Where such exact order and instruction existed, it may not be doubted that in rnilitary affairs„upon which in the first years of emancipation so much of future power and success was to depend, measures no less appropriate were taken, and that, with the Egyptian model universally known, similar institu tions, or others equally efficient, were adopted by the Israelites. Great tribal ensigns they had, and thence we may infer the existence of others for subordinate divisions. Like the Egyptians, they could move in columns and form well-ordered ranks in deep fronts of battle ; and they acted upon the best suggestions of human ingenuity united with physical daring, except when expressly ordered to trust to divine interposition. The force of circum stances caused in time modifications of importance to be made, where doctrine had interfered with what was felt to hinge on political necessities ; but even then they were long and urgently wanted before they took place, although the people in religion were constantly disregarding the most im portant points, and forsaking that God who, they all knew and believed, had taken them out of bondage to make them a great nation. Thus, although from the time the tribes of Reuben and Manasseh received their allotment east of the Jor dan, the possession of horses became in some mea sure necessary to defend their frontier, still the people persisted for ages in abstaining from them, and even in the time of David would not use them when they were actually captured ; but when the policy of Solomon had made extensive conquests the injunction was set aside, because horses became all-important ; and from the captivity till after the destruction of Jerusalem, the remnant of the east ern tribes were in part warlike equestrian nomades, who struck terror into the heart of the formidable Persian cavalry., won great battles, and even cap tured Parthian kings. When both the kingdoms of Judah and Israel were again confined to the mountains, they reduced their cavalry to a small body ; because, it may be, the nature of the soil within the basin of the Libanus was, as it still is, unfavourable to breeding horses. Another instance of unwillingness to violate ancient institutions is found in the Hebrews abstaining from active war on the Sabbath until the tinie of the Maccabees.
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 influ ence of Asiatic military ideas, according to which the masses do not act with ordered unity, but trust to the more adventurous in the van to decide the fate of battle. Later still, under the Maccabees, the systematic discipline of Macedonian importation can be observed, even though in Asia the Greek method of training, founded on mathematical prin ciples, had never been fully complied with, or had been modified by the existence of new circumstances and new elements of destruction ; such, for ex ample, as the use of great bodies of light cavalry, showering millions of arrows upon their enemies, and fighting elephants introduced by the Ptolemies.
But all these practices became again modified in Western Asia when Roman dominion had super seded the Greek kingdoms. Even the Jews, as is evident from Josephus, modelled their military force on the imperial plan ; their infantry became armed, and was manceuvred in accordance with that system which everywhere gave victory by means of the firmness and mobility which it im parted. The masses were composed of cohorts or their equivalents, consisting of centuthe and de curice, or subdivisions into hundreds, fifties, and tens, similar to modern battalions, companies, and squads ; and the commanders wcre of like grades and numbers. Thus the people of Israel, and the nations around them, cannot be accurately consi dered, in a military view, without taking into account the successive changes here noticed ; for they had the same influence which military innova tions had in Europe between the eras of Charle magne 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 pro duced upon the military institutions of antiquity.
The army of Israel was chiefly composed of in fantry, as before remarked, formed into a trained body of spearmen, and, in greater numbers, 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 Ben jamin, 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 instrumentality of selected officers, but by genealogists of each tribe, under the superintendence of the princes. Of those returned on the rolls, a proportion greater or less was selected, according to the exigency of the time ; and the whole male population might be called out on extraordinary occasions. When kings had rendered the system of government better or ganised, there was an officer denominated ',DIM, hash-shale'', a sort of muster-master, who had re turns of the effective force, or number of soldiers ready for service, but who was subordinate to the has-sopher, or scribe, a kind of secretary of state. These officers, or the VilUV, shoterint, struck out, or excused from service :—Ist, Those who had built a house without having yet inhabited it ; 2d, Those who had planted an olive or vineyard, and had not tasted the fruit—which gave leave of aosence for five years ; 3d, Those who were be trothed, or had been married less than one year ; 4th, The faint-hearted, which may mean the consti tutionally delicate, rather than the cowardly, as that quality is seldom owned without personal in convenience, and where it is no longer a shame the rule would destroy every levv.
The levies were drilled to march in ranks (1 Chron. xii. -.8), and in column by fives (nvnri, Chamushini) abreast (Exod. xiii. 18) ; 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 hun dred a solid square, with only the additional dis tance between the right hand or unmoved 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. The Pentastichoust system, or arrangement of five men in dcpth, was effected by the shnple evolution just mentioned, to its own condensation to double number, and at the same time afforded the neces sary space between the standing files of spearmen or light infantry for handling their weapons with out obstacle, always a primary object in every ancient system of training. Between the fifth and sixth rank there was thus space made for the ensign bearer, who, as he then stood precisely between the companies of fifty each, had probably some additional width to enable his ensign being sta tioned between the four middlemost men in the square, having five men in file and five in rank before, behind, and on each side ; there he \vas the regulator of their order, coming to the front in advancing, and to the rear in retreating ; and this may explain why grixos, a file, and the Hebrew deghel and nes, an ensign, are in many cases re garded as synonymous. Although neither the Egyptian depth of formation, if we may judge from their pictured monuments, 'nor the Greek phalanx, nor the Roman legion, was constructed upon deci mal principles, yet the former was no doubt so in its origin, since it was the model of the Israelites ; and the tetrastichal system, which afterwards suc ceeded, shows that it was not the original, since even in the phalanx, where the files formed, broke, and doubled by fours, eights, sixteens, and thirty twos, there remained names of sections which indi cated the first-mentioned division : such was the pentacontarchy, denoting some arrangement of fifty, while in reality it consisted of sixty-four ; and the decany and decurio, though derived from a decimal order, signified an entire file or a compact line in the phalanx, without reference to number.