B.C. 1490.

ways. Study to have an inward light, a practical,

should interfere with the proper discharge of duty; 2. It had respect to the present only: "To-day." II. Moses' reply. He was content. If his bro. was wrong, he was also, at any rate, devout and sincere. Fear and love.—Fear and love are necessary to constitute that sanctifying light, directing you; frame of mind wherein the essence of piety or true godliness doth and be not consist. Fear is necessary to keep God in our eyes; it is the office merely held, as of love to enthrone Him in our hearts. Fear cautions or avoids beasts, by the and whatever may offend; love yields a prompt and liberal service. authority laws of men, but Fear regards God as a witness and a judge; love cleaves to Him learn to know as a friend and a father. Fear makes us watchful and circum- and be sensible spect; love renders us active and resolute. In short, fear and of the sovereign authority of the love go hand in hand, and mutually assist each other. Love Most High God keeps fear from being servile and distrustful; and fear keeps and His law, and love from being forward and secure; and both spring from one to have respect unto all His comroot, viz., faith in God as a Being possessed of infinite perfec-mandments." tion, and related to us as our Creator and Governor, our Redeemer Leighton. and Judge.

If Cope.

CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH.

6

1—3. (1, 2) beasts," Heb. chayyah, living creatures (3) beasts clean hoof.. footed, not with solid hoof, as the horse; or that wh. and unclean has a hoof cloven in part, as the camel. and.. cud, of the order a Ac. x. 12-14. Ruminantia or popularly regarded as such, "the act of chew-"In this combiing the cud,' and rechewing being considered identical by the Hebs.; the sacred legislator, not being occupied with the doctrines of science, no doubt used the expression in the sense in wh. it was then understood."

nation of parting ing the cud the union of two moral and spiritual qualities is

the hoof and chew

those animals

Homiletic hints.-The Divine government of the table and ap- supposed to be petite. The common meal regarded in relation to law, natural spiritualised, viz. and revealed, a religious feast. The body to be cared for in the sure walking in selection of food at once sufficient and wholesome. God legis-laws (Ro. ii. 18, the way of God's lating on behalf of our lower nature sugg. of His greater care iii. 20-22; Ga. for the higher. The food of the mind, and heart, and soul. Here ii. 12-14; Ep. v. also there is clean and unclean. 15) and meditation upon it (Ps. Clean and unclean animals.-Of the laws relative to clean and i. 2)." Wordsunclean beasts, which are recorded in Lev. xi. and Deut. xiv., the worth. following may, perhaps, serve as an abstract, sufficient for a "The hearer of reader who has not to observe them, but means only to contem- God's Word plate them philosophically. In regard to quadrupeds, Moses re- ought to be like duces the previous customs of the Israelites, together with the that chew the additional ordinances which he found it necessary to make, into cud; he ought a very simple and natural system. According to him, all beasts not only to feed that have their feet completely cloven, above as well as below, and at upon it, but to ruminate upon the same time chew the cud, are clean. Those which have neither, it."St. Augusor indeed want one of these distinguishing marks, are unclean. tine on Ps. xlvi. That in so early an age of the world we should find a systematic Everything lives division of quadrupeds so excellent, as never yet, after all the according to the improvements in natural history, to have become obsolete, but, order of its on the contrary, to be still considered as useful by the greatest it be man, beast, masters of the science, cannot but be looked upon as truly won- bird, or reptile. derful. In the case of certain quadrupeds, however, a doubt may tural man acts on Hence the naarise whether they do fully divide the hoof, or ruminate. For natural princiexample, whether the hare ruminates or not is so undecided ples, the spiritual

nature-whether

B.C. 1490.

man on those

Christ, not through pressure

any

from without, but from a vital principle

within.

