s name to that of Caleb, Deuteronomy 1:26-38; the different division of the last thirty-eight years of the time in the wilderness, the bulk of which was spent at Ḳadesh according to JE, but between Ḳadesh and the brook Zered according to Deuteronomy 2:1-8 a, Deuteronomy 2:14; Deuteronomy’s additions of the campaign against Og, King of Bashan, Deuteronomy 3:1-11, and of the half-tribe of Manasseh (to Reuben and Gad), Deuteronomy 3:12 ff.; and the differences as to the events in Ḥoreb, for which see the notes to Deuteronomy 9:8-29, Deuteronomy 10:1-5; Deuteronomy 10:10 f., among them the addition of the making of the Ark, Deuteronomy 10:1. Nearly all these differences are susceptible of explanation, and most might disappear if we had the full text of the documents J and E. Deuteronomy’s additional facts may have been narrated in these—this is as certain as possible with regard to the making of the Ark; while Deuteronomy’s omissions are explicable by the fact that its narratives are but a summary of those of JE. Yet the silence about Jethro is symptomatic of a distinctive attitude to foreigners; for it is consistent with the omission from Deuteronomy of other foreign influences on Israel. The Book says nothing of what J tells us, Numbers 10:29-32, of Moses’ appeal to Hobab to act as eyes to the host (see p. 7), or of Balaam beyond the fragment of doubtful authenticity in Deuteronomy 23:4 b; it forbids intermarriage with the Canaanites, Deuteronomy 7:3, and a foreigner as King, Deuteronomy 17:15, and it emphasizes the sufficiency of Israel’s own wisdom for the national life, Deuteronomy 4:6-8. Far more difficult, and less reconcileable, are Deuteronomy’s differences from P in regard to facts. The spies, according to Deuteronomy 1:24, reached only the southern part of the Promised Land about Hebron, but P carries them as far as Rehob in the extreme north; and the two documents trace very different routes for Israel from Ḳadesh to the border of Moab—see the notes on Deuteronomy 2:1-8 a and Deuteronomy 10:7—and name different places as the scene of Aaron’s death and burial, Deuteronomy 10:6 b. Such cases are indicative of different traditions of the early history of Israel. Again while Deuteronomy, in agreement with JE, mentions Dathan and Abiram as the subjects of the judgement which it recalls in Deuteronomy 11:6, P mentions Korah instead. While Deuteronomy says that at Ḥoreb God separated the tribe of Levi to bear the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, to stand before Jehovah, to minister to his name, Deuteronomy 10:8—in agreement with its emphatic identification of Priests and Levites elsewhere—P confines the phrase to minister to Jehovah to the Priests, who according to it were not all the tribe of Levi but only a single family thereof, and specially allots the office of bearing the Ark to another clan, the Kohathites. Moreover while P constantly associates Aaron with Moses in solemn transactions on Ḥoreb and throughout the wilderness, Deuteronomy mentions Aaron twice only, once as the object of God’s anger, Deuteronomy 9:20, and once on his death, Deuteronomy 10:6—if indeed this verse be Deuteronomy’s (see notes to Deuteronomy 10:6 f.). These last cases are not only discrepancies in fact; they are symptoms of a difference in standpoint and attitude between Deuteronomy and P, which will emerge fully when we come to compare the two codes.

But the most critical of the divergences as to fact which Deuteronomy exhibits is one from both JE and P—that on the amount and character of the Law promulgated to all Israel on Sinai-Ḥoreb. Deuteronomy states that the Ten Commandments, Deuteronomy 4:13, and the Ten Commandments only—he added no more, Deuteronomy 5:22—were the words of the Covenant at Ḥoreb; the people also were too terrified to hear more so the Lord delivered His further commands to Moses alone (Deuteronomy 5:25-32), who did not communicate these to the people till the eve of crossing the Jordan and they form Deuteronomy’s Code, chs 12–26, the basis of the Second Covenant in Moab. But JE assigns to Ḥoreb the far longer and more detailed Code, Exodus 20:23 to Exodus 23:19, and states that—not the Decalogue but—this, written out as the Book of the Covenant and publicly read, formed the basis of Israel’s covenant with God at Ḥoreb, Exodus 24:3-8. As Driver says in his note on Exodus 24:3 : ‘the Decalogue, which the people had heard themselves cannot be included in the terms used1[6]’ by E of its Book of the Covenant. The discrepancy is complicated by the fact that the Code, chs 12–26, which Deuteronomy says was privately delivered to Moses (Deuteronomy 5:31) but was not published by him till 38 years afterwards in Moab as the terms of the Second Covenant, is partly based on the Code or Book of the Covenant which E avers to have been written out and publicly read at Ḥoreb. The inference seems just, that while the writer or writers of Deuteronomy knew of E’s Book of the Covenant (for they used it) they did not know of any promulgation of it on Ḥoreb, although the present form of E’s narrative distinctly says that it was promulgated there. Hence Kuenen’s suggestion that the Book of the Covenant, Exodus 20:23 to Exodus 23:19, appeared in the original form of E (as used by Deuteronomy) not at Ḥoreb but in Moab, like Deuteronomy’s Code or Book of the Covenant. However this may be, Deuteronomy gives an account of the legislation on Ḥoreb very different from that in Exodus 1[7].

[6] Driver’s Exodus (in this series), p. 252.

[7] See below, the notes introductory to ch. v. pp. 79 f., and to ‘The Ten Words,’ pp. 81 ff. Compare Robertson Smith, OTJC, 2nd Ed. pp. 331–337, much expanded from the 1st Ed., and Chapman, Introduction to the Pentateuch (in this series), pp. 112–117.

The legislation which P dates at Sinai (= Ḥoreb) is not only far greater in amount than either Deuteronomy or E assigns to Israel’s sojourn there, but is of a vastly different character. It lies now in Exodus 25-31, with a variant form in Exodus 35-40, and is continued throughout the Book of Leviticus, except for chs 17–26, which is a separate code known as ‘The Holiness Law’ or H. To all this long corpus of laws and regulations, said by P to have been delivered to Israel, or to Moses and Aaron, on Sinai, Deuteronomy makes no reference, and has very little material in common with it. That the writer or writers of Deuteronomy did not know of all this legislation assigned by P to Sinai is a natural deduction from their definite limitation of the public Law and Covenant on Ḥoreb to the Ten Words or Commandments. This difference of historical statement is not accounted for by saying that Deuteronomy is a book for the people, and therefore dispenses with regulations about ritual, vestments, and the furniture of the Sanctuary, which were within the office of the priests alone. For P too was meant (as we have seen) for all Israel; and its laws with regard to most of these details of the worship were commanded by God to be spoken to the children of Israel (Exodus 25:1; cp. Leviticus 27:34). The construction, equipment and financing of the Sanctuary were, according to P, the duty of the whole people and possible only by their co-operation after detailed public instruction; while many of the other laws said by P to have been delivered on Sinai have to do with the nation’s practical, every-day life. No: there is here a real discrepancy of fact. As Mr Chapman says, the deuteronomic narrative of what happened at Ḥoreb “leaves no room” for the public legislation dated there by P; Deuteronomy expressly limits the public legislation at Ḥoreb to the Ten Commandments.

When we pass from the narratives of the promulgation of the Law in the different documents to an examination of the contents and character of their different codes, we see that the discrepancies as to fact between Deuteronomy, JE, and P are connected with striking differences of standpoint, historical and social, and fundamental distinctions of attitude and spirit.

The Code of Deuteronomy , 12-26, not only (as we have seen) expands with its own rhetoric some of the laws of JE; but it extends their application, enforces them with fresh motives, frequently modifies them, and adds new laws creating new institutions—all in a way that reflects a more mature and complex form of society than that for which the codes of JE as they stand in Exodus 20:23 to Exodus 23:19 and Exodus 34 are designed. For example, the law on loans extended by Deuteronomy to embrace loans to foreigners, Deuteronomy 15:3, Deuteronomy 23:20, and the new laws against the removal of boundary stones, Deuteronomy 19:14, and on the King, Deuteronomy 17:14-20, and the Prophet, Deuteronomy 18:9-22, with all the detailed and graded administration of justice, Deuteronomy 16:18-20, Deuteronomy 17:8-13, reveal Israel as long settled in the Promised Land, with a more developed agriculture, commerce and polity, and ideas of prophecy, than there is any trace of in the primitive codes of J and E.

The contrast between the Codes of Deuteronomy and of P is still greater. Though it also extends to the social and political conditions of the people, it is mainly a contrast of religious ideas, organisation and institutions. In P these are developed, distinguished and classified to a degree far beyond anything that appears in Deuteronomy. Not merely does P enter into minute details of ritual for which Deuteronomy has no eye and shows no concern; but in the larger elements and on the main lines of the practice of religion there are great differences. For example, P increases the number of the annual Feasts (see on Deuteronomy 16:1 ff.) from three to seven and adds the Year of Jubilee, elaborates the sacrifices, divides and grades the priestly tribe and multiplies their rights—of all which Deuteronomy either knows nothing or enjoins inconsistently something simpler. To Deuteronomy all men of the tribe of Levi are priests; the priests the Levites is its distinctive and peculiar term for them, which it puts past all ambiguity by once adding the words all the tribe of Levi, Deuteronomy 17:9; Deuteronomy 17:18, Deuteronomy 18:1, Deuteronomy 24:8; cp. Deuteronomy 21:5. According to it they are all eligible, on certain conditions, for the distinctive priestly functions—at that time Jehovah separated the tribe of Levi to bear the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, to stand before Jehovah to minister unto him and to bless in his name unto this day, Deuteronomy 10:8; and if a Levite come from any of thy gates out of all Israel where he sojourneth … he shall minister as all his brethren the Levites do which stand there before Jehovah; they shall have like portions to eat, Deuteronomy 18:6-8. But in P, on the contrary, Priests and Levites are not identical terms; the priesthood and distinctive priestly functions, of bearing the ark and of standing before Jehovah to minister unto Him, are confined to descendants of Aaron, and Levite is the name for the other members of the tribe, to whom priestly functions are forbidden under heavy penalties and who discharge less sacred duties about the altar and the sanctuary—see further the notes on Deuteronomy 10:8 f., Deuteronomy 18:1-8. This difference between Deuteronomy and P is the more significant, that the former’s Code is in harmony therein with the spirit of the earlier practice of Israel, and the latter’s with the later practice (see 1 Kings 12:31 and Ezekiel 44:10-16)1[8]. Further, P, who says nothing about a king, speaks of a high (literally a great) priest, who has many of the distinctions of a king: he is anointed (Exodus 29:7, Leviticus 4:3; Leviticus 4:5; Leviticus 8:12, Numbers 35:25), wears the mitre and holy diadem (Exodus 29:6), and dates are reckoned by his life (Numbers 35:25). Of this Deuteronomy says not one word. Again, P increases the value of the priest’s share of the sacrificial meat which Deuteronomy allots to him, and this is the more significant because Deuteronomy’s injunctions are themselves a distinct advance on the practice in early Israel—see the notes to Deuteronomy 18:3. Altogether P increases the dues to the priests to a very much greater degree over what was the custom with regard to them in early times2[9]. There is also in the legislation of P an enhancement of the holiness of the priesthood, and a distinction between things holy and most holy, of which Deuteronomy tells us nothing.

[8] See Chapman, Introduction to the Pentateuch (in this series), pp. 153 ff. The reader will find the opposite case well stated by Orr, Problem of the Old Testament, pp. 184–192. The present writer has carefully considered this attempt to reconcile Deuteronomy’s and P’s statements about Priests and Levites. Dr Orr suggests that by the expression the Priests the Levites Deuteronomy only means ‘the Levitical Priests.’ But this interpretation is excluded by Deuteronomy’s addition, all the tribe of Levi, Deuteronomy 18:1, which Professor Orr ignores, and by Deuteronomy’s permission to any Levite to perform priestly functions.

[9] Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel (E. T.), 158; and the present writer’s Jerusalem i. 354 ff. For the difference between Deuteronomy’s and P’s laws of tithes see below pp. 196 f. and cp. 207 f.

But the cardinal distinction of the Code of Deuteronomy is the law of the One Altar and Sanctuary, ch. Deuteronomy 12:2-14; Deuteronomy 12:17-19; Deuteronomy 12:26 f., along with the necessary consequences of this in new, or modified, laws upon the slaughter of beasts elsewhere than at the Altar, Deuteronomy 12:15 f., Deuteronomy 12:20-25; on Tithes and the payment of vows and the sacrifice of firstlings, Deuteronomy 12:17 f, Deuteronomy 12:26 ff., Deuteronomy 14:22-29, with the additional note on Tithes, pp. 196 f.; and on the three annual Feasts, Deuteronomy 16:1-17; on the provision for the Levites of the rural sanctuaries, Deuteronomy 18:6-8; and on the cities of Asylum or Refuge, Deuteronomy 19:1 ff. While the laws of JE—in accordance with the practice of early Israel, sanctioned by all their religious leaders down at least to Elijah (see below p. xl ff.)—assume the validity of sacrifice to Jehovah at any altar where He may record His Name, Deuteronomy forbids all altars save one, and confines sacrifice to it1[10]. P also knows the single Sanctuary, but P throws back the institution of this to the legislation on Sinai, while to Deuteronomy the single Sanctuary and Altar is still a thing of the future, to be realised only when the people have settled down in the Promised Land. P also regards the eating of flesh not sacrificed as lawful, whereas H, the older code (Leviticus 17-26) incorporated in P, still requires all slaughter of animals for food to be sacrificial.

[10] In the light of the practice in early Israel it is impossible to reconcile the law in JE with that of the single altar in Deut. by saying that the former permits only successive but not necessarily simultaneous sanctuaries (so Douglas in Lex Mosaica, and Robertson, Early Religion of Israel, p. 410).

Deuteronomy, then, has a standpoint very distinct both from that of JE and from that of P. On the whole it is a standpoint midway between them. For on the one hand it reflects social and political and religious conditions more developed than those reflected in JE and on the other it exhibits an organisation of religion far less developed than that in P. The worship of Jehovah, sanctioned by JE at many altars—in accordance with the earlier practice in Israel—is concentrated by Deuteronomy on one only sanctuary. Deuteronomy alone has a Law of the King, while P has no reference to a King but exalts the chief priest and invests him with some at least of the distinctions of royalty; and Deuteronomy alone, it must also be emphasized, has a law of the Prophet. We shall have to reckon the bearing of all this on the question of the date of Deuteronomy 2[11], especially in view of the light cast on it from the earlier and later historical books. Meantime all we have to note, and on the strength of the cumulative evidence we have marshalled to note emphatically, is the conspicuous distinctiveness of the standpoint of Deuteronomy.

[11] See § 11.

But above and around this conspicuous standpoint of Deuteronomy, with its consequent differences of detail, there is a different atmosphere from those we breathe in the other documents. The style of the Book is but the music of winds that blow and sing through it alone—that sing even among its laws.

With the other documents Deuteronomy shares a very spiritual conception of the relations of Israel to their God. Though the religion of Israel, especially in the Pentateuch, betrays many of the traits common to all families of the race from which Israel sprang—many forms of ritual and ethical tempers, many of the physical phenomena in which the Deity was believed to manifest Himself to men, and especially the conception of Him as the God of one people through whom His Name and Nature were revealed—yet the origin and character of Jehovah’s relations to Israel are not (as with those of other Semitic gods to their peoples) physical, growing out of the soil or confined to one land, but historical and moral. Nor are they the reflection of the people’s own character. Jehovah chose Israel and chose them not for their strength or virtue but out of pity when they were in weakness and affliction, and redeemed them; and they had traditions of His earlier manifestations to some of their forefathers, to individual souls of their race, always the human fountain-heads of spiritual religions. Jehovah’s providence for the nation had not been only physical or political, by signs and great wonders and by war, but ethical, to instruct and discipline them, to prove and sift them; and the religiousness of Israel was the moral response to all this, a trust in His faithfulness, gratitude and the endeavour to keep His commandments. They felt that He was unique with a uniqueness both of power and character among the gods of mankind; and that by His influence they had a conscience and character and a religious wisdom of their own. So far all the documents of the Pentateuch are at one; they all reach this level.

But nowhere else in the Pentateuch has the love of God to man such free course as in Deuteronomy; and nowhere else is man’s love to God invoked, except once in Exodus 20:6, and that is a deuteronomic addition to the Decalogue. These two, God’s love to man and man’s love to God, are everywhere in Deuteronomy. They are the essence of its creed (Deuteronomy 6:1-5) the motives and power of the full obedience it demands, the passion of its wistful appeals to remember, to know and to consider, of all its constant cry for the hearts of its hearers. They beat in its distinctive metaphors—as a man beareth his son, as a man chasteneth his son—and in these still more intimate terms to draw to (or set his love upon) and to cleave to1[12], of a man’s true love to a woman: an early anticipation of St Paul on the love of Christ and His Church. And they echo throughout narrative, exhortation, and law alike, in those refrains to the Divine Name, thy God, your God, our God; over three hundred of them (as we have seen) to fewer than fifty in all the rest of the Pentateuch2[13]. It is true that Deuteronomy dwells on the Greatness of God, Deuteronomy 3:24, Deuteronomy 5:24, Deuteronomy 9:26, Deuteronomy 11:2 (elsewhere only in Deuteronomy 32:3, 1 Chronicles 29:11, and Psalm 145:3; Psalm 145:6; Psalm 150:2), a Great God and a Terrible, Deuteronomy 7:21, Deuteronomy 10:17, Deuteronomy 28:58, cf. Deuteronomy 10:21, and inculcates throughout the fear of Him. But He is terrible for His Israel’s sake and the fear of Him casteth out the fear of man. Except in face of the awful happenings on Ḥoreb Deuteronomy gives no occasion to construe this as terror or dread. On the contrary, the frequent commands fear and learn to fear associate the temper with hearing, keeping, or doing, God’s Law. Fear is reverence, anxious obedience, the intelligent and loyal practice of a trust (see on Deuteronomy 4:10). It is as little opposite to, as closely one with, love as the watching, taking heed to thyself and keeping thy soul diligently which are enjoined with equal frequency. God’s love for Israel, His intimacy with them and His care alike for the weakest of themselves—with the stranger that is in thy gates—and for the smallest details of their life and its circumstance are all plied with a tenderness that pervades the Book, narrative, exhortation and law alike, and suffuses with a peculiar warmth all God’s relations to His people and the duties He requires of them to Himself and to one another. The thoroughness of the discipline which only love can impose appears in the favourite phrases to humble thee and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart (see on Deuteronomy 8:2); and peculiar to Deuteronomy is the command to love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might (Deuteronomy 6:5). The effect of all this is a great joy in religion, on which Deuteronomy, of all the documents, most insists: ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God, thou shalt be altogether joyful (Deuteronomy 12:12; Deuteronomy 12:18, Deuteronomy 14:26, Deuteronomy 16:14-15, Deuteronomy 24:10-11); it is a sin with a curse on it, that thou hast not served the Lord thy God with joyfulness and gladness of heart (Deuteronomy 28:47). There is nothing of this in the laws of JE; it breaks through only once in those of P, the day of your gladness (Numbers 10:10), and once in those of H, Leviticus 23:40. Indeed the word for gladness appears only once more in all the rest of the Pentateuch, in the mouth of Laban the Aramean (Genesis 31:27); it is not used even in E’s story of Miriam and the women with their timbrels and dances (Exodus 15:20 f.), nor in his or J’s laws of the great Feasts. The contrast presented by P’s and Deuteronomy’s pictures of the worshipping congregation in the central Sanctuary is very striking: in P the awful glory of the Divine Presence, bells, trumpets, sweet savour of frankincense, gorgeous vestments, careful ablutions and all the people shouting and falling on their faces; in Deuteronomy only a set of happy households eating of the sacrificial meal and rejoicing before the Lord, altogether joyful. In one place Deuteronomy extends this joy in worship to all that ye put your hand to (Deuteronomy 12:7); and we may therefore take with it the Book’s delight in the Land—that good land is its frequent phrase—and the passages through which it lingers on the beauty and fruitfulness of the land which the Lord thy God is giving thee (Deuteronomy 6:10 ff., Deuteronomy 7:12 ff., Deuteronomy 8:7 ff., Deuteronomy 11:10 ff.). Take it all in all Deuteronomy has a heart of its own—a bigger, richer heart than any of its fellows in the Pentateuch.

[12] Deuteronomy 8:5, and the notes on Deuteronomy 7:7, ḥashaḳ, and Deuteronomy 10:20, dabaḳ.

[13] See note on Deuteronomy 1:6.

Other spiritual qualities distinctive of the Book are these. Though with the rest of the documents it records the signs and great wonders of the Divine Providence of Israel and even delights in its own way in describing them as the very grasp and gesture, the strong hand and outstretched arm, of the Almighty, the writing finger of God—of whom it also declares ye saw no manner of form, no form only a voice (Deuteronomy 4:12; Deuteronomy 4:15)—yet it lays still greater emphasis on this voice alone, on the spoken word of God. Sometimes, as in Deuteronomy 1:6-8, it ignores the physical manifestation to which P gives constant prominence and records only the voice accompanying. To Deuteronomy all miracles are ancillary to the Law; they only lead up to this end: your eyes have seen all the great work of the Lord which he did; therefore shall ye keep all the commandments, Deuteronomy 11:7 f. The Law is the thing! The Book does not doubt the reality of the miracles even of the false prophets, yet the test of a prophet is to be not his miracles but the character of his teaching (Deuteronomy 13:1). All divination, necromancy and the like, all the magic which revels in alleged physical signs at the expense of the moral and intellectual elements of religion, are of course absolutely condemned; they are abominations to Jehovah (Deuteronomy 18:9-22). Only the prediction that comes to pass is to be a mark of true prophecy—such a prediction implies faith and spiritual foresight—yet even it is to be repudiated if associated with false teaching (cp. Deuteronomy 13:2 with Deuteronomy 18:21 f.). To this doctrine of prophecy and discriminate treatment of miracles there is no counterpart in the other documents. On the whole then, the truth, the purity, the love that the Word carries are the proofs of its divinity; in the acceptance of these consist the wisdom and the understanding (Deuteronomy 4:6) which distinguish Israel from other peoples. The greatness and the strength of Israel lie not in their power or wealth but in their statutes and judgements, and in their obedience to these (Deuteronomy 4:8, Deuteronomy 11:8, etc.). Life—that ye may live and that it may be well with thee, very favourite phrases of the Book—comes by penitence and seeking after God (Deuteronomy 4:30), by discipline, obedience and watchfulness. Compare the prophetic appeal in Deuteronomy 10:12 : And now Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee?

It is in all these doctrines and tempers of doctrine that the distinctive spirituality of Deuteronomy is manifest, even more than in its proclamations of the Unity (Deuteronomy 6:4) and Uniqueness (Deuteronomy 4:34; Deuteronomy 4:39) and Sovereignty (Deuteronomy 10:14; Deuteronomy 10:17) of the Godhead of Jehovah, however absolutely we may interpret these; or in its insistence that He is without physical form (Deuteronomy 4:12; Deuteronomy 4:15), or in its constant thunders against other gods, and all images, likenesses and material emblems of deity. How much occasion and reason there were for such proclamations and denouncements, and for the passion that swells in them, may be seen from the multiplicity of the cults which Israel encountered in Canaan and from the character of these cults. Not only were there gods many and lords many in the world—a fact that Deuteronomy, speaking to a generation which believed in their reality, seeks to reconcile with the sovereignty of Jehovah by saying that it is He who has allotted those gods to their various peoples (Deuteronomy 4:19)—but the throng of gods in Canaan alone were by the popular mind easily huddled into, and confounded with, each other. The prophets bear witness how readily Israel, on emerging from the desert and settling to agriculture and the growth of the vine—with Canaanites still as their neighbours, for their conquest of the land was gradual (Deuteronomy 7:22)—succumbed to this polytheism and syncretism, and confounded their own God with the similarly titled deities of the land, the Baals the Adons and the Meleks. Compare Deuteronomy itself: Take heed to thyself that thou be not drawn away after them (after that they be destroyed from before thee); and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How do these nations worship their gods? even so will I do likewise (Deuteronomy 12:30). Most of what became shrines of Jehovah when Israel settled in Canaan had from time immemorial been the shrines of the local deities. The attributes of these gods and the forms of their worship were transferred to Him and to His worship. This transference took place the more easily that Israel as a family of the Semitic stock had already in common with the Canaanites so much ritual and so many sacraments—sacrificial slaughter of beasts, sacred poles and pillars with their unction and the like—and even so many conceptions of the Godhead—as the Lord of one nation, through whom His Name, (that is the revelation of His nature) was revealed, as its King and leader in war, a man of war (Exodus 15:3), as the Baal or husband or fertiliser of its land, as the Raingiver whose emblem was the rainbow, and as the Lawgiver whose voice was heard alike in thunder and in the rustle of the trees. Thus after Israel’s occupation of Canaan, though the high places of the land may in name have belonged to Jehovah, in reality they were devoted to the Baalim—according to the number of thy cities are thy gods, O Judah! (Jeremiah 11:13). There were in fact many Jehovahs. Hence the necessity of proclaiming the Unity of the God of Israel, hence even the particular forms in which it is proclaimed by Deuteronomy: Hear, O Israel, Jehovah thy God is one Jehovah (Deuteronomy 6:4), Jehovah He is God, there is none else beside Him; in heaven above and on the earth beneath He is God, there is none else! (Deuteronomy 4:35; Deuteronomy 4:39). Hence too the cardinal law of the concentration of His worship on One Sanctuary and One Altar, and the destruction of all the high places (ch. 12). In the religious circumstances of Israel in Canaan the One Altar was the only practical safeguard of the creed of the One God. Hence, too, the abolition of certain objects and rites that were traditional and had even been divinely sanctioned in Israel’s worship, the Asherim or sacred poles and the Maṣṣeboth or sacred pillars (Deuteronomy 16:21 ff., with the notes pp. 218–220), or the shaving of the head in mourning (Deuteronomy 14:1) to which even the prophet Amos speaks of the voice of God as calling the people (see note on p. 185). For such things were contents also of the Canaanite cults, by tradition from a common racial source. Hence, too, the recurring denunciation of all images. And hence even the ruthlessness of the laws against the Canaanites themselves and the Israelite worshippers of other gods (Deuteronomy 7:22 ff., Deuteronomy 20:13, Deuteronomy 17:2-7, Deuteronomy 20:13; Deuteronomy 20:16 ff.). If this ruthlessness, and the particular cruelties with which it was to be carried out, as in the ḥerem (Deuteronomy 2:34, etc.), seem paradoxical beside the other features of Deuteronomy on which we have dwelt—the love and tenderness that breathe through it—we must remember that the like combination has often appeared in the history of religion, when to the sincere consciousness of the possession of a higher purity, there has been added the fanatic zeal which a monotheistic creed appears to engender especially among Oriental peoples. But this brings us to consider in more detail the ethics of our Book.

The ethics of Deuteronomy show proofs of development similar to those we have observed upon its system of religion. That is, while they have elements in common with the ethics of other Semitic peoples, they mark in many respects an advance and ascent both from these and from the earlier law and practice within Israel itself. There is at once greater thoroughness of treatment (for example in providing for eventualities, see on Deuteronomy 15:7-11), in applying principles and in refusing compromise or a composition of interests where principle is concerned; and on the other hand there area broader equity and a greater humanity and a more considerate dealing with the rights and feelings of individuals. But, above all, motive and intention are included as well as action to a degree not found in any other system of laws and certainly beyond that reached by the other Israelite codes1[14].

[14] In the following paragraphs detailed references to the Code of Ḫammurabi are omitted as they are given in the notes.

Take first the administration of justice. Deuteronomy sanctions the same system of tribal judges and of appeal from them to the representative of God at the sanctuary (Deuteronomy 1:9-18, Deuteronomy 16:18-20, Deuteronomy 17:8-13), which exists among other Semitic peoples, nomad or settled; but with its characteristic application of religion to every interest of the national life it impresses upon the tribal judges that their charge as much as the priests’ is God’s judgement (see on Deuteronomy 1:17). With all Semitic law and practice Deuteronomy shares the same conscience of impartial justice and in particular it joins JE in forbidding bribes; but, after its style, it is more emphatic in its demands: Justice, Justice shalt thou follow or hunt (Deuteronomy 16:20). The principle of like for like—life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot—is laid down (Deuteronomy 19:21, cp. Deuteronomy 19:19, Deuteronomy 25:11 f.) as in the other Hebrew codes and in all Semitic jurisprudence; and the justice of the Semitic vendetta or blood-revenge is assumed—it is necessary to the welfare of society (Deuteronomy 19:13)—with of course the rights of sanctuary which mitigate the vendetta in all the tents and cities of Shem and are recognised in each of the Hebrew codes (Deuteronomy 19:1-13, Exodus 21:13 E, and Numbers 35:9-34 P); and as everywhere the guilty murderer is delivered to the kinsmen of his victim as his executioners (Deuteronomy 19:12, cp. Deuteronomy 19:6). But in Deuteronomy as in P careful provision is made for the full trial of the accused and for his security, if it be found that the fatal stroke was not intended by him; while on the other hand, as in JE and P, no such composition is permitted between a guilty man and the avengers of blood as is frequent among the Arabs, for the sin of murder is one not only against man but against God (see the additional note to Deuteronomy 19:1-13 and that at the foot of p. 241). The death-sentence is pronounced not only upon the murderer but as throughout the Semitic world and elsewhere on the man-stealer (Deuteronomy 24:7) and the adulterer (Deuteronomy 21:13 ff.), and as in some Semitic societies on the obdurate rebel against authority, that all the people may hear and fear (Deuteronomy 17:12 f.) and on the rebellious son that all Israel may hear and fear (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) (we must remember also that prisons are difficult to construct in most Semitic communities); and it is extended to the presumptuous prophet (Deuteronomy 13:1-5, Deuteronomy 18:20) and to native seducers to idolatry (Deuteronomy 13:6-18, cp. Exodus 22:20 E). These last cases rest on the same grounds of course as the merciless destruction of the Canaanites and of their property in war—thou shalt ban them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew them mercy, ḥesed, the kindly loyalty natural between man and man (Deuteronomy 7:2 f.). Those grounds are: first, that of ritual danger, for this is within the content of the technical terms tô‘çbah, abomination, and shiḳḳeṣ, to detest (see on Deuteronomy 7:25 ff.) and is implied in the phrase, that there cleave nought of the thing banned to thine hand (Deuteronomy 13:17); second, of the jealousy of Israel’s own God against other gods (Deuteronomy 4:24, Deuteronomy 5:9, Deuteronomy 6:15); but also, third (implicitly), of the ethical uncleanness of their practices—the wickedness of these nations (Deuteronomy 9:5, see note), to which recent excavations of Canaanite sanctuaries bear witness. While death is decreed to the false prophet and seducers to idolatry nothing is said of death in the case of the religious prostitutes of both sexes; but it has probably to be inferred as inflicted on them just as it must have been in the case of incest, in which also it is not mentioned (Deuteronomy 22:30). As in other primitive societies communal responsibility is recognised for crimes, the individual authors of which cannot be detected (Deuteronomy 21:1-9); and also the ethical solidarity of the family, with the power of parents over their children even to the extent of putting them to death (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). But this last is subject to examination and judgement by the elders; the parents are spared from being the executioners; and it is laid down that neither parents nor children shall be put to death for the guilt of each other. (Deuteronomy 24:16); this law is peculiar to Deuteronomy and in contradiction to the earlier custom in Israel at least up to the time of Amaziah. Deuteronomy does not repeat E’s decree of death to the man who strikes his father and mother (Exodus 21:15) or who curses them (Exodus 21:17), but the latter is cursed (Deuteronomy 27:16).

