then proceeds to charge them to serve the true God, and to avoid idolatry, and then to enforce this charge with awful threatenings and predictions of judgments that shall come upon them if they transgress, with the circumstances of these judgments, and promises of forgiveness on repentance; and the whole concluded with various arguments, pressing instances, solemn appeals, obtestations, exhortations, &c. to enforce their duty. If such a miscellany is called the words of the covenant, we need not wonder if the whole book, that is called the book of the law, should be a similar miscellany.

It was necessary that a record of a covenant between God and the nation of Israel, should contain the story of the transaction. But this, if fully related, would bring in very much of the history of the Pentateuch, which is extensively made up of an account of those things that were done by God, to bring the people into a covenant relation to him, and the way in which they became his covenant people. Hence the psalmist, in Psalm cv., having mentioned this covenant and law which God established with the people, proceeds, in the ensuing part of the psalm, to rehearse the series of events relating to this covenant transaction, from God's entering into covenant with the patriarchs, to the children of Israel's being brought into Canaan.

It was exceedingly necessary, in particular, when Moses was about to write a record of the covenant which God established with the people, and to give an account of the manner in which be entered into covenant with them, and brought them into a covenant relation to him, to show the beginning of it with the patriarchs, with whom that covenant was first established, and with whom was laid the foundation of all that transaction, and that great dispensation of the Lord of heaven and earth with that people, in separating them from all the rest of the world, to be his peculiar covenant people. The beginning and ground-work of the whole affair was mainly with them, and what was done afterwards by the hand of Moses, was only in pursuance of what had been promised to them, and often established with them, and for which God made way by his acts and revelations towards them. What God said and did towards those patriarchs, is often spoken of in the words of the law (those that are expressly called the law) as the foundation of the whole, and also in other parts of the Old Testament; as most expressly in Psalm cv. 8, 9, 10.; see also Josh. xxiv. 3, &c.; and many other parallel places.

And there is very often in the law, strictly so called, an express reference to the covenant that God had made with Abrahaın, Isaac, and Jacob, as in Levit. xxvi. 42. Deut. iv. 31. 37. Deut. vi. 10. 18, and vii. 8. 12, and ix. 5. 27, and x. 11. 15, and xix. 8, xxvi. 3. 15, and xxx. 20, which passages are unintelli

gible without the history of the patriarchs. And there are many other passages in the law, wherein there is an implicit reference to the same thing; as in those in which God speaks of the land, which the Lord their God had given them, or had promised them, the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Canaanites, &c., referring to the promise made to Abraham, Gen. xv. 18 to the end; where God promises to Abraham the land of those nations by

name.

Again, the forementioned considerations, many of them must at least, induce us to believe that Moses wrote the history of the redemption of the children of Israel out of Egypt, so far at least as he himself was concerned in that affair, and was made the chief instrument of it from his being first called and sent of God on that errand. But this as naturally leads us back further still, even to what God said and did to the patriarchs; for the beginning of this history directly points and leads us to those things as the foundation of this great affair, of which God now called Moses to be the great instrument. Thus when God first appeared to Moses, and spake to him in mount Sinai out of the bush, and gave him his commission, it was with these words, "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Exod. iii. 6. So again ver. 13, 14, 15, 16. "And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they shall say to me, What is his name? What shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. And God said, moreover, unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations. Go and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, for that which is done to you in Egypt." So again, chap. iv. 5. "That they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath appeared unto thee." And chap. vi. 2, 3, 4. "And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the Lord, and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty; but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them. And I have established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers." It is unreasonable on many forementioned accounts, to believe any other than that Moses should write this history, and it is most

credible that he did it on this account, that those first extraordinary appearances of God to him, as is natural to suppose, made most strong impressions on his mind, and if he wrote any history it is likely he wrote this. But from these things it appears that the history of the patriarchs lays the whole foundation of the history of the redemption of the children of Israel out of Egypt, and of God's separating them and bringing them into a covenant relation with himself. So that it cannot be understood without the history of the patriarchs. Would it not therefore have been an essential defect in Moses, in writing that history, to leave the children of Israel without any record of that great foundation?

There is frequent mention in that part of the Pentateuch, (which is expressly styled the law) of several tribes of Israel and their names, and of the patriarchs who were the heads of the tribes. Deut. iii. 12, 13. 15, 16, and xxvii. 11. 13, and elsewhere. And Moses was commanded to engrave the names of the twelve patriarchs on the stones of the breastplate of the highpriest. But these things are not intelligible without the history of Jacob's family. In Deut. x. 22, there is a reference to Jacob's going down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons, which is not intelligible without the history.

The law for him that brings the offering of the first fruits cannot be understood without the history of Jacob's difficulties and sufferings in Padan-Aram, and the history of his going down into Egypt with its circumstances, and the history of the great increase of his posterity there, and the history of their oppression, and hard bondage there, and the history and circumstances of their deliverance from it, and the history of the great and wondrous works of God in Egypt, and the Red sea, and the wilderness, until the people came to Canaan. And if Moses left no record of these things; then, in the law, he enjoined him who offered the first fruits, (i. e. of all the people, every individual householder, from generation to generation) to make an explicit confession and declaration of those things that he did not understand.