The law convinces

of sin.-"You see

not the motes in the air, though

that if we put the question to any two sportsmen, we shall rarely receive the same answer. In such cases, to prevent difficulties, which are spi-a legislator must authoritatively decide; by which I do not ritual. The be-mean, that he is to prescribe to naturalists what their belief liever lives to should be, but only to determine, for the sake of expounders or judges of the law, what animals are to be regarded as ruminating or parting the hoof. The camel ruminates, but whether it fully parts the hoof is a question so undecided that we do not, even in the Memoirs of the Academy of Paris, find a satisfactory answer to it on all points. The foot of the camel is actually divided into two toes, and the division even below is complete, so that the animal might be accounted clean; but then it does not extend the whole length of the foot, but only to the forepart; for behind it is not parted, and we find, besides, under it, and conforest, till the nected with it, a ball on which the camel goes. Now, in this glowing ray re- dubious state of circumstances, Moses authoritatively declares The river (Lev. xi. 4) that the camel has not the hoof fully divided. It seems to flow would appear as if he had meant that this animal, heretofore and accounted clean by the Ishmaelites, Midianites, and all the rest clear till the of Abraham's Arabian descendants, should not be eaten by the Israelities; probably with a view to keep them, by this means, the more separate from these nations, with whom their connexion and their coincidence in manners were otherwise so close; and perhaps, too, to prevent them from conceiving any desire to continue in Arabia, or to devote themselves again to their favourite occupation of wandering herdsmen. For in Arabia, a people will always be in an uncomfortable situation if they dare not eat the flesh and drink the milk of the camel."

numerous as the leaves of

the

veals them to the

eye.

stainless

wondrous microscope displays to the view a hundred loathsome reptiles enclosed in every drop that glitters be

neath the sun.". A. L. O. E.

b Michaelis.

quadrupeds clean and unclean

a De. xiv. 7; Ps. civ. 18; Pr. xxx. 26.

4-8. (4) nevertheless, etc., here follow illustrations of this law. camel. . hoof, though divided above, it is connected below by the pad. (5) coney," the hyrax (Hyrax Syriacus) or wabber of the Arabs. he.. cud, the action of the jaws is like that of ruminating animals. (6) hare, two varieties, Lepus "The rule given Syriacus, less than ours, yellowish buff; L. Sinaiticus, ab. size was that no ani- and colour of our wild rabbit. (7) swine,' still regarded as unmal popularly clean by many E. nations. (8) flesh. . eat, etc., "nothing held to ruminate separates one people fr. another more than that one should eat garded as fit for what the other considers unlawful.”

should be re

rule was most

food unless it Homiletic hints.-What to avoid. Three classes of animals to were cloven- be rejected as sources of food. I. Those whose multiplication footed. And this was slow, and whose special uses were needful-as the camel. effectual for the II. Those that were difficult to obtain; and not to be got but by intended pur- leaving the camp: wh. would involve danger and contact with pose, because all the heathens around-as the coney. III. Those that were by ruminants habit unclean and whose flesh is not, even now, reckoned most footed, although wholesome and nutritious-as the hog.

real

are

cloven

all cloven-footed

animals are not

Kitto.

Hare, lit. the leaping animal. A. S. hara; Ger.

The hare and the coney.-In Leviticus and Deuteronomy, ruminants." among the animals forbidden as food are the coney, i.e. the hyrax, a diminutive pachyderm peculiar to the Holy Land and to Africa, and the hare; and of each it is said, "he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof." Much difficulty has been raised hase; Sans. çaça upon this passage, because it is now well known by naturalists -cacto jump. that neither the hare nor the coney are ruminants, neither of Swine, lit. the them possessing the extra stomach of ruminating animals, and prolific animal, or the grunter. that therefore, strictly speaking, they do not "chew the cud." A. S. Swin; Ger. A notorious impugner of Holy Writ not long since took the

B.C. 1490.

grunt.

