statutes and laws which now, forty years after, he is on the point of publishing, as they will come into force at the settlement.  In the meantime the golden calf had been made down below; and when Moses descended from the mount, in his anger he broke the tables and destroyed the idol.  Then he betook himself for a second period of forty days and nights to the mount, pleaded for mercy for the people and for Aaron; and after he had made, according to divine command, two new tables and a wooden chest for them, Jehovah once more wrote down exactly what stood on the tables which were broken.  On this occasion, it is remarked in x. 8 seq., the Levites received their appointment as priests.

This is evidently a reproduction of the Jehovistic narrative, Exodus xix. xx. xxiv. xxxii-xxxiv.  The Priestly Code, on the contrary, is entirely ignored.  Deuteronomy knows only two laws, the decalogue, which the people received, and the statutes and judgments which Moses received, at Mount Horeb.  They were both given at the same time, one directly after the other:  but only the decalogue had till now been made public.  Where is the whole wilderness-legislation as given from the tabernacle?  Is it not denying the very notion of its existence, that Moses only publishes the Torah at the passage into the Holy Land, because it has application and force for that land, and not for the wilderness?  Apart from the fact that the Deuteronomist, according to chapter xii., knew nothing of a Mosaic central sanctuary, can he have read what we now read between Exodus xxiv. and xxxii.?  He passes over all that is there inserted from the Priestly Code.  Noldeke finds, it is true, 1

********************************************* 1.  Jahrbb. fuer prot.  Theologie, 1875, p. 350. **********************************************

a reminiscence of that code in the ark of acacia wood, Deuteronomy x. 1.  But the ark is here spoken of in a connection which answers exactly to that of the Jehovist (Exod xxxii. xxxiii.), and is quite inconsistent with that, of the Priestly Code (Exodus xxv. seq.).  It is only instituted after the erection of the golden calf, not at the very beginning of the divine revelation, as the foundation-stone of the theocracy.  True, the ark is not mentioned in JE, Exodus xxxiii., as we now have it, but in the next Jehovistic piece (Numbers x. 33) it suddenly appears, and there must have been some statement in the work as to how it came there.  The tabernacle also appears ready set up in xxxiii. 7, without any foregoing account of its erection.  The institution of the ark as well as the erection of the tabernacle must have been narrated between xxxiii. 6 and 7, and then omitted by the present editor of the Pentateuch from the necessity of paying some regard to Q, Exodus xxv.; that this is the case many other considerations also tend to prove. 2

***************************************************** 2.  Without the ark there is no use of the tabernacle, and the distinction in Exodus xxxiii. which is treated as one of importance, between the representation (Mal’ak) of Jehovah and Jehovah Himself, has no meaning.  By making an image the Israelites showed that they could not do without a sensible representation of the Deity, and Jehovah therefore gave them the ark instead of the calf. *****************************************************