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Untitled Article
not a reasonable inference that their abode there for forty years was decreed by the Divine Being as a punishment ? Besides , Moses was himself excluded from the holy land : would he have punished himself , have deprived himself of the opportunity of fixing them in a place of permanent residence before he gave them their commonwealth > This has struck us rather as an inconsistency ; but , upon the whole , this part of the work is written with a
liberality and a talent that have highly gratified us . The rest of the Old-Testament history is given in a systematic and condensed narrative , with a close adherence , as far as regards the facts recorded , to the original ; all the extraordinary events mentioned in the Old Testament are narrated as having literally occurred , but with a spirit of manliness that cannot but be very useful to the cause of revealed religion , and they are explained by a reference to the circumstances of society in those semi-barbarous ages . We are
presented , in the course of the narrative , with an excellent digest of the Mosaic code , and a clear and elegant description of many of the Jewish ceremonies . We venture to prophesy that this work will produce a far more general acquaintance with the history of this remarkable people than has hitherto prevailed ; and we again say that our author has entitled himself to the thanks of every friend of religion . We must here be permitted to give his review of the character of David , which we think excellent :
< Thus , having provided for the security of the succession , the maintenance of the law , and the lasting dignity of the national religion , David breathed his last , having * reigned forty years over the flourishing * and powerful monarchy of which he may be considered the founder . He had succeeded to a kingdom distracted with civil dissension , environed on every side by powerful and victorious enemies , without a capital , almost without an army , without any bond of union between the tribes . He left a compact and united state , stretching from the frontier of Egypt to the foot of Lebanon , from the Euphrates to the
sea . He had crushed the power of the Philistines , subdued or curbed all the adjacent kingdoms ; he had formed a lasting and important alliance with the great city of Tyre . He had organized an immense disposable force : every month 24 , 000 men , furnished in rotation by the tribes , appeared in arms , and were trained as the standing" militia of the country . At the head of his aFmy were officers of consummate experience , and , what was more highly esteemed in the warfare of the time , extraordinary personal activity , strength , and valour . His heroes remind us of those of Arthur or Charlemagne , excepting- that
the armour of the feudal chieftains constituted the superiority ; here , main strength of body , and dauntless fortitude of mind . The Hebrew nation owed the long peace of the son ' s reign to the bravery and wisdom of the father . If the rapidity with which a kingdom rises to unexampled prosperity , and the permanence , as far as human wisdom can provide , of that prosperity , be a Fair criterion of the abilities and character of a sovereign , few kings in history can compete with David . His personal character has often been discussed ; but both by his enemies , and by some of his learned defenders , with an
ignorance of , or inattention to , his age and country , in writers of such acuteness as Bayle , as melancholy as surprising . Both parties have been content to take the expression of the man after God ' s own heart in a strict and literal sense . Both have judged by modern , occidental , and Christian notions , the chieftain of an eastern and comparatively barbarous people . If David in his
exile became a freebooter , he assumed a profession , like the pirate in ancient Greece , by no means dishonourable . If he employed craft or even falsehood in some of his enterprises , chivalrous or conscientious attachment to truth was probably not one of the virtues of his day . He had his harem , like other eastern kings . He waged war , and revenged himself on his foreign , enemies with merciless cruelty , like other warr iors of his age and country . His one great crime violated the immutable and universal laws of morality , and there-
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380 The History of the Jeits .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1830, page 380, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2585/page/20/
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