******************************************** 1 The details of the demonstration will be found in the Jahrbb. fuer Deutsche Theologie, 1776, p. 572 seq., 1877, p. 454, note, and in the Leyden Theol.  Tijdschrift, 1878, p. 139 seq. ********************************************

We come to the migration of the Israelites to the land east of the Jordan.  According to the Jehovist the neighbouring tribes place obstacles in their way, and the land in which they desire to settle has to be conquered with the sword.  The Priestly Code tells us as little of all this as in an earlier instance of the war with Amalek; from all it says we should imagine that the Israelites went straight to their mark and met with no difficulty in the region in question; the land is ownerless, and the possession of it is granted by Moses and Eleazar to the two tribes Reuben and Gad (Numbers xxxii.).  But that war may not be completely wanting under Moses, we have afterwards the war with the Midianites, on which we have already commented (Numbers xxxi.).  There is not much story about it, only numbers and directions; and in verse 27 there is a suspicion of 1Samuel xxx. 24, as if that passage were the groundwork of the whole.  The passage is extremely interesting as showing us the views taken of war by the Jews of the later time who had grown quite unaccustomed to it.  The occasion of the war also is noticeable; it is undertaken not for the acquisition of territory, nor with any other practical object, but only to take vengeance on the Midianites for having seduced some of the Israelites to uncleanness.

The elders of Midian, so the story goes, went to the soothsayer Balaam to ask his advice as to what should be done against the Israelite invaders.  He suggested a means by which the edge of the invasion might be broken; the Midianites should give their daughters to the Israelites for wives, and so deprive the holy people of their strength, the secret of which lay in their isolation from other peoples.  The Midianites took Balaam’s advice and succeeded in entangling many of the Israelites with the charms of their women; in consequence of which Jehovah visited the faithless people with a severe plague.  The narrative of the Priestly Code up to this point has to be pieced together from Numbers xxxi. 8, 16 and Joshua xiii. 22, and from what is implied in the sequel of it; at this point the portion of it begins which is preserved to us (Numbers xxv. 6 seq.), and we are told how the plague was ultimately stayed.  A certain man coolly brings a Midianitish woman into the camp before the very eyes of Moses and the weeping children of Israel:  then the young hereditary priest Phinehas takes a spear, transfixes the godless pair, and by this zeal averts the anger of Jehovah.  This narrative is based on the Jehovistic one, which is also preserved to us only in part (Numbers xxv. 1-5), about the backsliding of Israel in the camp of Shittim to the service of