bally translated are, Because the hand upon the throne of the LORD, war to the LORD against Amalek.* The place has evidently the following difficuities. 1. There must be some words understood to fill up the sentence. The hand upon the throne of the LORD war against Amalek, must be supposed to be the same as, the hand of the LORD is upon his throne, that there shall be war against Amalek. The sentence must be thus transposed and filled up to make it bear 2. In order to its bearing the sense which any sense. our English version puts upon it, The hand of the LORD is upon his throne, must be supposed to signify God has sworn, his laying his hand upon his throne must import his taking an oath. But 3. In all the Old Testament, though the expression of God's having sworn occurs almost thirty times; yet it is not, I think, once expressed in words like what we here meet with, but always by the verb (vaw) shabang. The LORD hath sworn is (y) Nishbang Jehovah. The annotators are at a loss to ascertain the sense of the place; and certainly the Hebrew words, as our present copies run, are very hard to be reconciled to any Because purpose, rather than as they have translated it. his (i. e. Amalek's) hand has been covertly against you, the LORD will have war with Amalek, &c. sense whatsoever, unless we admit a very unusual expression for God hath sworn, which is not to be met with in any other place of Scripture. As to the LXX, they might perhaps think the place corrupted by transcribers; and by putting in ev xe xpupara instead of rendering the Hebrew words, they rather guessed what might make the passage good sense, than had authority for their translation. If I may be indulged the liberty, I could suggest what would give the place a clear meaning, without varying much from the present Hebrew text. The reason given in Deuteronomy why Amalek should be utterly destroyed is, because he here attacked the Israelites.. The words of Moses are, Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way-how he met thee, and smote the hindmost of thee, &c. Therefore it shall be, when the LORD thy God hath given thee rest-that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heacen: thou shalt not forget it." This was the reason why Gon determined to have war with Amalek; because he here basely assaulted the Israelites. Now let us suppose the true reading of the passage before us should be thus: Ki Yad nal Kem, yehi Milchemah Lahovah be Namalek, which translated word for a Deut. xxv. 17, 18, 19. בעמלק Amalek contra Jehovah bellum erit vos contra manus quia. i. c. ejus is vobis, Exodus xvi. 23. In like manner by signi fying contra,y may be contra vos, or perhaps it was word is, Because his hand hath been against you, the LORD will have war with Amalek, &c. The emendation of the text is very little: might be easily written D, the letters are so similar that the difference is scarcely perceptible: might be written for; for the final might easily be omitted by no very careless transcriber. And this very small emendation will restore the text to admit an easy and clear meaning, and supposes Moses to hint here the very thing which he expressed afterwards more copiously when he came to write, what he was directed to transmit to posterity upon this occasion." Soon after this victory over the Amalekites, Jethro the priest of Midian, Moses' father-in-law, came with Zipporah his daughter, the wife of Moses, and her two children, Gershom and Eliezer, into the wilderness to the camp at mount Horeb.c Moses received written more agreeably to the Hebrew regimen. It may perhaps be here remarked, that Milchemah is a noun. feminine, that I put the verb Jehi in the masculine termi. nation, contrary to true syntax. But to this I think I may answer, that the Hebrew language is not always crití. cally exact in this particular. Vid. Capell. Crit. Sac. 1.3. c. 16. & l. 6, c. 8. b Deut. xxv. 17, 18, 19. • Exodus xviii. I find some writers imagine, that Jethro's coming to Moses was not thus early. F. Simon says, that Jethro seems not to have come till the second year after the finishing of the tabernacle, as may be proved out of Deuteronomy. The learned father has not cited any passage in Deuteronomy to support his opinion; and I cannot find с him with the utmost respect, and told him all the, wonderful works which had been wrought for their deliverance. Jethro full of joy gave praise to GoD for his favours to them; and offered a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and invited Aaron and the elders of Israel to it. The day after, seeing Moses engaged all day long in determining little controversies, he observed to him, that he was fallen into a way, which would be full of fatigue to himself, and not give a due dispatch to the public business. Therefore he advised him to range the people in classes of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, and to appoint proper officers over the several classes, and reserve only matters of appeal and of the highest moment to his own decision. Moses approved of this advice of Jethro, and according to it appointed such officers as he had directed, to hear and decide the lesser controversies, and to dispense justice under him unto the people." any, which appears to me to favour it. Aaron and the elders of Israel coming to Jethro's sacrifice, hints to me, that the law was not yet given, nor Aaron consecrated to the priesthood; for if it had been given, Jethro might perhaps have been admitted to Aaron's sacrifice; but Aaron and the Israelites would not, I think, have partook of Jethro's; and therefore Jethro's coming to Moses must have been just after the victory over the Amalekites, as soon as they came to Sinai; and to this time, I think, the account of Moses, Exodus xviii. 5, does well fix it. d Exod. xviii. 8. Ver. 13-24. • Ver. 9. 1 Ver. 12. i gave A noble author makes the following reflection upon Jethro's advice here given to Moses. He says, that "the great founder of the Hebrew state had not perfected his model, until he consulted the foreign priest his father-in-law, to whose advice he paid such remarkable deference." The reflection insinuates, that a part of the Jewish polity was a contrivance of Jethro, and therefore that the whole cannot be pretended to be a divine institution. In answer hereto, I would observe, 1. That the advice which Jethro Moses, and what Moses did upon it, was not to perfect his model, as this noble writer is pleased to call it; for the advice was given and first executed, before there were any steps at all taken towards forming the Jewish polity; before God had given Moses any laws at all for the constitution of the Jewish state. But, 2. What Jethro here advised Moses to, though Moses followed the advice at the time it was given, nay and afterwards made use of it again, when circumstances required; was yet never made an essential part of the Jewish constitution. If we look for the institutions, which Moses has delivered down to us as dictated by GOD, 'for the government of the people; we shall find these only: Moses was at first their sole leader and governor, and Jethro found him acting without assistants in this capacity. When Moses was called up into mount Sinai, Aaron and Hur were to supply his place. After this Aaron and his sons were appointed Lord Shaftsbury's Charact. vol. iii. p. 58. |