Chapter XII
Hat I am about to narrate may well
appear so incredible that I am prepared to find that my personal guarantee of its truth will at first sight fail to carry conviction.
A few years ago — I could give details of every part of my narrative — a certain London merchant killed an unfortunate wretch whom circumstances had placed in his power. He did not actually kill him with his own hands, but he had him brought toa secluded room which was deliberately prepared for the purpose, and there he stood by while his victim was strangled by a man whom he had hired to do the deed. I myself examined the place. I can testify, moreover, that all the facts were known, not only to the authorities, but to the Queen. And yet not only did the homicide go unpunished, but, with full knowledge of all I have narrated, Her Majesty singled him out for royal favour and conferred a title upon him.
What estimate will my readers form of such conduct on the part of one whom we have been taught to regard as a pattern and paragon of public and private virtue?
But before they pass judgment upon the facts they ought to know a few additional details. The victim of the tragedy I have described was a condemned -murderer; the man who was paid to strangle him was the common hangman, the secluded room was in Newgate prison, and the merchant who received a knighthood was the Sheriff whose official duty it was to execute the criminal.
And now the meaning of my parable will begin to dawn upon the reader. Let these added details be suppressed, and a plain narrative which does not contain a syllable that is untrue or even exaggerated, may seem to endanger the reputation of Queen Victoria. And it is precisely by this sort of suppression that the Bible and the God of the Bible are misrepresented. Will any ‘person of culture” in our day dare to defend the extermination of the Canaanites? Will any one, I answer, dare to defend the strangling of a poor helpless wretch in a shut-in room?
It is not God’s way to justify Himself at the bar of His creature’s judgment. He acts and
Cu. XII.] DESTRUCTION OF THE CANAANITES 157
speaks autocratically. But in this matter He has deigned to explain His decrees. Men read the Bible story in the false light of the evolution craze. They picture to themselves a number of semi-civilised tribes on the upward path of progress, exterminated by an invading horde of religious fanatics.t But the Christian knows that they were a degenerate and apostate race whose destruction was decreed by a God of infinite mercy, because they had given themselves up to unnatural and loathsome sin. Four centuries had passed since Sodom fell. And among the citizens of Sodom not even ¢ex could be found who were clear of the evil. What then must have been the condition of the land when God at last called in the Israelites as His executioners? Of the guilty nations there was one that seemed still to merit pity, and on account of that nation the judgment was delayed. If for four generations the favoured people were left as strangers in a strange land, it was ‘‘ decause the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet ful ee
a re
: The discoveries of the archeologist make it plain that at the era of the Exodus, Palestine had long enjoyed a high civilisation (Lex Mosaica, p.9). The nations were lapsing from civilisation, not emerging from barbarism.
2 Gen. xv. 16, and see xiii. 15 and xviii. 32, and compare Rom. i. 21 ff. This is not a subject for plain speaking. I will dismiss
Considering that the historic Church of Western Christendom, by disparaging the sacred bond of marriage, affects a higher standard of morality than the Divine revelation of Christianity will sanction, it is not strange that men should claim to be more merciful than God. But the Bible narrative makes it clear as light that the extermination of the Canaanites was the carrying out of a Divine decree. That the men of a wandering tribe, with neither cavalry nor “military base,” and encumbered by multitudes of women and children and camp followers, should conquer a nation with walled towns and ‘chariots of iron” — the equivalent of modern artillery — this is a feat to which history affords no parallel. And sevex such nations fell before the Israelite invaders. Such facts seem to indicate that it was as clearly a Divine judgment as was the destruction of Pharaoh’s army in the sea.
To the solution of other “difficulties” of a kindred type my parable may afford the clew; as, for example, the imprecatory Messianic Psalms,
it with the strange confession that prior to knowledge acquired at Scotland Yard, these Divine judgments upon Canaan were a difficulty to my faith. There are some kinds of vice that seem to spread like leprosy, and to become hereditary.
Cu. XII.] THE JEWS AND THE WORLD 159
which are prophetic warnings of Divine judgments upon those who take the place of enemies of God. But I turn away to notice briefly difficulties of another kind, which depend, not on ignoring facts, but on perverting them. I will select one as illustrating the class to which I refer. What can be more unlike the Christian’s God than the scheme of granting to the Jews a monopoly of Divine favour, and leaving the world to its fate? To which I will make answer by asking another question, What can be more unlike the Christian’s Bible?
In commerce there are two well-known systems on which merchants deal with the public. The one is to sell directly to every one who wishes to become a customer; the other is to deal only through an agent. When the owner of some famous French vineyard, for instance, appoints an English agent, and refuses to supply his wines except thropgh that agent, his object is to make it easier for the English public to obtain supplies, and to ensure them against adulteration and fraud. And God’s purpose for Israel was that that favoured nation should be His agents upon earth. Jerusalem was to be “the place of His name.” But ‘the house of God,” designed to become a house of prayer for all nations, they treated as their own, and ended by making it “a den of thieves.”!