That the mother is joined with the father in the reverence due from their children (Deuteronomy 5:16, cp. Deuteronomy 27:16) and named along with the father in the case of the disobedient son (Deuteronomy 21:18 ff) may be substantially no more than we find in JE and in the Babylonian laws; among even the nomad Arabs a mother of sons is held in honour. But of woman in general and of man’s duty to her there is no doubt that Deuteronomy is inspired by higher conceptions than we find in the other Hebrew codes; witness its more discriminating form of the Tenth Commandment, Deuteronomy 5:21, and see the notes to that and to Deuteronomy 15:12; Deuteronomy 15:18, Deuteronomy 21:14, Deuteronomy 22:13 and Deuteronomy 24:1-4. Polygamy is taken for granted, but in its risks, that one wife may be loved better than another, justice is enforced for the latter and her child (Deuteronomy 21:15-17). The law on Divorce—the practice of this has always been easy among the Semites—is designed to make divorce a more serious and deliberate affair than even in Israel it was conceived to be, and in particular to prevent the degradation of the woman by too easy conveyance from one husband to another (Deuteronomy 24:1-4). It is interesting that the Code allows marriage with a female captive of war, with whom an Israelite has honestly fallen in love, and provides against her being used as a chattel, if he grows tired of her (Deuteronomy 21:10-14). The case of the suspected bride is in procedure on a level with similar cases among other Semitic tribes but in Deuteronomy’s statement of it there are touches of consideration for the woman’s feelings which are the Book’s own (Deuteronomy 22:13-21). In adultery the man is to be punished equally with the woman; for rape the man shall die, and if a man seduce a girl a fine shall not be sufficient, he must marry her because he hath humbled her (Deuteronomy 22:22-29). This is in advance of E’s law (Exodus 22:16 f.).

A comparatively small proportion of the social laws of Deuteronomy are—apart from the cardinal law of the One Altar and its consequences—concerned with matters of ritual; cp. the notes on the law of clean and unclean foods Deuteronomy 14:3-21, against various mixtures Deuteronomy 22:5-9; Deuteronomy 22:11, and of tassels Deuteronomy 22:12, possibly also Deuteronomy 23:9-14 on Cleanness in the Camp.

On the other hand the number of laws that are based on reasons of humanity is very striking; in nothing else is the superiority of Deuteronomy to other codes more conspicuous. Yet we must discriminate. For example, the generous treatment enforced for household slaves (Deuteronomy 15:12-18) has been always part of the general Semitic conscience, and is practised in Arabia today (see notes on pp. 202 ff.). The other Hebrew codes provide for the stranger, the foreign settler in Israel’s gates (E, Exodus 22:21; Exodus 23:9; H, Leviticus 17:10 f., Leviticus 19:10; Leviticus 19:33 f., Leviticus 20:2, Leviticus 24:22; P, Exodus 12:19; Exodus 12:48, Leviticus 16:29, Numbers 15:14; Numbers 15:16; Numbers 15:29) and legislate for the widow (E, Exodus 22:22 f.; H, Leviticus 21:14; Leviticus 22:13; P, Numbers 30:9 ff.). But P’s references to both stranger and widow are all concerned with ritual; H leaves the gleanings of the field to the stranger and the poor and insists that in law native and stranger shall fare alike. E alone adds the fatherless (Exodus 22:22 f.) and his directions for all three are based purely on grounds of justice and sympathy. So are Deuteronomy’s but they are much more numerous and emphatic, always in the combination, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow, Deuteronomy 10:18, Deuteronomy 24:17; Deuteronomy 24:19-21, Deuteronomy 27:19, and with the Levite, Deuteronomy 14:29, Deuteronomy 16:11; Deuteronomy 16:14, Deuteronomy 26:12-13. It is also distinctive that in the law leaving the gleanings to the poor, which is peculiar to H and Deuteronomy, while H gives as the motive I am Jehovah thy God, Deuteronomy emphasises this as kindness and as gratitude to God, and characteristically extends the law to the olive crop as well as to the grain (Deuteronomy 24:19 ff.) Israel is to love the stranger as God loveth him (Deuteronomy 10:18 f.). Deuteronomy’s law on loans and pledges (Deuteronomy 24:10-13) as compared with that of E (Exodus 22:25, see Driver’s note) shows no new principle but a more delicate consideration of the feelings of the poor debtor. With H alone Deuteronomy shares the law enjoining the payment to the hired servant of his wage before sunset (Deuteronomy 24:14 f.; H, Leviticus 19:13; cp. Matthew 20:8). Nor is it without significance that a number of other laws based on motives of humanity are peculiar to Deuteronomy among the Hebrew codes: on sparing the fruit trees in a siege (Deuteronomy 20:19 f.), a real advance on the ethics of war in the Semitic world and even within Israel; on protecting roofs (Deuteronomy 22:8); on help to an escaped slave (Deuteronomy 23:15 f.), also an advance on Semitic custom; against taking the family millstones as a pledge (Deuteronomy 24:6); against excessive beating (Deuteronomy 25:1-3), and on kindness to animals (Deuteronomy 25:4, cp. Deuteronomy 5:14, and possibly Deuteronomy 22:6 f.). Peculiar also to Deuteronomy is the law, equally scrupulous and equitable, upon the use at need of others’ crops (Deuteronomy 23:24 f.). But both this law and that on not muzzling the ox (Deuteronomy 25:4) are generally observed in the East. And also in Deuteronomy alone are two regulations on decency, physical and moral, on the cleanness of the camp (Deuteronomy 23:9-14) and reckless assault (Deuteronomy 25:11 f.), in neither of which are we compelled to trace the motive to any idea of ritual. If all these laws which are peculiar to Deuteronomy were derived by it from other codes, as we know that it derived some from E, yet its selection of them is no less a proof of the distinctive spirit of its morality. In these laws, as in the additions to others, the heart that beats behind the Deuteronomic Code is, as we have seen already, a bigger and a richer heart than we can feel in any other.

But still more distinctive of the higher ethical spirit which pervades Deuteronomy is its searching examination of moral moods and of motives and its inclusion of thoughts and desires as well as actions in its purview—as, for example, in its expansion of E’s story of the disaffection of the people and their penitence after the return of the spies (Deuteronomy 1:26-33); its call to consider with the heart (Deuteronomy 4:39), that is not, as our ears might take it, with the feelings, but with what heart meant to the Hebrew, the practical intellect; its denouncement not only of the appropriation of unlawful silver and gold but of all desire for this (Deuteronomy 7:25); its warnings against base thoughts as well as base deeds, lest thou say in thy heart, or beware that there be not a base thought in thy heart, or it must not seem too hard to thee (Deuteronomy 8:17, Deuteronomy 9:4, Deuteronomy 15:9; Deuteronomy 15:18). The obedience it demands to the Law of God is one of all the heart and all the soul and all the strength. With morality so personal it is not strange that though it is the only Code which provides for a King, Deuteronomy should lay such distinctive stress as it does upon the moral and political responsibilities of the whole people and upon their character as the critical element in their history. One of its laws recognises that public conscience in Israel, which exists also in the poorest tribe of the Arabian desert to-day, the instinct not to dishonour nor to shame one’s fellow-tribesmen; she hath wrought folly in Israel (Deuteronomy 22:21; cp. J, Genesis 34:7, Joshua 7:15, Jdg 20:6; Jdg 20:10). It shares the essentially democratic spirit common to all Semitic peoples. But it brings this out in its own moral way, emphasising the responsibilities of all members of the state rather than their rights. According to other documents of the Pentateuch Moses himself selects the tribal judges, according to Deuteronomy the people (see notes on Deuteronomy 1:9-18, Deuteronomy 16:18), and it describes how grave and serious the office of election is. Similarly it is the people who propose to Moses to send the spies (Deuteronomy 1:22), while in P the sending of the spies is a Divine command (Numbers 13:1 f.); in the victories over Sihon and Og Moses emphasises the people’s share, we smote him, we took all his cities (Deuteronomy 2:33 ff.; cp. Deuteronomy 3:4,etc); and all the exhortations and all the laws are to Israel as a whole. And there is no flattery of the people, but on the contrary, just as by the prophets, their wickedness is unsparingly declared; their shallow penitence is rejected (Deuteronomy 1:41-46); they are repeatedly called presumptuous in action, stubborn, wicked, and sinful (Deuteronomy 9:27), a stiffnecked people (Deuteronomy 9:6; Deuteronomy 9:13, Deuteronomy 10:16), constantly rebelling (Deuteronomy 9:7; Deuteronomy 9:23 f.), corrupting themselves (Deuteronomy 9:12) and quickly turning aside (Deuteronomy 9:16); not for thy righteousness or for the uprightness of thine heart … doth Jehovah thy God drive them out before thee (Deuteronomy 9:4 f.). The modern mind may object to the exclusiveness of the Old Testament’s conception of the Deity’s relation to Israel (see below), but it cannot deny that the relation is conceived in a thoroughly ethical spirit.

It is sometimes objected to Deuteronomy that its morality is too absolute—do good and you shall live, do evil and you shall perish—and that the absolutism is not relieved by any admission or explanation of the sufferings of the righteous: the problem that engaged Jeremiah and the later generations of thinkers in Israel. This is not wholly true. There is at least one passage on the Divine purpose of suffering. He hath led thee these forty years in the wilderness that He might humble thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart.… And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger and fed thee with manna … that He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live (Deuteronomy 8:2 f.). But the mind of the Book is not exercised with the problem, and immediately swings back to its absolutism upon the great hyperbole: Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell these forty years (Deuteronomy 8:4). As a man chasteneth his son so did the Lord thy God chasten thee (Deuteronomy 8:5). The Book leaves it at that, but that is much.

But there are two other more significant limitations upon the teaching of Deuteronomy. We have observed its interesting silence on the foreign influences which according to JE assisted Israel: Hobab’s, Jethro’s1[15], and Balaam’s; its sense of the sufficiency of Israel, possessors of the Law as they were, to themselves. Its interest, its sympathy, its humanity do not extend beyond Israel and the strangers within their gates. There is no blessing through Israel for other peoples as in J (Genesis 12:3; Genesis 18:18; Genesis 22:18; Genesis 26:4; Genesis 28:14)1[16], no calling of them nor destiny for them as in the prophets (Amos 9:7, Isaiah 2:2 ff., Isai. 2:23, etc.); nor even a sense of any natural law of nations (Amos 1); no missionary spirit, nor pity nor charity for other peoples, no promise for mankind beyond Israel. The law as to the admission of individual Edomites and Egyptians of the third generation resident in Israel (Deuteronomy 23:7) is no exception. And the morality and religion of Deuteronomy are confined to this life. There is no hope, nor even a thought, of one beyond.

[15] Hobah and Jethro may lie the same.

[16] See Ryle’s notes to Genesis (this series).

Such, then, are the peculiar style, standpoint, doctrines, spirit, and limitations of Deuteronomy 1-30 throughout. The force and individuality of the Book; its consistency and distinctiveness from the other documents of the Pentateuch as well as its differences from much of the custom and practice both in early and later Israel, are all obvious. Not only in its Cardinal Law of the One Altar, with all the consequences of this, and in other laws peculiar to itself such as those of the King and Prophet, and in its expansions and modifications of earlier law, both written and consuetudinary, but also in its religious temper and general spirit of humanity, Deuteronomy evidently occupies a particular stage in the development of the religion of Israel. Can we mark any point in Israel’s history, at which both the style and characteristic doctrines of the Book appeared as operative on the life and literature of the people? We are fortunate in having evidence in the Old Testament which enables us to fix that point with exactness. At the same time, in face of the structure of the Book—its divisions with their separate and independent titles—the question arises whether all of it appeared at once or whether some parts are not more original than others. That fact and this question will be dealt with in the next paragraphs.

§ 4. Deuteronomy and the Law-Book of Josiah

Neither in the primitive legislation of JE nor in the practice of their religion by early Israel is there a trace of the cardinal law of Deuteronomy, viz. that after Israel enters Canaan and the Lord gives them rest from their foes sacrifice to Him shall be confined to One Altar in a place which He shall choose to cause His name to dwell there (ch. 12). And because there is to be only One Altar the tithes of the people’s flocks and fruits must be taken to it, or if the way be too long to carry them there in kind they are to be turned into money (Deuteronomy 14:22-27); the three annual feasts, Passover, Weeks, and Tabernacles, are to be celebrated there (Deuteronomy 16:1-17); and cities of asylum are to be appointed for unintentional manslayers who are at too great a distance to flee to the Altar (Deuteronomy 4:41-43, Deuteronomy 19:1-13). In contrast to all this the laws of JE assume the validity of sacrifice to Jehovah at every place where He may record His Name and promise that in answer He will come there to bless His worshippers; while the fashion of altar the laws prescribe is one suitable to a multiplicity of rural sanctuaries (Exodus 20:24 f.). And while they include no law as to tithes, they direct that the three annual feasts shall be celebrated at a sanctuary (Exodus 23:14-17; Exodus 34:18-24) and, imply that asylum may be claimed at any altar (Exodus 21:12-14; cp. esp. Exodus 21:13 f.)[17]. So too, after Israel’s entrance into Canaan the histories recount not only that the religious leaders of the people—prophets, priests and kings—sacrificed on many altars scattered over the land, some of which had been high places of the Canaanites, but also that Jehovah appeared there to the worshippers and blessed them. In Judah this sanctioned practice continued down to the building of the Temple, and even after this the high places were not destroyed—not even by pious kings as the deuteronomic editor of the histories is careful to point out. In N. Israel at least several sanctuaries to Jehovah were recognised by the authorities, and Elijah was bidden to build Him an altar on Carmel, upon the sacrifices at which a manifestation of His power descended in answer to prayer1[18]. The prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries, indeed, strongly inveigh against Israel’s worship on the high places, many features of which were fundamentally hostile to the prophetic conceptions of the spiritual nature of Jehovah. But the prophets do not appeal to any written law on the subject, and indeed two of them deny that Jehovah had given any ordinances in the wilderness concerning sacrifices2[19]. Though there were earlier measures taken to destroy idols, and possibly even to concentrate the national worship in the Temple3[20], and though the status of the Temple and its priesthood was constantly strengthened and their influence increased from King Asa’s time onwards, yet the first recorded attempt to abolish the high places is that attributed to Hezekiah. The narrative here bears signs of being a later intrusion into the annals of this monarch4[21]. But the temporary destruction of all high places in the country by the Assyrians1[22], in contrast to the marvellous deliverance of Jerusalem in 701 and the inviolable sacredness with which the preaching of Isaiah had invested the Temple, renders such a reform by Hezekiah very possible and credible. Moreover the Rabshakeh imputes to Hezekiah the removal of the high places, 2 Kings 18:22. That the reform was drastic is proved by the reaction it immediately provoked on Hezekiah’s death. In any case the high places both within and beyond Jerusalem, and the impurities of the worship of Jehovah upon them, persisted during the reigns of Manasseh and Amon and into that of Josiah, as we learn from Jeremiah and Ezekiel 2[23].

[17] See Robertson Smith, OTJC, pp. 342–5, 353 f., and Prophets of Israel, 109 f., 393 f. (in reply to Prof. Green); also Driver’s Exodus (in this series) on the JE laws cited above, and his Deut. pp. xliii f. and 136–138. In the Problem of the Old Testament (1905), p. 175 (cp. pp. 503 f.). Dr Orr offers to Robertson Smith’s argument an answer, which however fails to meet both the facts of the O.T. texts and the contentions of the critics founded on them. He misses the force of the Heb. idiom in Exodus 20:24 f., which indubitably implies a multiplicity of altars. He admits indeed (thus differing from Prof. Green) that Exodus 20:24 f. covers the right of sacrifice at several altars simultaneously as well as at successive stations of Israel’s central sanctuary. But when he emphasises that this right is limited by the clause in every place where I record my name, he fails to state that this is of course admitted by the critics whom he opposes. When he adds that there is nothing in the law of Exodus to conflict with Deuteronomy, he ignores the fact that Deut. confines not only sacrifice but also the record of the Name of Jehovah to one place. Nor does he attempt to meet the force which the argument he opposes derives from the consequences of the law of the One Altar, viz. in Deuteronomy’s laws on tithes, the three annual feasts and the cities of asylum—consequences of which the laws in JE show no trace.

[18] For details and references see below pp. 161 f.

[19] Jeremiah 7:22; cp. Amos 5:25.

[20] As under Asa, circa 913–873 b.c., 1 Kings 15:9-15; see the present writer’s Jerusalem, vol. ii. 90 f.

[21] 2 Kings 18:4; the grammar of the clause on the high places, pillars and ’Asherîm is late, and all these were still in use in the beginning of Josiah’s reign, 60 or 70 years afterwards.

[22] Cp. the terms used of this in 2 Kings 18:33-35; 2 Kings 19:11-13; 2 Kings 19:17-19 (= Isaiah 36:18-20; Isaiah 37:11-13; Isaiah 37:18-20) with the terms used in Deuteronomy, especially in chs. 7 and 12.

[23] Jeremiah 2:20; Jeremiah 3:6; Jeremiah 3:8; Jeremiah 3:13; Jeremiah 3:23; Jeremiah 17:1 f.; and Ezekiel 6:13; Ezekiel 18:5 f., Ezekiel 20:28.

But in the eighteenth year of Josiah, 621 or 620 b.c., a Book of the Law was discovered in the Temple, which being read to the King filled him with consternation, and by the King to the people moved them to initiate great reforms including not only the destruction of idols but the abolition of the high places3[24]. The story has been doubted but on insufficient grounds4[25]. The discovered Book is called the, or a, Book of the Law (Tôrah), Deuteronomy 22:8; Deuteronomy 22:11 and virtually so in Deuteronomy 23:24 f., and the Book of the Covenant, Deuteronomy 23:2; Deuteronomy 23:21 (cp. v. 3, the words of this covenant written in this book). The former is the name Deuteronomy gives to itself; the latter agrees with the description of it in the title to one of its sections, the words of the covenant … in Moab (see above § 1) and with the character of its contents. But the main, and the irrefutable, proof, not merely of the similarity but of the identity of this Law-Book and of Deuteronomy—in whole or part—lies in the record of reforms which Josiah and his people were roused to carry out: the destruction of all idols and symbols including the pillars and ’Asherîm, and impure practices, whether connected with the worship of Jehovah or with that of other gods (cp. 2 Kings 23:4 f., 2 Kings 23:7, 2 Kings 23:10 f., 2 Kings 23:12 ff., 2 Kings 23:15 last clause, 2 Kings 23:19; 2Ki 23:24 with Deuteronomy 17:3; Deuteronomy 12:2 f., Deuteronomy 16:21 f., Deuteronomy 18:10 f., Deuteronomy 23:18 (17); the abolition of all high places and the centralisation of the worship of Jehovah in one place (cp. 2 Kings 23:8; 2 Kings 23:13-15; 2 Kings 23:19 with Deuteronomy 12); the provision, consequently necessary for the priests of the disestablished rural sanctuaries, to eat bread with their brethren at Jerusalem (2 Kings 23:9 b with Deuteronomy 18:8); and the new celebration of the Passover by all the people at Jerusalem—the first of the kind in the history of Israel (cp. 2 Kings 23:21-23 with Deuteronomy 16:5 f.). Among the codes of Israel that of Deuteronomy is the only one which requires the execution of all these measures. The one point in which Josiah did not carry out the deuteronomic law was its direction that the disestablished priests should be allowed to minister at the One Altar (cp. 2 Kings 23:9 a with Deuteronomy 18:7). That this exception is recorded does not subtract from but rather adds to the accumulation of evidence that the Law-Book discovered in the Temple 621–20 b.c. was not merely similar to, but identical with, at least the distinctive parts of Deuteronomy.

[24] 2 Kings 22 f. See below, pp. xciv ff.

[25] By a group of French writers, Havet, d’Eichthal, and Vernes, in answer to whom Steuernagel (Deut. p. x) quotes as conclusive an article by Piepenbring in which it is pointed out that the first deuteronomic edition of the Book of Kings, to which 2 Kings 22 f. belongs, must be earlier than the Exile, probably about 600 b.c.—Stade and Schwally, SBOT, excise the following as of later origin: Deuteronomy 22:6 f., 15–20 a, Huldah’s oracle, Deuteronomy 23:5; Deuteronomy 23:8 b, 10, 12 (last clause), 13–20, 26 f.; but other analyses (Kamphausen’s and Steuernagel’s) yield other results, and all are uncertain. Huldah’s oracle may not be in its original form, but the fact that it predicts a peaceful death for Josiah, who fell at Megiddo in 612, is proof that part at least of its first contents has been preserved. Even after the said analyses, enough remains of the two chapters to support the argument above.

This conclusion, suggested as early as Jerome and Chrysostom1[26], and recognised by Hobbes2[27], was first made current in modern criticism by De Wette3[28], and is now accepted almost universally4[29].

[26] Jer. Comm. in Ezekiel 1:1; Chrys. Hom. in Maath. ix.

[27] Leviathan, 200 f.: also the Law-Book = Deuteronomy 12-27.

[28] Beiträge, 1806.

[29] See Wellhausen’s Prolegomena to the History of Israel, 1878, English translation 1885, pp. 27, 32–34; Robertson Smith’s OTJC, 2nd ed. 256 ff., with his Additional Answer to the Libel (1878), pp. 78 ff.; and Answer to the Amended Libel (1879); Cornill, Einleitungin d. A. T. 1895, English translation of 5th ed. pp. 52 ff.; Cheyne, Jeremiah: his Life and Times, pp. 50 f.; Driver, Deuteronomy, 1895, pp. xliv ff.; Marti in Kautzsch’s Die Heilige Schrift des A.T. 3rd ed. vol. i. p. 238: ‘die Gründe hiefür sind so zwingend, dass eine andere Annahme ausgeschlossen ist’; Chapman, Introduction to Pentateuch, pp. 135–146; Orr, Problem of Old Testament (1909), p. 257: ‘no reason to doubt that the book which called forth this reformation embraced if it did not entirely consist of the Book of Deuteronomy,’ but he admits that the narrative in Kings generally does not require, though at points it suggests, more, e.g. Deuteronomy 23:21.

Recent attempts to dispute it, whether from a conservative1[30], or from an advanced standpoint, cannot be pronounced as reasonable. Some of the latter have already been mentioned; but a few words are necessary on another. Dr Kennett2[31] argues for a date for Deuteronomy subsequent to the reign of Josiah mainly on the grounds that its language is dependent on Jeremiah’s—but this is not proved and the converse is more probable—and that it contains exilic elements—but these, if they are really such, may be reckoned among the later additions to the Book. Dr Kennett’s explanation of Josiah’s consternation as due to some denunciations of sacrifice by one of the prophets does not suit the well-established fact that it was the reading of a Book of the Law, a Book of the Covenant which dismayed the King, and that it was denunciation not of sacrifice but only of certain forms of it to which the King’s reforms correspond. Dr Kennett has then to account for Josiah’s continuance of sacrifice at the Temple and does so by the fact that this was Josiah’s own royal chapel—a reason that may be safely left to the judgement of the reader! Dr Kennett thinks that ‘there is good reason for supposing that for some time neither the Jewish community in Babylon nor that in Egypt possessed any written law limiting sacrifice to one sanctuary’; that it was only Ezekiel’s presence in Babylon which prevented the Jews from building a temple there, like the one their brethren built in Egypt; and that ‘if we may suppose that the compact between southern Samaria (i.e. the district of which Bethel was the chief sanctuary) and Judah to make Jerusalem the one place of sacrifice for both districts dates from a time subsequent to Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem, the law of Deuteronomy which embodies and extends this compact must be placed still later.’ This is not argument but a series of conjectures: and even if we were to accept these, we should still have to ask what then caused Josiah’s consternation and what was the basis of his reforms?

[30] Möller, Are the Critics Right? transl. by Irwin, 1903.

[31] ‘The Date of Deuteronomy’ in the Journal of Theological Studies, July, 1906; cp. p. 43 of The Composition of the Book of Isaiah.

§ 5. Questions of Unity

But was the Law-Book discovered under Josiah the whole of Deuteronomy 1-30 or only part? The question is raised both by the record of his reforms which all find a sufficient motive within the Code 12–26, and by the structure of Deuteronomy itself. It is true (as we have seen) that the style and doctrine of chs. 1–30 are so distinctive and so uniform that it is natural to argue that they are a unity and from the same hand. The assertion has even been made that the evidence is ‘overwhelming1[32].’ This, however, is extravagant.

[32] Orr, Problem of the Old Testament, p. 253.

So far from the evidence for their unity being ‘overwhelming’ chs 1–30 bear many marks both of expansion and of compilation. Not only do the main divisions—into Discourses and Code and Discourses again, each with its own independent heading or introduction (§ 2)—suggest the association of originally separate documents; but these main divisions also reveal as between themselves, not indeed differences of substance, but, in spite of their uniform style, some differences of diction. Further, within each division there are prima facie appearances of more than one hand. Not only are there archaeological notes2[33] unsuitable in the mouth of the speaker and to his hortatory purpose and other obviously editorial expansions3[34]; but sections, both large and small, differ from each other in the form of address used to Israel, some using the Singular Thou others the Plural You (hereafter styled Sg. and Pl.). This distinction of address might be ignored if it stood alone, but it is frequently coincident with differences in the phraseology used for the same subjects, in the themes treated and even in the standpoints from which the people and their past are regarded. Such distinctions emerge not only in each of the Discourses but in the Code as well, in which we find evidence of doublets, or variant laws on the same subject. Altogether there are enough of such phenomena in the style and substance of the Book, if not to prove different authors and persons as in the case of the main documents of the Pentateuch, J, E, D and P1[35], yet to suggest the possibility of the compilation of our Deuteronomy from different editions of the original. And that would be a solution of the question which would not (it may be pointed out) conflict with the distinctive and impressive uniformity of the style throughout.

[33] E.g. Deuteronomy 2:10-12; Deuteronomy 2:20-23, etc.

[34] E.g. Deuteronomy 1:39, Deuteronomy 4:29-31, and clauses in Deuteronomy 11:10 f.; see § 9.

[35] See Chapman, I.P. passim.

With this evidence from the Book itself, some general considerations have to be kept in mind. Oneness of motive, of doctrine, of temper, or even of style, does not of itself prove oneness of authorship2[36]. This is most necessary to remember in the case of such a style as the deuterohomic. As we see from the admitted editorial expansions within the Book as well as from the influence it exerted on the subsequent literature of Israel the deuteronomic style is a most imitable and even infectious fashion of writing. Granted the same religious motives and tempers in the same political and spiritual circumstance, it is at least as conceivable that Deuteronomy 1-30 was the work of a school of writers in the same or successive periods, as that it was the work of an individual author. That is a possibility which we cannot ignore in view of the Book’s own evidences of compilation.

[36] Cp. Bagehot, Physics and Politics (1883), pp. 32–36, 88–90, on the rise and prevalence in a particular age or school of a uniform style.

Such are the questions which arise regarding the unity of Deuteronomy 1-30. They fall into two classes, fairly coincident with the two main stages in the history of the modern criticism of the Book. First there are the questions of the relations of the main divisions of the Book to each other—the Code, and the Introductory and Concluding Discourses with their separate headings; and Second there are the questions raised by the cross-divisions of the Book, which run through all the main divisions, especially the distinction between Sg. and Pl. forms of address, which is sometimes coincident with differences of phraseology and of subject.

§ 6. The Relations to Each Other of the Main Divisions—The Code and the Discourses

The earlier controversy upon the unity of Deuteronomy 1-30 was concerned with the relations, to the Code (12–26) and to each other, of the two Introductory Discourses (Deuteronomy 1:1 to Deuteronomy 4:40 and Deuteronomy 5-11) and the Closing Discourses (28–30; 27 raises questions of its own and will be treated later). Except for certain admitted expansions the Code was regarded as original; that is, the Law-Book discovered and enforced in the reign of Josiah contained at least the Code. Some critics argued that the Law-Book consisted only of the Code without any introduction, not even chs. 5–11 which they assigned to a later writer1[37]. Their principal reasons for this are that the author of chs. 5–11 implies that the statutes and judgements of the Code were already before him in writing—witness e.g. the perfect tense hath commanded you as in Deuteronomy 5:32 and the setting before the people in Deuteronomy 11:26 ff. of a blessing and a curse for keeping or transgressing commandments not yet given to them; and that chs. 5–11 form far too long an introduction to the Code for its author himself to make2[38]. But neither of these is a sound reason. Such perfects as we find in Deuteronomy 5:32 imply only that the speaker had already received from God the laws he was about to communicate to the people, which was the case with Moses; neither they nor anything else suggest more than that the author had completed his Code before he wrote his introduction to it, which is very probable1[39] and if true does not render the introduction less original than the Code. As for the great length of the introduction between the intimation at its outset that Moses is about to set the law or the statutes and judgements before Israel (Deuteronomy 5:1; cp. Deuteronomy 4:44), and the point at which he actually reaches these, (Deuteronomy 12:1) two things must be kept in mind: that the introduction, especially from Deuteronomy 6:1 onwards, is itself an exposition (see note on Deuteronomy 1:5), if not of the Law yet of the principles underlying it; and that the long historical section, Deuteronomy 9:8 to Deuteronomy 10:8 or 11 may not have been original to the introduction2[40]. Besides, it is very probable, if not certain, that a Code enjoining such drastic changes in the religious life of the people had some introduction explaining the principles on which it was based. Nor are there any discrepancies in substance between the Code and chs. 5–11. It is true that in the latter there is no allusion to the cardinal law of the Code, but (as we have seen) that law is but the practical corollary, in the peculiar circumstances of the seventh century, of the principles which those chapters enforce: the uniqueness of the God of Israel and the exclusion from all association with His worship of the practices prevalent in the worship of other gods. Nor are there differences of language between the Code and chs. 1–11 nearly sufficient to suggest different authors or dates of origin. It is true that many of the laws as stated in the Code are devoid of the usual formulas and other marks of the deuteronomic style with which chs. 5–11 are replete; and true also that the Code contains a certain number of terms not found elsewhere in Deuteronomy nor in the deuteronomic passages of the rest of the Old Testament. But this is to be explained by the fact that the Code incorporates laws, and perhaps even groups of laws, from previous collections3[41], and that in the exposition of principles, of which chs. 5–11 consist, there was no occasion for the use either of purely juridical terms, suitable to the statutes themselves, or of names of things or actions relevant only to the subjects of particular statutes. Nor is it without significance that it is precisely in the laws original to the Code—that of the One Altar and those which follow from it—that the deuteronomic formulas chiefly occur and that the language generally shows close affinity to that of chs. 5–11.

[37] Valeton, Studien, vi. 1880, pp. 157 ff. (not seen); Wellhausen, Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie, xxii. 187, 458 ff. and Comp. des Hexateuchs, 1885, pp. 191–3; Stade, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, i. 1881, pp. 61 f. More recently Cornill in the 5th ed. of his Einleitung in das A.T. 1906 (translated by G. H. Box, 1907) and Marti in Kautzsch’s Die Heil. Schrift des A.T. 3rd ed. 1909, vol. i. p. 239, both take the Code as the ‘Urdeuteronomium,’ and the two preceding discourses as introductions to separate editions of it. Cornill (English translation, p. 60) says: ‘I too feel bound to hold fast unreservedly to the opinion that chs. 5–11 cannot have been the indispensable introduction to D from the very first, because in that case the origin of chs. 1–4 remains inexplicable; the problem how to account for the juxtaposition of chs. 1–4 and 5–11 can only be solved on the hypothesis of two distinct and separate editions of D which form the basis of the present Deuteronomy.’

[38] Cp. Wellhausen, p. 192.

[39] But see below pp. xcvi f., on Cullen’s theory.

[40] See below pp. lxiii ff.

[41] See below pp. lxv ff.

