epoch, and proved the strongest and most lasting obstacle to their blending with the Canaanites.

The remarkable narrative of Dinah and the Shechemites involves instructive hints. The story is comparatively ancient in date, for it evidently forms, at least partially, the foundation of Jacob's utterances concerning Simeon and Levi in his last Address, which originated in the earlier times of the divided kingdom; yet it was certainly composed in an age when the Hebrews were not merely a single family, but constituted a people and a commonwealth, for it alludes to 'iniquity done in Israel'; and it probably refers to events in the period of the Judges, and reflects the opinions of the Hebrews in that time. The Hivites of Shechem honestly and guilelessly proposed to the Hebrews: 'Make marriages with us; give your daughters to us, and take our daughters to yourselves;' and then invited them to dwell in the land, 'to trade and acquire possessions therein'. Jacob's sons, keenly feeling the ignominy inflicted upon their sister and meditating revenge, answered the Hivites 'deceitfully,' saying, 'We cannot do this thing to give our sister to a man who is uncircumcised, for that were a reproach to us.'e The condition insisted upon must have appeared plausible to the Shechemites, who suspected no snare, and it was accepted. It is, therefore, most probable that the Hebrews, as far back as the period of the Judges, scrupled to give their daughters in marriage to the 'uncircumcised;" and although Hebrew men, from the earliest to the latest ages freely married heathen women-from Joseph and

Moses to Solomon and down to the days of Nehemiahayet Hebrew wives were at all times preferred, as is also proved by the instance of Samson's parents who, when he informed them of his intention of marrying a Philistine maiden, urged upon him: 'Is there not a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all our people, that thou goest to take a wife from the Philistines, the uncircumcised'? Thus the epithet of 'uncircumcised' (by) became among the Hebrews a most contemptuous term of dishonour implying the notions of impurity and religious degradation.c

But it must be observed with the utmost emphasis, that, until long after the Babylonian exile, circumcision was in Israel only a custom, not a law. Everyone will at once perceive the extreme importance of this proposition in its bearings upon the religion and nationality of the Hebrews, and we shall therefore, partially interrupting the thread of our enquiry, adduce some proofs in support of this view. Moses did not perform the rite on one of his sons born in Midian, because, in this country, circumcision was not customary. That the same great leader and zealous lawgiver attached to it but slight importance, and could not, therefore, have received it as a holy tradition from his ancestors, is besides amply evident from the fact faithfully handed down in the people's annals, that he allowed it to be neglected during the whole of the protracted wanderings in the desert. The later historian, who plainly records this fact-'all the people that came out of Egypt, were circumcised,

a See infra Sect. iii, and Comm. on Levit. ii. pp. 354-357. Philo (Vita Mosis, i. 27) observes that the Hebrews in Egypt took Egyptian wives, and that the children of such unions 'were enrolled as members of their fathers' race'.

b Comp. Judg. xiv. 1—4,

с

Judg. xiv. 3; xv. 18; 1 Sam, xiv. 6; xvii. 26, 36; xxxi. 4; 2 Sam. i. 20; Isai. lii. 1; Jerem. ix. 25; Ezek. xxviii. 10; xxxi. 18; xxxii. 19, 21, 24-32; Habak. ii. 16; Acts xi. 3; Mishn. Nedar. iii. 11. d Exod. iv. 24-26; see Comm. on Exod. pp. 79-83.

but all the people that were born in the wilderness... these they had not circumcised'-concludes his account significantly: 'And the Lord said to Joshua, This day have I removed from you the reproach of Egypt;' for in his time, in the seventh century B. C., uncircumcision had long been regarded as a stain and shame. But not even he, though writing in so late an age, appeals to a law; he points to no solemn precept proclaimed and infringed, to no religious duty enjoined and left unheeded, but merely to the fair fame of the Hebrews saved from the contempt of the Egyptians. It is, therefore, not surprising to find that in Deuteronomy, written at the same period, no mention whatever is made of circumcision, much less is a law on the subject enacted or enforced. The terms 'circumcise' and 'uncircumcised' occur indeed in a figurative sense proving the existence of the rite and recalling the deeper meaning which was gradually imparted to it. The Hebrews are exhorted: 'Circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked;"b they receive the gracious promise: "The Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live'; and other contemporaneous and subsequent authors employ the same expressions with a similar import. But this usage in ordinary speech is sufficiently accounted for by the prevalence of a cherished and deeply rooted custom. Nor do we discover, in the writings of any Hebrew prophet or historian either before or immediately after the exile, the least allusion to a formal law of circumcision: such a law appears for the first time in the levitical legislation and the levitical narrative, both of which were compiled in the fifth century B. C., and exhibit the latest phase in

