To gods whom they knew not,

To new gods that came up of late
Whom your fathers feared not.

Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful,
And hast forgotten God that gave thee birth.
And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them,
Because of the provocation of his sons and of
his daughters.

And he said, I will hide my face from them,
I will see what their end shall be;

For they are a very froward generation,
Children in whom is no faith.

So the Song proceeds in terms of strong condemnation.

II

The memory of the people in the time of David and Solomon, about the year 1000, was thus filled with the verses of songs and poems which were even then ancient. And also with the memory of ancient stories.

Some of these stories are so old that they antedate the time when Abraham set out to go from the land of the Euphrates to find a dwelling in the land of the Jordan. He brought these tales with him. Such, for example, is the story of the Flood.

Excavation of the ruins of Babylon has brought to light the library of King Asshurbanipal. Among his books-which were made of thick sheets of clay, and so have outlasted the weather of centuries-was found the long Epic of Gilgamesh, and in the eleventh canto of this poem was found the story of the Flood as it was told at a time which scholars reckon to have been about the year 2000.

The Noah of this story is told to build a ship for the saving of his life, and to cause all kinds of living things to go into it. "Let its form be long, and its breadth equal to its length. On the great deep launch it." This he does, and makes it tight with pitch and bitumen. Then comes a fearful tempest which terrifies even the gods, who "cowered like dogs at the edge of the heavens." The tempest continues, with "wind and flood and storm," for six days. When on the seventh day the rain abates, the sea is calm, the tempestuous wind is still, and the flood ceases, "I looked for the race of mortals," says the hero, "but every voice was hushed, and all mankind had been turned to clay. After twenty-four hours an island rose up, the ship approached the mountain Nisir. When the seventh day arrived, I sent forth a dove and let it loose. The dove went forth, but came back; because it found no resting-place, it returned. Then I sent forth a swallow, but it came back; because it found no resting-place, it returned. Then I sent forth a raven and let it loose. The raven went forth and saw that the waters had decreased; it fed, it waded, it croaked, and did not return. Then I sent forth everything in all directions, and offered a sacrifice." The gods came to the sacrifice, inhaling the sweet odor; and the god who had caused the flood seized the hands of the hero and his wife, and made them kneel before him, and declared that now this man and his wife shall be gods like us. "Then they took me, and made me dwell in the distance, at the confluences of the streams."

Into this story, told and retold, generation after

generation, through many centuries, the Hebrews brought their better knowledge of God. The gods disappear, and their place is taken by the Lord of all the earth. The cause of the flood is not a divine caprice, but a divine purpose to make a better race of men by beginning over again with a new Adam and Eve on Mt. Ararat. After the flood, the bow in the cloud is made a sign of the divine patience.

The value of most of these stories, however, is not in their great age, nor in any moral which they teach, but consists altogether in their simple human interest. If any of them represent, as some say, the migrations and relationships of tribes and families, only the most diligent scholars shall ever find it out. Nor is their interest obscured by the fact that their scenes are laid in Asia. The men and women of these stories are of our own kind and kin, and the tales that are told about them are true to human nature as we know it. Moreover, the manner of the telling has the perfection which is gained only by the process of centuries of repetition.

The longest of the stories deals with the Adventures of Joseph, who being sold by his brethren as a slave becomes the governor of all the land of Egypt. The most charming of them is the pleasant and peaceful tale of the Wooing of Rebekah. It comes in among the songs of war, and the accounts of battles, like the shining of a clear day in the midst of a season of tempestuous weather.

VI

THE CONQUEST OF CANAAN

HE narratives of Joshua and Judges have all the

TH

picturesque qualities of the narratives of the Pentateuch: for they belong to the same period, and are the result of the same process. They were shaped not by literary composition but by popular recitation. They were told for centuries before they were written.

If these books were printed like other books, one of the differences between these histories and other histories would be evident to every reader. History is commonly written in solid paragraphs, but these pages, if they were normally printed, would show the brief and lively paragraphing which is used in accounts of conversation. The numbered verses disguise the fact that the people of the Pentateuch, and of Joshua and Judges, are always talking. An unfailing human interest is imparted to these narratives by the fact that these men and women speak for themselves.

It is plain that such conversation has no basis in contemporary records. Nobody took down these words. Neither Abraham nor Isaac recorded what they said, the one to the other, on their way to the mountain of the sacrifice. Neither Moses nor Joshua recorded what they said as they came down from Sinai and heard shouting and singing in the camp. The nar

rator knew that they said something: they did not walk in silence. He asked himself what they probably said under such circumstances, and he found an answer in his imagination. His purpose was to make the situation real to his hearers or his readers, and this he did in the most natural way by dramatizing it. This is a liberty into which the modern historian will not venture, but the ancient historian had no such scruple. Accordingly, the history of the Hebrews in Genesis and Exodus, in Joshua and Judges, differs from the history of the Romans in Gibbon's Decline and Fall as the Henry the Eighth of Shakespeare differs from the Henry the Eighth of Froude. It is one of the reasons why the Bible history has kept its interest through all these hundred of years.

The narratives of Joshua and Judges which agree with the narratives of the Pentateuch in dramatic form, differ from them in being made to serve a moral purpose. The story of the Wooing of Rebekah has no moral. It is simply a delightful tale of a faithful servant and a charming maiden. But the story of the Siege of Ai (Jos. 8) includes an explanation of the moral reasons on account of which the Hebrews were defeated. The army of Joshua had attacked Ai and been repulsed.

And Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord until the eventide, he and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads. And Joshua said: "Alas, O Lord God, wherefore hast thou at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? would to God we had been content, and dwelt on the other side