* Exod. xx. 18, 19.

** This legislation and the history of the circumstances on which it was promulgated are contained in four of the books of the Pentateuch, viz. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  Any one of the numerous text-books published in Germany will be found to contain an analysis of these books, and the prevalent opinions as to the date of the documents which it [the Hexateuch] contains.  I confine myself here and afterwards only to such results as may fitly be used in a general history.

The people waited from week to week until Jahveh had completed the revelation of His commands, and in their impatience broke the new law more than once.  On one occasion, when “Moses delayed to come out of the mount,” they believed themselves abandoned by heaven, and obliged Aaron, the high priest, to make for them a golden calf, before which they offered burnt offerings.  The sojourn of the people at the foot of Sinai lasted eleven months.  At the end of this period they set out once more on their slow marches to the Promised Land, guided during the day by a cloud, and during the night by a pillar of fire, which moved before them.  This is a general summary of what we find in the sacred writings.

The Israelites, when they set out from Egypt, were not yet a nation.  They were but a confused horde, flying with their herds from their pursuers; with no resources, badly armed, and unfit to sustain the attack of regular troops.  After leaving Sinai, they wandered for some time among the solitudes of Arabia Petraea in search of some uninhabited country where they could fix their tents, and at length settled on the borders of Idumaea, in the mountainous region surrounding Kadesh-Barnea.* Kadesh had from ancient times a reputation for sanctity among the Bedawin of the neighbourhood:  it rejoiced in the possession of a wonderful well—­the Well of Judgment—­to which visits were made for the purpose of worship, and for obtaining the “judgment” of God.  The country is a poor one, arid and burnt up, but it contains wells which never fail, and wadys suitable for the culture of wheat and for the rearing of cattle.  The tribe which became possessed of a region in which there was a perennial supply of water was fortunate indeed, and a fragment of the psalmody of Israel at the time of their sojourn here still echoes in a measure the transports of joy which the people gave way to at the discovery of a new spring:  “Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it:  the well which the princes digged, which the nobles of the people delved with the sceptre and with their staves."**

     * The site of Kadesh-Barnea appears to have been fixed with
     certainty at Ain-Qadis by C. Trumbull.