d

the development of Hebrew religion, as far as it is unfolded in the Pentateuch.

At that period, circumcision was raised to a sign of the Covenant, and in order to surround it with a higher importance and sanction, its origin was associated with Abraham himself, the founder of the nation, who, it is averred, was commanded by God, 'You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be a token of the covenant between Me and you'; and who at the same time obtained the pledge, 'I will establish My covenant between Me and thee and thy seed after thee . . . for an everlasting covenant, to be a God to thee, and to thy seed after thee.' Then the ceremony was invested with that profound meaning which fitted it to serve as a main pillar of the monotheistic creed;b it was made the indispensable term of admission to the holy community and of participation in holy functions; nay the rigorously consistent legislator, it would seem, meant to include in the same ordinance even the heathen members of the Hebrew households, for he extended it to 'those that were born in the house and those that were bought with money, in fact, to any stranger;' and he added the unqualified declaration: "The uncircumcised man child the flesh of whose foreskin is not circumcised, shall be cut off from his people.' Though this absolute rule could not be maintained, the levitical lawgiver, taking for his starting point that kindred portion of Abraham's story just referred to, not only inserted, in his elaborate system of purity and holiness, the general law: 'If a woman has born a male child .... then on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised;'d but in framing the ordinances which he considered the most solemn, he scrupulously distinguished between those persons upon whom the ceremony had been performed and those who,

a Gen. xvii. 7, 10, 11.

b See Comm. on Genes. pp. 389,

390.

c Gen. xvii. 12-14.

ביום השמיני) 3 ,2 .d Lev. xii .(ימול בשר ערלתו

not having adopted it, were without the pale of the privileged community.a

We would invite the reader's attention only to one additional consideration. Was it, in the time of Moses, even possible to represent circumcision as 'a sign of the covenant' between God and Israel, that is, as a mark of distinction between the Hebrews and the rest of mankind, when it must have been universally known, that the same rite was practised by many other nations, both neighbouring and distant, by Ethiopian and Abyssinian tribes, Arabians and Phoenicians, Moabites and Ammonites, the Edomites and a portion of the Syrians; that above all it was common among the Egyptians, from whom the Hebrews borrowed it; and that, in a word, these were neither the first nor the only people which adhered to the custom? But on the other hand, it was by no means unfeasible in the fifth century, to attribute to circumcision the force and meaning we have pointed out. At that time, the rite had long fallen into disuse. not only among some minor tribes, as the Edomites, but also among the Egyptians, who reserved it for the priests alone as an additional emblem of superior sanctity, while it was denied to the people; at that time, the origin of the ceremonial had long been effaced in the national consciousness of the Hebrews, and might, therefore, be treated by the levitical writers as a peculiar ordinance and employed as an integral part and prominent support of their complex edifice.

Briefly recapitulating the result, we find, that neither the oldest code of laws in the 'Book of the Covenant,' nor Deuteronomy, nor any prophet or historian before the Babylonian exile, mentions circumcision as an insti

a Exod. xii. 43-49; see infra 22); 'There are no inhabitants of Sect. iii.

b With such essential modifications we must understand the remark of Josephus (Contr. Ap. i.

Palestine that are circumcised except the Jews (τῶν δὲ τὴν Παλαι στίνην κατοικούντων μόνοι τοῦτο ποιοῦσιν 'Iovdatoi, sc. mepitéμveodai).