It is unnecessary to catalogue the many deuteronomic formulas and terms found both in chs. 5–11 and in the Code, but a list of such of them and of other expressions as are found only in these two divisions and not elsewhere in Deuteronomy and some of them even not elsewhere in the O.T. may be given here as illustrating the very close affinity, if not unity, of authorship:—to love God Deuteronomy 6:5, Deuteronomy 7:9, Deuteronomy 10:12, Deuteronomy 11:1; Deuteronomy 11:13; Deuteronomy 11:22 with Deuteronomy 13:3, Deuteronomy 19:9; to serve or go after other gods Deuteronomy 6:14, Deuteronomy 7:4, Deuteronomy 8:19, Deuteronomy 11:16; Deuteronomy 11:28 with Deuteronomy 13:2; Deuteronomy 13:6; Deuteronomy 13:13, Deuteronomy 17:3 (cp. Deuteronomy 18:20); observe to do Deuteronomy 5:1; Deuteronomy 5:32, Deuteronomy 6:3; Deuteronomy 6:25, Deuteronomy 7:11, Deuteronomy 8:1, Deuteronomy 11:22; Deuteronomy 11:32 with Deuteronomy 12:32, Deuteronomy 15:5, Deuteronomy 17:10, Deuteronomy 24:8 and thrice in 28; eat and be full Deuteronomy 6:11, Deuteronomy 8:10; Deuteronomy 8:12, Deuteronomy 11:15 with Deuteronomy 14:29, Deuteronomy 26:12 (and in later writings sporadically); house of bondmen (Egypt) Deuteronomy 5:6, Deuteronomy 6:12, Deuteronomy 7:8, Deuteronomy 8:14 with Deuteronomy 13:5; Deuteronomy 13:10 and nowhere else, in Deuteronomy (but cp. Exodus 13:3; Exodus 13:14 JE); remember thou wast a bondman, etc. Deuteronomy 5:15 with Deuteronomy 15:15, Deuteronomy 16:12, Deuteronomy 24:18; Deuteronomy 24:22 and nowhere else in Deuteronomy (cp. Exodus 13:3; Exodus 13:14 JE); the Hiphil he ‘ěrîk used intransitively, to be long, Deuteronomy 5:16, Deuteronomy 6:2 with Deuteronomy 25:15, elsewhere only Exodus 20:12; that it be well with thee Deuteronomy 5:16; Deuteronomy 5:29, Deuteronomy 6:3; Deuteronomy 6:18 with Deuteronomy 12:25; Deuteronomy 12:28, Deuteronomy 22:7 (elsewhere in Deuteronomy only Deuteronomy 4:40), cp. the variant in Deuteronomy 5:33, Deuteronomy 19:13; ‘am segullah = a peculiar people Deuteronomy 7:6 with [Deuteronomy 14:2], Deuteronomy 26:18 and nowhere else; ‘am ḳadosh = a holy people Deuteronomy 7:6 with [Deuteronomy 14:2], 21, Deuteronomy 26:19 and Deuteronomy 28:9, nowhere else; ḥashaḳ be, he set his love on of God Deuteronomy 7:7, Deuteronomy 10:15 with Deuteronomy 21:11, of man, not elsewhere in Deuteronomy; padah = redeem Deuteronomy 7:8, Deuteronomy 9:26 with Deuteronomy 13:5, Deuteronomy 15:15, Deuteronomy 21:8, Deuteronomy 24:18, not elsewhere in the Hexateuch: thy corn, new wine, and oil Deuteronomy 7:13, Deuteronomy 11:14 with Deuteronomy 12:17, Deuteronomy 14:23, Deuteronomy 18:4 and Deuteronomy 28:51; thine eye shall not pity him or them Deuteronomy 7:16 with Deuteronomy 13:8, Deuteronomy 19:13; Deuteronomy 19:21, Deuteronomy 25:12 (often in Ezek., cp. Genesis 45:20, Isaiah 13:18); thou canst not in the very rare sense thou mayest not Deuteronomy 7:22 with Deuteronomy 12:17, Deuteronomy 16:5, Deuteronomy 17:15, Deuteronomy 21:16, Deuteronomy 22:3; Deuteronomy 22:19; Deuteronomy 22:29, Deuteronomy 24:4, ‘almost confined to Deuteronomy’ (Driver), cp. Genesis 43:32; an abomination of (= to) Jehovah Deuteronomy 7:25 with Deuteronomy 12:31, Deuteronomy 17:1, Deuteronomy 18:12, Deuteronomy 22:5, Deuteronomy 23:18, Deuteronomy 25:16; to walk in the ways of Jehovah Deuteronomy 8:6, Deuteronomy 10:12, Deuteronomy 11:22 with Deuteronomy 19:9, Deuteronomy 26:17 and Deuteronomy 28:9, Deuteronomy 30:16, also deuteronomic passages in Joshua and Kings; ḥetêb used adverbially Deuteronomy 9:21 with Deuteronomy 13:14, Deuteronomy 17:4, Deuteronomy 19:18, elsewhere only Deuteronomy 27:8, 2 Kings 11:8. Note in addition the use of ḳahal = assembly for the gathering of the people at Ḥoreb Deuteronomy 5:22, Deuteronomy 9:10, Deuteronomy 10:4 with Deuteronomy 18:16 (cp. Deuteronomy 23:1-3; Deuteronomy 23:8); assembly of Jehovah in contrast to P’s use of ‘edah (see note to Deuteronomy 5:22). These particular parallels (along with many others) between chs. 5–11 and the Code expose the groundlessness of the hypothesis by which Wellhausen in defence of his theory of diverse authorship attempts to explain the presence of deuteronomic elements in the Code, viz. that the later author to whom he assigns chs. 5–11 furnished the Code with echoes of 5–11 when he prefixed these as his introduction to it (Comp. p. 193).

The rare words and phrases, which are either peculiar to the Code or, if they occur once or twice in other parts of the O.T., are not found in chs. 5–11 are the following; and in nearly every case their presence in the Code and absence from the Discourse introducing it is explicable on grounds perfectly compatible with the theory that the compiler of the Code and the writer of this introduction to it were one and the same. For some are juridical terms proper to what are technically laws, but not to be expected in the exposition of the principles on which these laws are based; e.g. mishpaṭ-maweth or ḥeṭ’-maweth = case of death, capital crime, Deuteronomy 19:6, Deuteronomy 21:22, Deuteronomy 22:26, perhaps also the phrase and it be a sin in thee Deuteronomy 15:9, Deuteronomy 23:21 f., Deuteronomy 24:15, nowhere else; and ‘ălîloth debarim = wanton or unfounded charges Deuteronomy 22:14; Deuteronomy 22:17. Others again are relevant only to the subjects of the particular laws in which they occur: the place which Jehovah your God shall choose to cause His Name to dwell there Deuteronomy 12:5 (see note); ye shall eat before Jehovah your God Deuteronomy 12:7; Deuteronomy 12:18, Deuteronomy 14:23; Deuteronomy 14:26, Deuteronomy 15:20; ye shall rejoice before Jehovah thy God Deuteronomy 12:12, Deuteronomy 16:11, cp. Deuteronomy 12:7, Deuteronomy 16:14, etc.; and so too hith‘ammer = to treat as a chattel Deuteronomy 21:14, Deuteronomy 24:7, nowhere else; he‘ĕnik. = to equip Deuteronomy 15:14, only here; sons of Belial Deuteronomy 13:13 and a thing or word of Belial Deuteronomy 15:9, nowhere else in the Hexateuch; the nakedness of a thing, an idiom both for what is physically shameful Deuteronomy 23:14, and for what is morally so Deuteronomy 24:1; the month of ‘Abîb, Deuteronomy 16:1; and of course ṃa‘ăḳeh = battlement Deuteronomy 22:8, gedîlîm = fringes Deuteronomy 22:12, mamzer = bastard Deuteronomy 23:3 (elsewhere only in Zechariah 9:6), ḳaṭaph = pluck, melîloth = fresh ears, ḥermesh = sickle Deuteronomy 23:25, cp. Deuteronomy 16:9 and mebushîm Deuteronomy 25:11; also niddaḥ = let drive at Deuteronomy 19:5, Deuteronomy 20:19. Others again appear to have been taken over, with the rest of the text of the laws in which they stand, from earlier codes. This is certain in the case of zakur = male Deuteronomy 16:16, word for word an earlier law (Exodus 23:17, E) Deuteronomy 20:13. It is very probable with the following: the fem. form na‘ărah Deuteronomy 22:19 (in the Pentateuch only here, the masc. na‘ar being used elsewhere for both male and female, 8 times in Genesis , 13 in Deuteronomy); ṣarah = defection Deuteronomy 13:5, Deuteronomy 19:16 (from ṣur, see below, p. lv); and ‘abaṭ = to give a pledge Deuteronomy 15:6, Deuteronomy 24:10, with its Hiphil = to cause to give, i.e. take a pledge Deuteronomy 15:6; Deuteronomy 15:8, and ‘abôṭ = pledge Deuteronomy 24:10-13 (none of these elsewhere in the O.T., but cp. the pl. ‘ăbatim in Habakkuk 2:6), technical commercial terms, probably borrowed from the Aramaic (Wellhausen, Kleine Propheten, p. 207). And the same explanation is also possible for mishlaḥ yad = whal thou puttest thine hand to Deuteronomy 12:7; Deuteronomy 12:18, Deuteronomy 15:10, Deuteronomy 23:21 and Deuteronomy 28:8; Deuteronomy 28:20; and burn out the evil from the midst of thee, see note on Deuteronomy 13:5.

Since the connection of ch. 28 is concerned in this question of the unity of the Code and chs. 5–11 the points have been noted above at which it also shares the terms that are common to them. Others may now be added which it shares with either the Code or chs. 5–11; evil diseases of Egypt, Deuteronomy 7:15, Deuteronomy 28:60 and nowhere else; the ‘ashtoreths, i.e. the young (? or the ewes) of thy flock Deuteronomy 7:13, Deuteronomy 28:4; Deuteronomy 28:18; Deuteronomy 28:51; shegar ’ălaphheka = increase of thy kine Deuteronomy 7:13, Deuteronomy 28:4; Deuteronomy 28:18; Deuteronomy 28:51 (cp. Exodus 13:12 J, shegar behemah); the form yagôr = to tremble Deuteronomy 9:19, Deuteronomy 28:60; and tene’ = basket Deuteronomy 26:2; Deuteronomy 26:4, Deuteronomy 28:5; Deuteronomy 28:17, nowhere else1[42].

[42] In the small print above the references to chs. 13 and 23 are given according to the numbering of the verses in our English Versions.

It is clear from the above that ch. 28 shares many of the resemblances and affinities between the style of chs. 5–11 and that of the Code. Because of this; because it is probable that like the earlier code of E the deuteronomic Code had an Epilogue; and because the stern curses which ch. 28 pronounces on disobedience to the Laws fully account for Josiah’s consternation when the Law-book was read to him, ch. 28 has been reasonably taken by most as also part of the original Deuteronomy. And the undoubted differences in phraseology between it and chs. 5–26 have been explained as due to the difference of purpose governing ch. 28 or to later additions to its original form.

This then became the most generally accepted result of the earlier stage of the controversy upon the relations to each other of the Code, chs. 12–26, the immediately preceding Introduction to it, chs. 5–11, and the Epilogue, ch. 28, viz. that they are from the same hand and time and substantially the Book of the Law or Covenant discovered in the Temple under Josiah2[43]. Driver may be quoted: ‘chs. 5–26 may thus be concluded, without hesitation, to be the work of a single author’; and ch. 28 ‘may be included without serious misgivings.’ Some, however, of the critics of the later stage of the discussion deduct ch. 5 as forming a separate discourse and the historical section Deuteronomy 9:8 to Deuteronomy 10:11 as disturbing the connection between the hortatory sections, 6–9:7 and Deuteronomy 10:12 to Deuteronomy 11:1[44] These we shall consider later2[45].

[43] So virtually Kuenen, Hexateuch (1886, English translation of part of his History of Critical Inquiry into the Origin of the Books of the Bible), 1881; Dillmann, Nu.-Deut.-Jos., 1885, pp. 261 ff.; Westphal, Les Sources du Pentaleuque, ii. 1892, pp. 105 ff.; Kittel, Geschichte der Hebräer, i. 1888, pp. 44 ff., on the ground that the situation throughout 5–26 is the same, and that the agreement of the language is so great that a difference of authors would constitute a new problem, whose solution must develop into incomparably greater difficulties than those which beset the supposition of the unity of the author; also as against Kuenen Kittel thinks 5–11 were composed at the same time as 12–26; Oettli, Deut., Jos., Richter (Kurzgefasstes Kommentar), 1893; Driver, Deuteronomy, 1895, pp. lxv–lxvii; compare Moore, E.B. 1899, col. 1081, ‘nothing indicates diversity of origin’; Ryle, Hastings’ D.B. i. p. 598; Bertholet, Deut. (Kurzer Hd. Comntr.), 1899, pp. xx f.; Robinson, Deuteronomy, Joshua (Century Bible), p. 13.

[44] E.g. Bertholet and Robinson.

[45] § 7.

There has been much greater difference of opinion on the First Introductory Discourse Deuteronomy 1:6 to Deuteronomy 4:40, and the question of its relations to the Second Discourse and the Code 5–26. The question is complicated by the fact that, like the Second, the First Discourse consists both of a historical and a hortatory part, Deuteronomy 1:6 to Deuteronomy 3:29 and Deuteronomy 4:1-40.

The general doctrine and style of the two Introductory Discourses are undoubtedly the same (§ 2) and that in spite of the fact that narrative forms the bulk of the First while in the Second the reverse is the case. The same purpose is expressed by the First as by the Second, to expound the Law (Deuteronomy 1:5 see note), to teach the statutes and the judgements of the Code (Deuteronomy 4:1; Deuteronomy 4:5; Deuteronomy 4:8; Deuteronomy 4:14; Deuteronomy 4:40 with Deuteronomy 4:44, Deuteronomy 5:1; Deuteronomy 5:31, Deuteronomy 6:1, Deuteronomy 11:32, Deuteronomy 12:1, Deuteronomy 26:16); and there are not only the same urgency and spiritual thoroughness (as contrasted with its sources, see notes to Deuteronomy 1:16 f., Deuteronomy 1:41, Deuteronomy 4:9; Deuteronomy 4:29; Deuteronomy 4:39), but the same directions of religious and ethical emphasis, e.g. God’s love to Israel (Deuteronomy 4:37 with Deuteronomy 7:8; Deuteronomy 7:13, Deuteronomy 10:15; Deuteronomy 10:18, [Deuteronomy 23:5] and not elsewhere in the Hexateuch), His choice (Deuteronomy 4:37 with Deuteronomy 7:6-7, Deuteronomy 10:15, Deuteronomy 14:2) and tender care” of them (Deuteronomy 1:31, Deuteronomy 2:7, Deuteronomy 4:7; Deuteronomy 4:34 with Deuteronomy 8:2-5, Deuteronomy 11:2), their consequent duty to trust, fear and obey only Him (Deuteronomy 1:21; Deuteronomy 1:29, Deuteronomy 3:22, Deuteronomy 4:10 with Deuteronomy 5:29; Deuteronomy 5:32, Deuteronomy 6:2; Deuteronomy 6:13; Deuteronomy 6:24 f., etc., but the Second Discourse alone enforces Israel’s, love to God) and the guilt of unbelief, forgetfulness and disobedience (Deuteronomy 1:26 ff., Deuteronomy 1:32, Deuteronomy 4:9 with the frequent commands to remember and not to forget in 6–11) especially in going after other gods and worshipping images (Deuteronomy 4:3; Deuteronomy 4:16-19; Deuteronomy 4:25 with Deuteronomy 5:7-10, Deuteronomy 6:14, Deuteronomy 7:5, Deuteronomy 8:19, Deuteronomy 9:12; Deuteronomy 9:16) for He is the one and only God (Deuteronomy 3:24, Deuteronomy 4:35; Deuteronomy 4:39 with Deuteronomy 6:4, etc.) and intolerant of the worship of others (Deuteronomy 2:34, Deuteronomy 3:6 ḥerem, Deuteronomy 4:24 and Deuteronomy 5:9, Deuteronomy 6:15, Deuteronomy 7:4, etc.); compare also the initiative and responsibility of the whole people as distinct from their leaders (Deuteronomy 1:9-18; Deuteronomy 1:37 with Deuteronomy 15:18; Deuteronomy 15:20), the duty of caring for the helpless and the stranger (see note to Deuteronomy 1:16) and of instructing the young (Deuteronomy 4:9 f. with Deuteronomy 6:7; Deuteronomy 6:20, Deuteronomy 11:19)1[46]. And all this is expressed in the same style; chs. Deuteronomy 1:1 to Deuteronomy 4:40 have the same distinctive prose rhythm with preference for sonorous forms, accumulation of epithets (especially those signifying greatness), love of hyperbole (Deuteronomy 1:10; Deuteronomy 1:28, cp. Deuteronomy 9:1, Deuteronomy 2:25, Deuteronomy 4:11), and repetition.

[46] Like the Second Discourse the First does not mention the Code’s Central Law of the One Altar.

But the likeness of the First Discourse to the Second is not only general. It extends to the frequent use of the characteristic deuteronomic formulas, single words, and even terms of syntax. There is an impressive agreement in details as well as in the main lines and in the spirit of the doctrine and style.

These details have virtually all been marked in the notes, but the question of unity between chs. 1–4 and 5–26 is so important that it is well to gather the details together here. (a) Both the Discourses and the Code have place-names characteristic of Deuteronomy, e.g., Ḥoreb as in E for J’s and P’s Sinai (Deuteronomy 1:6; Deuteronomy 1:19, Deuteronomy 4:10; Deuteronomy 4:15 with Deuteronomy 5:2, Deuteronomy 9:8, Deuteronomy 18:16, [Deuteronomy 29:1]), Ḳadesh-Barnea (Deuteronomy 1:19, Deuteronomy 2:14 with Deuteronomy 9:23), Pisgah for P’s Nebo (Deuteronomy 3:17; Deuteronomy 3:27, Deuteronomy 4:49).

(b) Characteristic formulas, for the most part not found outside Deuteronomy and deuteronomic passages elsewhere, but common to Deuteronomy 1:1 to Deuteronomy 4:40 and Deuteronomy 5-26, 28-30 :—e.g. Jehovah our or thy or your God, see note on Deuteronomy 1:6; the God of our, thy or your fathers, Deuteronomy 1:11; Deuteronomy 1:21, Deuteronomy 4:1 with Deuteronomy 6:3, Deuteronomy 12:1, Deuteronomy 26:7; God’s oath to the Patriarchs, Deuteronomy 1:8; Deuteronomy 1:35, Deuteronomy 4:31 with Deuteronomy 6:10; Deuteronomy 6:18; Deuteronomy 6:23, Deuteronomy 7:8; Deuteronomy 7:12 f., and further frequently, even in Deuteronomy 28:11; set, or deliver up, before you the land or the foe, Deuteronomy 1:8; Deuteronomy 1:21, Deuteronomy 2:31; Deuteronomy 2:33; Deuteronomy 2:36 with Deuteronomy 7:2; Deuteronomy 7:23, Deuteronomy 23:15, Deuteronomy 28:7; Deuteronomy 28:25; the land (etc.) which Jehovah, our, thy or your God, is about to give us, thee, or you, Deuteronomy 1:20; Deuteronomy 1:25, Deuteronomy 2:29, Deuteronomy 3:20, Deuteronomy 4:1; Deuteronomy 4:40 with Deuteronomy 5:16 and very many other instances throughout 5–11 and the Code; the same with various additions, e.g. for an inheritance Deuteronomy 4:21; Deuteronomy 4:38 with Deuteronomy 19:3; Deuteronomy 19:10, Deuteronomy 20:16, Deuteronomy 21:23, Deuteronomy 24:4, Deuteronomy 25:19, Deuteronomy 26:1, or to possess it Deuteronomy 3:18 with Deuteronomy 5:31, Deuteronomy 9:6, Deuteronomy 12:1, Deuteronomy 19:2; Deuteronomy 19:14, Deuteronomy 21:1, cp. Deuteronomy 15:4, Deut. 25:19, 31 (some of the foregoing verses read have given for about to give); the good land, Deuteronomy 1:35, Deuteronomy 3:25, Deuteronomy 4:21 f. with Deuteronomy 6:18, Deuteronomy 8:10, Deuteronomy 9:6; the phrase would not, Deuteronomy 1:26, Deuteronomy 2:30 with Deuteronomy 10:10, Deuteronomy 23:5, Deuteronomy 25:7, Deuteronomy 29:20; deliver into the hand of, Deuteronomy 1:27 (see note), Deuteronomy 2:24; Deuteronomy 2:30, Deuteronomy 3:2 f. with Deuteronomy 7:24, Deuteronomy 19:12, Deuteronomy 20:13, Deuteronomy 21:10; destroy, surely destroy or destroyed, Deuteronomy 1:27, Deuteronomy 2:12; Deuteronomy 2:21-23, Deuteronomy 4:3; Deuteronomy 4:26 with Deuteronomy 6:15, Deuteronomy 7:4; Deuteronomy 7:23 f., Deuteronomy 9:3; Deuteronomy 9:8; Deuteronomy 9:14; Deuteronomy 9:19 f., Deuteronomy 9:25, Deuteronomy 12:2; Deuteronomy 12:30, Deuteronomy 28:20; Deuteronomy 28:24; Deuteronomy 28:45; Deuteronomy 28:48; Deuteronomy 28:51; Deuteronomy 28:61; Deuteronomy 28:63—as against only 5 or 6 times elsewhere in the Hexateuch; cause to inherit, Deuteronomy 1:38 and Deuteronomy 3:28 of Joshua with Deuteronomy 12:10, Deuteronomy 19:3 of God and Deuteronomy 31:7, Joshua 1:6, of Joshua, elsewhere only in Jer., Ezek. and later writers, P having another form; take (good) heed to thyself or yourselves, Deuteronomy 2:4, Deuteronomy 4:9 f., thy soul, 15, 23 with Deuteronomy 6:12, Deuteronomy 8:11, Deuteronomy 11:16, Deuteronomy 12:13; Deuteronomy 12:19; Deuteronomy 12:30, Deuteronomy 15:9; Jehovah hath blessed thee in all the work of thy hand or hands, Deuteronomy 2:7 with Deuteronomy 14:29, Deuteronomy 16:15, Deuteronomy 24:19, Deuteronomy 28:12, cp. Deuteronomy 1:11, Deuteronomy 15:10; Deuteronomy 15:18, Deuteronomy 23:20; thy greatness and thy strong hand, Deuteronomy 3:24, Deuteronomy 4:34, strong hand and stretched out arm, with Deuteronomy 5:15 and Deuteronomy 7:19 as in Deuteronomy 4:34, Deuteronomy 5:24 glory and greatness, Deuteronomy 6:21 and Deuteronomy 7:8 strong hand alone, Deuteronomy 9:26 greatness … and … strong hand, 29 great power and stretched out arm, Deuteronomy 11:2 greatness, strong hand and stretched out arm, Deuteronomy 26:8 as in Deuteronomy 4:34; as at this day, Deuteronomy 2:30, see note, Deuteronomy 4:38 with Deuteronomy 6:24, Deuteronomy 8:18, Deuteronomy 10:15, Deuteronomy 29:28; the frequent alternatives to pass over, go over, come in or simply go generally followed by the Jordan or to possess, Deuteronomy 1:8, Deuteronomy 3:18; Deuteronomy 3:21, Deuteronomy 4:1; Deuteronomy 4:5; Deuteronomy 4:14; Deuteronomy 4:22; Deuteronomy 4:26 with Deuteronomy 6:1, Deuteronomy 7:1, Deuteronomy 9:1, Deuteronomy 10:11, Deuteronomy 11:8; Deuteronomy 11:10 f., Deuteronomy 11:29; Deu 11:31, Deuteronomy 12:10; Deuteronomy 12:29 (nations for land), Deuteronomy 17:14, Deuteronomy 18:9, Deuteronomy 23:20, Deuteronomy 26:1, Deuteronomy 30:16; Deuteronomy 30:18[47]; fear and learn to fear God, Deuteronomy 4:10 with Deuteronomy 5:29, Deuteronomy 6:2; Deuteronomy 6:24, Deuteronomy 8:6, Deuteronomy 10:12, Deuteronomy 14:23, Deuteronomy 17:19, Deuteronomy 28:58; observe and do, Deuteronomy 4:6 with Deuteronomy 7:12, Deuteronomy 16:12, Deuteronomy 23:23, Deuteronomy 24:8, Deuteronomy 26:16, Deuteronomy 28:13—the variant form observe to do (see p. 16) does not occur in 1–4 but frequently in 5–26, 28; prolong days, Deuteronomy 4:26 see note, 40 with Deuteronomy 5:33, Deuteronomy 11:9, Deuteronomy 17:20, Deuteronomy 22:7, Deuteronomy 30:18, cp. the intransitive use Deuteronomy 5:16, Deuteronomy 6:2, Deuteronomy 25:15 (see p. xlix), not elsewhere in Pentateuch except Exodus 20:12, a deuteronomic clause; and thou shall know, Deuteronomy 4:39 with Deuteronomy 7:9, Deuteronomy 8:5, Deuteronomy 9:3; Deuteronomy 9:6, Deuteronomy 11:2.

[47] Note the correct distinction from these terms of the command to! Israel while still in the southern wilderness, go up, possess, Deuteronomy 1:21.

(c) Besides those frequent formulas the First Discourse, Deuteronomy 1:6 to Deuteronomy 4:40, has in common with chs. 5–26 a number of other phrases and single terms equally distinctive of Deuteronomy but less frequent:—’êkah = how, emphatic form, Deuteronomy 1:12 see note, with Deuteronomy 7:17, Deuteronomy 12:30, Deuteronomy 18:21; shebeṭ—tribe, Deuteronomy 1:13 see note, Deuteronomy 1:15; Deu 1:23 with Deuteronomy 12:5; Deuteronomy 12:14, etc., etc.; respect persons, Deuteronomy 1:17 with Deuteronomy 16:19, not elsewhere in Pentateuch; gur = fear very rare in prose, Deuteronomy 1:17 with Deuteronomy 18:22; because of Jehovah’s hating us, Deuteronomy 1:27 with Deuteronomy 9:28; made our heart to melt, Deuteronomy 1:28 with Deuteronomy 20:8, not elsewhere in Hexateuch except for deuteronomic passages in Joshua; ‘araṣ = to fear, Deuteronomy 1:29 with Deuteronomy 7:21, Deuteronomy 20:3, very rare in prose; the participial construction, The Goer before you, Deuteronomy 1:33 with Deuteronomy 20:4, Deuteronomy 31:6; Deuteronomy 31:8; yiḳṣoph = was wroth of God, Deuteronomy 1:34 with Deuteronomy 9:19, but also twice in P; which he hath trodden upon, a vivid substitute for into which he went, Deuteronomy 1:36, with Deuteronomy 11:24 f., but also in JE, Numbers 14:24; hith’annaph = was angry, Deuteronomy 1:37, Deuteronomy 4:21, with Deuteronomy 9:8; Deuteronomy 9:20, nowhere else in Pentateuch; were presumptuous, Deuteronomy 1:43 with Deuteronomy 17:2, Deuteronomy 18:20; sur = to turn for naṭah (of Numbers 20:17), Deuteronomy 2:27 with Deuteronomy 5:32 (29), Deuteronomy 17:11; Deuteronomy 17:20, Deuteronomy 28:14; the frequent use of the qualifying conjunction raḳ = only, but, etc., Deuteronomy 2:28; Deuteronomy 2:35; Deuteronomy 2:37, Deuteronomy 3:11; Deuteronomy 3:19, Deuteronomy 4:6; Deuteronomy 4:9 with Deuteronomy 10:15 (see note), Deuteronomy 12:15 f., 23, 26, Deuteronomy 15:5; Deuteronomy 15:23, Deuteronomy 17:16, Deuteronomy 20:14; Deuteronomy 20:20, Deuteronomy 28:13; Deuteronomy 28:33 (some of these however are editorial); sons of Israel = its males, as distinct from the usual deuteronomic expression all Israel, Deuteronomy 3:18 (see note) with Deuteronomy 23:17, Deuteronomy 24:7; until Jehovah give rest, Deuteronomy 3:20 (see note) with Deuteronomy 12:10, Deuteronomy 25:19; ye shall not add … nor diminish …, Deuteronomy 4:2 with Deuteronomy 12:32; to cleave unto Jehovah, Deuteronomy 4:4 with Deuteronomy 10:20, Deuteronomy 11:22, Deuteronomy 13:4, Deuteronomy 30:20, with God nowhere else in Pentateuch; out of the midst of the fire, Deuteronomy 4:12; Deuteronomy 4:15; Deuteronomy 4:33; Deuteronomy 4:36 with Deuteronomy 5:4; Deuteronomy 5:22; Deuteronomy 5:24; Deuteronomy 5:26, Deuteronomy 9:10, Deuteronomy 10:4; let thyself be drawn away, Deuteronomy 4:19 with Deuteronomy 30:4; Deuteronomy 30:17, cp. the active form of the verb in Deuteronomy 13:5; Deuteronomy 13:10; Deuteronomy 13:13.

In contrast to this impressive array of features of style and language, both general and particular, which are common to chs. Deuteronomy 1:1 to Deuteronomy 4:40 and chs. 5–26, 28–30, the linguistic peculiarities which 1–4:40 present and which are not found in 5–26, 28–30 are very few.

These have also been pointed out in the notes. After deduction of the place-names peculiar to 1–3, which are not relevant to the themes treated in 5–26, 28–30, they amount to the following: ṭoraḥ = weight, Deuteronomy 1:12, not elsewhere in the O.T.; ragan = murmur, Deuteronomy 1:27, not elsewhere in the Pentateuch; zûlathi = save, Deuteronomy 1:36, Deuteronomy 4:12, not elsewhere in Pentateuch; tahînu = deemed it a light thing, Deuteronomy 1:41, not elsewhere in the O.T.; he’ězîn = gave ear, Deuteronomy 1:45, and in prose of Hexateuch elsewhere only in Exodus 15:26 (deuteronomic); yerushah = possession, Deuteronomy 2:5; Deuteronomy 2:9 twice, 12, 19 twice, Deuteronomy 3:20; hithgarah = contend with, Deuteronomy 2:5; Deuteronomy 2:9; Deuteronomy 2:19; Deuteronomy 2:24; saghebhah = be high, Deuteronomy 2:36 in prose only here and elsewhere only in Job 5:11; hithḥannen = beseech, Deuteronomy 3:23, with God as object only here in Pentateuch, to beseech man E, Genesis 42:21; hith‘abber = to be enraged, Deuteronomy 3:26; leb = heart, Deuteronomy 4:11 for the longer lebab elsewhere in Deuteronomy; kur habbarzel = iron furnace, Deuteronomy 4:20, not elsewhere in Pentateuch; ‘am nahălah = people of inheritance, Deuteronomy 4:20, instead of the usual deuteronomic peculiar people. There is also in Deuteronomy 4:16-32 a group of words characteristic of Ezekiel and P, and not found elsewhere in Deuteronomy:—semel = figure 16, male and female 17, tabnîth = build, likeness 17 f., romes = that creepeth 18, holîdh = beget 25 (cp. Deuteronomy 28:1), nôshen = grow old, stale 25, and bara’ ’elohim = God created 32; to which may be added tûr = explore Deuteronomy 1:33, only here and in P for the deuteronomic ḥaphar, Deuteronomy 1:22, Joshua 2:2 f., and JE’s see.

Some of these may at once be put aside. Surely an author might once use the figure an iron furnace without losing his identity! The figure, as we shall see, begins to appear in the O.T. from about the date of Deuteronomy onwards. Again the shorter form leb is ‘generally used by preference in the metaphorical sense of Deuteronomy 4:11’ (Driver) and besides the longer lebab occurs several times in 1–4 (Deuteronomy 2:30, Deuteronomy 4:9; Deuteronomy 4:29; Deuteronomy 4:39) just as throughout the rest of Deuteronomy. Again ‘am nahtălah, people of inheritance, closely resembles its equivalents in 5–26 etc., especially thy people and thine inheritance., Deuteronomy 9:29. Little can be inferred from the use of ἅπαξ λεγόμενα like ṭoraḥ and tahînu, most writings have one or two; and ragan and he’ězin may be ignored as marks of difference in view of the general tendency of the deuteronomic style to employ rare poetic words for commoner ones. That leaves us with not more than 5 or 6 terms for which the rest of Deuteronomy employs others, surely by themselves an insufficient basis for a theory of dual authorship, especially when they are so greatly outnumbered by the characteristic deuteronomic phrases, which we have just seen that chs. 1–4 have in common with chs. 5–26, 28–30. The group of terms characteristic of P are more puzzling, and will be dealt with later; note in the meantime that with the exception of tûr they are confined to one section Deuteronomy 4:16-32 of the hortatory part of the First Discourse.

Nor can more weight be attached to the alleged discrepancies of fact between the First Discourse Deuteronomy 1:6 to Deuteronomy 4:40 and chs. 5–26.[48] They are only three and each of them is susceptible of a reasonable explanation.

[48] This against Moore, E. B. 1087.

