EXODUS XIX.-XXIV.

N the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai" (ver. 1). The Lord called up Moses into the mountain, and gave him a message to the people. The beautiful figure in verse 4 forms part of this-" Tell the children of Israel; Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself." The same figure is more fully brought out in Deut. xxxii. 11, 12-"As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings; so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him." It has been customary to explain this by saying, that Moses simply makes use of a popular impression without any regard to its scientific truthfulness. This may have been the case, just as it is common among ourselves to speak of certain natural phenomena in ways which strictly speaking they do not warrant, such as the moving of the sun round the earth, the falling down of dew, and the like. The mode, however, in which Moses uses the figure in Deuteronomy, would lead one to look for the illustration of his words in the natural habits of the eagle. His long sojourn in the wild regions around the mount of God, must have made him familiar with the habits of several of the larger birds of prey. A friend, an accurate observer, has informed me, that he once witnessed the eagle, in one of the deep gorges of the Himalayas, thus teaching its young to fly. While with his glass he watched several young ones on a ledge of rock at a great height, the parent birds swept gently past the young, one of which ventured to follow, and seemed as if unequal to the flight. As it gently sunk down with extended wings, one of the parent birds glided underneath it, and bore it aloft again. Other birds have recourse to similar arts to support their young. The swan may often be seen sailing along with her cygnets on her back. So, likewise, with the wild duck. The observer will be amply rewarded for his patience in watching, if he once witnesses the arts brought to bear on the young by the parent bird, to prevail on them to rest on her as she glides from place to place. The other aspects of habit

noticed here have often been observed. "It is not necessary," says a recent traveller, writing in view of a deep chasm in the Lebanon range, "to press every poetical figure into strict prosaic accuracy. The notion, however, appears to have been prevalent among the ancients, that the eagle did actually take up her yet timid young, and carry them forth to teach them how, and embolden them to try their own pinions. To this idea Moses seems to refer in Exodus xix. 4: 'Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself.' The fact is not impossible: the eagle is strong enough to do it, but I am not aware that such a thing has ever been witnessed. I myself, however, have seen the old eagle fly round and round the nest, and back and forth past it, while the young ones fluttered and shivered on the edge, as if eager but afraid to launch forth from the giddy precipice. And no wonder, for the nest 'is on high,' and a fall from thence would end their flight for ever." Almost all kinds of birds try this "fluttering, and spreading abroad of their wings," to entice their young to leave their nest. Goldsmith has made fine use of the fact in his sketch of the village pastor :—

"But in his duty, prompt at every call

He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt, for all:

And, as a bird each fond endearment tries
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,

He tried each art, reprov'd each dull delay,
Allur'd to brighter worlds, and led the way."

"The eagle," Heb. nesher, is the golden eagle; see under Leviticus

xi. 13.

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me" (xx. 4, 5). The precept strikes at the root of all idolatry. The expression "any thing that is in heaven. above," is not to be limited to imaginary images of angels. This is no doubt included in it, but it is susceptible of an application much more purely Egyptian likewise. In carly Egyptian astrology cach planet had an animal consecrated to it, which was esteemed sacred by the people, and had divine homage paid to it. A blow is also struck at other gross forms of animal worship in the words "earth bencath, and waters under

the earth." A multitude of beasts, birds, and fishes were esteemed sacred by the Egyptians. Some of these were worshipped from dread; most of them were so because of real or imaginary benefits they were held to bestow on man. But "the Bible denies that this gives man a right to declare them as Divine beings; to assign whole provinces for their sustenance; to offer to them voluntary gifts in gold and silver; to collect alms for them; to bathe and to anoint them; to cover them with rich garments, and to place them on luxurious cushions; to erect

for them magnificent temples, and to scent the air which they inhale with the most costly perfumes; to bewail their death more than that of a man; to punish those who kill them as impious murderers, and to visit even their undesigned destruction; to embalm their bodies, and to entomb them in beautiful sarcophagi with lavish expense. The beasts are, according to the Mosaic doctrine, beings that owe the breath of their life to the omnipotence of God; to Him they are indebted for all

their instincts; and, if these serve the use and advantage of man, they fulfil merely their natural destiny; and the honour belongs to Him alone who has endowed them with those wonderful powers."

See for notice of chap. xxii. 6, under 2 Kings xix. 26. Chap. xxiii. is devoted to questions bearing upon the attitude of the people to one another, to the three great feasts, and to the promise of help in driving out the doomed people of Canaan from the promised land. In verses 27-30 it is said—"I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come; and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee. And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee. I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee. By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased and inherit the land." The words "my fear" are evidently very general. That they are to be regarded as equivalent to "hornet,' is not so clear as some have thought. They seem rather to include natural agencies of any sort, which would fall as a scourge on the people to be expelled from the land. One such agent was found in the hornet. There is no reason for taking this word as used metaphorically to express the curse of God which was to fall on the natives of Canaan. Examples are not awanting of the tremendous influence for evil of swarms of hornets. They may be regarded as having been actually sent on the Canaanites. Thus in the closing address of the Lord to the people by Joshua, it is said-" And I sent the hornet before you, which drave them out from before you, even the two kings of the Amorites; but not with thy sword, nor with thy bow" (Josh. xxiv. 12).

"Hornet," Heb. tzireah, is the Vespa crabro of entomologists, one of the Vespida, or wasp family of insects. It is much larger than the common wasp, is of a dark brown colour, very active and fierce. Its sting is very severe and often deadly. It still abounds in Palestine. "The arms with which they annoy are two darts finer than a hair, furnished on the outer side at the end with several barbs not visible to the naked eye, and each moving in the groove of a strong and often curved sheath, frequently mistaken for the sting, which, when the darts enter the flesh, usually injects a drop of subtile venom, furnished from a peculiar vessel in which it is secreted, into the wound."

Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, went up into the Mount to meet with God-" And they saw the God of Israel and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a

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sapphire-stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness" (xxiv. 10).

"Sapphire," Heb. sappir. This word occurs ten times in the Old and once in the New Testament. The sapphire is a variety of corundite, a precious stone composed almost entirely of alumina. Corundites are of different colours, as grey, brown, red, and blue. The well-known emery, used in polishing stones, cutting glass, &c., has the grey colour predominating. When brown prevails, we have the, so-called, adamantine spar. Red yields the oriental ruby, and blue the sapphire. Alumina and silex, or rock-crystal, form the basis of nearly all precious stones. The tones of corundites depend on the proportion of oxide of iron and of silex they contain. Thus, while the noble corundite,

sapphire, contains alumina 98.5, oxide of iron 1'0, lime 0.5, the common corundite, emery, contains alumina 860, silica 30, oxide of iron 4.0. The colour of the sapphire is a clear beautiful blue. Its hue varies from the most delicate azure to the bright indigo blue. Very valuable specimens have been obtained which are blue by day and assume a beautiful violet colour under artificial light. The sapphire is chiefly found in India and Ceylon. This accounts for the comparative familiarity of the Hebrews with it. They would obtain it, in the earliest period of their history, from the merchants who traded with India by the way of Arabia, and, in later times, it would be brought by the ships of Tarshish which traded between Ezion-geber and the southern shores of Asia.