What is said in the law, of the Edomites, as the children of Esau, and what God had given to him for his possession, and the favour God had showed Esau, in Deut. ii. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 22; and the law concerning the Edomites, Deut. xxiii. 7, 8, how they should be treated, because Esau was their brother, cannot be understood without the history of the family of Isaac. And the kind of mention made of Moab and Ammon, as the founders of the nations of the Moabites and Ammonites, and the favour showed them on their father Lot's account, in Deut. ii., seems to suppose the history of Lot and his family, and cannot be understood without it. And the reference there is in the law to the overthrow

of Sodom and Gomorrah, Deut. xxix. 23, cannot be understood without the history of that affair.

appear

These things that have been mentioned, lead us up in the history of the Pentateuch, within less than eleven chapters of its beginning; so that according to what has been said, all except this very small part of the Pentateuch must have been delivered by Moses to the children of Israel; and it is unreasonable to suppose that this small part was not delivered by the same hand as part of the same record. The history of Abraham begins with the 26th verse of the xi. chap. of Genesis; and the beginning of that history is there so connected with, and as it were grows upon, the preceding history of Noah and his posterity, that to suppose any other than that they were originally the same record, having the same author, is most unreasonable. That Moses's history began any where between that and the beginning of Genesis, or that that part of Genesis from the beginning to the 26th verse of the xi. chapter, is to be divided, as having several writers, are suppositions which, from a bare view of the history itself, any one will be convinced are erroneous. But it will still more unreasonable not to ascribe it to Moses, if we consider not only the connection of the beginning of the history of Abraham with it, but the dependence of many things in the following history upon it; and also in that part of the Pentateuch that is more plainly called the Law. There is frequent mention made both in the law and history of the posterity of the sons of Ham, Mizraim and Canaan, called by the names of these their ancestors, mentioned chap. x. 6, and of those of the posterity of Mizraim, called Caphterim, mentioned ver. 14, and in Deut. ii. 23, and of the posterity of the sons of Canaan, mentioned ver. 15, &c., called by their names. And in the following history there is mention made of Ham, the son of Noah, Gen. xiv. 5. Mention is made of Elam and Shinar, Gen. xiv. 1, &c., of whom we have an account, chap. x. Frequent mention is made of the land of Cush, (in our translation, Ethiopia,) so named from Cush, the son of Ham, of whom we have an account, Gen. x. 6, 7, 8. So there is in the following history frequent mention of the land of Aram, the son of Shem. In Balaam's prophecy, referred to in the law in Deuteronomy, mention is made of Ashur, Chittim, and Eber, Numb. xxiv. 22. 24. The great event of which Moses most evidently wrote the history, and which takes up all the historical part of the Pentateuch, from Gen. x. 26 to the end of Deuteronomy, is God's separating the seed of Abraham and Israel from all nations, and bringing them near to himself to be his peculiar people. But to the well understanding of this, it was requisite to be informed of the origin of nations, the peopling of the world, and the Most High dividing to the nations their inheritance: and therefore the

VOL. IX.

17

ix., x., and xi. chapters of Genesis are but a proper introduction to the history of this great event. In the song of Moses, of which mention is made in the law, and which Moses in the law was required to write, and the people in the law were required to keep, and learn, and often rehearse, there is an express reference to the separating the sons of Adam, and God's dividing the earth among its inhabitants; which is unintelligible without the x. and xi. chapters of Genesis. In that song, also, is plainly supposed a connection between this affair, and that great affair of separating the children of Israel from all nations to be his peculiar people, about which most of the history of the Pentateuch is taken up. The words are as follows, and in them the people are expressly called upon to keep in remembrance both these events that are so connected, which obviously supposes an history of both, Deut. xxxii. 7, 8, 9. "Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations. Ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee; when the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord's portion is his people, Jacob is the lot of his inheritance." And by the way I would observe, that in the following words are also references to other historical facts of the Pentateuch that cannot be understood without the history.

In the fourth commandment, there is such a mention made of the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the sea, and all that in them is, and of God's resting the seventh day, as is a kind of epitome of the first chapter of Genesis, and the beginning of the second, and is unintelligible without that history; and there is a reference, in Deut. iv. 32, to God's creation of man, and there is mention in the prophetical song of Moses of the name of Adam, as the grand progenitor of mankind, Deut. xxxii. 8. And there is mention made of the garden of God, or Paradise, Gen. xiii. 10. And before I leave this argument from references to historical facts, I would observe, that a very great part of the thirty-one first chapters of Deuteronomy, (which are most evidently, as I observed before, a part of the law of Moses, laid up in the holy of holies,) are made up of nothing but recapitulations, brief rehearsals, references, and hints of preceding historical facts, and counsels, and enforcements from history, which cannot be understood without the knowledge of that history.

And not only does the law of Moses depend upon the history, and bear such a relation to it, and contain such references to it that it cannot be understood without it, but the manner of writing the law shows plainly that the law and history were written together, they are so connected, interwoven, blended, inwrought, and incorpo