The alleged discrepancies and the explanations of them are: (a) It is said that in chs. 1–3 the name Amorite is employed, as in E, in a general sense for all the peoples encountered by Israel in Palestine, in Deuteronomy 1:7; Deuteronomy 1:19-20; Deuteronomy 1:27; Deuteronomy 1:44 for those W. of Jordan and in Deuteronomy 3:2; Deuteronomy 3:8-9 for others in E. Palestine; while in Deuteronomy 7:1, Deuteronomy 20:17, as in J, the Amorite is but one of the seven nations occupying the Promised Land before the coming of Israel. If this interpretation of Amorite in 1–3 be correct, we may explain the difference of meaning from that in Deuteronomy 7:1 and Deuteronomy 20:7 as follows. It would be natural for the same author, when writing narrative to employ Amorite generally (especially as his narrative is mainly based on E, which so employs the name), but when he came to exhortation and his particular purpose was to forbid all heathen rites, it would be appropriate for him to give an exhaustive list of the particular nations who practised there. Yet it is not clear that the writer of the narrative in chs. 1–3 uses the name in so general a sense as is alleged. For even in W. Palestine he speaks of the Amorites only as in the hill country ch. 1 and even once mentions along with them the Canaanites of the sea shore; cp. Deuteronomy 11:30. (b). In Deuteronomy 2:14 Moses is made to say that all the generation of the men of war in Israel were consumed in the wilderness by the time Israel crossed the brook Zered, thirty-eight years after leaving Ḥoreb; while the Second Discourse, in Deuteronomy 5:2-5, etc. and Deuteronomy 11:2-7, represents him as explicitly addressing in Moab the same Israel which had taken part in the covenant at Ḥoreb and had seen with their own eyes the events there and throughout the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. Cornill (Introd. Eng. Tr. p. 59) calls this difference ‘insoluble.’ But this difference is one not of fact but of purpose. For Deuteronomy 2:14 belongs to the narrative part of the First Discourse where the purpose is to relate fact; while Deuteronomy 5:2 and Deuteronomy 11:2-7 belong to a more hortatory part of the Second Discourse in which Israel is suitably treated as a moral whole, and the particular purpose of Deuteronomy 5:2 is to distinguish the generation under Moses with the covenants they received at Ḥoreb and in Moab from their forefathers before the Egyptian servitude and the Covenant God had made with them. Besides even the First Discourse, when it becomes hortatory in Deuteronomy 4:1-40, also assumes the moral unity of Israel throughout the wilderness wanderings:— Deuteronomy 4:10, the day thou stoodest before Jehovah thy God in Horeb, and so down to Deuteronomy 4:15; Deuteronomy 4:23, the covenant … which he made with you; Deuteronomy 4:33, God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard; Deuteronomy 4:34, all that Jehovah your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes; v. 36, he made thee to hear his voice and thou heardest his words out of the fire. This conception of Israel, as throughout many generations the same Israel, appears in all the hortatory discourses, even when the speaker forecasts the nation’s far future, e.g. Deuteronomy 4:25, when … ye shall have been long in the land, and Deuteronomy 4:27-31 in the time of exile; cp. Deuteronomy 6:20-25, Deuteronomy 26:3-9, and Deu 26:28 throughout; indeed this conception of a moral unity persists in the same passages which threaten deaths innumerable, e.g. Deuteronomy 28:62 ff. But it is needless to multiply examples. The same speaker who has in narrative, as in Deuteronomy 2:14, emphasised the destruction of one generation for their sins may in exhortation equally emphasise the identity of Israel throughout successive generations. Moreover even the narrative portion of the First Discourse tends to assume, though less explicitly, Israel’s sameness throughout, Deuteronomy 1:9; Deuteronomy 1:19-20; Deuteronomy 1:22; Deuteronomy 1:26; Deuteronomy 1:46 (c) In Deuteronomy 2:29 the Moabites, along with the children of Esau, are represented as having sold food and water to Israel, while Deuteronomy 23:4 a states as a reason for excluding an Ammonite and a Moabite from the Assembly of Jehovah (v. 3), that they met you not with bread and water in the way when ye came forth out of Egypt. But as there are signs of Deuteronomy 23:4 a being a later addition to the text (see notes to Deuteronomy 23:3-6) it is not certain that this discrepancy is due to the original author or authors of Deuteronomy. In any case this is the only real discrepancy between 1–4 and 5–26, as these chapters now stand. For the description of the ḥerem or ban upon Sihon and ‘Og, Deuteronomy 2:34 ff., and Deuteronomy 3:6 f.—though it agrees exactly neither with the treatment of the seven nations of Palestine, enjoined in Deuteronomy 7:2; Deuteronomy 7:25 f. nor with that of distant enemies enjoined in Deuteronomy 20:10 ff., but combines features of both (see note on Deuteronomy 2:34)—falls before the period for which the Law was designed.

We are thus left first with a great array of features of style, language and doctrine, both general and particular, which are common to the First Discourse chs. 1–4, and to chs. 5–26, 28–30; second with no real discrepancy of fact between the two divisions; and third (if we except the group of words characteristic of Ezekiel and P which all occur in the section Deuteronomy 4:16-32) there are only some 5 or 6 terms peculiar to 1–4 for which others are found in 5–26, 28–30. That is a very slender basis on which to argue for a different authorship for the First Discourse from 5–26 etc.; and we can hardly think that the argument would have been maintained, but for the facts that the two Introductory Discourses Deuteronomy 1:6 to Deuteronomy 4:40, and Deuteronomy 5-11 have each of them a title of its own, Deuteronomy 1:5 and Deuteronomy 4:44-49, and that the First Discourse is further separated from the Second by the historical fragment on the Cities of Refuge, Deuteronomy 4:41-43. The two titles, it has been reasonably argued, surely signify that the Discourses which they start were originally independent compositions—different introductions, as they are both entitled, to the same Code. Attempts to meet this argument cannot be said to be satisfactory. The separate title to the Second Discourse, Deuteronomy 4:44-49, is a composite one (see notes to it); and Professor Driver claimed1[49] ‘that there is nothing unreasonable in the supposition that, as formulated by the original author (whether preceded by Deuteronomy 4:41-43 or not), this title was considerably briefer than it now is and not longer than was sufficient to break the commencement of the actual ‘exposition’ of the law, promised in Deuteronomy 1:5, as opposed to the introductory matter contained in Deuteronomy 1:6 to Deuteronomy 4:40.’ This is far from convincing. For it evades the question, why did the historical fragment Deuteronomy 4:41-43 (to which by the way the Code in its law on the Cities of Refuge, ch. 19, makes no reference) come to be inserted just here? And it raises a kindred question:—if Deuteronomy 4:44-49 was originally, as suggested, a brief sub-title in the middle of a work from the same hand, why was it so largely expanded by later editors?

[49] Deuteronomy, p. lxviii.

It is therefore not surprising that there has been considerable divergence of opinion as to the relations of the First Discourse to the Second and to the Code. The majority of critics, emphasising the evidence of differences in style and standpoint between the two Discourses—and in the present writer’s opinion seriously exaggerating them—rightly however laid stress on the presence and independence of the two titles, and had no doubt that the First Discourse could not be by the same author as the Second. These, it was held, were different prefaces either to the same or to different editions of the Code; and the First was accounted to be the later of the two because of its reference to the Exile, Deuteronomy 4:27-31 (or at least because it includes in this a promise of Israel’s recovery from exile1[50]), or because it was alleged to show signs of using the two main sources common to both Discourses, viz. J and E, only after these were combined, whereas the Second appears to contain no such reflections of J and E as interwoven with each other2[51]. On the other hand, a smaller number of critics, minimising or attempting to explain away the fact of two separate and independent titles, laid stress—and as we have seen reasonable stress—on the general, and especially on the particular, agreement between the two Discourses in substance as in style and held—some absolutely but the most with reservations—that chs. Deuteronomy 1:6 to Deuteronomy 4:49 must be from the same author as chs. 5–26 etc. That some reservations are necessary is obvious; the archaeological notes in chs. 1–3 are doubtless due to an editor, and to editors also some ascribed the features in Deuteronomy 4:16-32 and elsewhere which are akin to P, and, if not the threat of Exile in Deuteronomy 4:26 f., the promise of conversion and the restoration of the converted in Deuteronomy 4:28 ff. The presence of the two independent titles, and the loose connection between the narrative Deuteronomy 1:6 to Deuteronomy 3:29 and the hortatory Deuteronomy 1:1 to Deuteronomy 4:40, which makes no use of the preceding narrative, but treats of subjects chronologically anterior to the events there narrated, led to other reservations of a more complicated kind. Dillmann for instance, who believed that the alleged discrepancies of fact between Deuteronomy 1:1 to Deuteronomy 4:40 and Deuteronomy 5-26, etc. are reconcileable, that ‘no’ mere imitator could have throughout [Deuteronomy 1:1 to Deuteronomy 4:40] and to the minutest particulars hit upon the tone and style of D’; and who therefore assigns all the substance of the First Discourse to the same author as that of chs. 5–26, etc., argues that the form is due to the following drastic changes by the editor. He suggests that the editor found the substance of Deuteronomy 1:1 to Deuteronomy 3:29 as the original author’s historical introduction to chs. 5–26, in which Moses was represented in the third person and also found Deuteronomy 4:1-40 (except Deuteronomy 4:28 ff.) among the concluding enforcements of the Law (note I have taught in Deuteronomy 4:5) and that he changed the former into a speech by Moses, as it now stands, and transferred the latter from the close, to the beginning, of the exposition of the Law, as a suitable hortatory conclusion to Deuteronomy 1:1 to Deuteronomy 3:29. This subtle theory well illustrates the great difficulty about the First Discourse—on the one hand its substantial and detailed agreement with chs. 5–26, on the other hand its separation in form from these chapters, as well as the looseness of connection between its own two parts1[52].

[50] See the notes to Deuteronomy 4:27-31, and below p. xcviii.

[51] The principal advocates of a different authorship for the First Discourse from that of the Second have been these:—Colenso, Pentateuch, Pt vi. 1871, though he had previously affirmed the opposite, 1864; Klostermann in the Studien und Kritiken for 1871,. 253 ff.; Reuss, La Bible, 1879, i. 207; Valeton, Studien, vi., vii., 1880–81, not seen; Wellhausen, Comp. des Hex. 1885, p. 192 footnote, ‘chs. 1–4 and chs. 5–11 have among other ends this one in common, to indicate a historical situation for the deuteronomic legislation, they are properly two different prefaces to different editions’ of the latter; Kuenen, Hex. 1886, lays stress on the linguistic peculiarities of chs. 1–4 and on the fact that while their author is particularly anxious to distinguish the two generations whom Moses addressed at Ḥoreb and in Moab respectively, the author of chs. 5–11, though aware that these generations are different still ‘wishes to identify them.’ ‘Is it not clear that[the author of chs. 1–4] cannot also be the author of chs. 5–11?’ (for answer to which see above pp lvii f.); L. Horst, Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, xxiii. 1891, 184 ff. (not seen, cited by Driver and Bertholet); Westphal, Les Sources du Pent. ii. 1892, 66ff., 80 ff., emphasises the fact of the two independent introductions, and separating the narrative, chs. Deuteronomy 1:6 to Deuteronomy 3:29 from the hortatory ch. Deuteronomy 4:1-40, regards the former as due to a later deuteronomic writer who desired to add a historical, to the hortatory, preface to the Code; Addis, Documents of the Hexateuch, ii. 1898, pp. 19 ff., who had formerly (i. 1892, pp. lxiv f.) with Kuenen relied on the strength of discrepancies between chs. 1–3 and 5–11 (e.g. in the conceptions of Israel held respectively in the two discourses) now lays less or no stress on these; but because of the two independent titles Deuteronomy 1:5, and Deuteronomy 4:44-49, because Deuteronomy 4:9-40 betrays familiarity with the style of Ezek. and P, and because of other divergences in language (admitted even by Dillmann) feels himself ‘justified in regarding the authors of Deuteronomy 1:1 to Deuteronomy 4:40 as later disciples of the Deuteronomic school’; Moore, ‘Deuteronomy,’ in E.B. i. 1899, ‘the diversity of historical representation is decisive,’ i.e. between 1–3 and 5–26, and ‘6 goes beyond 5–11 in that its monotheism takes a loftier tone like that of Isaiah 40-55’ and it presupposes the Exile; Steuernagel, Deut.-Jos. 1898, pp. xv f., decides for a different’ author because of differences between the two discourses, especially Deuteronomy 2:14 and Deuteronomy 5:3, and because of the separate titles, but Wellhausen’s theory that 1–4:40 and 5–11 formed introductions to different editions of the Law cannot be correct’ for 12–26 never existed without 5–11’; Bertholet, Deut. 1899, pp. xxii f., because of differences in language and substance, and still more because of the separate titles, and the author of the First Discourse must be the later for Deuteronomy 1:19 to Deuteronomy 2:1 compared with Numbers 13 ff. shows him acquainted with J and E in their combined form; Carpenter and Harford-Battersby, The Hexateuch, 1900, i. p. 92: ‘1:6–3 is with much probability referred to another edition of the Book’ than 5–11 and 12–26; cp. vol. ii. p. 248; Robinson, Deuteronomy, Joshua, p. 13.

[52] In the modern critical school the principal supporters of the unity of the authorship of 1–4 and 5–26 have been Dillmann, Nu.-Deut.-Jos. 1886, pp. 228–231, as set forth above; Van Hoonacker, L’Origine des Quatre Premiers Chapitres du Deutéronome, 1889 (not seen; a summary of his arguments is given by Driver, pp. 67 ff.); Oettli, Das Dent. u. die Bb. Jos. u. Richter, 1893; Driver, Deuteronomy , 1 st ed. 1895, 3rd 1902, pp. lxvii–lxxiii, thus summed up: ‘To the present writer there appears to be no conclusive reason why c. 1–3 should not be by the same hand as c. 5 ff.; and the only reason of any weight for doubting whether c. Deuteronomy 4:1-40 is by the same hand also, seems to him to be one which after all may not be conclusive either, viz. that the author of c. 5–26, desiring to say what now forms c. Deuteronomy 4:1-40, might have been expected, instead of inserting it between c. 1–3 and the body of his discourse (c. 5 ff.), to have incorporated it, with his other similar exhortations, in the latter.’ On Driver’s explanation of the separate titles to the two Discourses see above p. lviii—Kittel, Gesch. der Hebr. i. pp. 46–50, while recognising the strength of Dillmann’s arguments, would—on the grounds of the separate titles to Deuteronomy 1:6 to Deuteronomy 4:49, and of the fact that 5–11 is a sufficient introduction to the Code but that Kuerten’s theory also presents difficulties—leave the question open.

These then were the results of the earlier and broader stage Of the controversy upon the unity of Deuteronomy 1-30, viz. that concerned mainly with the relations of the two Introductory Discourses, the Code, and its concluding enforcements. But in our review of this stage of the controversy it has become clear that the question of unity cannot be confined to the relations of these main divisions to each other, but must be carried into investigation of differences and lines of cleavage apparent within each division, and moreover similar in all. In other words, in addition to the main divisions of Deuteronomy 1-30, there are many cross-divisions running through the whole Book, and it is these with which the later and more minute investigations of its unity have been engaged. We shall consider them in the next Paragraph.

§ 7. The Cross Divisions and Distinctions

The distinctions and differences, which are found within each of the main Divisions of Deuteronomy 1-30, some of them running through all these, and which have been taken to be evidences of different hands, are of five kinds. It does not matter in what order they are treated as they often both coincide with and cross each other. First, the distinction (already discussed) between the two conceptions of Israel of the wilderness, now as separate generations and now as one and the same; second, the division of both Introductory Discourses into historical and hortatory parts; third, the evidence of doublets within the Code and of independent groups of laws, distinguished by differences of form and phraseology; fourth, the distinction, sometimes coincident with the foregoing and sometimes crossing them, between the Singular and Plural forms of address; and fifth, the evidences all through the Book of editorial re-arrangements and additions, some of them reflecting the Exile.

First, the distinction between the two conceptions of Israel in the wilderness, as two successive generations, especially at Ḥoreb and in Moab, and as one and the same people, who have witnessed with their own eyes all the events between the passage of the Red Sea and the crossing of Jordan, has already been sufficiently treated (pp. lvi f.). This distinction is present in both Introductory Discourses, though less explicitly in chs. 1–3 than in chs. 5–11. It is clearly a distinction of attitude or rhetorical purpose and no conclusion of a difference of authorship can be drawn from it.

Second, each of the Introductory Discourses is divided between a historical and a hortatory part1[53]. In the First Discourse chs. Deuteronomy 1:6 to Deuteronomy 3:29 are historical, ch. Deuteronomy 4:1-40 is hortatory; in the Second the historical parts, chs. 5 and Deuteronomy 9:8 to Deuteronomy 10:11[54], appear before and within the hortatory, Deuteronomy 6:1 to Deuteronomy 9:7 and Deuteronomy 10:12 to Deuteronomy 11:32. In each Discourse the connection between the historical and hortatory though not unnatural is loose, and in the Second marked by a jerk in the grammar, Deuteronomy 9:7. And while the historical parts are, except for isolated and detachable passages in the Pl. form of address, the two hortatory parts are mainly in the Sg., yet with several Pl. passages. But, as we have seen, all alike are in the deuteronomic style and spirit and replete with the deuteronomic formulas (pp. liii–lvi), except that curiously enough the historical part, chs. Deuteronomy 9:8 to Deuteronomy 10:11, only twice gives the full deuteronomic title Jehovah your God (Deuteronomy 9:16; Deuteronomy 9:23). The historical parts are evidently based on JE and equally so, yet they are occasionally divergent from these older documents in the statement of facts. None betrays any dependence on P, and, with most of the general and particular differences of the deuteronomic style from that of P, all show also differences of fact, and their accounts both of the divine manifestations in the wilderness and the origin of the institutions of Israel belong, with the Code and the hortatory addresses, to a school of religion very different from P’s; yet curiously they also share with P a few touches of language and substance. Finally, the historical parts suitably supplement each other, but it is the two which now stand in the Second Discourse, which treat of the events in Ḥoreb, while that which opens the First Discourse follows the later events from the departure from Ḥoreb to the arrival at Beth-peor in Moab. This is a strange reversal of the proper order.

[53] Calvin in his Preface to his Harmony of the Pentateuch (1564) draws attention to the fact that the books Exodus to Deuteronomy are ‘composed of two principal parts The Historical Narrative and The Doctrine.’ … ‘This distinction Moses does not observe in his Books, not even relating the history in a continuous form, and delivering the doctrine unconnectedly as opportunity occurred.’ Nowhere else, however, do these contrast and in arrangement clash with one another as they do in Deuteronomy.

[54] Calvin’s Harmony (Eng. trans, pp. 294 ff.) gives it as a separate section Deuteronomy 9:7 to Deuteronomy 10:11. The proper beginning of it Isaiah 9:7 b, on which see note below.

For the connection between the historical and hortatory parts of the First Discourse see pp. lxiii, xciii; for the same in the Second see notes to Deuteronomy 9:7 and Deuteronomy 10:6-11.—The uniformity of the deuteronomic style throughout all the parts of the Discourses has been already shown in detail, pp. xlix f., liii f.—As for the forms of address, the only Sg. forms in the historical parts, are in Deuteronomy 1:1 to Deuteronomy 3:29 these scattered and more or less detachable fragments, Deuteronomy 1:21; Deuteronomy 1:31 a, Deuteronomy 2:7; Deuteronomy 2:24 b, Deuteronomy 2:25; Deu 2:30 b, Deuteronomy 2:37, in ch. 5 only the quoted Decalogue, and in Deuteronomy 9:8 to Deuteronomy 10:11 only Deuteronomy 10:10 b, for which however nearly all MSS of LXX have the Pl.; while the hortatory parts of the two Discourses differ within themselves and from each other thus; Deuteronomy 4:1-40 Pl. except for explicable instances of Sg. in the section Deuteronomy 4:9-24, and for a consistent Sg. through Deuteronomy 4:29-40; ch. 6 mixed, but the Sg. prevails throughout the rest of the hortatory part of the Second Discourse, except for editorial additions in chs. 7, 8 and these other passages, Deuteronomy 10:16-19, Deuteronomy 11:2-9; Deuteronomy 11:21-28; Deuteronomy 11:31 f.—For the dependence of the historical parts on JE, especially E, see above pp. xvi f.; and for the discrepancies from JE, pp.

Whether the author or authors of the historical parts used J and E before these documents were combined (Dillmann and Kittel) or after (Bertholet), the present writer does not deem it possible on the evidence to decide.—The general and particular differences of language and style which distinguish Deuteronomy from P (see pp. xv, xxi) are sustained throughout the historical parts. So too the difference of religious standpoint and ethical spirit: e.g. the emphasis on the spoken word of God rather than on the physical manifestation accompanying, see notes introductory to Deuteronomy 1:6-8; the ascription of the mission of the spies to the initiative of the people, Deuteronomy 1:22, instead of, as in P, to the divine command; also the notes on Deuteronomy 1:34-40, Further Note to Deuteronomy 1:36-38, and notes to Deuteronomy 3:23-29; the different treatment of the gêr or stranger, see on Deuteronomy 10:19, cp. on Deuteronomy 14:21; the different conception of the Priests and Levites, see above pp. xxiii f. and below on Deuteronomy 10:8-10; the absence of P’s constant emphasis on Aaron’s association with Moses, though, with P, Deuteronomy 10:6 recognises him as the founder of a hereditary priesthood. For differences with P in details of fact see above pp. xix–xxii and below pp. 133 ff. On the other hand, the historical parts of the Deuteronomic Discourses agree with P in the name Kaḍesh-barnea see on Deuteronomy 1:2; and in other place-names, if the fragment of an itinerary Deuteronomy 10:6-8 belongs to Deuteronomy 9:8 to Deuteronomy 10:11 and is not a later insertion; in the addition of Joshua’s name to that of Kaleb, Deuteronomy 1:37 f. but see note there; and in the use once of P’s term tûr = explore, Deuteronomy 1:33. Also alone with P the historical parts of the Discourses record that the spies were twelve, Deuteronomy 1:23, cp. Numbers 13:2, and that the ark was ‘of acacia wood, Deuteronomy 10:3, cp. Exodus 25:10 (but see introductory note to Deuteronomy 10:1-3, pp. 131 f. where P’s elaborate additions are pointed out). These of course were probably elements of common tradition and form no proof that the historical sections in Deuteronomy depend on or reflect P.

These phenomena raise several questions. Were the narrative and exhortation, between which the two Introductory Discourses are each divided, once independent of each other—forming as some maintain different introductions, historical and hortatory, to the same or different editions of the Code? It would be difficult if not impossible to relate the hortatory contents of the First Discourse, Deuteronomy 4:1-40, with those of the Second. But the detachableness of the historical parts from their context is clear, and most manifest are their affinities with each other; their common style even to details, their use of the same form of address, their dependence on the same sources, their similar treatment of their materials, and their complementary character. Were they originally one work? The evidence is so clear that this question is answered in the affirmative not only by those who take the whole of the two Introductory Discourses to be from the same hand1[55], but even by those who ascribe the rest of the two Discourses to different hands. All conceive it at least probable, that Deuteronomy 9:8 to Deuteronomy 10:11 and Deuteronomy 1-3, of course in that order, formed once a (separate?) historical introduction to the Code. But if so, how came the two parts to be divorced and placed in different Divisions of our Deuteronomy, with what should have been the earlier in the later place? This is but one of many questions which illustrate the truth that the difficulties about the unity of Deuteronomy 1-30 arise not from its substance nor from its style, but from that structure and arrangement of its parts, in which it has come down to us.

[55] Dillmann, for whose theory on the subject see above pp. lx f. and Kittel.

Third, the Code itself, chs. 12–26. Although the Laws are arranged on the whole with regard to their subjects—I. Religious Institutions and Worship, II. Offices of Authority, III. Crime, War, Property, the Family, etc.—yet this plan is not consistently carried through (see below, pp. 154–8); laws and groups of laws appear out of their proper setting. Partly coincident with the divisions and groups and partly cutting across them are differences of form and of style, just as we have seen in the Discourses. The cardinal law of the One Altar and the laws consequent on it—weighted with injunctions as to their practical objective, the abolition of the worship of all other gods—are significantly set either at the front of the Code or as near the front as their subjects permit—in division I. chs. Deuteronomy 12:2-28, Deuteronomy 14:22-29, Deuteronomy 15:19 to Deuteronomy 16:22; in II. Deuteronomy 17:8-13, Deuteronomy 18:1-8; in III. Deuteronomy 19:1-13. They are throughout in the peculiar style of Deuteronomy and replete with its formulas and other distinctive phrases. But in other laws, the deuteronomic formulas, chiefly at the end of a law, are detachable from the context and being removed leave the laws compact and sufficient, just as in the case of the deuteronomic expansions of the Decalogue (p. 84). In a number of other laws there are no marks of Deuteronomy’s style—neither the direct form of address nor any of the distinctive phraseology. Still another distinction runs across both the laws which are in the style of Deuteronomy and those which are not. For in each of these classes some laws are not only parallel to laws in JE, but contain so many linguistic agreements with these and even exact repetitions that they are evidently based on them, though modified to suit the law of the One Altar or expanded in Deuteronomy’s own phraseology and humane spirit. Other laws are paralleled only in H and P, without however any proof of being based on these codes; while others have no parallels in JE, H, or P but are peculiar to Deuteronomy, and of these also some have its phraseology and some not. Again, most but not all of the laws are in the direct form of address characteristic of Deuteronomy, and of those which are, most have the Sg. address and a very few the Pl. (see next §). And again there are groups of laws on the same subject, such as War or the Family, which carry formulas common to themselves but distinct: from those of other groups. All these phenomena raise the question whether behind the Code, chs. 12–26, there are not other codes besides those of J and E. And, finally, a few of the laws bear signs of a date later than the bulk of the Code and than the reign of Josiah when it became operative.

All these distinctions are marked in the notes to the text, but they may be usefully arranged here.

(a) The evidence that our Code used the codes of JE, Exodus 13:3-16, Exodus 20:23 to Exodus 23:33, Exodus 34:12-26, is of different degrees of worth and requires discrimination; in several instances its force has been exaggerated. It is most clear in the following, some of which are exact repetitions:—Exodus 12:3 altars and images of other gods, cp. Exodus 34:13; Exodus 14:21 seething a kid in its mother’s milk, exactly as in Exodus 23:19; Exodus 34:26; Exodus 15:12-18 on slaves, cp. Exodus 21:2-11; Exodus 16:19 just judgement, cp. Exodus 23:2; Exodus 23:6-8; Exodus 19:15-21 witnesses, with terms and phrases similar to those in Exodus 23:1 ff; Exodus 22:1-4 lost property, cp. Exodus 23:4 ff.; Exodus 23:19 f. interest etc., cp. Exodus 22:25; Exodus 24:7 manstealing, cp. Exodus 21:16; Exodus 24:17 f. stranger, fatherless and widow, cp. Exodus 22:21 f., Exodus 23:9; Exodus 25:17-19 Amalek, with phrases from E, Exodus 17:14, Joshua 10:19 (?). In the following four laws we find a great expansion of the corresponding laws in JE with alterations to suit the law of the One Altar: Exodus 15:19-23 firstlings, cp. Exodus 13:11-16; Exodus 22:29 f., Exodus 34:19 f.; Exodus 16:1-17 the three feasts, cp. Exodus 23:14-17; Exodus 34:18-23; Exodus 34:25; Exodus 19:1-13 rights of asylum, cp. Exodus 21:12-14; Exodus 26:1-11 presentation of firstfruits, cp. Exodus 26:2; Exodus 26:10 ff. with Exodus 34:26. Less clear are these:—Exodus 15:1-11 year of remission, cp. Exodus 23:10 f., the connection is slight and questionable; Exodus 18:9-22 the prophet, contains details from E, Exodus 22:18, etc. (see notes); Exodus 21:18-21 rebellious son, cp. Exodus 21:15; Exodus 21:17; Exodus 22:28 f. seduction, cp. Exodus 22:16 f.; Exodus 24:10-13 pledges, cp. Exodus 22:26 f. with different technical terms. Of course it is possible that some of these parallels are due to derivation from sources common to JE and Deuteronomy; this is probable in the case of the lex talionis, Exodus 19:21, which is given more fully in Exodus 21:24 f. But on the whole the evidence justifies the conclusion that the codes of JE formed a basis for that of Deuteronomy. See (in this series) Driver’s notes to the JE codes in his Exodus, and Appendix III. of Chapman’s Introduction to the Pentateuch with his conclusion that ‘the whole legislation in the Book of the Covenant’—i.e. Exodus 21:23 to Exodus 23:33—‘Exodus 21:18 to Exodus 22:15 excepted, is repeated (sometimes with material modifications) in Deuteronomy.’ One law new in Deuteronomy seems designed to supplement one in E; that on fencing roofs, Exodus 22:8, cp. E on fencing pits, Exodus 21:33 f.

(b) The parallels between the Code of Deuteronomy and those of H and P—other than what all have with those of J and E—are the following:—Deuteronomy 14:1 (plus deuteronomic formulas in v. 2), mutilation for the dead, cp. Leviticus 19:28; Leviticus 14:3-20 clean and unclean beasts, cp. Leviticus 11:2-23; Leviticus 20:23; Leviticus 14:22-29 tithes, cp. Leviticus 27:30-33, Numbers 18:21-32; Numbers 16:13; Numbers 16:15 booths (the name for the feast), Leviticus 23:34; Leviticus 23:42 f.; Deuteronomy 16:21 f. Asherîm and Maṣṣebôth, Leviticus 26:1 (in part); Deuteronomy 17:1 blemished beasts, Leviticus 22:17-25; [Deuteronomy 18:1-8 tribe of Levi, Leviticus 7:31-33, Numbers 18:1-20 (very slight)]; Deuteronomy 18:10 Molech, Leviticus 18:21; Leviticus 20:2-5; Leviticus 22:9-11 against various mixtures, Leviticus 19:19; Leviticus 22:12 on fringes, Numbers 15:37-41; Numbers 22:22 adultery, Leviticus 18:20; Leviticus 20:10; Leviticus 22:30 incest, Leviticus 18:8; Leviticus 20:11; Leviticus 23:9-14 cleanness of camp first part, Numbers 5:1-4; Numbers 23:21-23 vows, Numbers 30:2; Numbers 24:8 leprosy, Leviticus 13 f., Numbers 12:14 f.; Deuteronomy 24:14 f. hired servant, Leviticus 19:13; Leviticus 24:19-22 gleaning, Leviticus 19:9 f.; Deuteronomy 25:13-16, weights and measures, Leviticus 19:35 f. In these parallels the verbal agreement is but small, the differences of language and substance many. On the law of tithes P, as we have seen (p. xxiv), represents a later stage of development, and is much more detailed in the law on vows. While the same spirit of humanity breathes in H as is conspicuous in the deuteronomic laws, the religious motive is differently expressed. Further these laws as stated in Deuteronomy are all in the Sg. form of address—except Deuteronomy 14:1; Deuteronomy 14:3-20 in the Pl. and Deuteronomy 22:30 in neither—and are in large part in the deuteronomic style. The deuteronomic formulas, however, are easily separable in Deuteronomy 14:1 f.; Deuteronomy 27:1, Deuteronomy 22:22, Deuteronomy 23:9-14, Deuteronomy 25:13-16 (15b; and 16 the Lord thy God); there are no marks at all of Deuteronomy’s distinctive style in Deuteronomy 22:9-12; Deuteronomy 22:30; and elsewhere the absence of its formulas is noteworthy. On the whole Deuteronomy shows no dependence on H or P; some of the laws it seems to derive from the same written source as they do; in other cases the parallels may be different reductions to writing of the same or similar practices or tempers in Israel.