All nations are to be blessed in Christ; and the Israelites as a people were a type of Christ, and ought to have been a blessing to the world. But instead of bringing honour to the name of God, they caused His name to be blasphemed among the heathen.2, They were as false to the Divine trust committed to them, as the “‘ historic Church” of Christendom has been in this Christian dispensation.
In cases of this kind human error either ousts Divine truth altogether, or else becomes so identified with it in popular estimation that men in rejecting the error reject also the truth. And in this respect very ‘superior persons” are often the greatest offenders. Matthew Arnold, for instance, like many another writer of the same type, identifies the truth of the Eden fall with that horror of Augustinian theology, the damnation of infants.3 Indeed the whole Augustinian doctrine of election, as distinguished from the ¢ruth of election, is a case of putting the new wine of the Christian revelation into the old bottles of a bygone dispensation.
* 1 Kings viii. 41-43; Isaiah lvi. 7; Mark xi. 17 (R.V,). * Rom. ii. 24; Ezek. xxxvi. 20, 23. 3 See p. 219, fost.
Cu. XII.] ARAUNAH’S THRESHINGFLOOR 161
I will here notice, in passing, a Biblical “blunder” of which much has been made. In 2 Sam. xxiv. 24, we read that David bought the oxen and threshingfloor of Araunah for fifty shekels of silver. From 1 Chron. xxi. 25, we learn that David gave 600 shekels of gold for the place. It is extraordinary that any honest and intelligent mind could find a difficulty here. Fifty shekels of silver were presumably a fair price, though to us it seems very little, for the oxen and for the temporary use of the threshing-floor, for the purpose of the sacrifice.t And this was all that the king had in view at the moment. But does any one imagine that the fee-simple of “the place” — the entire site of the Temple — was worth only fifty silver shekels? David went on to purchase the entire homestead out and out; and the price he paid for it was 600 shekels of gold. And this is what the “Chronicler” records.
The “Chronological errors” of the Bible fall within the same category. Mere textual blunders seem scarcely worth notice here, such, e.g., as the
= The English reader must not base anything on the force of the English words “buy” and “bought” in 2 Sam. xxiv.24. The narrative in Chronicles suggests that it was the Lord’s “answering him by fire” that led the king to go on to the purchase of the
place. 12 reading seven instead of three in 2 Sam. xxiv. 13,” and eight instead of eighteen in 2 Chron. xxxvi. 9. Having regard to all the circumstances, the wonder is that such mistakes are so rare. But the whole scheme. of Biblical chronology is regarded as proof of error. This will repay looking into.
No sceptic will accept the wild chronology of the Egyptologists. If the English people were not so unimaginative, they would reckon the several dynasties of the Heptarchy as successive, and thus lay claim to a really imposing national antiquity. But no one who has studied the subject will dispute that the story of man’s tenancy of the earth reaches back to an earlier period than Biblical chronology appears to warrant. Such a discovery, however, troubles only those who suppose the Bible to be a history of the human race.?
Upon this subject the intelligent Bible student will not fail to arrive at three conclusions. The first is that there is a definite system in Biblical chronology; and the second is that the writers had no thought of any system whatever. And, thirdly, finding that there is a system, and that it
* LXX. reads three, and this in itself proves that it is merely an error of copying. 2 See p. 194, post.
oc ee SE a is not the outcome of human thought or plan, he’
will accept the obvious conclusion that it is Divine.
Some of our chronologists have vaguely noticed such a system, but all of them have been misled by the universally prevailing error of regarding the birth. of Christ, and not the Crucifixion, as the crisis and close of the Jewish dispensation. As to His birth date Scripture is silent; but His death date is fixed with definiteness. For no date in history is indicated more precisely than the epoch of the Ministry, namely, the 15th year of Tiberius Cesar; and as the Crucifixion occurred at the fourth Passover of the Ministry, its date is definitely fixed by Scripture itself as in a.p. 32.
On a subject of this kind all heresies and fads are to be deprecated. Let us accept the dates as given by our greatest chronologist, Fynes Clinton. But with one slight correction. His “Adam” date is B.c. 4138, and his “Deluge” date 2482; but for cogent reasons given by the learned author of the Ordo seclorum, 1 would add three years to the Gen. xii. — xiv. period, and fix the
* Luke iii. 1 is an end of controversy on this subject with all who reject the nightmare system of interpreting Scripture. The matter is fully discussed in Daniel in the Critics’ Den, App. vi., and also in The Coming Prince, to which I beg to refer the reader,
Creation at B.c. 4141, and the Deluge at B.c. 2485- Clinton assigns the Call of Abraham to B.c. 2055, and the Exodus to B.c. 1625.
Clinton fixed these several dates without reference to any system; but their striking significance will be made clear by the following table : —
B.C.
4141 Adam — The Creation. 1656 years.
2485 Noah — The Flood. 2086 years.
430 years.
2055 Abraham — The Covenant.
430 years.
1625 Moses — The Law. jot years.
1656 years.
A.D. 32 Christ — The Crucifixion.
Now to dismiss these results as accidental is simply absurd. Certain it is that they are absolutely accidental in the sense that they were not designed either by the chronologist or by the “Biblical writers.” But the proof these figures afford of a Divine plan of ‘time and seasons” is overwhelming. And if any one should still insist that the results are a mere coincidence, the mathematician will tell him that the probabilities against such a coincidence are altogether incalculable. In a word, such a conclusion is a misbelief which revolts our intelligence.
