the ideas of the Pentateuch to look for the tabernacle here, and, if he did not find it, to introduce it.  Yet even the interpolation does not remove the difficulties.  Where is the Mosaic altar of burnt-offering?  It was quite as important and holy as the tabernacle itself; even in Chronicles it is invariably mentioned expressly in connection with it, and did not deserve to be permitted to go to ruin at Gibeon, which, from another point of view, would also have been extremely dangerous to the unity of the sacrificial worship.  Further, if the sacred vessels were transferred from the tabernacle to the temple, why then was it that Solomon, according to 1Kings vii., cast a completely new set? 1

************************************* 1.  The brazen altar cast by Solomon (1Kings viii.64; 2Kings xvi.14, 15) is not now found in the inventory of the temple furniture in 1Kings vii.; but originally it cannot have been absent, for it is the most important article.  It has therefore been struck out in order to avoid collision with the brazen altar of Moses.  The deletion is the negative counterpart to the interpolation of the tabernacle in 1Kings viii.4. ***************************************

The old ones were costly enough, in part even costlier than the new, and, moreover, had been consecrated by long use.  It is clear that in Solomon’s time neither tabernacle, nor holy vessels, nor brazen altar of Moses had any existence.

But if there was no tabernacle in the time of the last judges and first kings, as little was it in existence during the whole of the previous period.  This is seen from 2Samuel vii., a section with whose historicity we have here nothing to do, but which at all events reflects the view of a pre-exilian author.  It is there told that David, after he had obtained rest from all his enemies, contemplated building a worthy home for the ark, and expressed his determination to the prophet Nathan in the words, “I dwell in a house of cedar, and the ark of God within curtains.”  According to vi.17, he can only mean the tent which he had set up, that is to say, not the Mosaic tabernacle, which, moreover, according to the description of Exodus xxv. seq., could not appropriately be contrasted with a timber erection, still less be regarded as a mean structure or unworthy of the Deity, for in point of magnificence it at least competed with the temple of Solomon.  Nathan at first approves of the king’s intention, but afterwards discountenances it, saying that at present God does not wish to have anything different from that which He has hitherto had.  “I have dwelt in no house since the day that I brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, but have wandered about under tent and covering.”  Nathan also, of course, has not in his eye the Mosaic tabernacle as the present lodging of the ark, but David’s tent upon Zion.  Now he does not say that the ark has formerly been always in the tabernacle, and that its present harbourage is therefore in the highest