(c) Laws peculiar to Deuteronomy. Apart from those which deal with the One Altar and its consequences and which are noted above (p. lxvi), the laws found only in Deuteronomy fall into three classes, so far as form and style are concerned. First, those in the distinctive style of Deuteronomy, nearly all in the earlier part of the Code:—Deuteronomy 13:1-5 false prophets, 6–11 enticers to idolatry, 12–18 idolatrous cities, with Deuteronomy 17:2-7 idolaters; [Deuteronomy 17:8-13 judges of appeal]; Deuteronomy 17:14-20 the king; Deuteronomy 17:9-20 the prophet, with echoes of E; Deuteronomy 20:1-9 exemptions from war-service, 10–18 terms for an enemy city, 19 f. fruit-trees in siege, with Deuteronomy 21:10-14 marriage to a captive of war and Deuteronomy 23:9-14 cleanness of camp (as a whole, see also under b); Deuteronomy 23:15 f. escaped slave; Deuteronomy 24:1-4 divorce; Deuteronomy 25:1-3 excessive beating, Some are without the formulas prevalent in other parts of Deuteronomy, but these formulas are not called for by the particular subjects in hand; and the laws bear other signs of the deuteronomic style—repetition, expansion, emphasis: all in the Sg. form of address. Second, laws peculiar to Deuteronomy in which its formulas and other favourite phrases are detachable from the context:—Deuteronomy 19:14 boundary-stones, Deuteronomy 21:1-9 untraced murder, 18–21 disobedient son, 22 f. hanged malefactor, Deuteronomy 22:5 against wearing the clothes of the other sex, 6 f. sparing the mother bird, 13–21 the suspected bride, 23 f. and 25–27 treatment of a betrothed virgin, Deuteronomy 23:3 f. Ammonite and Moabite excluded from the congregation (on probable deuteronomic additions see note), 17 f. ḳedeshôth and ḳedeshîm, Deuteronomy 25:11 f. indecent assault. All are in the Sg. form of address, except Deuteronomy 22:23 f., which is Pl. save for the concluding formula, and Deuteronomy 21:18-21 and Deuteronomy 22:13-21, which, with the same exceptions, are not in the form of direct address. The detachableness of the deuteronomic elements suggests that some of these may be earlier laws incorporated by Deuteronomy, and this is corroborated as in Deuteronomy 22:23 f. by the change from the Pl. address in the body of the law to the Sg. in the closing deuteronomic formula, or as in Deuteronomy 22:13-21 by the body of the law not being in the form of direct address while the closing formula Isaiah 21:1-9, untraced murder, may be either a modification of written law or the modification of an unwritten practice. Third, laws peculiar to Deuteronomy which bear no marks of its distinctive style:—Deuteronomy 21:15-17 right of firstborn; Deuteronomy 22:8 fencing of the roof; Deuteronomy 23:1 exclusion of eunuchs, 2 of bastards (unless ḳahal, assembly, in this sense be taken as characteristic of Deuteronomy, see p. xlix), 7 f. on Edomites and Egyptians, 24 f. use at need of others’ crops; Deuteronomy 24:5 the newly-married, 6 millstone forbidden as pledge, 16 fathers and children; Deuteronomy 25:4 unmuzzle the ox, 5–10 Levirate marriage (see note p. 286). Of these 7 are not in the direct form of address prevalent in Deuteronomy, while 5 are in its prevalent Sg. That some or all of them come from an earlier code is possible but not certain; Deuteronomy 24:16 sanctions an innovation which came into Israel’s practice in Amaziah’s time; Deuteronomy 23:24 f. and Deuteronomy 25:4 practices now common in the east and probably ancient.

(d) Groups of Laws dealing with the same subject or procedure and marked by the same or similar special formulas. There are three or four of these groups. The most conspicuous is that on War, to which there are no parallels in JE:—

Deuteronomy 20:1-9, when thou goest forth to battle against thine enemies.

Deuteronomy 20:10-18, when thou drawest nigh to a city to fight against it.

Deuteronomy 20:19 f., when thou shall besiege a city a long time.

Deuteronomy 21:10-14, when thou goest forth to battle against thine enemies.

Deuteronomy 23:9-14, when thou goest forth in camp against thine enemies.

Steuernagel takes only the last two as from the same source, a ‘War-code ‘older than the bulk of Deuteronomy: he holds the opening formula in Deuteronomy 20:1-9 as editorial, but for the groundlessness of this see note on p. 244. If there ever was a separate code of War-laws all these five belonged to it; but its separate existence is quite uncertain. These laws are all in the Sg. form of address; they contain it is true but few of Deuteronomy’s formulas, yet they have its rhythm and no elements foreign to its diction. Secondly, there is a number of laws which use formulas containing the word To‘ebah, abomination:—

Deuteronomy 17:1, for that is an abomination to Jehovah thy God.

Deuteronomy 18:10-12 a, for whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto Jehovah.

Deuteronomy 22:5, for whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto Jehovah thy God.

Deuteronomy 23:17 f., for even both these are an abomination unto Jehovah thy God.

Deuteronomy 25:13-16, for all that do such things are an abomination unto Jehovah thy God.

These five Steuernagel takes as from a code earlier than Deuteronomy, consisting of ‘To‘eba-oracles.’ The hypothesis is arbitrary. Abomination is a term frequently used in Deuteronomy both in other laws and in the Discourses; to separate from these the five above and assign them to another source is obviously arbitrary. Thirdly, a number of the laws introduce the elders as judges or executioners

Deuteronomy 19:1-13, Cities of Asylum or Refuge, elders of his city.

Deuteronomy 21:1-13, Untraced Murder, thy elders and judges, elders of that city.

Deuteronomy 21:18-21, Disobedient Son, elders of his city.

Deuteronomy 22:13-21, Suspected Bride, elders of the city in the gate.

Deuteronomy 25:5-10, Levirate Marriage, elders of his city.

These all begin similarly; those in which the death-sentence is inflicted have the phrase that he may die; the city-gate is the place of judgement; and the phrase to bring out is frequent. On these grounds Steuernagel takes them (in part of course, for he eliminates alleged additions) as a group by themselves and he adds to them other laws which also contain the aforesaid phrases, Deuteronomy 17:2-13, Deuteronomy 21:15-17; Deuteronomy 21:22 f., Deuteronomy 22:22-29, Deuteronomy 24:1-5; Deuteronomy 24:7; which do not mention elders! This also is arbitrary. It is true that Deuteronomy has provided in Deuteronomy 16:18 f. for the appointment of lay judges in each city, and that it is difficult to understand the relation of these to the elders. Yet this is a frail ground on which to build the hypothesis of a separate authorship. As Steuernagel himself shows, these laws have several elements of diction in common with laws which do not mention elders and some of which are thoroughly deuteronomic in style. No law seems more original to Deuteronomy than that of the cities of Asylum, and it mentions elders.

(e) Laws alleged to be of later date than the bulk of the Code chiefly on the ground that they could not have been extant when the Law-book was discovered under Josiah nor for some time after. These are four in number:—(1) Deuteronomy 14:1 f. against mutilation for the dead, because it was unknown to Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Jews who came from Shechem to worship at Jerusalem (see notes on pp. 184 f.); this law is probably of later origin but not certainly, for other deuteronomic laws were neglected in the period immediately following Josiah’s reign, e.g. Deuteronomy 15:12-18 on the emancipation of slaves (cp. Jeremiah 34:8 ff. and Nehemiah 5:5), and the law as to the participation of the rural Levites in the Temple-worship, Deuteronomy 10:8 f., Deuteronomy 18:1-8 (cp. 2 Kings 23:9). (2) The law of clean and unclean beasts, Deuteronomy 14:3-20, in the Pl. form of address and without deuteronomic elements (except in v. 3 which may be Deuteronomy’s original law), is paralleled only in P. (3) The law of the King, Deuteronomy 17:14-20, is taken by some as later than the rest of the Code because like Deuteronomy 31:9 it represents the whole law as already in writing and canonical, but this is far from conclusive; and it is extremely probable that the original Code contained a law of the King (see note on p. 224). On Deuteronomy 23:1-9 and Deuteronomy 26:3 f. see the notes.

The above evidence leads to the conclusion that like other bodies of law this in Deuteronomy is the result of growth and compilation from various sources—new laws, expansions and modifications of old ones, while some probably are the reduction to writing for the first time of unwritten practices. Part of the Code is undoubtedly based on the codes of J and E; that there were other codes behind it is possible. The non-deuteronomic style of many of the laws indicates that these were not original to the author or authors of Deuteronomy but borrowed. That is all we can say with certainty. Steuernagel’s discrimination of older codes, ‘War-laws’ ‘Toʿeba-laws’ and ‘Elder-laws,’ is insufficiently founded. Apart from the reasons against it given above it is improbable that separate codes existed for separate subjects. Just as in the case of the Discourses the evidences of the presence of elements later than the bulk of the Code are few and except in the law on clean and unclean beasts sporadic. But, of course, there are not a few scribal and editorial additions, which have been indicated in the notes.

These, however, are not the only kinds of evidence of compilation which the Code offers. There is another and more striking kind. Several of the laws, and among them some of those most clearly original to Deuteronomy, bear signs of having once existed in separate and variant forms now put together. The cardinal law itself, ch. 12, appears to be composed from three statements—some would say more but there are at least three—all emphasising the concentration of the worship of Jehovah upon One Altar, but differing in details, with different forms of address and introduced or followed by different reasons:—1st Deuteronomy 12:2-7, Pl.; 2nd Deuteronomy 12:8-12, Pl.; 3rd Deuteronomy 12:13-19, Sg., with the corollary, Deuteronomy 12:20-27, permitting the eating of flesh not sacrificially slaughtered to Israelites too far from the One Altar to be perpetually resorting to it. For details see the notes on pp. 159–172. The law of the Priests, Deuteronomy 18:1-8, seems compounded of doublets. Also the two laws, Deuteronomy 13:1-18 and Deuteronomy 18:2-7, are parallels; why both should be in the same code, or being in it should be separated from each other, is best explained on the ground that they originally belonged to different editions of the code. In Deuteronomy 16:1-8 we have probably a compilation of two laws originally separate, one on Passover and one on Maṣṣoth. There is more uncertainty about Deuteronomy 17:8-13, on the Judges of Appeal; it seems the combination not of two written forms but of the double practice prevailing in Israel from the earliest times1[56]. All this points to the existence of different editions of the Code of Deuteronomy—a fact which is not surprising, for elsewhere in the Old Testament we find different editions of the same law; e.g. the Decalogue itself, in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5; the Sabbath-law, Exodus 23:12; Exodus 34:21; the law of firstlings, Exodus 13:12-16; Exodus 34:19 f., both in J; the Seventh Year, Exodus 23:10 f. and Leviticus 25:1-7; and the law of clean and unclean beasts, Deuteronomy 14:3-20 and Leviticus 11:2-23; etc., etc.2[57] But any signs that there were once different editions of the laws of Deuteronomy, and these its most distinctive laws, are in striking harmony with the evidence, which we found in the Discourses, of different Introductions to the Code with independent titles (§ 6, esp. p. lviii). The doublets in ch. 27 (see note on p. 300) are clear indications of separate supplements to the Code. And there are also two accounts of the institution of the cities of Asylum, Deuteronomy 4:41-43 and Deuteronomy 19:1-10, both deuteronomic.

[56] Some also find doublets in Deuteronomy 18:9-22, the law of the Prophet, but on questionable grounds; see the notes.

[57] Cp. the parallels on pp. 370 f. of Driver’s Exodus (in this series).

The Fourth Cross-Distinction in Deuteronomy, that between the Singular and Plural Forms of Address, which we have so frequently found connected with the cross-distinctions that we have just been examining, is sufficiently important—and complicated—to require a Paragraph to itself.

§ 8. The Singular and Plural Forms of Address

Except for titles, a few historical fragments intruded among the Discourses, and several Laws, chs. 1–30 of Deuteronomy are composed throughout in direct address to Israel. But, as we have seen, both in the Discourses and among the Laws there is more or less frequent transition between the Sg. and Pl. forms of address. Israel is now Thou and now You. Sometimes one of these forms is maintained through whole sections of the Discourses, sometimes with sporadic interruptions of the other. Sometimes one form prevails only through a paragraph or a sentence and yields in the next to the other. Sometimes both are used in the same sentence. By far the most of the Laws are in the Sg. but a few carry the Pl.; and again some of the latter, and others also which are not otherwise in the form of direct address, have a single clause in the Sg., either at the beginning or more often at the end of the law.

Till recently this distinction in the form of address was not carefully examined. In 1891 Cornill (Einleitung in das A.T. 1st ed.) stamped some of the laws as secondary because they use the Pl. form. A few years later Staerk (Das Deuteronomium etc. 1894) and Steuernagel (Der Rahmen des Deuteronomium 1894, Die Entstehung des deut. Gesetzes 1896, and Deuteronomium-Josua 1898 in Nowack’s Handkommentarz. A.T.) independently analysed the Book mainly on the basis of Sg. versus Pl., but with regard also to other differences of style as well as to some of substance. Their results are different and contradictory. In chs 1–11. Staerk distinguishes three speeches of Moses in the Pl., two pre-exilic and one exilic, with a large number of ‘sketches and essays’ in the Sg. dating mostly before but partly during the Exile. Of the laws those which he reckons original are all in the Sg.; all in the Pl. he takes as later—except where on other grounds this is impossible and then he frequently alters the text—but with them he counts as also later some laws and other passages in the Sg. Steuernagel on the other hand not only identifies two separate introductions to the Code but two separate Codes corresponding to them: the older in the Sg. address, Deuteronomy 6:4 f., Deuteronomy 6:10-13; Deu 6:15, Deuteronomy 7:1-4 a, Deuteronomy 7:6; Deu 7:9, Deuteronomy 7:12-16 a, Deuteronomy 7:17-21; Deu 7:23 f., Deuteronomy 8:2-5; Deuteronomy 8:7-14; Deuteronomy 8:17 f., Deuteronomy 9:1-7 a, Deuteronomy 9:5-7 a, Deuteronomy 10:12; Deuteronomy 10:14 f., Deuteronomy 10:21 (22?), Deuteronomy 11:10-12; Deuteronomy 11:14 f. with all the laws dealing with the centralisation of the worship and its consequences and all others showing an ethic, either rigorous or humane, in harmony with the principles of their introductory discourse and almost exclusively using the Sg. He finds a younger Introduction marked by the use of the Pl. in Deuteronomy 5:1-4; Deuteronomy 5:20-28, Deuteronomy 9:9; Deuteronomy 9:11; Deuteronomy 9:13-17; Deuteronomy 9:21; Deuteronomy 9:25-29, Deuteronomy 10:1-5; Deuteronomy 10:11; Deuteronomy 10:16 f., Deuteronomy 11:2-5; Deuteronomy 11:7; Deuteronomy 11:16 f., Deuteronomy 11:22-28, with these laws:—parts of ch. 12 in the Pl. and a number of other laws not showing any order because collected from various sources, some in the Pl. some in the Sg., and including several against heathen practices which show sympathy with their Introduction’s frequent polemic against images; and again within each collection of laws he discriminates smaller codes (see above pp. lxix f.) from which it was compiled, and later additions. He adds lists of phrases which he finds characteristic of these Sg. and Pl. divisions respectively. Staerk and Steuernagel thus agree only in seeing a frequent and very complicated difference of authorship in the distinction between Sg. and Pl. and in judging the Pl. to be generally the later. Their theories were adversely criticised by Kosters (Theol. Tijdschrift, 1896), Addis (Documents of the Hexateuch ii. 1898, pp. 10–19) and Bertholet (Theol. Literaturzeitung, 1899, No. 17) principally on three grounds: (1) that in other Hebrew writings the changes between the Sg. and Pl. forms of address are too common to afford a basis for difference of authorship; (2) that within passages using the same form of address differences of date are apparent, and (3) that the complexities of the two analyses, the drastic changes in the text, and the arrangement of the Book, which their respective results require, and especially the contradictions between these results, all justify further and final scepticism. This last objection is enhanced by still another analysis of Deuteronomy on the basis of Sg. and Pl., by Professor Mitchell of Boston (Journal of Biblical Literature, 1899, pp. 61 ff.), which leads to results different from both Staerk’s and Steuernagel’s. On the other hand, Steuernagel’s principle of analysis and even many of his results have received approval both from conservative and from advanced critics. Professor G. L. Robinson of Chicago (Expositor, 1899, p. 362) makes the singular suggestion that the Pl. sections of the Discourses are suitable to Moses in the wilderness addressing as a prophet the individuals of his own generation, while the Sg. address agrees with the attitude of Moses as an old man in Moah looking back on the nation as a whole! In the fifth ed. of his Einleitung (1906) Cornill, besides repeating his earlier emphasis on the ‘tell-tale Plural’ in the laws, acknowledges Staerk’s and Steuernagel’s ‘demonstration of the coherence of the Pl. and Sg. passages respectively—which Steuernagel has further confirmed by a number of acute observations on the linguistic usage.’ In 1900 the present writer read before the Society of Historical Theology in Oxford a paper in which he independently analysed the Sg. and Pl. passages and reached conclusions regarding a difference of authorship between them more positive than he now feels to be justified, as will be seen from the following paragraphs. Other criticisms of the distinction between Sg. and Pl. as a criterion of difference of authorship—repeating the objections given above and adding fresh ones—will be found in Estlin Carpenter’s and Harford Battersby’s The Hexateuch, ii. 1900, pp. 246 f. (footnote) and in Cullen’s The Book of the Covenant in Moab, 1903, pp. 2–4. The former rightly does not consider either the complexity of Staerk’s and Steuernagel’s results or their difference in detail from each other as fatal to their common principle, but says that ‘the distribution into two documents corresponding to Sg. and Pl. seems somewhat hazardous,’ on the grounds that ‘it does not rise naturally out of the phenomena of the text,’ many laws assigned by Steuernagel to the Pl. author being in the Sg. and redactions being invoked of which the text shows no trace; that the Massoretic tradition of the text is often uncertain; and that in the Discourses it would not be unnatural for the same speaker to pass, as for instance Jeremiah does, from the one to the other form of address. Cullen’s objections lay stress on the liability of the text to alteration during its tradition; on the facts that the Hebrew editors of the Book saw nothing objectionable ‘in the want of continuity in the verbal and pronominal numbers’ and that other Hebrew writers show the same disregard of continuity; and on the opinion that ‘to elevate a detail of form of this kind into anything like a norm of analysis for an O.T. book is a departure from the true principles of historical criticism’; the distinction between the Sg. and Pl. is ‘a trifling item of literary technique.’

We cannot be content with such summary opinions; the last in particular is far from just to the facts. However complex and obscure these facts may be they are certainly not ‘trifling.’ When we find that the transitions between Sg. and Pl. are often coincident with other changes—changes of subject-matter or of diction, obvious interruptions of the theme of the context, sometimes by awkward constructions—we cannot regard them all as accidental or insignificant. Whatever estimate we may finally form of their value as signs of a difference of authorship, they demand from us a close examination. Therefore they have been duly marked in the notes to the text, and we have now to consider their evidence as a whole.

1. To begin with, a note of caution is necessary upon the text itself. No elements of this were more liable to alteration in the course of its tradition than the Sg. and Pl. forms of address, and the readings of these are therefore often uncertain. The Hebrew sometimes gives one form where in the Samaritan Version or in the Greek, or in both, we find the other. Decision between or among three such witnesses is generally difficult and not always possible. It may seem a sound principle to prefer the consensus of the two most ancient Versions where they differ from the Hebrew, but we cannot always confidently act upon this. For in such cases both sets of translators may have been, intentionally or unconsciously, harmonising: e.g. Deuteronomy 4:3; Deuteronomy 4:25, Deuteronomy 11:13 f., cp. Deuteronomy 8:1, LXX, against which are both the Hebrew and Samaritan. Moreover the original reading of the LXX is often doubtful; its MSS vary. Thus part of the material of our discussion is uncertain. Yet the uncertainty must not be exaggerated. To a very great extent the two Versions agree with the Hebrew. With few exceptions, they do so through the long passages of the Book where one or the other form is constant; and they do so sometimes even when both forms occur in the same sentence and when therefore there was most temptation to translators to harmonise the grammar: e.g. Deuteronomy 4:21; Deuteronomy 4:23 f., Deuteronomy 5:1, Deuteronomy 7:4; Deuteronomy 7:25, Deuteronomy 8:19 f. (see note), Deuteronomy 11:10 whither thou goest in … whence ye came out. And in instances both of agreement and of difference between the Hebrew and the Versions we have often other reliable tests. But withal we must be prepared for a residuum of doubtful readings in cases where the difference between Sg. and Pl. is concerned.

We can sometimes trace the intrusion of a Sg. form into a Pl. passage or of a Pl. form into a Sg. passage either to dittography or to attraction: e.g. Deuteronomy 4:29 (see note), Deuteronomy 8:1 (?) and Deuteronomy 9:7 where the Samaritan Greek reading ye went forth is to be preferred to the Hebrew thou as the latter is probably due to attraction from the preceding verbs in the Sg.; cp. Deuteronomy 4:23 b where the exceptional Sg. may be similarly due to the Sg. verbs that follow it; or Deuteronomy 4:25 thou shalt beget for which read you shall (see note); on Deuteronomy 4:37 where the awkward Hebrew his seed after him seems to have arisen under the influence of the Sg. verb of the clause and where Samaritan, Greek, Syriac, Targum and Vulgate all read their seed after them; on Deuteronomy 17:16 b where the Pl. unto you, exceptional in this law, is most reasonably explained by attraction from the Pl. verb in the following quotation; and similarly in Deuteronomy 20:2 a (see note). Of course we cannot say whether such forms as are due to attraction are inconsistencies on the part of the original writer, as they may well be (see below p. lxxviii) or the faults of copyists of the text.—Of passages where the Versions help us to emend the text Deuteronomy 4:34, Deuteronomy 20:2 a, Deuteronomy 28:14 may be taken as examples. The two exceptional Pl.’s your God and for you in Deuteronomy 4:34 are suspicious especially in face of the immediately following thine eyes (so Hebrew confirmed by the Versions); but the LXX reads our God and most Greek MSS omit for you, thus diminishing the confusion.—But in this same verse we have a sign of how readily translators come under the influence of ‘attraction,’ for both our English Versions give your eyes instead of the Hebrew thine eyes. Similarly in Deuteronomy 4:3 the Authorised Version gives among you for the Hebrew in the midst of thee, correctly reproduced in our Revised Version.

2. In addressing Israel other writings of the O.T. pass from the Sg. to the Pl. and vice versa, some occasionally some more frequently. As Deuteronomy is both a Code of Laws and a Discourse (or Discourses) to Israel we may take for comparison with it in this practice the codes in JE and the discourses or oracles of Jeremiah.

In the code Exodus 20:23 to Exodus 23:33 all laws couched in the form of direct address to Israel are in the Sg. except seven in the Pl. Five of these Driver (Exodus in this series), who takes no note of this difference, marks as editorial; in a sixth, Exodus 22:31, ye shall be holy men the Pl. is inevitable, no one would write ‘thou shalt be holy men,’ and the seventh is the opening law of the code, Exodus 20:23, ye shall not make … with me, gods of silver or gods of gold ye shall not make unto you, which Pls may be due to attraction from the Pl. pronouns in the preceding exordium v. 22; yet both verses have been marked by other critics as editorial not only on account of their Pl. form, but because Versions show that variant forms of them were extant.

Again in Jeremiah’s addresses to Judah, Jerusalem, men of Judah or House of Israel he frequently—one might almost say usually—employs the Pl. form: e.g. Jeremiah 2:4 ff., Jeremiah 4:3 f., Jeremiah 5:20 f., Jeremiah 7:1-15; Jeremiah 7:21-25; [Jeremiah 10:1 ff.]; Jeremiah 11:1-8; Jeremiah 13:15-17; Jeremiah 16:10-13; Jeremiah 18:5-17; Jeremiah 21:4 f., Jeremiah 21:8 f., Jeremiah 21:11 f.; Jeremiah 22:1-5 (changing to Sg. in v. 6 after a personification), 10; Jeremiah 25:3-8; Jeremiah 26:4 f., Jeremiah 26:12-15; Jeremiah 27:9 ff.; Jeremiah 29:10 f. (to the exiles); Jeremiah 31:31-33 (the new covenant, indirect address); Jeremiah 34:13-17 (except for the quotation noted below); Jeremiah 35:13-16; Jeremiah 42:9 ff., Jeremiah 42:19 ff. (O remnant of Judah); Jeremiah 44:7-11; Jeremiah 44:26 (all Judah that dwell in the land of Egypt). When Jeremiah uses the Sg. address it is mostly but not always in one of three connections. (1) After, or with, a vivid personification of the people, land or city: e.g. Jeremiah 2:1-3; Jeremiah 2:14-25; Jeremiah 2:31-37; Jeremiah 3:1-5; Jeremiah 4:1 f.; Jeremiah 10:17 ff.; Jeremiah 12:7 f.; Jeremiah 13:20-27; Jeremiah 22:6 f. (but passing to Pl. in v. 9), Jeremiah 22:20-23; Jeremiah 30:12-14 (Sion = the community); Jeremiah 31:3-5 (virgin of Israel), Jeremiah 31:15-17 (Rachel the mother), Jeremiah 31:18-20 (Ephraim the son), Jeremiah 31:21 f. (virgin of Israel). Or (2) when short of actually personifying the nation Jeremiah sets it in sharp contrast to any other, or all others: e.g. Jeremiah 2:36 f.; Jeremiah 4:5-8 (Pls. except in 7 where the other nation comes in); Jeremiah 10:24 f.; Jeremiah 15:11-14; Jeremiah 30:7-11 (Jacob) and Jeremiah 46:27 f. (Jacob as Servant)—these last two passages should perhaps rather come among the personifications. Or (3) when he is quoting from Jereronomy: e.g. in Jeremiah 5:14-19 he begins with the Pl., passes to the Sg. in words more or less those of Jer 28:49 ff., and resumes the Pl. with his own words in v. 19 (v. 18 may be an insertion); similarly in Jeremiah 34:14 the change from the Pl. to the Sg. comes in with a quotation of Jeremiah 15:12 and again Pl. is resumed with the prophet’s own words. But in some quotations Jeremiah changes their original Sg. to his own usual Pl.: e.g. Jeremiah 29:13, cp. Jeremiah 4:29; Jeremiah 44:3, cp. Jeremiah 13:6. There are, however, a considerable number of transitions from Sg. to Pl. in Jeremiah’s discourses which are not capable of the above explanations, nor of any other except that the prophet felt himself free to make them! For example, Jeremiah 3:12 ff. is mainly in Pl. but has one Sg. clause (but is it a quotation?); Jeremiah 3:19 passes from Sg. to Pl.; in Jeremiah 11:13 the two forms are in successive clauses; and in Jeremiah 21:13 f. we find I am against thee … ye which say … I will punish you … her forest round about her.

All this—while further exposing the complexity of the question and while explaining the inevitableness of contradictions in the various analyses of Deuteronomy on the basis of the two forms of address—nevertheless offers some clues through the maze. The discourses of Jeremiah show that some changes from Pl. to Sg. may be due to the influence of a vivid personification of the nation or community addressed; or, short of personification, to a conception of it approaching the personal, especially when it is contrasted with other peoples; or to the quotation by the speaker of other writings in a different form of address from that which he usually adopts, or to no apparent reason at all except the inconsistence of the writer. Again, the codes in JE show still more clearly that some changes from Sg. to Pl. are due to the hand of an editor or expander of the original. We have now to ask, whether any of the changes of address in Deuteronomy correspond to any or to all of these?

As for the influence of personification on the form of address there should be constant opportunity for observing this in Deuteronomy, in which Israel is regarded as a moral unity and is so often conceived under a vivid personal metaphor. Hence the prevailing Sg. in the hortatory parts of the Discourses, especially where these contrast Israel with other peoples (as in Deuteronomy 4:32 ff. and Deuteronomy 9:1-6), and in all laws which concern the whole nation. Hence, too, in Pl. contexts the emergence of the Sg. at points where the exhortation becomes particularly intense or intimate: e.g. Deuteronomy 4:9 (and carried on into v. 10).

The transitions between the two forms of address often coincide with the transitions between exhortation and narrative in a manner too exact to be other than significant. We have noted the prevalence of the Sg. in the hortatory parts of the Discourses; it is the Pl. which prevails in the historical parts. With few exceptions (which we shall consider immediately) the Pl. runs through Deuteronomy 1:1 to Deuteronomy 3:29, the historical part of the First Discourse; and is sustained through the historical parts of the Second Discourse: through ch. 5 (except for the quotation of the Decalogue) and without interruption through ch. Deuteronomy 9:7 b – Deuteronomy 10:11; the hortatory setting, Deuteronomy 6:1 to Deuteronomy 9:7 a and Deuteronomy 10:12 to Deuteronomy 11:32, being mainly in the Sg., except significantly enough in the longish passage Deuteronomy 11:2-9, where the exhortation is mixed with narrative and the Pl. again prevails (the other Pl. exceptions are as we shall see probably editorial). Moreover the transition from Sg. to Pl. in Deuteronomy 9:7 is marked by an awkward construction, as though we had there the splicing of two strands by a hand which had found them separate. Of course even this—though a sign of the compilation of different documents—is not proof of a difference of authorship. It would be natural for the same author to use mainly the Pl. in narrative but to turn to the Sg. when he came to exhort the people especially under the deuteronomic conception of Israel as a moral unity; and as we have seen (§ 6) there is—apart from this difference in the form of address—great similarity of style and doctrine not only between the two Discourses as a whole but within each, between its historical and hortatory parts (see below for exceptions). Moreover this association of the Sg. with exhortation and of the Pl. with narrative is not constant. We find the prevailing Pl. of the historical part of the First Discourse, Deuteronomy 1:1 to Deuteronomy 3:29, running on into the hortatory part, Deuteronomy 4:1-40 (at least Deuteronomy 4:1-8, hortatory though it is and containing also a contrast between Israel and other nations, cannot be separated from Deuteronomy 1:1 to Deuteronomy 3:29); and similarly the Pl. of ch. 5 runs for a little way into ch. 6, so that although we discover some evidence of principle or habit in the use of the forms of address, we see also that this is not adhered to with constancy.

We may take next the question of quotations, and here again some things are clear amid much that is uncertain. In ch. 5 which is otherwise consistent in the use of the Pl. the Decalogue is quoted and it is in the Sg.; while in Deuteronomy 11:18-25, mainly a Pl. passage, the emergence of the Sg. in Deuteronomy 11:19-20 comes in a quotation, slightly varied, of Deuteronomy 6:6-9, a Sg. passage. This is treated just as Jeremiah treats some of his quotations; some of the pronouns are altered to harmonise with the context, some are left as they are in the original passage. May the same or a similar reason not explain the exceptional Sgs in Deuteronomy 4:24, Deuteronomy 29:3; Deuteronomy 29:10 f.? It certainly serves as a sufficient reason for some of the exceptional appearances of the Pl. in the Code: e.g. Deuteronomy 26:1, against mutilation for the dead, and Deuteronomy 14:4-20, on beasts clean and unclean. The former law shows other reasons for our doubting that it is original to Deuteronomy (see the notes); v. 2 is, then, a deuteronomic addition to it. The law on clean and unclean beasts is throughout foreign to the usual style of the deuteronomic Code, in other respects (see notes on it) than its use of the Pl.; the Sg. verse with which it opens may be either the original law of Deuteronomy on the subject or an addition by a deuteronomic editor when he incorporated this Pl. law in the Code. Other quotations coincident with the appearance of the Pl. are Deuteronomy 17:16 b, Deuteronomy 20:3. But, once more, we have in all these cases signs of compilation, not evidence of two distinct authors, one employing the Sg. and one the Pl. form of address.

We come now to the question of editorial additions or expansions, and here too we may be confident sometimes—though not always—of a measure of certainty; subject to this consideration that it is difficult to distinguish between an editorial addition and a quotation by the original author (e.g. Deuteronomy 4:23 b, Deuteronomy 4:24). What we have to ask is whether in Deuteronomy there are any occasional appearances of the Sg. in Pl. passages or of the Pl. in Sg. passages, in clauses which are separable from their contexts without disturbing the sequence of these, or still more whose presence itself disturbs that sequence. The answer is in the affirmative; there are such, but in the present writer’s opinion not so many as sometimes have been alleged.

In the historical part of the First Discourse, Deuteronomy 1:1 to Deuteronomy 3:29, the Sg. passages are only seven or eight, all single clauses or brief sentences (see pp. 5 f.). Only one is an obvious intrusion, Deuteronomy 1:31 a—in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that Jehovah thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son—separating the following clause from the conjunction and that introduces it. None of the rest is so clear. Ch. Deuteronomy 2:37 qualities and is not necessary to the preceding context, yet there is no other reason for denying it to the same writer; its Sg. may be simply an unconscious inconsistency on his part. Ch. Deuteronomy 2:30 b is not necessary to the context but it is relevant and may just as well be due to the original writer as to a pious expander who desired to add a religious reason for King Sihon’s obstinacy. In Deuteronomy 1:21 and Deuteronomy 2:7 the hortatory temper rises to a degree at which (from what we have seen) it would be natural for the same writer to pass from the Pl. to the Sg. In Deuteronomy 3:22 the readings are doubtful; if Pls. be read their appearance, though Joshua is addressed, is natural (see note). The Sgs. in Deuteronomy 2:9 a, Deuteronomy 2:18-25; Deu 2:31 and Deuteronomy 3:2 are of course due to the address in these passages being to Moses himself: Jehovah said unto me. On the Pls. in Deuteronomy 4:34, clearly editorial, see above p. lxxvi.