16, 17; He. ix.

trouble of writing to one of the most eminent naturalists in England to inquire whether the hare were a ruminant, and then schwein; Lat. sus; with a flourish of trumpets published his reply, which stated Gk.hus; fr. Sans. a fact known to any child in the first class of a national school. su; to bring But unfortunately for this parade of a wonderful discovery, there forth, or fr. its are two things apparently unknown to the self-advertising critic. 8 Is. lxv. 4, lxvi. First, that the Hebrew word does not imply "having a ruminant 3, 17. stomach," but simply rechew, or masticate; and, secondly, that e Ro. xiv. 14, 17; the text practically states that the hare and coney are not rumi-1 Co. viii. Col. ii. nating animals. But both of these creatures have a constant 9, 10. habit, as any observer of the former knows, of grinding and Treat animals chewing with their teeth. Whenever the hare is at rest on its kindly, and they will give us their form, the restless motion of its jaws betrays the constant working love; teach them of its teeth, and the same habit we have noticed in the coney. kindly, and they But for all this, they were not to be classed with the "clean," will give us their or ruminating animals; and the lawgiver in fact says, that "Admire the though to all appearance they are rechewing animals, yet they do wisdom of the not fulfil the conditions of creatures allowable for food. It is Creator in providing animals remarkable that the Arabs of the present day, though in most with instincts points adhering to the Mosaic distinctions of clean and unclean, suitable to their yet class the hare among animals lawful to be eaten, on the forms and habits of life."-Topics. express ground that it does chew the cud. d Dr. Tristram.

service.

9-12. (9) all.. waters, fish, etc. scales.. eat, fish with-fishes clean out scales still avoided in Egypt. (10) not.. scales, etc., as and unclean shell fish, eels, etc. (11, 12) abomination," shall not even be a Le. vii. 18; De. regarded but with detestation. xiv. 3; 1 Co. viii. 13.

Poisonous fish.-There are five obvious circumstances to be taken into consideration in the incidents of fish-poisoning. (1) The existence of a sanies, from some disorder indicated in the The fish here living tissues of the animal; (2) A natural deleteriousness in described as the flesh, without reference to a state of disease; (3) The adven-edible, are such titious presence of something deleterious in the fish, from the as, to this day, are regarded as food recently eaten; (4) The injury resulting from cooking fish wholesome. with such large organs as the liver unextracted,—the liver being at all times dangerous as food in some particular fishes; (5) The poisonous putrefaction known to prevail in some fishes after 24 hours' keeping. Morbid action set up in the healthy animal body that receives the putrefactive poison being indicated by oppression, nausea, giddiness, and general prostration. To these may be added-(6) The known existence of an irritating fluid, issuing from the surface of some fishes of peculiar structure."

b Dr. Burroughs.

c Ibid. 102.

13-19. (13) eagle, prob. the great vulture. Heb., nesher. birds clean The griffon vulturea (Vultur fulvus), called Nisr by Arabs. and unclean ossifrage, i.e. the bone-breaker: Heb. peres (also called lamer- a Tristram's Land geyer, the bearded vulture (Gypaëtus barbatus), of the natural- of Israel, 447. ists). ospray, perh. the sea-eagle (Pandion Haliaëtus), or the b Ibid. 184. short-toed eagle (Circaëtus gallicus). (14) vulture, Heb., dããh, the kite. kite, prob. the red kite (Milvus regalis). (15) raven.. kind, all of the crow family. (16) owl, Heb., bath d Ps. cii. 6. haya' anah, the ostrich. the.. hawk, owl. cuckow, perh. e Tristram, L. of the gulle (as the Larus andouni). (17) owl,d the Athene meri-1. 68. dionalis. cormorant, the common C. (Phalacrocorax carbo). f De. xiv. 16, note and owl, the horned owl (Bubo maximus). (18) swan, the Heb. prob. the ibis (Ibis religiosa), an unclean feeder. pelican,g De. xiv. 17; Ps. perh. the P. ornocratalus. gier eagle, Heb., rāchām: prob. cii. 6; Is. xxxiv.