Are we, then, to conclude that the period from this “Coronation year,” 1902, to the first appearance of the Adam race on earth was exactly 6,042 years? Bynomeans. Scripture itself will furnish us with a clew to the system on which the Divine chronology is framed.
According to 1 Kings vi. 1, Solomon’s temple was begun in the 480th year from the Exodus. “Ifa little of the time and energy which the critics have expended in denouncing that passage as a forgery or a blunder had been devoted to searching for its hidden meaning, their labours might perchance have been rewarded. That the chronology of the period was known is plain from Acts xiii., which enables us to reckon the very same era as 573 years. How then can this seeming error of 93 years be accounted for? J/¢ zs precisely the sum of the several eras of the Servitudes. The inference, therefore, is clear that ‘the 480th year’ means the 48oth year of national life and national responsibilities.” 3
x Acts xiii. 18-21 gives 4o years in the wilderness, 450 years under the Judges, and 4o years for the reign of Saul. To which must be added the 4o years of David’s reign, and the first three years of Solomon, for it was in his fourth year that he began to build the Temple. The servitudes were to Mesopotamia for 8 years, to Moab for 18 years, to Canaan for 20 years, to Midian for 7 years, and to the Philistines for 40 years. See Judges iii. 8, 145 iv. 2,3; vi. i; xiii, 1. But8+ 18 + 20+ 7+ 40 years are pre-Call this a coincidence, and the mathematician will tell you again that the probabilities against such a coincidence are simply incalculable. When the rejection of one hypothesis involves the acceptance of another, mere unbelief degenerates into misbelief.
A life without God is death. Righteousness must keep a strict account, or Grace may pardon. And when God forgives sin, He “remembers it no more.” The record is wiped out, and the time it covers is treated asa blank. The days of our servitude to sin are ignored in the Divine chroncisely equal to 93 years. To believe that this is a mere coincidence would involve an undue strain upon our faith.
Acts. xiii. 20 is one of the very many passages where the New Testament Revisers have corrupted the text through neglect of the well-known principles by which experts are guided in dealing with conflicting evidence. It is certain that neither the apostle said, nor the evangelist wrote, that Israel’s enjoyment of the land was limited to 450 years, or that 450 years elapsed before the era of the Judges. The text adopted by R.V. is therefore clearly wrong. Dean Alford regards it “as an attempt at correcting the difficult chronology of the verse;” and he adds, “taking the words as they stand, no other sense can be given to them than that the time of the Judges lasted 450 years.” That is, as he explains, not that the Judges ruled for 450 years — in which case the accusative would be used, as in verse 18 — but, as the use of the dative implies, that the period until Saul, characterised by the rule of the Judges, lasted 450 years.
The objection that I omit the servitude of Judges x. 7, 8 is met by a reference to the R.V.- The punctuation of the passage in Bagster’s Bible perverts the sense. That servitude affected only the tribes beyond Jordan, ology. May not this be the explanation of the enigma? And if it be, we shall be prepared to find that possibly the Divine chronology of the race omits as many periods of various lengths as does the 480 years era of 1 Kings vi.
But this is mere conjecture. What concerns us is the fact, first, that the chronology of the Old Testament is framed upon a system, and a system, moreover, which is not of human design; and secondly, that there is a mystic element in it. And if when the Egyptologists have been. brought to reason by some process akin to “cross-examination,” it should become clear that the history of our race extends back far beyond the time of which Scripture appears to take cognisance, the discrepancy may be thus accounted for.
The element of design is beyond question, and the clew to it is to be found in the history of the favoured people. As we have seen, the covenant with Abraham is made the central date between the Creation and the Cross, and the ages measured back and forward from that epoch are each divided into two periods of equal length, but in inverse order. And the history of that people is marked throughout by cycles of ‘“‘seventy weeks” of years.
From the entrance into Canaan (s.c. 1586-5)
a eee to the establishment of the monarchy (B.c. 1096) was 490 years.
From the kingdom (s.c. 1096) to the Servitude to Babylon (B.c. 606) was 490 years.
From the conquest by Babylon the national history of Judah was suspended until the royal edict of Artaxerxes Longimanus of Persia ordered the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, and restored the old polity of the Judges; and then began the mystic era of 490 years which constitute the “‘seventy weeks” of Daniel’s prophecy.
And from the dedication of Solomon’s temple (B.c. 1005) to the dedication of the second temple in the sixth year of Darius Hystaspis (B.c. 515) was also a period of 490 years.
Now all this is deduced from works written in different ages by men who had no plan or purpose of the kind in view. To attribute the results to chance is too silly for discussion, and no intelligent person will hesitate to conclude that the chronology of the Old Testament is part of a Divine plan, or ‘economy of times and seasons.” I deprecate the suggestion that the Christian’s faith in the Bible depends on such incidental proofs of its “hidden harmony.” But they are not altogether without value as an antidote to the scepticism of the critics.