In the hortatory parts of the Second Discourse, chs. Deuteronomy 6:1 to Deuteronomy 9:7 a and Deuteronomy 10:12 to Deuteronomy 11:32, most but not all of the Pl. exceptions afford other signs than the Pl. of being additions or expansions. The opening verse, Deuteronomy 6:1, merely continues the Pl. of the previous narrative chapter; and the single Pl. clause in Deuteronomy 6:3 that ye may increase mightily could not have been expressed so naturally in the Sg. Neither of these then is editorial. But the Pl. clauses in Deuteronomy 6:14; Deuteronomy 6:16 f. are probably so (see notes). In ch. 7 the momentary Pl. in Deuteronomy 6:4, confirmed by the Versions, is curious; whether editorial or not who could say? In Deuteronomy 6:5; Deuteronomy 6:7 f. the Pl. clauses (see note) are separable from the context, but the former is as possibly a quotation by the original writer as an editorial insertion. In Deuteronomy 6:12 the Pl. clauses are superfluous and that in Deuteronomy 6:25 may be the mistake of a scribe (see note); still it is curious that this and the Pls. in Deuteronomy 6:5 occur just as the writer mentions heathen altars, images, and symbols, for we shall find other instances of this coincidence. In ch. 8 the only Pls. are Deuteronomy 6:1; Deuteronomy 6:19, common formulas and possibly editorial. In the Pl. passage Deuteronomy 10:16-19 there are marks of expansion other than the Pls. (see the notes). The prevalence of the Pl. in the longish passage Deuteronomy 11:2-9 is (as we have seen) coincident with the re-appearance of narrative; there is no reason to doubt the unity of the passage with its Sg. contexts. But the Pl. clauses in Deuteronomy 11:10-15 are obvious interruptions of the theme of the passage, and those in Deuteronomy 11:18-28 are formulas and separable—all probably editorial—yet those in Deuteronomy 11:16 f. are not so easily accounted for (see notes to ch. 11 throughout).

In the Laws the Pl. clauses exceptional in Sg. contexts are very few. Some of them have already been explained (for Deuteronomy 14:1; Deuteronomy 14:3-20 see p. lxx; Deuteronomy 17:16 b and Deuteronomy 20:2 a see note thereon). The rest may be confidently marked as editorial, see the notes on them: Deuteronomy 12:16, Deuteronomy 13:3 f. (perhaps a loose quotation), Deuteronomy 13:7; Deu 13:13 b, Deuteronomy 20:18, Deuteronomy 23:4 a (may be a quotation), Deuteronomy 24:8 f. On ch. Deuteronomy 27:4 see note. In ch. 28 there are but four verses out of the sixty-eight with Pl. clauses; but in Deuteronomy 28:14 we should read thee for you; in Deuteronomy 28:62; Deuteronomy 28:68 the Pls. are explicable logically; those in Deuteronomy 28:63 are less easy to explain, they may be editorial.

We see, then, that both in the Discourses and the Laws some of the short Sg. exceptions where Pl. prevails and most of the short Pl. exceptions where Sg. prevails may be regarded as secondary or editorial. But this is not true of all. Some are as natural as we found similar instances in Jeremiah to be. And as for the rest, which have no logical explanation and no sign that they are secondary, we must admit the possibility of inconsistency, arbitrary or unconscious, on the part of the original writer or writers. Note Deuteronomy 9:13 f., it and them as in Exodus 32:9 f.; cp. Deuteronomy 18:21, thou and we, and in Deuteronomy 26:15, us and our with the I and me of previous verses.

3. Next we have to inquire, whether—as has been alleged—the difference in the forms of address is at all coincident in Deuteronomy with differences of vocabulary and phrasing sufficient to indicate a difference of authorship. To be adequate the inquiry must cover these questions: (1) What phrases characteristic of Deuteronomy are common to the Sg. and Pl. passages? (2) Do any of the characteristic phrases predominate with the one or the other set of passages? (3) Are any characteristic words or phrases used only with the Sg. or only with the Pl.? (4) Are there any cases of different terms for the same idea being used with Sg. and Pl. respectively1[58]?

[58] The analysis on which the following paragraphs are based was made in 1900 for my paper for the Society of Historical Theology before Professor Mitchell’s analysis (see above p. lxxiv) reached me. For the most part we agree, but he registers some distinctions which are not clear enough to be enumerated in a discussion of difference of authorship. I have marked those that I owe to him. I have also carefully studied Steuernagel’s lists on pp. xxxiii ff. of his Deuteronomium-Josua. The reader must keep in mind that these lists are not prepared on the same principle as those in the following paragraphs. By Sg. and Pl. I mean all passages of the Book in the singular and plural forms of address respectively. Steuernagel’s Sg. and Pl. on the other hand are the two documents which he believes to have discriminated as running throughout the discourses and the codes, in which singular and plural forms prevail but are by no means constant. Nor can I agree with his very numerous estimate of editorial passages. With Bertholet I believe it to be very extravagant. Many items in it are founded on arbitrary grounds.

First, terms characteristic of Deuteronomy (see above §§ 2 and 6) found in both the Sg. and Pl. passages. Both speak of Israel as fearing God (Sg. at least eight, Pl. five times), loving Him (Sg. at least nine, Pl. three times), and cleaving to Him (Sg. Deuteronomy 10:20; Deuteronomy 30:20; Pl. Deuteronomy 4:4; Deuteronomy 11:22 secondary, Deuteronomy 13:4 parallel to Deuteronomy 10:20). Both use these phrases—to take heed or beware (Sg. Deuteronomy 4:9; Deuteronomy 6:12; Deuteronomy 8:11; Deuteronomy 12:13; Deuteronomy 12:19; Deuteronomy 12:30; Deuteronomy 15:9; Deuteronomy 23:9; Pl. Deuteronomy 4:23; Deuteronomy 11:16 and with other forms of the same verb Deuteronomy 2:4, Deuteronomy 4:15); observe to do (Sg. Deuteronomy 6:3; Deuteronomy 7:11; Deuteronomy 15:5; Deuteronomy 17:10; Pl. Deuteronomy 5:1; Deuteronomy 5:32; Deuteronomy 12:32); observe and do (Sg. Deuteronomy 16:12; Deuteronomy 23:23; Deuteronomy 24:8 a, Deuteronomy 26:16, Deuteronomy 28:13; Pl. Deuteronomy 4:6; Deuteronomy 7:12 secondary); prolong thy or your days and the like (Sg. Deuteronomy 4:40, [Deuteronomy 5:16], Deuteronomy 6:2, Deuteronomy 22:7, Deuteronomy 5:15; Pl. Deuteronomy 4:26, cp. Deuteronomy 30:18, Deuteronomy 5:33, Deuteronomy 11:9); which I am or Jehovah is commanding thee or you this day (Sg. about nineteen, Pl. ten times); and both use way or ways in a spiritual sense (Sg. Deuteronomy 8:6; Deuteronomy 13:5; Pl. Deuteronomy 5:33; Deuteronomy 11:22; Deuteronomy 11:28 both secondary, cp. Deuteronomy 9:12; Deuteronomy 9:16). The two agree in usually employing the longer forms of the word for heart, lebab and of the first personal pronoun, ’anokî; and in a very rare use of the shorter forms (see above pp. xvi, lv f. and note to Deuteronomy 12:30). Both have the day of Assembly.

Second, terms characteristic of Deuteronomy, found mostly with the Sg. and seldom or doubtfully with the Pl. Of Jehovah, drawing to (ḥashaḳ), choosing and loving Israel (Sg. Deuteronomy 4:37; Deuteronomy 7:6; Deuteronomy 7:13; ?Deuteronomy 10:15; Deuteronomy 14:2; Deuteronomy 23:5?; Pl. only Deuteronomy 7:7 secondary), redeeming Israel (padah Song of Solomon 7:8 see note, Deuteronomy 13:5, Deuteronomy 15:15, Deuteronomy 21:8, Deuteronomy 24:18; Pl. Deuteronomy 9:26), leading them all the way these forty years in the wilderness and the like (Song of Solomon 2:7 but see p. lxxxi, Deuteronomy 8:2; Deuteronomy 8:4; Deuteronomy 8:15; Pl. Deuteronomy 29:5 see note), disciplining (Sg. Deuteronomy 4:36; Deuteronomy 8:5; Pl. Deuteronomy 11:2) and testing (nissah or with massôth, tests, Sg. Deuteronomy 4:34 see note, Deuteronomy 7:19, Deuteronomy 8:2; Deuteronomy 8:16, Deuteronomy 29:2; Pl. only Deuteronomy 13:3 but Pl. speaks of Israel testing God, Deuteronomy 6:16; and both use nissah in the sense to attempt or assay, Sg. Deuteronomy 4:34, Pl. Deuteronomy 28:56). Also these phrases—lest thou or you forget and the like (Song of Solomon 4:9; Song of Solomon 6:12; Song of Solomon 8:11, [14, 19], Deuteronomy 9:7, Deuteronomy 25:19; Pl. only Deuteronomy 4:23) and with all the heart and with all the soul (Sg. Deuteronomy 4:29; Deuteronomy 6:5; Deuteronomy 10:12; Deuteronomy 26:16; Deuteronomy 30:2; Deuteronomy 30:6; Deuteronomy 30:10; Pl. Deuteronomy 11:13; Deuteronomy 13:3 both editorial1[59]).

[59] Professor Mitchell adds strong hand and stretched out arm, Sg. Deuteronomy 4:34; Deuteronomy 5:15; Deuteronomy 7:19; Deuteronomy 26:8; Pl. Deuteronomy 11:22. But the phrase varies much—see p. liv—and in Deuteronomy 9:29 Pl. we have great might and stretched out arm. Pl. uses strong hand alone (or with greatness) thrice Deuteronomy 3:24, Deuteronomy 7:8 a editorial, Deuteronomy 9:26; Sg. Deuteronomy 6:21.

Third, terms characteristic of Deuteronomy that are used only with the Sg. or only with the Pl. (a) Only with the Sg.:—of God, a jealous God (Deuteronomy 4:24, [Deuteronomy 5:9], Deuteronomy 6:15, yet Pl. has Jehovah and his jealousy Deuteronomy 29:20), a devouring fire (Deuteronomy 4:24, Deuteronomy 9:3), a compassionate God (Deuteronomy 4:31), keeping covenant and true love (Deuteronomy 7:9; Deuteronomy 7:12, cp. Deuteronomy 5:10); of Israel, a peculiar people (Deuteronomy 7:6, Deuteronomy 14:2, Deuteronomy 26:18); of Egypt, house of bondmen (Deuteronomy 5:6, Deuteronomy 6:12, Deuteronomy 7:8 b, Deuteronomy 8:14, Deuteronomy 13:5; Deuteronomy 13:10; cp. bondmen in Egypt, Deuteronomy 5:15, Deuteronomy 6:21, Deuteronomy 15:15, Deuteronomy 16:12, Deuteronomy 24:18; Deuteronomy 24:22); to harden the heart in a bad sense (Deuteronomy 2:30, Deuteronomy 15:7); the land which Jehovah thy God giveth, or is about to give thee, for an inheritance (Deuteronomy 4:21 b, Deuteronomy 4:38, Deuteronomy 15:4, Deuteronomy 19:10, Deuteronomy 20:16, Deuteronomy 21:23, Deuteronomy 24:4, Deuteronomy 25:19, Deuteronomy 26:1; with Pl. applied to the people, a people of inheritance Deuteronomy 4:20, cp. Deuteronomy 9:26; Deuteronomy 9:29); and several less important terms; nashal, to drive off (Deut 7:1, 32); hadaph, to expel (Deuteronomy 9:4, Deuteronomy 6:19); haser, to lack (Deuteronomy 2:7, Deuteronomy 8:9, Deuteronomy 15:8 and its noun Deuteronomy 28:48; Deuteronomy 28:57), and the accumulation tests, signs and wonders (Deuteronomy 4:34, Deuteronomy 7:19, Deuteronomy 26:8 in part, Deuteronomy 29:3; Deuteronomy 11:3 signs and works, Pl.). There are also several expressions peculiar to the Sg. laws; to consume the evil (bi‘er thirteen times); ’ivvah, to desire (Deuteronomy 12:20, Deuteronomy 14:16, the Decalogue has the Hithpael v. 19), and its noun ’avvah, all the desire of thy soul (Deuteronomy 12:15; Deuteronomy 12:20 f., Deuteronomy 18:6); and these formulas wherefore I am commanding saying or this word (Deuteronomy 15:11; Deuteronomy 15:15, Deuteronomy 19:7, Deuteronomy 24:18; Deuteronomy 24:22), hear and fear (Deuteronomy 13:6, Deuteronomy 17:13, Deuteronomy 19:20, Deuteronomy 21:21), which shall be in those days (Deuteronomy 17:9, Deuteronomy 19:17, Deuteronomy 26:3), and it shall be a sin in thee (Deuteronomy 15:9, Deuteronomy 23:22 f., Deuteronomy 24:15), and he or she or they shall die (Deuteronomy 13:10, Deuteronomy 17:5; Deuteronomy 17:12, Deuteronomy 18:20, Deuteronomy 19:12, Deuteronomy 21:21, Deuteronomy 22:21 f., Deuteronomy 22:24 f., Deuteronomy 24:7[60]). (b) Characteristic terms used only with the Pl. are not nearly so many:—hith’anneph, to be angry, of Jehovah (Deuteronomy 1:37, Deuteronomy 4:21, Deuteronomy 9:8; Deuteronomy 9:20); the Pi’el of ’abad, to destroy (Deuteronomy 11:4, Deuteronomy 12:2; Deuteronomy 12:8 but with both Sg. and Pl. we find the Hiphil), to make war upon of Jehovah (Deuteronomy 1:30, Deuteronomy 3:22, Deuteronomy 20:4), shaḥath in the sense to deal corruptly (Pi’el, Deuteronomy 9:12, Hiph. Deuteronomy 4:16; Deuteronomy 4:25, Deuteronomy 31:29 while the Sg. uses Hiph. only in the active sense to destroy, Deuteronomy 20:19 f. of a thing, Deuteronomy 4:31, Deuteronomy 10:10 of Israel; but cp. Deuteronomy 9:26 Pl.), in consequence of obeying (Deuteronomy 7:12, Deuteronomy 8:20) and I, we or they turned (Deuteronomy 1:24, Deuteronomy 2:1; Deuteronomy 2:8, Deuteronomy 3:1, Deuteronomy 9:15, Deuteronomy 10:5), at that time (Deuteronomy 1:9; Deuteronomy 1:16; Deuteronomy 1:18, Deuteronomy 2:34, Deuteronomy 3:4; Deuteronomy 3:8; Deuteronomy 3:12; Deuteronomy 3:18; Deuteronomy 3:21; Deuteronomy 3:23, Deuteronomy 4:14, Deuteronomy 5:5, Deuteronomy 9:20, Deuteronomy 10:1; Deuteronomy 10:8), and the construction of the verb to be with a participle (Deuteronomy 9:7; Deuteronomy 9:22; Deuteronomy 9:24 elsewhere only in Deuteronomy 31:27 in imitation of Deuteronomy 9:7 Bertholet). Some of these singularities are due, it is obvious, to the Sg. passages being mainly hortatory and the Pl. mainly narrative.

[60] These last formulas I have taken from Professor Mitchell’s list.

Fourth, very few are the instances of different phrases for the same idea according as it is conveyed in the Sg. or Pl. forms of address. But there are some. While with the Sg. Israel’s passage to the Promised Land is almost constantly phrased as when thou comest into the land, or the land whither thou art coming—the participle (Deuteronomy 7:1, Deuteronomy 9:5, Deuteronomy 11:10; Deuteronomy 11:29, Deuteronomy 18:9, Deuteronomy 23:20, Deuteronomy 26:1, Deuteronomy 27:3, Deuteronomy 28:21; Deuteronomy 28:63, Deuteronomy 30:16), with the Pl. the idea is expressed by another participle, whither ye are crossing to possess it (Deuteronomy 4:14, Deuteronomy 6:1, Deuteronomy 11:8; Deuteronomy 11:11 editorial, cp. Deut 27:2, 30, 18 by the witness of the Samaritan and Greek; see also Deuteronomy 3:21 in the Sg. because addressed to Joshua and Deuteronomy 4:22). The exceptions are Deuteronomy 8:1 where come in is with the Pl. (editorial), Deuteronomy 9:1 where cross is in the Sg., and Deuteronomy 11:31 where both phrases are in the Pl. (editorial). Another, but insignificant case of difference is the Sg. Be thou not afraid nor dismayed (Deuteronomy 1:21, Deuteronomy 31:8) for the Pl. Be ye not startled nor afraid (Deuteronomy 1:29, Deuteronomy 31:6); cp. Be ye not afraid nor disturbed nor startled (Deuteronomy 20:3). On the alleged discrepancy between the Amorites of the Pl. passages and the full list of seven nations given with the Sg. address see above p. lvi. It has also been alleged that in the use of the various names given to the Law or laws there is evidence of a difference between the Sg. and Pl. passages, but the evidence is far from clear. (Titles, as obviously editorial, may be left out.) Tôrah, Law, is used in both (Sg. Deuteronomy 17:11; Deuteronomy 17:18 f., Deuteronomy 28:58; Deuteronomy 28:61, Deuteronomy 30:10; Pl. Deuteronomy 4:8; Deuteronomy 29:21; Deuteronomy 29:29). So is Miṣwah, Charge or Commandment, when used alone (Sg. Deuteronomy 8:1; Deuteronomy 26:13; Deuteronomy 30:11, in Deuteronomy 15:5 and Deuteronomy 19:9 it probably refers to a single law; Pl. Deuteronomy 11:8; Deuteronomy 11:22, the latter editorial, in Deuteronomy 5:31 it is combined with statutes and judgements). So with Miṣwôth, commandments, when used alone and so with ḥuḳḳîm, statutes, when alone (Sg. Deuteronomy 6:24; Deuteronomy 16:12; Pl. Deuteronomy 4:6; Deuteronomy 17:19). The double term statutes and judgements, by itself, is found once with Sg. and seven times with Pl. (Sg. Deuteronomy 26:16; Pl. Deuteronomy 4:1; Deuteronomy 4:5; Deuteronomy 4:8; Deuteronomy 4:14; Deuteronomy 5:1; Deuteronomy 11:32; Deuteronomy 12:1); preceded by Miṣwah it appears in one Sg. passage and two Pl. (Deuteronomy 7:11, and Deuteronomy 5:31, Deuteronomy 6:1). But as his statutes and judgements it often occurs with the Sg. (Deuteronomy 4:40, Deuteronomy 27:10, or with the feminine of statutes, Deuteronomy 6:2, Deuteronomy 10:13, Deuteronomy 28:15; Deuteronomy 28:45, Deuteronomy 30:10). The triple, his commandments, judgements, and statutes is found only with the Sg. (Deuteronomy 8:11, Deuteronomy 11:1, Deuteronomy 26:17, Deuteronomy 30:16) but the other triple, testimonies, statutes, judgements (or commandments) occurs with both forms (Sg. Deuteronomy 6:20; Pl. Deuteronomy 6:17 editorial).

4. Are there any differences of attitude, temper or subject between the Sg. and Pl. passages?—beyond the one we have already observed, that the hortatory sections are generally Sg. and the narratives generally Pl. Several such differences have been asserted by various critics; and some of them justly. But for the most part their details are either explicable by the difference between exhortation and narrative or do not imply more than the presence in our text of editorial additions or expansions.

Professor Mitchell (op. cit.) feels a difference of temper between the Sg. and the Pl. passages, in that the Sg. appeal generally to the people’s gratitude to God, the Pl. to their fear of Him. But surely the Sg. call upon Israel to fear and to remember the divine chastisements as much as the Pl. do, and it is with the Sg. alone that we find the expressions a jealous God and a consuming fire, and the formula hear and fear. If in enforcing obedience the Sg. passages linger more on Jehovah’s love of Israel and His kind Providence—although they too mention the terrors of the wilderness, Deuteronomy 8:15—while the Pl. emphasise the awfulness of His revelation on Ḥoreb, the instances of His wrath and the details of the people’s sufferings (see above p. lxxxiv and Deuteronomy 1:44, Deuteronomy 2:14-16, Deuteronomy 4:3, Deuteronomy 9:22); such a difference does not necessarily imply difference of authorship. It also is explicable by the fact, with which we are so familiar, that the Sg. address naturally prevails in the hortatory sections of the Book but the Pl. in its narratives. Except for their ideal treatment of the experiences of Israel in the wilderness the Sg. passages do not differ from the Pl. as to the facts of the people’s past. Nor is there any difference of perspective. The Sg. which in one law uses the phrase going forth from Egypt of the actual night of Israel’s departure, Deuteronomy 16:3; Deuteronomy 16:6 (cp. v. 1), also uses it more loosely, as the Pl. does, of events well on in the wilderness wandering: Deuteronomy 25:17 of Amalek, cp. Pl. Deuteronomy 23:4 of the coming to Moab; Deuteronomy 24:9, Miriam’s leprosy.

Again it is true that while there is only one instance of the denunciation of images in the Sg. form of address, Deuteronomy 4:23 (and this possibly editorial), all other emphases on the sin of idolatry and commands to destroy images occur either in the longer Pl. sections, e.g. Deuteronomy 4:10-18; Deuteronomy 4:25-28, Deuteronomy 9:8-22, Deuteronomy 12:2 f.; or—exactly as in Exodus 20:23—in short Pl. sentences or clauses that break into Sg. contexts: e.g. Deuteronomy 7:5; Deuteronomy 7:25 a, with the following, against going after or worshipping other gods, Deuteronomy 6:14, Deuteronomy 11:16; Deuteronomy 11:26-28. Also it is curious that the Pl. should crop up in the threats of the destruction of Israel attached to several of the Sg. denunciations of the worship of other gods, Deuteronomy 7:4, Deuteronomy 8:19, Deuteronomy 30:17 f. Yet on the other hand we find the Sg. not only in frequent denunciations of the worship of other gods—e.g. besides those just quoted, Deuteronomy 4:19 against star-worship, Deuteronomy 12:30, Deuteronomy 13:2; Deuteronomy 13:6; Deuteronomy 13:13 (the one Pl. here is probably editorial), Deuteronomy 17:3 f., Deuteronomy 18:20, Deuteronomy 28:14 (see note), 64—but in the law against Asherim and Pillars, Deuteronomy 16:21 f., and warnings against other abominations of the heathen, Deuteronomy 18:9 f., Deuteronomy 20:18, etc.; not to speak of Deuteronomy 5:7-9, the deuteronomic edition of the Second Commandment. The conclusion is reasonable that while this evidence gives signs of editorial expansions it hardly amounts to a proof of the presence of two documents by different authors.

The evidence we have examined in this paragraph is very complicated—too complicated for any but moderate conclusions. It may point towards, it does not reach, certainty. Upon the strength of it we can indeed exclude certain opposite extremes. No sane mind could imagine that the two forms of address always indicate different hands or that the same writer might not use the one as well as the other, sometimes of purpose and sometimes with unconscious inconsistency. So wild a theory has never been proposed. On the other hand, no one can maintain that the difference between the Sg. and Pl. forms of address never indicates a difference of hand. In clear disproof of this is the fact that many of the exceptional Pl. clauses in Sg. passages and one or two of the exceptional Sg. clauses in Pl. passages bear other marks of being secondary. These are not merely the mechanical intrusions of formulas by scribes; many are more deliberate expansions or qualifications of the original by an editor or editors. There are even laws which, except for the single deuteronomic formulas attached to them, are at once in the Pl. address and give indications either that they are of date later than the time of Josiah when the Code of Deuteronomy became operative, e.g. Deuteronomy 14:1 against mutilation for the dead, or that they were reduced to writing by a legislator of a different style and school from those which produced the distinctive bulk of the Book, e.g. Deuteronomy 14:3-20, on clean and unclean beasts. So far we are on firm ground; though some cases of editorial expansion or addition are necessarily doubtful others are clear. Can we go further and point to sufficient evidence for the presence in Deuteronomy of long documents (Staerk and Steuernagel) with shorter ‘sketches and essays’ (Staerk), distinguishable from each other mainly by their respective use of the Sg. and Pl. forms of address? As we have seen, the Book certainly offers evidence by other signs—the separate titles to the Discourses and the existence of doublets among the Laws—of its compilation from more than one edition of its original form. To this evidence the distinction between Sg. and Pl. has its own contribution to make, as in the fact that of the three statements of the cardinal law on the One Altar one is in the Sg. and two are in the Pl. But the attempt to trace separate editions throughout both Discourses and Laws mainly on the difference of Sg. and Pl. is upon the evidence we have examined most precarious if not utterly impossible. Steuernagel’s division of the Laws into two different collections by his Sg. and Pl. authors respectively is carried through only by frequent arbitrariness and an extravagant assumption of editorial additions. Staerk’s is hardly less arbitrary. As for the Discourses, we have seen that the distinction between Sg. and Pl. may often be more naturally interpreted as due to the difference between exhortation and narrative than as significant of difference of authorship. We must repeat—the Sg. prevails in the hortatory, the Pl. in the narrative, sections of the Book and not only so but a number of Sg. interruptions in Pl. sections coincide with the rise of the narrative to the pitch of exhortation, and some Pl. interruptions in Sg. sections occur where the exhortation becomes reminiscent and approaches the narrative style. But although all this is generally, it is not always, the case: signs remain of an inconsistence which, however, on the evidence of other books, we must always allow to a writer. It is not true that there is any real difference of ethic or temper between the Sg. and Pl. passages (pp. lxxxv f.). It is true that there is some linguistic difference—that some phrases are found only or predominantly with the Pl. (pp. lxxxiii ff.). But here again much of the difference may be accounted for by the fact that one is mainly exhortation the other mainly narrative; what remains of linguistic difference is too slight to sustain the conclusion of a dual authorship. It is also true—and very curious—that in the Discourses images are denounced only in Pl. passages; yet both Sg. and Pl. frequently denounce the worship of other gods and many of the Sg. laws forbid the use of all heathen symbols and other abominations (p. lxxxvi). Besides, a number of the references to idolatry, peculiar to Pl., are due to the prevailing narrative of the Pl. sections—especially the account of the events on Ḥoreb. Steuernagel is hard pressed to find enough laws to carry out through the Code the iconoclastic fervour alleged to be peculiar to his Pl. introduction: he cites (p. vi) Deuteronomy 12:8-12, Deuteronomy 16:21 to Deuteronomy 17:7, Deuteronomy 22:5, Deuteronomy 23:18 f., in which there is no mention of images and the Pl. address occurs but once!

Thus all that a careful examination of Deuteronomy’s use of the Sg. and Pl. forms of address yields to us is confirmation of the other evidence we have had that the Book is a compilation—not only in the sense that the materials of its Code have been partly drawn from other codes and ancient practices, nor only in the sense that both the Discourses and the Code have been expanded by editors and copyists, but that there were once different editions of the Code probably with different introductions,—yet whether these were from different hands the evidence of the Sg. and Pl. passages does not enable us to decide in full confidence.

§ 9. Editorial Factors

The last of the cross-distinctions which run through all the divisions of Deuteronomy (§ 7) are those due to the compilers, adapters and annotators to whom we owe the present form of the Book. That there are such secondary elements in Deuteronomy is admitted by even the more conservative scholars1[61], who however do not sufficiently appreciate the amount of them. At the opposite extreme some critics—on arbitrary grounds and often in the interests of particular schemes of analysis—exaggerate the quantity of editorial matter2[62], and identify editors to a number and to degrees of difference beyond the warrant of the data. But that some editors have been at work on Deuteronomy is at once clear from its text (as we have seen in the preceding Paragraphs) and no more than we should expect from the state of other books of the Old Testament.

[61] E.g. Dr Orr as quoted below p. 232; cp. Lex Mosaica, pp. 211 f. notes for the admission (by the Rev. J. J. Lias) that in other books of the O.T. there are interpolations by ‘too zealous copyists.’

[62] E.g. Steuernagel, see above p. xii, footnote 2.

Thus the JE narratives in the preceding Books of the Pentateuch have deuteronomic additions (Driver, Exodus in this series, pp. xviii, 192 ff.). The framework of the Books of Kings and the religious standard by which they review the annals of Israel and Judah are due to editors of that same school. Again, Chronicles are the re-cast of earlier histories by editors of another style who have increased the numerals and idealised some of the characters in their sources. And a comparison of the Hebrew text of the Book of Jeremiah with the Greek Version proves how long the process of revision and expansion persisted and how it even altered sometimes the range and direction of a prophet’s message; for a striking illustration of which, in Jeremiah 27, see Robertson Smith, OTJC, 2nd ed. pp. 103 f.

But in Deuteronomy the task of distinguishing the later additions and enlargements is one of peculiar uncertainty; both because the style of the original itself is so prone to repeat and expand (§ 2) and because this same style and not another is also used by some of the editors. Therefore only a general indication of their work is possible, with however a number of its obvious instances. The editorial contributions to Deuteronomy must have included the following (in addition to the short insertions indicated in § 8, pp. lxxx ff.).

1. The compilation of the several editions (§ 10) with the re-arrangements to which parts of them have been subjected, e.g. the separation of the historical sections, chs. 1–3 and Deuteronomy 9:7 b – Deuteronomy 10:11 (perhaps also ch. 5), which we cannot doubt were from the same hand (§ 7) but in a chronological order now reversed. But who to-day may decide whether the original compilers of the Code or some later editors were responsible for the divorce of chs. Deuteronomy 12:29 to Deuteronomy 13:18 from Deuteronomy 16:21 to Deuteronomy 17:7, and for the frequent separation, in Part iii. of the Code, of laws with a common subject (see pp. 155 f. below)? 2. Harmonising statements: these are very few, e.g. Deuteronomy 3:14 f., Deuteronomy 16:8; their number has been exaggerated, see notes on Deuteronomy 11:29, Deuteronomy 19:8 to Deuteronomy 10:3. Antiquarian and geographical notes: e.g. Deuteronomy 1:1 b – Deuteronomy 1:2, Deuteronomy 2:10-12; Deuteronomy 2:20-23, Deuteronomy 3:9; Deuteronomy 3:11; Deuteronomy 3:13 b, Deuteronomy 11:30; unless those in chs. 1–3 are to be held as part of that narrative in the 3rd person singular which Dillmann suggests was the original form of the historical introduction to the Code (see above p. lxi). 4. Expansions: (a) Of hortatory passages, such as in Deuteronomy 4:9-40, with the group of words characteristic of P in Deuteronomy 4:16-32 and the reflection of the Exile in Deuteronomy 4:29-31, also Deuteronomy 6:2 f., Deuteronomy 6:14, possibly Deuteronomy 7:5; Deuteronomy 7:7 f., Deuteronomy 7:12 a, the Pl. clauses in Deuteronomy 11:10-13, parts of Deuteronomy 11:18-25 and of Deuteronomy 11:29-30 (see notes); others would add Deuteronomy 11:32 f., Deuteronomy 7:4 b, Deuteronomy 7:16 b, Deuteronomy 7:22, Deuteronomy 8:6; Deuteronomy 8:14 b, Deuteronomy 8:15 f., Deuteronomy 11:8, etc., but for reasons against this see notes; it is in the hortatory passages, where repetition and expansion are most natural to the deuteronomic style, that we find it most difficult and often impossible to distinguish between the original and the additions of editors or copyists. (b) Of narrative, as in Deuteronomy 1:39 (tautologous in its present context and clearly borrowed from Numbers 14:31), Deuteronomy 3:15 and possibly but not probably Deuteronomy 9:22-24; the fragment, Deuteronomy 4:41-43, quite irrelevant where it stands, betrays merely the desire of an editor to preserve all the material at his disposal, similarly the first part of the fragment Deuteronomy 10:6 to Deuteronomy 8:5. The introduction of laws later than the bulk of the Code: Deuteronomy 14:1; Deuteronomy 14:4-20 and perhaps Deuteronomy 23:1-9, to which some would add (but on insufficient grounds) most if not all of the rest of the laws in Deuteronomy 21:10-23 (Budde, Gesch. d. althebr. Litteratur, p. 113); and in other laws the marks of the growth of priestly rights and influence beyond the deuteronomic standpoint (see pp. xxiii f.) suchas the expansion of Deuteronomy 18:1-5, the priests in Deuteronomy 19:17, the priests sons of Levi in Deuteronomy 21:5, with perhaps Deuteronomy 26:3 f.: others include Deuteronomy 20:2-4 but see note. 6. The combination of Deuteronomy, thus compiled and expanded, with the other documents of the Hexateuch, J, E and P. Whether the editors who combined J and E were prior to, or the same as, those who compiled Deuteronomy is a question much discussed, and in the present writer’s opinion impossible to answer. But there is little doubt that JE and Deuteronomy were combined by deuteronomic editors—note the deuteronomic additions to JE in other books of the Pentateuch, with such an insertion as that in Numbers 21:33-35 of part of Deuteronomy’s narrative of the campaign against Og, ch. Deuteronomy 3:1-7. Finally other editors (for they use the phraseology not of Deuteronomy but of P) fitted the combined JE-Deuteronomy into P (see notes on chs. 31–34) and achieved our Hexateuch. To them we owe in whole or part the titles Deuteronomy 1:1-5, Deuteronomy 4:44-49, Deuteronomy 29:1 (Heb. 28:69). On the subject of this Paragraph see, besides the works cited in it, Robertson Smith, OTJC, 2nd ed. pp. 425, 430; Bertholet, Deut. pp. xxiv f.; Cullen, Book of the Covenant in Moab, pp. 1, 102, 182, 199 f., etc.; G. B. Gray, Crit. Introd. to the O.T. pp. 48, 50; Chapman, Introd. to Pent. pp. 42, 181 ff.

