punishment, nor did it resort to confinement for any other purpose than that of detention.* But, on the other hand, the debtor was a prisoner to his creditor, being held by him to personal service, if he had no other means to discharge the claim.† And this fact it is necessary to keep in view, in order to illustrate the reasonableness of the laws respecting usury, and respecting restitution as a punishment for theft. In connexion with them, it made part of a mutually sustained and energetic system; without it, the laws of the former class would have been oppressive, and those of the latter ineffectual. An Israelite could the better venture to lend without interest, since his security was complete; he had a claim upon the debtor's landed property (which there could not fail to be), upon his movables, and, in the last resort, upon his person, as a laborer. And a detected thief had nothing to console him in the mildness of the penalty of restitution; since, in the first place, it was accompanied, as we have seen, by a heavy fine, and resolved itself, if not so discharged, into liability to be made a slave to the injured party, till the debt, so enhanced, was cancelled. The two prompters to theft, cupidity and idleness, were effectually met on their own ground. In the passage, which, at the beginning of the twentysixth chapter, follows the collection of laws we have been remarking on, Moses recommends to the Israelite a fit expression of the devout and grateful sentiments, with which, reviewing his nation's history, he ought to be filled, when, settled at length in his promised country, and having raised a harvest from its long-desired soil, he should repair to the Sanctuary with his first offering of those First-Fruits, which thenceforward the Law made it his duty to present, with each returning * Lev. xxiv. 12. + Ex. xxii. 3; Lev. xxvi. 39, 47. * season. A direction of the same purport I understand to be next given in relation to the time, when, having surmounted in two years the embarrassments of a first settlement, he should present himself on the third with his offering of Tithes. And the people, in conclusion, are briefly assured, that if true to the obligations and engagements, which they had been so honored in being permitted to assume, they would not fail to experience what designs of unequalled favor their Divine Benefactor had conceived for them, when he who was addressing them should have passed away.‡ * Deut. xxvi. 1 - 11. † xxvi. 12-15. + xxvi. 16-19. LECTURE XX. DEUTERONOMY XXVII. 1. XXXIV. 12. MOSES COMMANDS THE ERECTION OF AN ALTAR ON THE WEST SIDE AT the end of the eleventh chapter of this book, before entering on the recital of those laws which we have last been considering, Moses had hinted at a solemn ceremony, by which he designed that the people, on first occupying their destined country, should consecrate themselves anew to the service of him, who, at length, had fulfilled his word, in their secure establishment in the home of their fathers. Proceeding now to prescribe that ceremony, he directs, that, first, certain imprecations, which he specifies, upon the perpetrator of particular crimes, having been engraved upon the stones of an altar, to be erected on a mountain in the centre of the country, shall be pronounced aloud by the 62 VOL. I. Levites, and responded to, in like manner, by the Amen Such, at least, is my understanding of the narration, * Deut. xxvii. 2, 3. xxxi. 9-13, 24 – 26. See p. 425. So incomplete is it, that, from first to last, the Sabbath to be intended, to which, however, no reference is made, either in the direction of Moses, or in the account of its fulfilment by his successor.* Lastly, under the guidance of the context, and in a very proper application of the word rendered "law," (a word signifying instruction, injunction, of any kind, which the imprecations may rightly be considered, not to say that the writing and utterance of them were, strictly speaking, a law of Moses,) some have regarded the curses recorded in the latter part of the twenty-seventh chapter, and the blessings at the beginning of the next, as together composing the law in question. But this, I think, is still assigning a too great comprehensiveness to the present use of that word. The benedictions, here proposed to be included, correspond to the other curses, by which they are followed, at greater length, in the same chapter, and (if I mistake not) were destined with them to the second use which I have specified above; viz. that of being rehearsed by the twelve tribes, after the first ceremony (that of the reading aloud, by the Levites, of the twelve imprecations engraved on the altar stones) had been concluded. Those first twelve imprecations, brought together in one list, and suited (as one sees at a glance that they are) to such a use, by their concise and pointed statement, so different from the diffuse form of most of what follows, I take to be the law which Moses directed to be inscribed on the altar. And such, I think we shall see reason to *Josh. viii. 30-35. This view dates as far back as Josephus. See his "Antiq. Jud.,” lib. 4, cap. 8, § 44. Deut. xxvii. 1-8.- "And Moses, with the elders of Israel, commanded the people" &c. (1); he had been hitherto addressing the elders (compare p. 165); he now dismisses them with a direction to acquaint the people, in their several divisions, with the intended solemnity. "Thou shalt set thee up great stones, and plaster them with plaster" - |