oracles in the two, examples gibeath moreh and allon moreh.  The latter expression is explained by another which alternates with it, “oak of the soothsayers.”  Now we know that the priests in the days of Saul and David gave divine oracles by the ephod and the lots connected with it, which answered one way or the other to a question put in an alternative form.  Their Torah grew no doubt out of this practice. 1 The Urim and Thummim are regarded,

************************************* 1. 1Sam xiv. xxiii. xxx.  In connection with 1Samuel xxxi. 3 I have conjectured that the verb of which Torah is the abstract means originally to throw the lot-arrows.  The Thummim have been compared in the most felicitous way by Freytag, and by Lagarde independently of him (Proph.  Chald. p. xlvii.) with the Arabian Tamaim, which not only signifies children’s amulets but any means of “averruncatio”.  Urim is probably connected with )RR “to curse” (cf.  Iliad i. 11 and Numbers xxiii. 23):  the two words of the formula seem mutually to supplement each other. ************************************

according to Deuteronomy xxxiii. 8, as the true and universal insignia of the priesthood; the ephod is last mentioned in the historical books in 1Kings ii. 26, 1

************************************** 1 Bleek, Einleiung in das A. T., 1878, p. 642. **************************************

but appears to have remained in use down to the time of Isaiah (Hosea iii. 4; Isaiah xxx. 22).  The Torah freed itself in the process of time, following the general mental movement, from such heathenish media and vehicles (Hab. ii. 19).  But it continued to be an oral decision and direction.  As a whole it is only a power and activity of God, or of the priests.  Of this subject there can be no abstract; the TEACHING; is only thought of as the action of the TEACHER.  There is no torah as a ready-made product, as a system existing independently of its originator and accessible to every one:  it becomes actual only in the various utterances, which naturally form by degrees the basis of a fixed tradition.  “They preserve Thy word, and keep Thy law; they teach Jacob Thy judgments and Israel Thy statutes " (Deuteronomy xxxiii. 9, 10).

The Torah of the priests appears to have had primarily a legal character.  In cases which there was no regular authority to decide, or which were too difficult for human decision, the latter was brought in the last instance before God, i.e., before the sanctuary or the priests (Exodus xviii. 25 seq.).  The priests thus formed a kind of supreme court, which, however, rested on a voluntary recognition of its moral authority, and could not support its decisions by force.  “If a man sin against another, God shall judge him,” 1Samuel ii. 25 says, very indefinitely.  Certain legal transactions of special solemnity are executed before God (Exodus xxi. 6).  Now in proportion as the executive