§ 10. Conclusions as to Unity

We have now before us all the data on which to answer the questions stated in § 5 with regard to the Unity of chs. 1–30. Did these questions depend only on the language and style, the spirit and teaching (whether of facts or principles), their answers would not be difficult to find. In these respects we have found extremely little that is incompatible with the attribution of the Book to a single author and that little it is possible to explain as due to editors1[63]. Further, the conspicuous originality of the style, with the personal tone of its address, points towards one heart and one pen as the ultimate source of Deuteronomy.

[63] On the few and slight differences in language see above pp. l, lv; on the absence of deuteronomic phrases from some of the laws, merely showing that the Code was compiled from several sources and received later additions see p. lxix. On the alleged discrepancies in fact see pp. lvi f. On the consistency of the teaching see § 3. On the work of the editors see § 9.

But when we turned from the language and the spirit of the Book to its structure, to the relations and internal arrangement of its main divisions, we found facts pointing the other way. The structure—it cannot be too often repeated—the structure and not the content of Deuteronomy is the difficulty in answering the questions of its unity. Under separate titles Deuteronomy 1:5 and Deuteronomy 4:44-49, and divided not only by the latter but by the fragment Deuteronomy 4:41-43, are two discourses, both introductory to the Code but independent of each other, in the sense that neither refers to or seems to need the other (§ 6). The inference is that they contain, if they do not coincide with, introductions to the Code which once existed apart. Again, in the Epilogue to the Code, chs. 27–30, there are discourses similar to but separable from each other (pp. 299 f., 306, 320). And within the Code, even in the laws original to this—even in its most distinctive law of the One Altar, in ch. 12—there are parallel but slightly variant statements of the same divine commands (pp. lxxi f.), just as is the case with other Hebrew laws including the Decalogue itself. Thus both the Code and the Discourses carry us to the conclusion that Deuteronomy 1-30 is a compilation of various editions. Even this, of course, is not proof of a diversity of authorship. Whether these editions were due to the same author or to a school of writers sharing one spirit, one purpose and one style, may be held to be an open question to which there is no certain answer (§ 5). The second alternative, however, appears on all the data, literary and historical, to be the more probable. The very imitable style was, we know, practised by many pens and spread through Hebrew literature. The distinctions in diction, such as that between the Sg. and Pl. forms of address, though in themselves insufficient criteria (§ 8), often coincide with other differences in suggesting a plurality of writers. In the next Paragraph we shall see how much there was in the circumstances of the time at which Deuteronomy was published to confirm this literary evidence that separate editions of the Book were once extant.

It is interesting that so conservative a scholar as Dr Orr has suggested a similar explanation of the origins of other parts of the Pentateuch. His words are these: ‘singleness of plan and co-operation of effort in the original production’ and ‘the labour of original composers working with a common aim and towards a common end’ (Problem of the O.T. pp. 354, 375). If the words ‘in a common style’ be added this description would nearly suit our evidence that there was more than one edition of Deuteronomy.

These editions have been compiled and interwoven in a manner, which, while it leaves segments of their outlines clear, renders us unable to distinguish them in detail. The differing results of the many attempts at their analysis (§§ 6 and 8 and below pp. xcvi ff.) prove that modern criticism is without the powers for so exacting a task. We can no longer adopt any of the various conclusions reached during the earlier stage of research (§ 6), which approximated on this, that the first forms of the Book were to be measured by one or more of the main divisions of which it now consists. The lines of cleavage within these divisions, the difference between exhortation and narrative, the close affinity of the narrative portions of the two Discourses introductory to the Code, and the doublets in the Code itself, forbid such simple solutions of the problem. The narratives now separated, chs. 1–3 (v. ?), and Deuteronomy 9:7 b – Deuteronomy 10:11, all mainly in the Pl. address, appear to have originally formed one piece. Did this ever form a historical introduction to the Code separate from the hortatory pieces, among which it is now divided, chs. Deuteronomy 4:1-40; Deuteronomy 4:6 – Deuteronomy 9:7 a, Deuteronomy 10:12 to Deuteronomy 11:32? For answer we have only these data: that the hortatory section Deuteronomy 4:1-8 is the natural continuation of the historical, 1–3, with the same general use of the Pl. address; but that the historical ch. 5 is clearly separable from, and the historical Deuteronomy 9:7 b – Deuteronomy 10:11 is still more clearly an intrusion into, the rest of chs. 6–11. Again, as the parallel versions of the Law of the One Altar, ch. 12, exhibit, the distinction between the Sg. and Pl. forms of address did constitute one of the differences among the original editions of Deuteronomy. But how far was this distinction sustained? We have seen that it is impossible to answer (§ 8); the same author may have changed from Sg. to Pl. as he passed from exhortation to narrative or vice versâ. To sum up—the drastic re-arrangement of the original contents of the Book, the use throughout (with extremely few exceptions) of one style, and this by some even of the editors, the freedom we must assume for the same writer to use both forms of address, especially when combining narrative and exhortation (pp. lxxviii f., lxxxvii f.), conspire to render impossible an exact definition of the outlines and contents of the once separate editions.

But these diversities of workings are of slight importance compared with the Unity which animates and controls them—in one Spirit baptized into one body. That Unity is at once spiritual, practical and dramatic. The various forms of Deuteronomy and all the phases they exhibit have their source in the same truths, move towards the same ends, use the same method and style. Not only does the Unity of the Godhead shine and beat throughout the Book to the dispersion of virtually every mist or shadow that might break it; but the Power, the Righteousness, and above all the Love of God compel the submission of every aspect and detail of life to their influence and draw out to Him an undivided devotion. It is the whole man for the One God!

Deuteronomy is also a Unity in that it expresses not only the experience of the nation from their origin onward through the centuries, but the soul of Israel, conscious of their distinction, roused to every foreign influence as the threat of their disintegration, and concentrating upon their spritual heritage and duties, since only by loyalty to these can they preserve their individuality as a people and prove their right to live. The whole Israel is here, as in no other book of the Old Testament—the whole Israel in its limitations as in its potentiality, in its sins as in its aspirations, in its narrow fanatic tempers as in its vision and passion for the Highest.

One other Unity haunts the reader. Imitable as is the style of the Book, it is yet so distinctive, so sudden in its appearance in Hebrew literature, and so personal in its address as to keep us wondering to what individual it owed its start and shaping. For every distinctive style may be traced—where the means exist for doing so—to the birth of a spirit and a rhythm in the heart of one man. It is but natural to believe that Deuteronomy is no exception to the rule.

§ 11. The Ages of the Book and of its Contents

1. In the history of the complicated structure we have been examining, one year and one only is fixed: the eighteenth of the reign of Josiah or 621 b.c. when a Book of the Law or of the Covenant was found in the Temple, read to the king and then to the people, and adopted by them in solemn covenant, as the canon of certain religious reforms which they forthwith inaugurated. We have seen (§ 4) that this Book was some form of Deuteronomy. But in our inability to define the different editions from which our Deuteronomy gives evidence of being compiled (§ 10) we cannot say which of these this Law-Book was or whether it was exactly any one of them, or whether the process of their compilation had already begun. Only this is clear from the account of the reforms, 2 Kings 23, that the Book of the Law or Covenant must have included at least the following: one or more of the parallel statements in ch. 12 of the cardinal law of the Deuteronomic Code involving the destruction of the high places, and the confinement of sacrifice to One Altar (with the consequent permission to eat flesh not sacrificially slain on all places out of reach of that altar); some form of the law giving to the rural Levites the right to minister at the One Altar and to receive sustenance there, Deuteronomy 18:1-8; some form of the Law of the Passover and probably of the other yearly feasts, Deuteronomy 16:1-17; along with laws against idols, pillars and Asherim, and all impure practices, Deuteronomy 12:29 to Deuteronomy 23:16, Deuteronomy 16:21 to Deuteronomy 17:7. We may infer also the inclusion of the rest of the consequents of the cardinal law, viz. Deuteronomy 14:22-29 on tithes, Deuteronomy 15:19-23 on firstlings, Deuteronomy 19:1-13 on cities of Asylum, and some form of Deuteronomy 16:18-20 and Deuteronomy 17:8-13 on the local and central judiciaries. Nor is there any reason to exclude from Josiah’s Law-Book other laws which show no sign in their substance of being later than Josiah’s time, especially if they are based on earlier codes or if their principles had been already enforced by the Prophets; with this caution that laws in Part iii. of the Code1[64] which are separated from previously occurring laws on the same subject may owe their separate position to the fact of their later inclusion in the Code. Josiah’s Law-Book, too, most probably had an introduction and epilogue (like other Hebrew codes) relating its authority, expounding its principles, and describing the consequences respectively of obedience and disobedience to its orders. Not otherwise can we explain either its name, the Book of the Covenant, or how it produced its effects upon king and people. In order to create the situation and atmosphere which resulted from its discovery the Book must have been a work of prophecy as well as of law, of principle and passion as well as of practical measures. It must have contained some form of the discourses now in chs. 1–11, 28–30.

[64] See below pp. 155 f.

A more exact definition of Josiah’s Law-Book is impossible. Bertholet reasonably says (Deut. p. xix): ‘everything is to be reckoned to the original Deuteronomy which is not on quite definite grounds to be excluded from the time of Josiah’ and he describes this as all that can be proved to be drawn from the earlier prophets or from the codes in Exodus 21-23, 34, all that follows immediately from the premises of Deuteronomy, and what is presupposed by Josiah’s reforms. As specimens of attempts at more exact definition the following may be quoted. Budde (Gesch, d. althebr. Litteratur, p. 113):—‘the “Grundstock” of chs. 5–11 with the superscription Deuteronomy 4:45-49 [this surprises one in view of the composite character of these vv.], chs. Deuteronomy 12:1 to Deuteronomy 21:9 [he can hardly mean all ch. 12 and the other doublets], ch. 26 and a conclusion in Blessing and Curse essentially comprised in ch. 28.’ Cornill (Intord. E.T. pp. 57 f.): ‘ Deuteronomy 12:1 to Deuteronomy 13:1 in a substantially shorter form, Deuteronomy 13:2-18, Deuteronomy 14:3; Deuteronomy 14:21 a a*, Deuteronomy 14:21 b?; Deuteronomy 14:22 to Deuteronomy 15:3; Deuteronomy 15:7-23; Deuteronomy 16:1-8*, Deuteronomy 16:9-20; Deuteronomy 16:21 to Deuteronomy 17:7 (but in other places); Deuteronomy 17:8-13*; Deuteronomy 18:1-13; Deuteronomy 19:1-15; *Deuteronomy 19:16-20; Deuteronomy 19:21; Deuteronomy 20 (minus, however, Deuteronomy 20:2-4, and Deuteronomy 20:15-18); Deuteronomy 21-25 (in part); and Deuteronomy 26:1-15’ (the asterisk affixed to certain of these indicates revision or expansion). Much shorter editions than these are conceived by Cheyne (Jeremiah, p. 50) and by Chapman (Introd. to the Pent. in this series, p. 145).

A fuller review is required by the theory of Dr John Cullen in The Book of the Covenant in Moab (1903), one of the most original and searching of recent works on the subject. With the majority of later critics Dr Cullen recognises Deuteronomy as a compilation of several editions. But in contrast to most of them he finds its earliest form not in the Code but among the Discourses, in which he sees the necessary inspiration for Josiah’s zeal and reforms, while he takes the Code (with some introductory matter) to be the result of the reforms. His arrangement of the former—called by him ‘The Miṣwah’ or Charge from the name which it frequently uses—is as follows: chs. Deuteronomy 28:68 to Deuteronomy 29:14; Deuteronomy 5:2; Deuteronomy 4:10-16 a, Deuteronomy 4:19-26, Deuteronomy 5:29 to Deuteronomy 8:18; Deuteronomy 26; Deuteronomy 8:19 to Deuteronomy 9:6; Deuteronomy 10:12-21; Deuteronomy 27:1 b, Deuteronomy 27:3 b, Deuteronomy 27:4 a, Deuteronomy 27:5-7; Deuteronomy 11:8-28; Deuteronomy 28:1 a, Deuteronomy 28:2 a, Deuteronomy 28:7-15; Deu 28:20-25 a, Deuteronomy 28:43-45; Deuteronomy 30:11-20; Exodus 24:4-8; Deuteronomy 32:45-47; while the latter, ‘The Tôrah,’ consists of chs. Deuteronomy 12:2-25, hastily put together, with an original environment—Deuteronomy 4:44-45 c, Deuteronomy 4:46 a, Deuteronomy 27:9 f.; Deuteronomy 4:1-4, Deuteronomy 11:31 f. and Deuteronomy 12:1 in the front of it; but after it Deuteronomy 4:5-8, Deuteronomy 27:11-14, Deuteronomy 28:2 b – Deuteronomy 28:6; Deu 28:15-19, Deuteronomy 27:26, Deuteronomy 31:9-13. The possibility of an analysis so exact is more than doubtful, and Dr Cullen achieves his results in absolute disregard of the different forms of address (above p. lxxv). Nor are his general arguments for separating the ‘Miṣwah’ from the ‘Tôrah’ and for taking the former as the cause but the latter as the precipitate of Josiah’s reforms convincing. He thinks (with others, above p. xlvii) that chs. 6–11 which form the bulk of his ‘Miṣwah’ are too long to have been a mere introduction to the Code; but, as we have seen (pp. xlviii, lxiii ff.) and as he admits, the original form of this Discourse was much shorter, and in any case Deuteronomy was never intended as only a code but also as a prophetic message, the expression of which would naturally be longer than a mere introduction. In chs. 6–11 he eliminates all reference to the Code by supposing that the phrase, statutes and judgements, wherever it occurs, was added only after the ‘Miṣwah’ and ‘Tôrah’ were combined; but for this there is no reason beyond the needs of his theory. Again, he pleads that the hortatory element is the original part of Deuteronomy, the Code being based on earlier laws; which is not a true antithesis, for while the Code, like others, has its sources in ancient custom and in laws already written down, it also contains the new and original law of the One Altar, ch. 12, and, among other consequents of this, equally new laws on the Levites and the Passover, the presence of all of which in Josiah’s Law-Book is implied by the story of his reforms. Dr Cullen further argues that a code is more likely to have been the outcome of a revolution than its inspiration, for which we must look rather to a hortatory appeal; yet granted that the effect of the Law-Book on the King and people proves that it must have contained such discourses as we find in Deuteronomy, this does not oblige us to deny that laws accompanied the discourses; but on the contrary when we find some laws in the Code couched in the same style as the discourses and forming the practical application of their principles it is but reasonable to believe that from the beginning discourse and law were combined. Dr Cullen also appeals to Jeremiah 7:21-23. This startling statement (confirmed by Amos 5:25)—that at the Exodus God did not charge the fathers of Israel concerning burnt-offering and sacrifice, but, that He might be their God and they His people, only charged them to obey His voice and to walk in all the way He should command them—certainly agrees with the theory that the Book found in the Temple was confined to general principles and contained no sacrificial laws. But the statement is not conclusive proof of this. Even if Jeremiah’s words be taken literally as implying that he did not believe that God had given to Israel laws on sacrifice, this would no more prove that such laws were absent from the Deuteronomy known to him than that they were absent from the older code in JE. The prophet may be interpreted as protesting against their presence in Deuteronomy—or alternatively against the undue importance attached to them by his generation (which is all that can be inferred if his words be not taken literally). Even less convincing is Dr Cullen’s use of Jeremiah 11. It is true that Deuteronomy is there named not as ‘Tôrah’ but as the words of this covenant (v. 2), covenant being frequently used in the deuteronomic discourses, and that it is described (vv. 3 ff.) in terms corresponding to Deuteronomy 29:1-15; whereas the Code calls itself the words of this Tôrah (Deuteronomy 17:18 f.) or when it mentions covenant (Deuteronomy 17:2) may be alluding to some other work. But this last is not certain; and in any case 2 Kings 22 f. calls the Book found in the Temple both Tôrah and Covenant. Besides if that Book was confined to Dr Cullen’s ‘Miṣwah’ (as he argues) it is very strange that neither in 2 Kings 22 f. nor in Jeremiah it is called Miṣwah.—On the whole, while Dr Cullen presents an unanswerable case for the inclusion in Josiah’s Law-Book of considerable sections of the deuteronomic discourses, and especially of chs. 5–11, he fails to prove that the book did not also contain some at least of the Code.

King Josiah reigned till 608 when he fell at Megiddo. His reforms, begun in 621, probably took time to accomplish. They offended several interests and were certainly opposed. From Jeremiah 11 we learn of measures for the propagation of the Covenant throughout the land—in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem; and in Jeremiah 8:8 the prophet exclaims to those who boast, the Tôrah of Jehovah is with us!—that the pens of the scribes are busy upon it even to the extent of falsifying. These things point to the possibility that some editions of Deuteronomy originated during the last twelve years of the king’s reign. There is no reason to seek a later date for any of the substance of the Book. No part of it reflects the troubles which followed Josiah’s death and confronted Habakkuk and Jeremiah with their problems. The phrase alive as at this day (Deuteronomy 6:24, cp. Deuteronomy 8:18) seems to imply that Israel was prosperous when it was written and to preclude the Exile. In view of the growth of Egyptian power and of the decline of Assyria after 625, the threat of a return to bondage in Egypt—echoing a frequent threat of the prophets—would be natural even before Pharaoh Necho’s overthrow of Israel at Megiddo in 608; and it cannot be subsequent to his defeat by Nebuchadrezzar in 6041[65]. The only fragments that require a later date are those which betray the hand of an editor (§ 9) or are written from the point of view of the Dispersion (e.g. Deuteronomy 4:29-31). Such fragments along with the secondary Laws (Deuteronomy 14:1; Deuteronomy 14:4-20, etc.), and probably the compilation of the editions and re-arrangement of their contents (§ 10), may be assigned to the Exile, the date also of the deuteronomic composition of the Books of Kings. In any case the Law under which the Jews lived till the time of Ezra was the deuteronomic. Its influence is most apparent in the Book of ‘Malachi.’

[65] On Dr Kennett’s conjectures of a later date see above, p. xliv.

2. But how long before 621 are we to seek for the origin of the Law-Book then discovered? Here we discern only the possibilities of an exact date, and they extend over a century—from Josiah back to Hezekiah.

There are first the early years of Josiah’s reign. In variance with 2 Kings 22, the Chronicler, 2 Chronicles 34:3-8, states that Josiah, who had begun to seek after the God of his father David in the eighth year of his reign, began already in the twelfth year to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places and the Asherîm and the graven and molten images. But if this was so, what cause remained for the consternation of the King, which even the Chronicler imputes to him, on the discovery of the Book six years later? The story in 2 Kings 22 is more consistent, yet in view of Josiah’s character and of the circumstances of the time, the previous dates on which the Chronicler fixes are significant. The eighth year of Josiah’s reign was that of his adolescence, presumably also of the consecration of his strong will to the principles in which he had been trained, and the beginning of the influence that he undoubtedly exercised on his generation; while the twelfth year, 625 b.c., was the year of Ashurbanipal’s death, which left Judah somewhat more free to manage her own affairs1[66]. The memory of Manasseh’s persecutions was such as to bind the ranks of the purer religion with the sense of their common danger from heathenism and to further that combination of prophetic and priestly ideals on which Deuteronomy is based. Thus all the conditions were present for the preparation of its programme, and accordingly many fix the composition of the first form of the Book between 637 and 621 b.c.1[67] But this brings the origin of Deuteronomy very close to its discovery in the Temple. Does it not also involve Hilkiah and his colleagues of the priesthood in the secret of its composition and introduction to the place where it was found? None of the persons concerned in the discovery appears to have doubted the antiquity of the Book. The straightforward narrative in 2 Kings 22 contains no feature from which to suspect Hilkiah’s complicity; and Deuteronomy itself bears witness to the contrary. The Code seriously diminishes the rights of the Temple priests, for example by diverting from them to the poor of the provinces the tithes of every third year (Deuteronomy 14:28 f.). Moreover Josiah failed to secure the admission of the rural Levites to the ministry of the altar at Jerusalem (2 Kings 23:9), though this is enjoined in Deuteronomy 18:6 f. Had Hilkiah and his colleagues been responsible for the form of Deuteronomy found in the Temple, they would surely have framed this section of the Code differently. But that only raises another question. The Book is manifestly the result of an effort to combine prophetic and priestly principles; if this effort took place in the early years of Josiah why was Hilkiah left out of it?

[66] See the present writer’s Jerusalem, ii. pp. 201 ff., with references to Erbt, Die Sicherstellung des Monotheismus i. vor-exil. Judah, p. 8; Cullen Bk. of the Covt. in Moab, p. 17, and, so far as the character of Josiah is concerned, Cornill, Das Buch Jeremia, pp. xiii, etc.

[67] De Wette, Reuss, Kuenen, Wellhausen, Cheyne, Stade, Addis, Holzinger, Marti—and virtually Cornill and Bertholet.

Therefore other critics, holding with Driver that ‘the grounds for referring the composition of Deuteronomy to the reign of Josiah … are not decisive,’ put it farther back during Manasseh’s persecution of the adherents of the purer religion, about 670. They thus explain the anonymity of the Book, the author’s deposit of it for safety in the Temple and the oblivion from which it was recovered in 6212[68]. The objection to that date is that Deuteronomy shows no suggestion of such a schism as then existed in Israel, no hint that it was possible for Israel to break into two or that the loyal Israel ever suffered or could suffer persecution from a powerful party of heathen sympathies and habits. The Book reflects rather a situation in which the Israel that is loyal to Jehovah is in authority, with power to punish individuals and communities given to idols. Though it would be absurd to deny the possibility, even under the cruelties of a Manasseh, of such confidence and hope as breathe throughout Deuteronomy, yet had the Book been composed in a time of national schism and of the persecution of a pious remnant by their fellow-countrymen, it could hardly, in its extreme sensitiveness to the other religious experiences of Israel, have escaped all marks of reaction against the bitterness and disgrace of this one.

[68] So, besides Driver, Ewald, Robertson Smith (Additional Answer to the Libel, p. 78), Kittel, and Ryle (Canon of the O.T. pp. 54 ff., 60).

Some therefore seek for the origins of Deuteronomy before Manasseh’s time, and they find support in the anticipation of Josiah’s reforms which is ascribed to Hezekiah (c. 725–685)1[69]. We have seen that Hezekiah’s measures must have been drastic2[70]—for however short a time they endured—and that there is reason for including among them the destruction of the high places in Judah. For this powerful motives already existed and some precedents. King Asa (c. 913–823), besides destroying certain images and cults, concentrated in the Temple the holy things which he and his father had dedicated (1 Kings 15:9-15). Between his time and that of Ahaz the influence of the Temple steadily increased, and must have been further enhanced on the fall of the Northern Kingdom with all her shrines in 720, and the concentration of the hopes of Israel upon Judah. But it was Isaiah who fully revealed the religious significance of Jerusalem. Jehovah (these are his words) had founded Ṣion and had tended her growth as a vineyard for Himself. In spite of the vices of her people Ṣion was still His dwelling and Ariel, the altar-hearth of God. The Temple was the place of the manifestation of His Holiness; and to the eyes of the prophet the whole City was wrapped in a supernatural glory1[71]. These are high sanctions for the measures ascribed to his ally the King. Unlike Jeremiah Isaiah does not denounce the high places; yet his visions of what Jerusalem, in spite of her delinquencies, still stood for in the purpose of the Almighty pointed the administrators of his day only less obviously than they did those of Jeremiah’s day to the concentration of the worship at Jehovah upon the Temple. And his contemporary Micah predicts the destruction of Israel’s pillars and Asherîm as of no more account than their graven images, which with Isaiah he also condemns (Deuteronomy 5:10). These are good grounds for the credibility of Hezekiah’s reforms; and on these grounds as well as on the fact that the religious and ethical truths of Deuteronomy had already been proclaimed by the prophets of the eighth century, many base their belief in the origin of the Book, or of some early form of it, during Hezekiah’s reign2[72]. The objections taken to this conclusion are, that Isaiah does not condemn the high places; that no law is connected with Hezekiah’s reforms though his age was active in literary collection3[73]; and that the language of Deuteronomy is more akin to Jeremiah’s than to that of Isaiah 1[74].

[69] On the difficult questions of this reign, including that of a single versus a double deliverance of Jerusalem, see the present writer’s Jerusalem, ii. ch. vi. ‘Hezekiah and Sennacherib.’

[70] Above, p. xlii. Winckler (Keilinschriften des A.T. 3rd ed. p. 221) calls them ‘a thorough carrying through of Jahvism in its strict monotheistic significance, with a partial removal of other cults’; cp. Guthe, Gesch., p. 223.

[71] Jerusalem, ii. ch. v. ‘Isaiah’s Jerusalem.’

[72] Wesphal (Les Sources du Pent. ii. pp. 269–286 and The Law and the Prophets, tr. by Du Pontet, 1910, 304); Oettli; König (Einl. p. 217), who fixes the date at 722 (720?), the fall of the N. Kingdom, and points to Isaiah’s association with Uriah the Priest; the present writer in The Critical Review, 1895, pp. 339 ff.; Steuernagel (Deut. p. xiv), who dates the reforms soon after the downfall of Samaria and connects them with what he identifies as the earliest basis of the deut. Code. A more probable date is after 705 when Judah revolted from Assyria and before 701 when the Kabshakeh taunted the Jews with Hezekiah’s removal of the altars of Jehovah and his confinement of the worship to the altar in Jerusalem. But for this we might conceive of the reforms as still more probable after 701 when the sanctity of Jerusalem was marvellously vindicated by her deliverance. J. E. McFadyen (Introd. to the O. T. pp. 55 f.) finds in the reforms the first impulse to the legislation which afterwards appears in Deuteronomy, but ‘the Book in the main was written in the reign of Manasseh’; the ‘more aggressive tone’ of the Pl. sections he assigns to this reign, the passages of a milder tone to Hezekiah’s.

[73] Proverbs 25:1; cp. Isaiah 38:9 ff., 2 Chronicles 30:1.

[74] König (Einl. p. 217) admits this.

These, then, are the alternative possibilities for the date of the origin of Deuteronomy during the century before its discovery in 621. Each of the three reigns, Hezekiah’s, Manasseh’s and Josiah’s, offers reason and occasion for the composition of such a Book. But in the case of each there are difficulties. To the present writer the difficulties seem greatest under Manasseh; but the truth is that we are without the means of deciding definitely upon any one of the three.

Taking, however, the century as a whole, 720–621 b.c., it is clear that the conditions for the production of the essential parts of Deuteronomy were in existence throughout; and that the urgency of the measures which it enforces grew with every decade. Not only had the basal truths of Deuteronomy—the Sovereignty, the absolute Justice, and the Love and Mercy of Jehovah, His special relations to Israel, their holiness and peculiar duties and destiny—been proclaimed by Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Micah, but the accent, the tone and even some of the phrases which it employs to enforce these truths are the echo of theirs. The Book ‘will certainly be best understood when read after Hosea and Isaiah. This at any rate is its historical position.… One can hardly fail to see the teaching of Hosea reflected in both these points’—Deuteronomy’s emphasis on love as the true relation of men to God and of God to men, and the humanity which its laws inculcate2[75]. There had also been long need in Israel for that discrimination which Deuteronomy draws between true and false prophets (Deuteronomy 13:1-5, Deuteronomy 18:20 ff.); while its protests against trafficking with the dead (Deuteronomy 18:11 f.) had already been made by Isaiah (Deuteronomy 8:19 f.). The worship of the host of heaven, forbidden in Deuteronomy 4:19; Deuteronomy 17:3, of which there is no sign in Israel before Amos (Amos 5:26), was introduced to Judah by Ahaz (2 Kings 23:12, cp. Deuteronomy 16:10 ff., Deuteronomy 17:16) and became lavish under Manasseh (2 Kings 21:3; 2 Kings 21:5, cp. Deuteronomy 23:4 f., 11 f.); similarly with the rite of passing children through the fire (Deuteronomy 12:31; Deuteronomy 18:9 f., 2 Kings 16:3; 2 Kings 17:17; 2 Kings 21:6[76]. In short the whole century exhibits the conditions, the occasions, the mingled atmosphere of prophetic teaching and of heathen practice, with the heavy sense of a crisis between them2[77], in, on, and under which both the spirit and the matter of Deuteronomy imply that the Book was conceived and composed.

[75] A. B. Davidson, The Theology of the Old Testament, p. 360. He adds the ‘holiness’ of Jehovah, but on this see below pp. 108–110; where it is pointed out that Deuteronomy (in contrast both to Hosea and Isaiah) does not apply the term holy to God Himself. It must also be admitted that Deuteronomy differs from the prophets in other respects, e.g. it does not avail itself to the full of Isaiah’s visions of the Divine Presence in Jerusalem. The definition, the place which Jehovah your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put His Name there, even His habitation is restrained in comparison with Isaiah’s exultation in the glory of Ṣion.

[76] On this see Jerusalem, ii. pp. 263 f., with notes.

[77] See Chapman, Introd. to the Pent. (in this series), p. 138.

There are other considerations. We have seen (§§ 2 and 3, especially pp. xvi ff.) that the retrospects in Deuteronomy are a selection with expansions from the narratives in J and E. Now these documents of the Pentateuch, though they have a common basis of date older than the Disruption of the Kingdom under Rehoboam (c. 970), were composed certainly after this event3[78], and probably not till the ninth or even the first half of the eighth century. The composition of the historical surveys in Deuteronomy must then have been later. It is very significant also that of all the three codes of Israel Deuteronomy alone has a law of the King, and does not attribute to the chief priest the marks of royalty which P attributes to him4[79]: this and the fact that Deuteronomy also alone has a law on the Prophet points clearly to a date under the Monarchy. And finally there is the evidence of the style. This is not only free from archaisms—except where primitive forms of words have been preferred because of their sonorousness—but ‘in its rhetorical fulness and breadth of diction [the style] implies a long development of the art of public oratory, and is not of a character to belong to the first age of Hebrew literature1[80].’

[78] Ibid. p. 182, note.

[79] See above p. xxiv.

[80] Driver, Deut. p. xlvii; König (Einl. p. 217) points out some forms of words (e.g. the feminine infinitives of strong verbs) ‘which do not belong to the earlier literature.’

