The Lawgiver
“And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?” — Deut. IV. 8.
A MODEEN jurist, a rrenchman and an infidel, observes, “Good right had Moses to challenge his Israelites, And what nation hath statutes like yours? a so exalted, laws so equitable, a code so complete? Compared with all the legislations of antiquity, none so thoroughly embodies the principles of everlasting and universal righteousness. Lycurgus WTote not for a people but for an army: it was a barrack which he erected, not a commonwealth; and sacrificing everything to the military spirit, he mutilated human nature in order to crush it into armour. Solon, on the contrary, could not resist the effeminate and relaxing influences of his Athens. It is in Moses alone that we find a regard for the right, austere and incorruptible, — a morality distinct from policy, and rising above regard for times and peoples. The trumpet of Sinai still finds an echo in the conscience of mankind, — the Decalogue still binds us all.”
Did the merit belong to Moses, in the annals of legislation his would be the proudest of names, for never before nor since did a code spring into such sudden existence or conquer such tremendous difficulties. As it is, that name stands out in serene and saintly pre-eminence, as the meek self-merging medium through which Heaven conveyed to earth the choicest of mercies. “Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon Him for? And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?” — Where it is beautiful to see how God gets all the glory, and Israel all the good; how, on the one hand, mingling himself with the mass of the nation, the man Moses, so very meek, he speaks of Jehovah as ‘’ our God,” — their. God as much as his; and how, on the other hand, he tries to lift their hearts from the midst of their mercies to that God who gave them this mercy surpassing, statutes and judgments so righteous. Like a magnificent Alp, whose green skirts are the nest of a nation, and whose top white and glisteni Legislation Franaise, par Heunequin, torn, i. 609.
ing, if terrestrial at all, is something transfigured, our lawgiver stands up in the horizon of history, not proud but pre-eminent — a halo round his head, and an emancipated people at his feet — claiming to himself no credit, but rejoicing in their happiness, and pointing to that high source from which it all comes down.
In order to understand the Mosaic legislation rightly, we must remember a distinction. The Israelites were to be a peculiar people. They existed not for themselves, but they had a function to fulfil towards all mankind, and, in order to fulfil this function, it was needful that they should be for a time a people separate and self-contained, singular in their usages and sequestered in their dwelling. In order to fix them down to one spot they had their local worship. It was a law that all the men amongst them should rendezvous at the central shrine three times a year, and thus foreign settlements or distant journeys were made impossible. The Hebrew home must be within a short and easy radius round the Temple, and if he went abroad he carried this tether, and was pulled back again by the Passover or some other pilgrimage. Then again to keep Israel distinct and immiscible, there were imposed upon him many rules and restrictions. If a stranger wished to settle in the Holy Land he must submit to circumcision; he must keep the
Sabbath; he must not bring with him, on pain of death, his idols or his own religious observances; and, on the other hand, if a Hebrew wished to roam, if on business or pleasure he went abroad, he must not adopt the usages of the people round him. He must not adopt their garb; he must not even wear his hair as they wore theirs; above all, he must not join them in their feasts or share their usual food, so that what with his peculiar garb and flowing beard, with his horror of things strangled, and with his long catalogue of unclean beasts, if the stranger found the Hebrew in the Holy Land a stiff and unaccommodating host, the Hebrew on his travels made himself a grotesque and inconvenient guest. And this was exactly what his law designed. It was intended to preserve him a personage peculiar in his own self- consciousness, and conspicuous in the eyes of others — the world’s prophet and its priest till once his function was fulfilled — till that Divine personage had arrived who was “the end of the law,” and, emancipated from meats and drinks and divers washings, men like Paul and Peter merged the Jew in the Christian and the Catholic, and, no longer calling anything common or unclean, found in every clime a country and in every saint a living temple.
Whilst some laws were designed on purpose to make the Jew peculiar, in reading others we must bear in mind how imperfect were the people to whom they were originally addressed. There might have been better laws, as we are apt to imagine, throwing backward our New Testament light, but they were the best that the people could bear. A wise lawgiver has regard to the powers and to the prejudices of the people for whom he is legislating, and will not lay on them burdens greater than they have strength to carry. He will take into account their climate, their prevailing pursuits and callings, their previous training, the present state of religion and morals, and whilst it will be his object to help them up to a higher level, he will not make the steps of the ascent so cyclopean that none but giants can climb. Thus the law of Moses allowed certain forms of slavery, and it forbade the taking interest for money. It allowed a man, in certain cases, to have more wives than one, and it gave facilities for divorcement, which, in the words of the Saviour, showed great “hardness of heart,” — a bluntness of feeling and coarseness of sentiment such as could not have been “in the beginning,” and such as cannot well exist under the refining influence of the gospel.
At the same time, there are in this Mosaic code many traits and touches which anticipate the higher tone and tenderness of a later dispensation. “If thou meet thine enemy’s ox or his ass going astray, thou shall surely bring it back to him again. If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him; thou shalt surely help with him.”^ What could be more disarming, what more likely to electrify an enemy into sudden subjugation! what finer conquest over one’s -self, for the first impulse is to glory over the perplexity of an opponent; but although revenge would fain “forbear to help,” religion says, Thou shalt surely succour. “Rise up before the hoary head.”^ A ruffian race, mere warriors and freebooters, despise and dislike the old, for they can fight no longer; but it needs some sentiment and some homage to worth and wisdom to recognise in the hoary head a crown of glory. Then again, how many of these laws are marked by a considerate humanity! “If thou at all take thy neighbour’s raiment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it unto him by that the sun goeth down. It is his only covering; wherein shall he sleep?” “And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. Neither shalt thou glean every grape of thy vineyard: thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger: I am the Lord.”* And the same kindness which thinks of the poor and
1 Ex. xxiii. 4, 5. Ex. xxii. 26.
2 Lev. xix. 32. * Lev. xix. 9, 10.
provides for thera from the superabundance of the rich, extends its regards to the lower forms of life. “Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn.” “If a bird’s nest chance to be before thee in the way, in any tree or on the ground, and the dam sitting upon the eggs or upon the young, thou shalt not take the mother-bird with the young: thou shalt in any wise let the dam go free, and take the young to thee.”^
On the laws of Moses we shall not enter further; but they will repay the study of those who have taste and leisure for such investigations. They will repay the historian, for they will introduce him to a civilisation compared with which the Grecian culture and the Roman commonwealth are but of yesterday. They will repay the scholar, for in Moses, with his monotheism, — in Moses, with his sublime cosmogony, — in Moses, with his laws so protective to the poor and so equitable towards every citizen, he will find some of the sublimest things in Plato’s philosophy, and some of the wisest, human est things in Plato’s imaginary Republic. They will repay the jurist, for in the deodands and compensations, the doctrine of trespass and damage and malice prepense laid down by the Hebrew lawgiver, he will find the origin or earnest of much iin our own British statute-book. And they will
* Deut, xxii. 6.; repay every student of morals and of mankind, for, as has been truly remarked, “Thoughts colonize as well as races. Ideas, like families, have a genealogy and a propagation;”^ and in tracing the migrations of thought from land to land, in following up these spiritual migrations, there is many a great idea of which we do not find the birthplace till we reach the Books of Moses, many a notion which has widely influenced mankind, and which is still wielding over the world a powerful sway, of which we shall not find the germ or principle till we reach this cradle of all codes, — this book of all beginnings.
1 Wines’ Commentaries, p. 103.