this blessing on Simeon, that the same tribe had been largely wasted in the wilderness. In the apocalyptic list of the tribes, Dan and Ephraim are excluded on account of their idolatrous character, Joseph and Levi being substituted for them; but in the last chapter of Ezekiel they are included.

xxxiii. 9. “Who said unto his father and to his mother, I have not seen him." Mr. Green reads: "The Levites said of their father and of their mother, We respect them not." In this verse both the singular and the plural verb are found; but Mr. Green uses the plural throughout, to which the proper name of Levites is the nominative.

xxxiii. 12. "And he shall dwell between his shoulders." This is an anthropomorphic form of speech, which seems congenial to the Hebrew, and is understood by Mr. Green of the tribe of Benjamin, as comprehending within its borders some part of Jerusalem, where the temple stood. It was so intimately associated with Judah by its vicinity that the fortunes of the one were involved in the other, and the name of the one became the representative of both.

JOSHUA.

Chap. i. ver. 4. "From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea, towards the going down of the sun, shall be your coast." The pronoun "this" is here expletive, and wanting both in the Greek and Vulgate versions, as well as in Deut. xi. 24, which contains the words of Moses to the same effect. Kennicott would also expunge "the land of the Hittites," because they are not found in the passage cited from the Pentateuch, nor in the Greek and Latin text of Joshua; but it does not follow that the words of God in this place should exactly correspond with those written by Moses; and the Hittites, being the chief nation of Canaan, occupying the territory of Hebron, which was afterwards the royal residence of David, and being mentioned in comparison with the Syrians and Egyptians, it may have pleased the Divine Being to have marked their land designedly in his address to Joshua.

ii. 1. "And came into a harlot's house, named Rahab." The Septuagint has yvvaikòs πóρvηs, which Dr. Wall translates, a woman who was an hostess." So Josephus and the Chaldee paraphrast understand it. From her marriage with Salmon, Boaz was descended. See Drs. Doyley and Mant in loco, Patrick, Pyle, and Stackhouse.

ii. 4. "And said thus." The Hebrew, Syriac, and

Arabic reading is, "And said, It is true." has fateor.

The Vulgate

iv. 9. "And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bare the ark of the covenant stood." These stones could not possibly have been erected in the bed of the river; and it is stated in another part of the same chapter that they were set up in Gilgal. It is ascertained likewise, from verses 3, 8, and 20, that these pious memorials of divine interposition were taken from the stony bottom of the river, being the very locality where the feet of the priests stood. The passage, according to Kennicott, ought therefore to be thus written: "and Joshua set up twelve stones from the midst of Jordan." Theophrastus alludes to the counterfeit custom of anointing stones, and of paying superstitious and idolatrous worship to them by passengers.

v. 1. "When all the kings of the Amorites, which were on the side of Jordan westward, and all the kings of the Canaanites, which were by the sea, heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of Jordan from before the children of Israel, until we were passed over." Drs. Wall and Kennicott read, with twenty-seven Hebrew copies, "until they were passed over;" for otherwise this passage must have been written by Joshua himself, or some other person present on the occasion. The Septuagint has, év T διαβαίνειν αὐτούς; and so also the Vulgate.

vii. 18. The process of discovering Achan was by selecting a tribe, a family, and a household, the members of which were lastly examined man by man. Achan is written "Achar" in 1 Chron. ii. 7, both in the Hebrew text and

all the versions. Also the name is the same in five places of Joshua, in the Syriac, and in the Greek of the Vatican manuscript, as well as twice in the Alexandrian copy. It is also so called by Josephus. The valley where he was stoned was Achor.

ix. 4. "And went and made as if they had been ambassadors." The Vulgate has, tulerunt sibi cibaria, "they provided themselves with food." So likewise read other ancient polyglot versions.

ix. 21. The Syriac and Arabic add to this verse, “and they became gatherers of wood and drawers of water to the whole congregation, as the princes had promised them."

x. 2. "That they feared greatly." The Vulgate has timuit valde, "he feared greatly," Adonizedec being the antecedent. So also reads the Syriac and one Hebrew manuscript.

x. 13. "In the midst of heaven." Horsley reads, "in the division of the heavens," i. e. the horizon.*

*The miracle of the sun and moon standing still took place just before the full moon, at the time of her appearance above the eastern horizon and the declension of the sun in the western. Mr. Horne is of opinion that, since the ordinary length of the day in that latitude is about thirteen hours, it was prolonged extraordinarily to twenty-six hours. It seems improbable that this miraculous event, which was effected at the command of Joshua, B.C. 1451, should have embraced any distant region beyond Judea. The expression of the heavenly luminaries becoming stationary must be understood to be figurative, so far as respects the mode, circumstances, and extent of its performance, but not in regard to the local reality of the result produced. The Divine honour and that of the Jewish nation were involved in the discomfiture of their Canaanitish enemies,

x. 15. "And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, unto the camp to Gilgal." This passage in the original Hebrew is considered by Drs. Wall and Kennicott and Mr.

against whom the army of Joshua were waging war; but no other nations of the world were responsible for the occasion of the battle, nor concerned in its issue. Had the earth been impeded for one day in its orbit, and the moon in her path for the same period, the former of these occurrences must have been perceived by the heathen, who would have been struck with awe by its obscuration, and attributed its cause to the interposition of their presiding deities, according to the prevalent and respective superstition of the national mind. The latter would have been noticed in a comparatively much less degree, or have passed altogether unheeded, except by the few, in an early age of astronomical research, who surveyed the heavens with the view of registering time. The marvel would have been transmitted to posterity through the lapse of centuries by oral tradition, till it attained its rank, like the deluge of Deucalion, in the fables and legends of mythology, as it was at length written in the Jewish book of Jasher. There is, however, no more reason for believing the universality of the continuous day recounted by Joshua, than that of the Egyptian night by Moses, which lasted for three days, and was more intense than a total eclipse of the sun, so that one neighbour was not discernible by another during the interval of deprivation, and the ordinary business of life was suspended, with the exception of the Israelites, who were guarded from the plague. The transient but natural phenomenon of zodiacal light is defined by Mrs. Somerville to be the lenticular-shaped atmosphere of the western sun in the twilight of the evening, after it has set, and is a nebulous body revolving in the plane of the solar equator, making an angle of 7 degrees with the plane of the ecliptic. This appearance in the welkin might afford, indeed, an extremely faint idea of that visible daylight arising from the miraculous reflection and convergency of the solar rays, were the laws of nature so far counteracted by the will and power of the Almighty, that they irradiated a single locality with prolonged duration and intensity, in furtherance of a particular design, without implying thereby the necessity of interfering with the regulated interchange of day and night by the other inhabitants of this earth, arresting the very rotation of our own planet on its axis, or the revolution of its satellite.