(2) Equipment. At the time of the departure of Israel, horses were not yet abundant in Egypt, for the pursuing army had only six hundred char iots, and the shepherd people were even prohibited from breeding or possessing them. The Hebrews were enjoined to trust, under Divine protection, to the energies of infantry alone, their future coun try being chiefly within the basin of high moun tains, and the march thither over a district of Arabia where to this day horses arc not in use. We may infer Ciat the inspired lawgiver rejected horses because they were already known to be less fit for defense at home than for distant expeditions of conquest, in which it was not intended that the chosen people should engage.
(3) Assyria and Persia. There are, however, indications in their military transactions, from the time Assyrian and Persian conquerors pressed upon the Israelite states, and still more after the captivity, which show the influence of Asiatic mil itary ideas, according to which the masses do not act with ordered unity, but trust to the more ad venturous in the van to decide the fate of battle. Later still, under the Maccabees, the systematic discipline of Macedonian importation can be ob served, even though in Asia the Greek method of training, founded on mathematical principles. had never been fully complied with, or had been modi fied by the existence of new circumstances and new elements of destruction ; such, for example, as the use of great bodies of light cavalry, showering millions of arrows upon their enemies, and fight ing elephants introduced by the Ptolemies.
(4) Rome. But all these practices became again modified in Western Asia when Roman do minion had superseded the Greek kingdoms. Even the Jews, as is evident from Josephus, modeled their military force on the imperial plan ; their in fantry became armed, and was maneuvered in ac cordance with that system which everywhere gave victory by means of the firmness and mobility which it imparted. The masses were composed of cohorts or their equivalents, consisting of cen turuz and decurix, or subdivisions into hundreds, fifties, and tens, similar to modern battalions, companies, and squads; and the commanders were of like grades and numbers. Thus the people of Israel, and the nations around them, cannot be accurately considered, in a military view, without taking into account the successive changes here noticed; for they had the same influence which military innovations had in Europe between the eras of Charlemagne and the Emperor Charles V, including the use of cannon—that invention for a long time making no greater alteration in the constitution of armies than the perfection of war machines produced upon the military institutions of antiquity.
(5) Israel's Army. The army of Israel was chiefly composed of infantry, formed into a trained body of spearmen, and, in greater num bers, of slingers and archers, with horses and chariots in small proportion, excepting during the periods when the kingdom extended over the desert to the Red Sea. The irregulars were drawn from the families and tribes, particularly Ephraim and Benjamin, but the heavy armed derived their chief strength from Judah, and were, it appears, collected by a kind of conscription, by tribes, like the earlier Roman armies ; not through the instru mentality of selected officers, but by genealogists of each tribe, under the superintendence of the princes. Of those returned on the rolls, a pro portion greater or less was selected, according to the exigency of the time; and the whole male pop ulation might be called out on extraordinary oc casions. When kings had rendered the system of government better organized, there was an officer denominated hashoter, a sort of muster-master, who had returns of the effective force, or number of soldiers ready for service, but who was subor dinate to the hasapher, or scribe, a kind of secre tary of state. These officers, or the shoterim, struck out, or excused from service—first, those who had built a house without having yet in habited it ; second, those who had planted an olive or vineyard, and had not tasted the fruit—which gave leave of absence for five years; third, those who were betrothed, or had been married less than one year ; fourth, the faint-hearted, which may mean the constitutionally delicate, rather than the'cowardly.
(6) Formation. The levies were drilled to march in ranks (t Chron. xii :38), and in column by fives (chamushim) abreast (Exod.
hence it may be inferred that they borrowed from the Egyptian system a decimal formation, two fifties in each division making a solid square. equal in rank and file ; for twice ten in rank and five in file being told off by right hand and left hand files, a command to the left hand files to face about and march six or eight paces to the rear. then to front and take one step to the right, would make the hundred a solid square, with only the additional distance between the right hand or un moved files necessary to use the shield and spear without hindrance ; while the depth being again reduced to five files, they could face to the right or left, and march firmly in column, passing every kind of ground without breaking or lengthening their order.