B.C. 1490.

Egyptian vulture, the racham of mod. Arabs (Neophron percuop11; Zeph. ii. 14; terus). (19) stork, prob the black S. (Ciconia nigra). ́heron, the great plover ( Charadrius ædicnemus). lapwing, prob. the hoopoe (Upupa epops).

marg.

h Freq. on upper Jordan. Mac

gregor Rob Roy on Jordan, 286.

i Tristram, L. of I. 438, 539.

"The Arabs have a super

stitious

rence for this bird, wh. they believe to possess dicinal qualities, and they call it the doctor. Its

marvellous me

head is an indispensable ingredient in all charms and in the practice of

witchcraft."Tristram.

k

i

Homiletic hints. These are, for the most part, birds of prey, or unclean feeders. I. Not good for food. II. Needful as scavengers. III. Not prolific. IV. Not gregarious, Live in solitudes and mountain regions.

The ossifrage. The bird here denoted is the Lämmer-geyer, or Bearded Vulture, the largest and most magnificent of the vulture tribe (Gypaëtus barbatus); and the Hebrew word, meaning "the breaker," is well expressed by the Latin ossifrage, or "bonebreaker." Marrow bones and tortoises are its favourite delicacies; but huge as is its size (four and a half feet in length), its claws and bill are comparatively weak, and it is only by carrying its prize to a great height, and then dropping it repeatedly, that it is able to reach the dainty morsel within. It is not a common bird in the Holy Land, and is not gregarious; but most of the ravines are peopled by a pair, and one or two may be observed in every day's journey. The Lämmer-geyer may be seen floating slowly at a uniform level, close to the cliffs of some deep gorge, like the Jabbok, where his shadow is cast on the wall-like rocks. If the ravine has sharp angles, he does not cut across from point to point, but preserves the same distance from the cliffs. When the other vultures have picked the flesh off any animal, he comes in at the end of the feast, and swallows the bones, or breaks them and swallows the pieces, if he cannot otherwise extract the These birds, im- marrow. The bones he cracks by letting them fall on a rock plying rapacity, from a great height. He does not, however, confine himself to cruelty, luxu- these delicacies, but, whenever he has an opportunity, will riousness, glutdevour lambs, kids, or hares. These he generally obtains by pushing them over cliffs when he has watched his opportunity, of the will of and he has been known to attack men while climbing rocks, and God. dash them against the bottom. But tortoises and serpents are his ordinary food.'

Of vulturidæ, two species, V. cinereus and V. fulvus, may have

been known in Palestine.

tony,

are for

bidden, as hints

1 Dr. Tristram.

creeping

things clean and unclean

20-23. (20) all.. creep, lit. all creeping things with wings : as insects. (21) flying, etc., insects of the saltatoria kind, as the cricket and grasshopper. (22) locusts,a much used in the a Ma. iii. 4; Mk. E. as food. beetle, etc., prob. var. of locust species are meant. (23) all.. things, all other of the insect tribes.

i. 6.

b Robinson's B. R.

Homiletic hints.-Locusts, as an article of food, are-I. Abunii. 204; Palgrave, dant. II. Nutritious. III. Savoury. IV. Used in many parts of the East.

Arabia ii. 138.

beings so minute

and, as it were, such nonentities, what wisdom is displayed, what power, what un

On the perfection Prohibited reptiles, etc.-Moses is especially careful to interdict of insects, Pliny the use of various sorts of lizards; which, of course, must have says:-"In these been eaten in some parts of Egypt, or by the people in the adjacent countries; but concerning which, I must admit, that I have not met with any account besides. There is, indeed, as we find from Hasselquist's Travels in Palestine (under the class Amphibia, lvii.), one species of lizard in that country, viz., the Gecko, which is poisonous; so much so, that its poison kills when it happens to be among meat. This is not the case with the poison of serpents, which is only noxious in a wound, and may, as well more food delias the animals themselves, which are edible, be safely taken into cacies than the stomach, if only the mouth be perfectly sound, and free from posed. Many bloody spots. This Lacerta Gecko must certainly not have been

fathomable per

fection!"