In answer to this argument for the origin of Deuteronomy in the eighth or seventh centuries we are sometimes pointed to the undoubtedly ancient elements which the Book, and especially its Code, contains. (a) It is true that the Codes in JE from which many of the materials of the deuteronomic Code are derived are older than the narrative portions of these documents; but as we have seen (p. xxii) there is a great difference between the economic conditions which the laws of JE and of Deuteronomy respectively reflect—a difference that can be accounted for only by ‘a considerable interval of time in which the social and political organisation of the community had materially developed and the Code of Exodus [chs. 21–23, E] had ceased to be adequate to the nation’s needs2[81].’ This difference is conspicuous both in the laws which Deuteronomy has expanded or adapted from those of JE, and in the laws which are peculiar to itself—e.g. those on the King and the Prophet and of course those on the One Altar, and its consequences. (b) It is also true that the ancient character of some of the deuteronomic laws is proved by other evidence than that of JE—for example the law on wizards and witches, Deuteronomy 18:11, cp. 1 Samuel 28:3 for the time of Saul; and that requiring two witnesses, Deuteronomy 19:15, cp. 1 Kings 21:10 for the time of Ahab—but these decide nothing against an eighth or a seventh century date for the compiler of the Code, who may have derived them from an earlier code or have been the first to reduce them to writing. Take an instance which seems to be even more indicative of an early date for a deuteronomic law than those just quoted. In 2 Kings 14:6 f. it is recorded that in slaying the assassins of his father, King Amaziah (797–789) did not also slay their children. The editor of the history (deuteronomic be it remembered) says that the King acted thus in obedience to the deuteronomic law, Deuteronomy 24:16, which is not found in the other codes. But we know that Amaziah’s merciful discrimination was an innovation upon the practice hitherto observed in such cases in Israel; and it is probable that the Deuteronomist was the first to articulate and codify its principle as a standing law for the nation3[82]. Sometimes it is by such personal examples that national laws arise, and if we knew more of the details of the history of Israel we might be able to identify in the humane code of Deuteronomy other instances of the kind4[83]. Laws with such an origin are no less inspired than those which some prophet heard the voice of God utter directly to his own soul. But the point before us is that, so far from proving that the deuteronomic code is earlier than Amaziah’s time, 2 Kings 14:6 f., when taken along with the practice in such cases prevailing before Amaziah, yields evidence that the Code contains laws which ripened comparatively late in the history of the monarchy. To this evidence we may add from the law against removing landmarks—to which there is no parallel in JE—the words which they of old time set (Deuteronomy 19:14; cp. Hosea 5:10) and the implication that the bread of mourning was ritually unclean, also not in JE (Deuteronomy 26:14; cp. Hosea 9:4). But of course the outstanding instances of late law are the Law on the One Altar and its consequents (see above pp. 24 f., xl ff. and below pp. cviii f., 159 ff.).

[81] Driver, Deut. p. xlvi.

[82] See Jerusalem, ii. pp. 113 f.

[83] In Lex Mosaica (p. 39) Principal Douglas recognises how the legislation expands as the history opens up, and notes Numbers 26:33; Numbers 27:1-11; Numbers 36:1-11, Joshua 17:3-6, and the different laws on the Passover.

We cannot, therefore, avoid the conclusion that Deuteronomy was composed somewhere after the beginning of the reign of Hezekiah (725 b.c.) and before the discovery of one form of it in 621 b.c. With so general a result we have to be content. To trace the Book to any particular decade in that century is beyond our power. To attempt to allocate its different forms to successive decades is to play with the data. Modern criticism has no glasses, telescopic or microsopic, for so exact a vision.

Three points, however, may be stated with some confidence. First, it is probable that, if not the original form of Deuteronomy, yet some code or programme with similar aims came into being with Hezekiah’s reforms. Second, it is certain that if Deuteronomy, with its distinctive style, originated as early as the eighth century it remained unknown till the reign of Josiah, for not until his time is its influence clear upon other literature. ‘The early prophets, Amos, Hosea, and the undisputed portions of Isaiah, show no certain traces of this influence; Jeremiah exhibits marks of it on nearly every page; Ezekiel and Deutero-Isaiah are also evidently influenced by it. If Deuteronomy were composed between Isaiah and Jeremiah, these facts would be exactly accounted for1[84].’ And third, even if the Book was written in the early part of Josiah’s reign there is (as we have seen) no evidence that the priest Hilkiah or his colleagues in the Temple had anything to do with its composition; while its contents afford not a little proof to the contrary.

[84] Driver, Deut. p. xlvii.

One other point must be repeated; it still haunts us. Whatever the Book owed to the prophets it did not owe everything. The style is its own. The spiritual fruits of the past, the practical urgencies of the present, the memories, passions and hopes of both, are all tuned to a new and original rhythm—the gift we cannot but believe of one man to the literature of his people1[85]. He remains as unknown to us as the author of the Book of Job or the great Evangelist of the Exile (Isaiah 40-55).

[85] Above, pp. xii f., xlvi, xciv.

3. Deuteronomy 1-30 nowhere claims to have been written by Moses2[86], and if the evidence we have just adduced for its date in the eighth or the seventh century b.c. be sound, it precludes us, of course, from ascribing the Book to him. But in addition to the marks which these centuries have stamped so deeply on Deuteronomy there are other grave considerations against the Mosaic authorship. For we have seen not only that the narratives in Deuteronomy must be later than those in J E because on the whole they are based upon them; but that the two documents state or interpret the same events so differently that we cannot imagine them to have been written by the same man, even though we assume that nearly forty years elapsed between his composition of the one and his composition of the other3[87].

[86] The only certain mention of the writing of a law or tôrah by Moses Isaiah 31:9 : and Moses wrote this law. It occurs in a part of the Book admitted, even by conservative scholars, to have been compiled by the editors of the Pent. from several sources; and the meaning of this law is uncertain; probably it does not cover more than the Code.

[87] Which of course cannot be allowed, for the narrative of JE continues through the Pentateuch to the death of Moses and beyond this into the Book of Joshua.

Take the most critical of these differences—that on the amount and character of the Law promulgated on Sinai-Ḥoreb (above pp. xx. ff.). How are we to conceive that the same writer—and he the chief human actor in that awful scene—composed both accounts of it, that he could have said in one document, Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 4:13, Deuteronomy 5:22), that only the Ten Commandments and no more were given to the people from the Mount, but in another document E (Exodus 24:3-8) that it was not the Decalogue but the detailed code of Exodus 21:23 to Exodus 23:19, written and publicly read, which formed the basis of the Covenant at Sinai? If, for the moment, Moses be assumed to have written or to have been responsible for E’s account he cannot have been the author of the Discourse in Deuteronomy which contains the other account. The difficulty is not removed by the acceptance of Kuenen’s theory that the legislation Exodus 21-23 now assigned in our Pentateuch to Ḥoreb originally appeared in E as having been delivered in Moab; for if that be the case the discrepancy is only shifted from Ḥoreb to Moab. Instead of two accounts of the legislation on Ḥoreb we are left with two different Codes promulgated by Moses in the valley over against Beth-peor, Exodus 21-23 and Deuteronomy 12-26.

To this decisive instance it is hardly necessary to add two other differences between JE and Deuteronomy when treating of the same events. Describing the appointment of judges to assist Moses, Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 1:9-18) omits all reference to the origin of the proposal with Jethro (Exodus 18:13-26); and it gives a distribution of the last thirty-eight years in the wilderness which is different from that given in JE (see below p. 29, note introductory to Deuteronomy 2:1-8 a). These differences are sometimes explained by the summary form of Deuteronomy’s retrospects of the history and, in the case of the second, by the fact that we have not before us the complete narratives of JE. This may explain the first difference, but it is not adequate for the second: and the absence of Jethro’s name from Deuteronomy is (as we have seen) but one instance of that Book’s constant silence upon the indebtedness of Israel to foreigners: a silence indicative of a standpoint and a temper very different in this—as in many other respects—from those of JE.

Once more we must appeal to the cardinal Law of Deuteronomy, confining sacrifice to the One Altar. If Moses himself published that law to all Israel gathered in solemn Assembly, published it in his last hours and as one of the culminating points of his legislation, it is more than strange that for five or six centuries afterwards—especially when Israel had grown secure in Canaan and the Temple was built—the history of his people should reveal no tradition or memory of the fact, no sign of the existence of such a law; but that on the contrary some prophets and leaders in Israel, like Samuel, Solomon and Elijah, continued to build altars and to sacrifice at many places in the land under the liberal sanction of the code in JE (see above pp. xl f.); while other prophets, like Amos, Hosea and Isaiah, though they expose the religious dangers of the high places, nevertheless nowhere suggest that these be abolished or that Israel’s sacrifices be confined to a single sanctuary. The history of Israel shows rather, that the deuteronomic law of the One Altar was not prophetic but experimental—the fruit of an experience gradual yet at last so convincing that it replaced the good conscience with which the leaders of Israel built and sacrificed at many altars, according to immemorial practice and under the sanction of the ancient law in Exodus 21:24, by a stronger conscience of the fatal dangers which that freedom involved to the spiritual elements of Israel’s religion. So also does history in the Old Testament explain itself. The law of One Altar for the One God came into being only when, and because, it was at last seen—as the prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries gradually came to see—that sacrifices to Jehovah at many altars, some of them once the shrines of other gods, distracted His people’s sense of His Unity, subverted their ancient loyalty to Him, and, by confusing Him with those deities and mingling their rites with His worship, corrupted both religion and morality. In this bitter experience the law had its sources; its opportunities were the growing influence of the Temple to which His Ark had been brought, and the Assyrian destruction of nearly all other shrines in the land.

After all this it is hardly necessary to refer to some minor signs in Deuteronomy of an authorship later than Moses. Among these I do not include (as is sometimes done) the designation of Eastern Palestine as the land on the other side of Jordan, for this occurs only in titles that are admitted to be secondary, Deuteronomy 1:1; Deuteronomy 1:5, Deuteronomy 4:46 f., 49, or in other verses, Deuteronomy 3:8, Deuteronomy 4:41, which are probably also from the hand of an editor; and elsewhere, Deuteronomy 3:20; Deuteronomy 3:25, Deuteronomy 11:30, the phrase on the other side of Jordan is applied to Western Palestine in harmony with the position of Moses in Moab. But the writer occasionally betrays a time-perspective which is that not of Moses but of a later age. Omitting Deuteronomy 2:12, Deuteronomy 3:8; Deuteronomy 3:14 and Deuteronomy 23:4 (adduced by Driver, p. xlii) as possibly editorial, we find some slight indications of this later perspective in the use of the phrase at that time for what had taken place only a few weeks or months before the speaker is made to use it: Deuteronomy 2:34 of the taking of Sihon’s cities, Deuteronomy 3:4 of Og’s and Deuteronomy 3:12 of both; cp. Deuteronomy 3:18; Deuteronomy 3:21; Deuteronomy 3:23. A stronger indication of the same is the phrase as ye came forth out of Egypt for events that happened far on in the period of the wandering in the wilderness, Miriam’s death Deuteronomy 24:9, and the attacks of Amalek, Deuteronomy 25:17. The perspective of these phrases is hardly that of Moses in Moab, but suits a later age when the forty years (Deuteronomy 8:2; Deuteronomy 8:4) were foreshortened. On the whole the authors of Deuteronomy have remained true to the standpoint of Moses but in these moments their dramatic consistency appears to fail. Cp. what is said above (p. xcviii) on Deuteronomy 6:24, Deuteronomy 8:18, as at this day.

The defenders of an early date for Deuteronomy appeal to its commands to give no quarter to the Canaanites (Deuteronomy 7:1-5, Deuteronomy 20:16-18) or to Amalek (Deuteronomy 25:17-19) as meaningless and futile in a work of the eighth or seventh century when Israel’s danger from these peoples had wholly disappeared, and therefore as signs that the date of Deuteronomy must be far earlier. But both these commands, repeated from JE (Exodus 23:31 b – Exodus 23:33 and Deuteronomy 17:14-16), are natural to the author’s presentation of Moses as the speaker, and they are not purposeless in a Book designed to warn off Israel not only from idolatries introduced from Assyria and Babylonia but from those of Canaan which exercised all the greater fascination that they were native to the soil on which Israel lived and were bound up with its agriculture. It is interesting, too, that the Amalekites are mentioned in 1 Chronicles 4:41-43 as still active in Hezekiah’s time.

§ 12. Resulting Questions and their Answers

The evidence adduced for the age of Deuteronomy—adduced from itself and other parts of the Old Testament—raises some questions, the answers to which constitute the concluding task of this Introduction.

If the Book be so late a work, embodying in its legislation the results of Israel’s long experience of settled life in Canaan, and inspired by the prophets of the eighth century, why did its authors not express themselves accordingly? Why did they not give a retrospect of that gradual development with the results thereof; and—appealing (as Amos does) to God’s continued Providence for His people since He planted them in the land but especially to His last revelation through the Prophets—proclaim in His Name that those results of His Providence and that supreme Word now replaced all laws previously delivered? Why was Deuteronomy rather cast in the form of Discourses and a Code said to have been delivered before Israel had even begun the settled life, upon the experience of which the Code especially is based? Why did the authors, deriving their immediate inspiration from the prophets of the eighth century, go behind these and back to Moses as the authority and the mouth of their doctrine?

We may answer at once that the form in which the Book is cast was not merely (a) usual under the literary custom, and (b) conditioned by the mental habit, of its age; but (c) is justified historically by the facts of Israel’s origin and earliest organisation under Moses, and by the persistence of his influence, both as Prophet and Lawgiver, down to the days of the authors. Of these considerations the first two need not long detain us; the third, the historical, is the one of most importance.

(a) It has often been emphasised, and justly, that the form adopted for Deuteronomy—of making Moses the speaker throughout—was a literary form prevalent in ancient times and employed by other historians in the Old Testament. In the Books of Joshua, Kings and Chronicles speeches are quoted as if they were the very words of early leaders in Israel, which nevertheless betray their composition by the historian himself, through being in the same style as the narratives in which they occur and containing phrases and even ideas that are distinctively late1[88]. This use of the dramatic imagination not only in the reproduction of history, but in the criticism of old truth and the presentation of new, finds its supreme illustration in the Book of Job. There are many instances in other literatures.

[88] Driver, Deut. p. lviii.

Driver, besides giving the instances just cited, refers to Plato, Dante, Shakespeare and Paradise Lost (Deut. p. lviii). Cornill says: ‘The author only did what all historians have done, and to speak of his work as a literary fraud is out of the question; indeed it cannot be described even as pseudepigraphic’ (Einleitung § 9, 5). But this opinion is not confined to critics who agree with Graf and Wellhausen. It is virtually accepted by a scholar whose independent work is characterised by opposition to many of the positions of modern criticism, Professor James Robertson. He makes the following interesting observations. ‘It is remarkable that he [Wellhausen] and many like-minded have not taken note of the peculiarity of the Hebrew language that has not developed what we call the indirect speech—a peculiarity which necessitates the regular introduction of speeches or addresses.… The absence of the indirect speech in Hebrew can be made quite clear to the English reader by a reference to any page of the historical books. If a writer wishes to say that one person made a verbal communication to another, he must say, “So-and-so spake to So-and-so saying,” and must give the ipsissima verba. And yet, strictly speaking, the writer is not to be taken as vouching for the actual words spoken. He is simply producing, in the only way that the laws of his language allow him to produce, the substance of the thing said; and from beginning to end of the O.T. writings, the language remained at that stage, only the faintest attempts to pass beyond it being visible’ (Early Religion of Israel, pp. 422 f.; cp. Expositor, 2nd series, vi. pp. 241 ff., ‘Graphic Element in the O.T.’).

(b) A deeper reason for the form of Deuteronomy is the unfamiliarity of the idea of development to the mind of the ancient East. That mind fixed upon results rather than processes, to the significance of which it has taken ages of research to awaken ourselves. Things, which we know came into being only gradually, appeared to early man—appeared indeed till recently to our own fathers—as the offspring of a word, of a moment. This was especially the way of the Semite, ever absolute in his thinking as in the expression of his thought. Just as he described physical phenomena, now known to be of long development, as having happened instantaneously, or as the first of Genesis puts it in a day; so similarly did he describe results that were religious or moral. Does he present the creation of the Universe as the act of the Word of God on seven successive days? So also does he present Deuteronomy, the fruit of centuries of the Spirit’s influence on Israel, as the utterance in one day of Moses. The Oriental finds it difficult to conceive of authority except as personal and immediate. Whether in his philosophy or in his politics he ignores secondary and gradual causes.

(c) But these literary and psychological reasons for the form of Deuteronomy are of minor importance to the historical ones. Based, as it is, on the long experience of settled life in Canaan and inspired by the prophets of the eighth century, the Book has valid reasons in fact for going behind those prophets for the source of its principles and even behind Israel’s history in Canaan for the authority of its laws—and for finding that source and that authority in Moses himself.

In proof of this we have first of all certain general indications in the history of Israel immediately subsequent to their settlement. These all point to the fact that the years of Moses had been the creative period in the national history; that then the nation was made, that then the several tribes of which it was composed were drawn to each other because drawn and covenanted to the same God. Their unity, which was sealed by the institution of the monarchy, was not, like the latter, created after their settlement. On the contrary, as the Book of Judges and especially the Song of Deborah testify, their occupation of Canaan at first disintegrated a union previously achieved. The tribes became separated by the geographical divisions of their settlement and by the diverse directions of culture along which these attracted them. The one bond which prevailed over such distractions was a common feeling of duty to Jehovah; and this community of faith—weakened by the physical and religious temptations of times of peace but always roused again by a call to war—they owed to Moses and to his conduct and discipline of them through the wilderness. Israel were one because they were Jehovah’s people and Jehovah the God of all of their tribes; and this had come about through their first, and to the end their greatest leader. In all Israel’s history nothing is more certain than that Israel’s unity was to begin with a religious unity and that Moses was its mediator.

The reader will find confirmation of this argument in the reasons given in this series by Dr Driver, Exodus, pp. 413 ff., for believing that the distinctive character of Israel’s religion had been operative from the origins of the nation onward. ‘If the religion of Moses had not differed, in some distinctive feature, from the ordinary religions of antiquity, it is impossible to understand why, when the Israelites entered Canaan, and intermingled, as in many cases they did intermingle, with the native Canaanites, it was not merged and absorbed in their religion.’ He quotes from Mr Monteflore’s Hibbert Lectures for 1892, pp. 46 f.: the ‘successful resistance to Canaanite polytheism … would surely not have been possible unless the Yahweh whom Moses taught differed from the Canaanite deities, not only in his numerical uniqueness, but in his higher and more consistent ethical character.… We are therefore entitled to doubt whether the exclusive worship of the national God would ever have been ordained, had there not Iain in the original conception of Yahweh the “promise and potency” of the monotheism of Amos and Isaiah.’ And in turn Mr Montefiore quotes Professor Kamphausen: ‘I recognise in the fact that the small number of Israelites was not absorbed by the Canaanites, who were by far their superiors in all matters of external culture, a convincing proof of the ethical power of the Yahwistic religion.’

But again, the Prophets themselves pointed their deuteronomic disciples back to Moses. Amos delivers this message: I brought you up out of the land of Egypt and led you forty years through the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite (Deuteronomy 2:10). Jehovah’s knowledge of Israel, begun then, had been their distinction from other peoples, the secret of their individuality and of their present moral responsibility (Deuteronomy 3:1 f.). Hosea puts it more vividly. He recalls the days of Israel’s youth, when she came up out of Egypt, as a time of loyalty to her first Husband, before the temptations of Canaan drew her away after her paramours the Baalim; and he conceives of her regeneration as possible only by a return to the conditions and atmosphere of the days of the wilderness (ch. 2). Or changing the figure he says that when Israel was a child Jehovah loved him and taught him to walk and took him in his arms (Deuteronomy 11:1-3). I am Jehovah thy God from the land of Egypt, thou knewest no God but Me, and beside Me there is no Saviour; I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought (Deuteronomy 13:4 ff.). But the wealth of Canaan and its Baalim and graven images have drawn away the heart of the people (passim). Israel has forgotten his Maker (Deuteronomy 8:14). As Isaiah says: The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: Israel doth not know, My people doth not consider (Deuteronomy 1:3). But these are the very affections, the discipline, the warnings, which Deuteronomy makes Moses enforce in the Name of Jehovah. Does Hosea affirm that the one thing needful for Israel in Canaan, if she is to be restored to her God, is that He should once more woo her, bring her back into the wilderness, and speak home to her heart (Deuteronomy 2:14)? That is just what the Spirit does in Deuteronomy. Hosea’s words exactly fit the aim, the form and the temper of this Gospel. Back to the wilderness days, back to the first wonder and grace of God’s choice and care of this people, back to the loyalty and trust thus evoked, back to the discipline which kept them pure—back to the feet of Moses, as he pleads and urges it all!

So much in justification of the general aim and temper of the Book. Not very different is the case for the specific doctrines which Deuteronomy listening to the prophets hears the voice of Moses himself proclaim. The prophets do not profess that the doctrines which they bring to their generation are new1[89]. Their burden is to recall and enforce the old; they give no new commandment but an old commandment which the people had from the beginning, when by a prophet Jehovah brought Israel out of Egypt and by a prophet was he kept2[90]. That Jehovah is the One and Only God for Israel, their Chooser, Redeemer, Father, Husband and Guide; that He is utter Righteousness and Love, that He requires these qualities from them towards Himself and towards one another; that He is the source of all law and authority in peace and war, the King and Judge of His people, and that their life as a nation lies in loyalty to Him and to the ethical truths He has revealed—such are the specific doctrines which the prophets tell their generation they ought to have known but have forgotten. It cannot be denied that at least the substance of these doctrines had been first delivered by the prophet Moses in terms of the experience of the forty years of his leadership through the wilderness3[91], or that Deuteronomy is therefore historically justified in putting them into his mouth as his last testament to his people in view of their immediate passage to new conditions that would sorely tempt their faith and loyalty. But equally clear and equally justifiable is the fact that, in the light of God’s subsequent Providence and especially of the teaching of the prophets the Book has much developed and expanded whatever expression Moses himself may have given to these doctrines. This is clear for instance in the emphasis which it lays on the love of God to man and of man to God as compared even with the utterances of Moses in Jeremiah 1[92]. Were it otherwise, the leading of the Divine Spirit since Moses died had been in vain. It is the duty of every scribe, who has been made a disciple to the Kingdom of Heaven to bring out of his treasure things new as well as old. This being understood, the ascription to Moses himself of the specific doctrines which Deuteronomy inculcates is amply vindicated from the history of the origins of Israel as interpreted, or implied, by the prophets of the eighth century.

[89] Till the prophets break into the Exile with the good news of Israel’s restoration they do not use the phrase new things for the contents of their message.

[90] Hosea 12:13. It is singular that before Jeremiah no prophet mentions Moses by name.

[91] See above p. cxiii.

[92] See above pp. xxvi f.

But the Deuteronomists had before them credible witnesses to these origins other and earlier than the prophets. The retrospects of the wilderness which they put in the mouth of Moses are (as we have seen) based upon the narratives of J and E in Exodus and Numbers; documents of a date somewhere between David and the eighth century2[93]. Of the age of their sources we have no clear evidence. That these were partly written but mainly oral is apparent from the infrequency with which J and E refer to a written source3[94]; as well as from the differences between them in detail which are such as arise in the course of oral tradition. But whatever the date of their sources—and the tendency of recent criticism has been to increase the emphasis upon their antiquity—the general credibility of J and E cannot be denied. As Dr Driver says in this series4[95], ‘it is hypercritical to doubt that the outline of the narratives which have thus come down to us by two channels is historical.’ They ‘cannot but embody substantial elements of fact,’ which ‘cannot be called in question by a reasonable criticism.’ He proceeds to state them; they are practically the same as those which we have seen implied by the history of Israel immediately subsequent to the settlement in Canaan; and they are all that is necessary to prove a sufficient basis of fact for the retrospects of Deuteronomy and the exhortations arising from these. In particular the witness of J and E to Moses himself, to his influence on the people, and to the character and effects of the Divine revelation which he brought to Israel, is indubitably strong and trustworthy.

[93] Above p. civ.

[94] E.g. Exodus 17:14; Exodus 24:4.

[95] Exodus p. xliv.

There remain only the laws. The tradition in Israel that Moses was a Law-giver as well as a Prophet is too constant, too weighty and we may add too varied to leave us in doubt. The habit of ascribing to him every new code, however recent might be some of its contents, is in itself proof that he laid the basis of legislation for his people. But the tradition is confirmed by the facts that Israel received through him, at the very least, a new and a powerful impression of the Deity and in consequence their first national organisation. Events so signal, so distinctive in the Semitic world, and—as we have seen from the early history of Israel in Canaan—so potential in religious and political results, cannot have happened without leaving in their own time some precipitate in the shape of statutes and judgements whether oral or written. Further, there are parts of the bodies of law in the Old Testament which offer no reason whatever against their origin under Moses. There is, as we shall see, the original form of the Decalogue1[96], and there are other instances in the codes of J and E. But for our present purpose it is best to leave the question of single instances of Mosaic torôth, and to follow these general considerations.

[96] Below pp. 84 f.; cp. Driver’s Exodus, App. II.

We will remember that of every code of national law two things are true—the high antiquity of its origins, the gradual development of its ultimate contents and form. The codes of Israel are no exception.

In the first place much of the jurisprudence of the Old Testament is obviously even older than Moses. The tribes which came up out of Egypt and which he first welded together had already a considerable amount of consuetudinary law: of principles and of practice—in both of what we distinguish as religious and civil law, but to them all law was religious—of immemorial origin. This is clear from the fact that some of the principles acknowledged in the Mosaic codes as well as many of the statutes and judgements are not peculiar to Israel, but common to all peoples of the Semitic stock. One example is the principle of life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, with the consequent tribal duty of the vendetta1[97], and measures for its control and regulation, attempts at which are universal in the Semitic world. There are the principles of communal responsibility for crimes committed in the communal territory2[98], and of the ethical solidarity of the family3[99]. There are the principles of judicial procedure, for example the authority of the local or tribal elders—what we should call civil courts of the first instance—with an appeal on all harder cases to the Deity’s representative either at a local sanctuary, or at some central and famous one4[100]. The god was ever regarded as the ultimate judge of his people. There are other instances of civil and criminal law common to Israel and her Semitic kindred to which attention will be called by the notes on the text. But above all there was the common system of sacrifice, with the observance of the same annual feasts, the same devotion of the first-born of men and cattle5[101], and many identical or nearly identical forms of ritual and religious symbols. In virtue of their Semitic descent Israel had inherited all these. Moses did not create them; and in this negative certainty we may find the explanation of the startling statement of some prophets—made, we must remember, before the sacrificial codes of P were formed—that God gave no commandments to Israel in the wilderness concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices6[102]. As they came out of Egypt Israel practised the system of sacrifice as well as of social justice and criminal law which they had derived, and can have little modified, from the customs of their Semitic ancestors. But upon all that consuetudinary law there descended, to a degree unique in the Semitic world, the higher ethical influences of the revelation which God had made of Himself and His Will through Moses. These must have altered the Hebrew heritage of custom, law and ritual. We know that they did. The proof is clear from the purer and more humane forms which that heritage assumed in the legislation of Israel. We cannot deny the beginnings of such a change to Moses, nor doubt that these beginnings were expressed in restatements of ancient custom, rite or statute, whether oral or, as the tradition says, written down1[103].

[97] See below on Deuteronomy 19:21, and the note on p. 246.

[98] P. 251.

[99] Pp. xxxiv and 282.

[100] Above p. xxxii.

[101] See p. 206.

[102] See above p. xcvii.

[103] For a list of laws common to JE and Deuteronomy see pp. xvii, lxvii.

But, secondly, it is equally certain that Moses did not complete the elevating and purifying process. By Israel’s living faith in a living God this continued through the subsequent centuries. We have seen its effects in the appearance of new and more humane laws sometimes arising from the example of individuals2[104]; in the adaptation or expansion of older laws to suit new economic conditions3[105]; in the wider and more thorough application of a moral principle as when it is extended, as it is frequently by Deuteronomy, from outward action to the region of thought and motive4[106]; and in laws abolishing rites or symbols, which had been used with a good conscience by earlier generations5[107], but were now proved to be temptations to worship the other gods, in whose honour they also served, and to confuse them with Jehovah. The real danger to the spiritual elements in His religion came from the ritual, so many points of which it shared with other cults. If the Deuteronomists did not abolish the ritual, as some of their teachers the prophets seem to have desired, they at least purified it of its worst features and brought its practice under control and safeguard by confining it to one sanctuary. So doing they not only, as the following centuries proved, made it serve the doctrine of Jehovah’s unity as the only God for Israel, which there can be no doubt that Moses proclaimed; but they also brought the ritual back round his Ark, and more nearly to the purer form it must have assumed in the conditions of the wilderness.

[104] Pp. cv f.; and the laws in which women are concerned.

[105] Pp. xxii and cv.

[106] On the developed ethics of Deut. see above pp. xxxii–xxxviii and on the 10th Commandment.

[107] E.g. the pillars and Asherim and certain mourning customs.

Hence the sincerity, the vitality, the power of the work of these reformers. Deuteronomy is a living and a divine book, because, like every other real reformation it is at once loyal to the essential truth revealed in the past, while daring to cast off all tradition, however ancient and sacred in origin, that in practice has become dangerous and corruptive; vigilant to the new perils and exigencies of faith and receptive of the fresh directions of the living God for their removal or conquest.

But that is not all nor nearly all. While so nobly serving its own age and establishing a discipline that with all its limitations—and indeed partly because of these—preserved and trained Israel for their mission to mankind, Deuteronomy gave utterance to truths which are always and everywhere sovereign:—that God is One, and that man is wholly His, that it is He who finds us rather than we who find Him; that God is Righteousness and Faithfulness, Mercy and Love and that these also are what He requires from us towards Himself and one another; ‘that His Will lies not in any unknown height but in the moral sphere known and understood by all’ (Deuteronomy 30:11-14). Thus in the preparation for Jesus Christ Deuteronomy stands very high. Did He not Himself attest the divine authority both of its doctrine and of its style by accepting its central Creed as the highest and ultimate law not for Israel only but for all mankind (Mark 12:28-30, Deuteronomy 6:4-5)?

List of the Principal Abbreviations employed

D.  Deuteronomy, chs. 1–30. For reasons given in the Introduction, especially in Paragraphs 2, 3, 5–11, it has not been found possible to distinguish the various original editions from which the Book has been compiled.

D.B.  A Dictionary of the Bible, edited by James Hastings, D.D. (1898–1904).

E.  Elohist, the name given to one of the constituent documents of the Pentateuch.

E.B.  also Enc. Bibl. Encyclopaedia Biblica, edited by T. K. Cheyne, D.D., etc., and J. S. Black, LL.D. (1899–1903).

E.T.  English Translation.

Ethn. Ber.  Ethnologischer Reisebericht, being Pt. iii of Arabia Petraea, by Alois Musil (Vienna, 1908). Moab and Edom form Pts. i and ii of this work.

Hex.  Hexateuch, i.e. Genesis to Joshua.

HGHL.  The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, by George Adam Smith (Seventh Thousand 1897, and subsequent editions).

I.P.  An Introduction to the Pentateuch, by A. T. Chapman, M.A. (Cambridge, 1911, in this series).

J.  Jahwist or Jehovist, the name given to one of the constituent documents of the Pentateuch.

JE.  The combination of J and E.

KAT3.  Die Keilinschriften und das AIte Testament, 3rd edition (1903), by H. Zimmern and H. Winckler.

OTJC.  The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, 2nd edition, revised and much enlarged (1892), by W. Robertson Smith.

P.  Priestly Writer or Writing, one of the constituent documents of the Pentateuch.

PEFQ.  Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund founded in 1865. (London.)

Pent.  Pentateuch.

Pl.  Passages of Deuteronomy in the Plural form of address—see Introduction, § 8.

Sam.  Samaritan Text of Deuteronomy.

SBOT.  The Sacred Books of the Old [and New] Testaments, a New English Translation, edited by Paul Haupt (1898 onwards).

Sg.  Passages of Deuteronomy in the Singular form of address—see Introduction, § 8.

ZATW.  Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft.

ZDPV.  Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palaestina-Vereins.

The principal works referred to are designated in full in the Introduction and the footnotes to it, or in the following Notes on the Text.

No maps accompany this volume; the reader is referred for the geography relevant to Deuteronomy to the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the Holy Land, designed and edited by George Adam Smith and prepared under the direction of J. G. Bartholomew (1915), and in particular to the following maps therein:—Nos. 7 and 8, ‘Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula’; 11 and 12,’ Palestine-Orographical’; and 29 and 30, ‘Moab and Dead Sea.’ In the last the water-courses of Southern Moab are given according to the most recent surveys; and the names of most of the places mentioned in Deuteronomy 1-3 have been inserted.