Section IV. Num. xxviii. 2, 3, 9, 11, 16, 26; xxix. 7, 12, 35-38; ten laws about the great fes tivals and services of God's worship, suggested appa rently by the near approach of the conquest of Canaan, that the successes of the nation might not lead them to the neglect or contempt of these paramount ordinances.
Section V. Num. xxx. 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, to, 12, 14, 15; ten laws about especial vows ; and when married and unmarried women are excused from their ful filment.
Section VI. Num. xxxv. 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, to, r2, 13, 14, 15 ; ten laws respecting Levitical cities, and cities of refuge.
Section VII. Num. xxxv. 16, 17, 20, 22, 26, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34 ; ten laws respecting murder and manslaughter. The last of these laws is worthy of special quotation : 'Defile not the land which ye shall inhabit, wherein I dwell; for I, the Lord, dwell among the children of Israel'—nin+ .ots; Timm Thus all these laws ter minate in Jehovah, who still keeps his covenant with his people, notwithstanding the many shocks they had dealt against it. The land, which was now full to overflowing with the sins of a guilty race ripe for judgment, is, in view of that covenant, already holy and sacred for a holy nation and its Theocratic King ! The book of Numbers and the code of Israel alike end with a statute respecting female heiresses, whiqli arose out of a case which came before Moses in Ore plains of Moab, shortly before his death and the invasion of Canaan.
Repetition of the Law ; Deuteronomy. —The generation which had been delivered from Egypt had met that doom in the wilderness to which Jehovah had devoted them in his wrath' (Ps. xcv. 1), and their children are on the confines of Canaan ready to enter on its conquest. Moses employs the few remaining weeks of his life in the consolidation of his great legislative work. He recounts to the sons God's mercies to their fathers all through the trials of their provocation, and above all he recapitulates the laws wherewith Je hovah had organised them into a theocratic people, and urges them by every constraining motive of love and fear to obey them. This Deuteronomy is not to be regarded of course as, organically, a new code, or even as a material addition to the former legislation, in the same sense as the Sinaitic laws (contained in Bertheau's Groups ii. -vi.), and the laws of Kadesh (Bertheau's Group vii.) were organic additions to 'the Book of the Covenant' (Bertheau's Group i.) It is rather an authoritative comment of the legislator upon his own laws ; or, to put it more correctly still, the inspired explana tion of the laws of the Divine King by the accredited human agent who had been employed in their original promulgation.* We have thus, in Deute ronomy, the human side of the law, as compared with the Divine side of the three preceding books —the subjective rather than the objective form. [DEuTERoNomv.] All the commandments, there fore, of this last book of the Pentateuch are given as injunctions of Moses, and not, as before, in the direct name of Jehovah. More of an ethical treat
ment of the law appears also in Deuteronomy. High moral aims are attributed to its discipline. The stern letter which killeth' (2 Cor. iii. 6), so manifest in the previous hooks, is here clothed with 'the spirit that giveth life.' Moses, the specially I honoured servant of Jehovah, and the mediator with Jehovah's people, had not been favoured with his unique opportunities of knowing God's purposes and will (Deut. xxxiv. so) without catching an insight into that great future for which his own legal dispensation was meant to pave the way. Nor could he have concluded the labours of his grand life with more effectual advantage to his nation than by adding the book of Deuteronomy to the law, with its treasury of spiritual truth, out of which, in the progressive scheme of God's dispensations, the holy prophets were in course of lime to take and expand such doctrines and precepts and promises as should gradually advance to the spirit and per fection of the gospel itself (Davison, On Prophecy, pp. 51, 52). This characteristic of Deuteronomy was carefully observed by the ancient fathers of the church, and St. Jerome expounds their pro found observation in these words—' Deuterono mium quoque secunda lex et evangelical legis pr figuratio. Nonne sic habet ea qua; priors sunt, ut tamen nova sint omnia de veteribus ?' as if the repetition of the law, signified by the title Deute ronomy, after all received its best sense in its pre figuring the law of the gospel, and so imparting a new aspect to the old commandments of which it treated (S. Hieronymi Opera [Ed. Ben. i. 276], Epist. ad Pauli».) Difference of Structure of the Deuter. law.—The parzenetic character of this last book of the Penta teuch prepares us for the absence of that structural regularity which we have seen pervading the legal portions of the former books. Bertheau (Grupp. Mos. Gesetze, S. 312) remarks on the manifest difference of the method, which has no longer the classification of sections and groups ; but instead thereof a long connected discourse, grounded on a more general basis. The oft-recurring formulce, which were the legal sanction, especially the well known MUM 1..z am+ inn (And the Lord spake unto Moses), have now disappeared ; moreover the greatest change of the order, as well as of the form, is apparent.' It must not, however, be forgotten that the great legislator is still an inspired agent of Jehovah, and that his communications to the new race of Israel carry no less real authority than the more formal decrees which he spoke to their fathers in God's direct name. This authority has always been acknowledged by Jews and Christians, and no part of the Mosaic writings is more appealed to throughout the O. T and in the N. T., than the book of Deuteronomy. This book bears some resemblance, as to its place in the harmony of the law, to St. John's Gospel in the evangelic harmony. It is supplementary, according to circumstances.