"Insects furnish

is

generally sup

B.C. 1490.

larvæ of insects,

the

eaten by any of the neighbouring nations, and Moses had therefore no occasion to prohibit it. With regard, however, to those winged insects, which besides four walking legs (Pedes saltatorii), esp. beetles, are Moses makes an exception, and under the denomination of locusts, eaten in dif. parts declares them clean in all their four stages of existence, and of the world." under as many different degrees of hardness. In Palestine, "The Hottentots Arabia, and the adjoining countries, locusts are one of the most rejoice at arrival of locommon articles of food, and the people would be very ill off if custs, eating they durst not eat them. For when a swarm of them desolates them in such the fields, they prove, in some measure, themselves an antidote to quantities as to the famine which they occasion; so much so, indeed, that poor than before, and get visibly fatter people look forward with anxiety to the arrival of a swarm of making of their locusts, as yielding them sustenance without any trouble. They eggs a brown or are not only eaten fresh, immediately on their appearance, but coffee-coloured the people collect them, and know a method of preserving them soup." for a long time for food, after they have dried them in an oven.c 24-28. (24) toucheth," avoid touching and there will be touching the no eating. (25) beareth, in his clothes. (26) every.. them, carcases of the unclean even by accident: emphasis marked by repetition. (27) paws, as dis. fr. those that have hoofs; as beasts of prey, etc. (28) he carcase, as to bury it; out of the camp. Homiletic hints.-I. Recapitulation needful-1. To enforce duty; 2. To aid the memory. II. Strict prohibition necessary conveniences of "The great into prevent evasion of law. If we do not touch, we cannot eat. the law conEve looked at, longed for, touched the fruit before she ate it. nected with this Give an inch, take an ell. Minute regulations useful in the infancy of society.

c Michaelis.

a Col. ii. 21.

and other defile

ments, necessarily obliged the Israelites to pay great attention to cleanliwas probably what the laws on this subject had principally in view."-Kitto.

ness; and this

Touching the unclean.-The law further prohibited the touching the carcase of any unclean beast. This, however, does not mean that a carcase was, in a literal sense, never to be touched (for then it must always have been in the way, and we shall see in the sequel that it was expressly ordered to be buried), but only that the person who touched it was to be deemed unclean till the evening. To strangers who dwelt among the Israelites, unclean beasts were not forbidden for certainly the legislator never thought of making his prohibition of certain meats a moral law, "However the by which every man, of whatever nation, was to be bound to law, to make it regulate his conduct. If his design in these statutes was to a mystery and a

be

separate the Israelites from other nations, it must have been his trade, may wrapped up in

vious to common

wish and intention to prohibit the former from the use of those terms of art, yet very meats which were eaten by the latter; and had the people it is founded on in any of the surrounding countries deemed all such meats reason, and obunclean, Moses would probably have given a set of laws on this sense."-Bucksubject quite different from those which he did give. When a ingham. commander gives his soldiers a cockade to distinguish them from other troops, he by no means wishes that everybody should indis-v. 26. The prohibited animals criminately wear it, but would rather have it taken from any under this deforeigner who should mount it. The law relative to clean and scription include unclean beasts was never, not even under the Old Testament, a not only those precept of religion which every individual, to whatever nation he wh. have a single belonged, was bound to observe for the sake of his eternal salva- hoof, but those which divide the tion; it was only, if I may so term it, a cockade for the Israel- foot into paws, ites; but still one that they could not omit wearing without as lions, &c. committing a trespass of a Divine commandment; and, indeed, it was so firmly pinned upon them by their earliest education, that b Michaelis. it must certainly have been difficult for them ever to lay it aside."