AND the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
2 See, I have called by name Bezaleel
the 'son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe
of Judah:

3 And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,

4 To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass,

5 And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship.

6 And I, behold, I have given with him Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan: and in the hearts of all that are wise hearted I have put wisdom, that they may make all that I have commanded thee;

7 The tabernacle of the congregation, and the ark of the testimony, and the mercy seat that is thereupon, and all the furniture of the tabernacle,

8 And the table and his furniture, and the pure candlestick with all his furniture, and the altar of incense,

9 And the altar of burnt offering with all his furniture, and the laver and his foot,

10 And the cloths of service, and the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the

garments of his sons, to minister in the priest's office,

11 And the anointing oil, and sweet incense for the holy place: according to all that I have commanded thee shall they do. 12 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,"

13 Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you.

14 Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.

15 Six days may work be done: but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, 'holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.

16 Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations for a perpetual covenant.

17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for 'in six days the LORD made heaven and carth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.

18 And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, 'two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.

11 Chron. 2. 20. 2 Heb. vessels. Chap. 20. 8. Deut. 5. 12. Ezek. 20. 12.

4 Heb. holiness. 5 Gen. 1. 31, and 2. 2.

6 Deut. 9. 10.

Verse 4. "Gold, silver, and brass."-Here and elsewhere we find mentioned together the metals which were procured the earliest, and first applied to purposes of use and ornament. No other metals were employed in the construction of the tabernacle, nor are any others mentioned but in such slight allusions as to show that they were indeed known, but not in common use. The Hebrew has the same word for both copper and brass, but our translation always renders it by "brass," even when the context shows that the simple metal (copper) is intended-as in "Out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass"—that is, copper, brass being a compound, factitious preparation. It is not always easy to distinguish where the word in the original denotes brass, or where copper. Perhaps we should always understand the latter in the more early passages where it occurs; and in later times we may assume that brass is intended where something refined and ornamental is implied in the text. The three metals, gold, silver, and copper, were naturally the first which men appropriated to their service; and the Scripture exhibits them as in use, and even abundant, in Egypt and Palestine a few ages after the flood. We know not precisely when these metals first became known; but at the time now immediately under our notice, the art of metallurgy had certainly attained considerable perfection; various personal ornaments, various utensils-and even images-of gold and silver, have already been often mentioned in the sacred text. It seems to our minds that a large mass of evidence in favour of the verity of the Pentateuch remains yet untouched-the evidence resulting from the perfect conformity of all its allusions to the state of the arts and the materials on which the arts operate, as well as the agreement of its statements concerning the condition of men, with the natural progress of men and of the arts they cultivate, and with the condition of things at the most early times of which profane history exhibits any knowledge. Even the silence of the Pentateuch, as to particulars which a writer later than Moses could scarcely have failed to notice, is not the least valuable of the internal evidences which the book bears of its own antiquity and truth.

In the present instance, all history and all experience corroborate the statements of Moses with regard to the early and prior use of gold, silver, and copper. These are the metals which are the most easily found, which are found in the purest state, and which are the most easily wrought when they are found. Iron must have been longer in becoming known, and it appears to have been little used for a long time after it became known. Goguet, whose continual references to Scripture render his statements of peculiar value for purposes of illustration, has à long and interesting VOL. I.

chapter on the discovery and working of metals; and little remains for us to do than to condense and analyse so much of his information as may tend to elucidate the notices of gold, silver and brass, which occur here and throughout the Scriptures.

Many incidents may be imagined, which, without search or thought, would place metals in the hands of the early races of men. The devastations occasioned by rains and inundations probably first led to the discovery of metals. After violent rains, metals are still, in some countries, found in almost every brook, and in the sands and valleys over which torrents have passed: and the supplies from this source must have been far more plentiful in early times than at present, when the superficial parts of the earth have almost everywhere been ransacked for the precious substances. The ancient writers frequently speak of rivers famous for the gold, silver, and copper, which they rolled down in their waters. These metals are also found in other situations, in grains or lumps; and in whichever of these forms exhibited, the metal would have been generally so pure and unmixed as to need none of those elaborate processes of smelting and refining, which ores taken from the mine generally require. The early stock of metal which we find existing in the hands of men might therefore have been obtained with comparatively small labour or difficulty. However, it appears that men did, at a very early period, acquire the art of extracting metal from the mine, and of refining the ore. These processes are mentioned distinctly in the very ancient book of Job. (See the notes on Job, ch. xxviii.) The metals must have been known for some time before the art was discovered of forging them into shapes proper for their designed uses. Goguet thinks that people had not at first any other way of shaping metals than by casting them in moulds. Strabo mentions a nation that made use of cast copper, not knowing how to forge it; and there are barbarous nations no less ignorant at this day. It would soon be observed, however, that all metals, except lead and tin, became flexible and soft when in the fire; and this would readily suggest the idea of working them, when in a state of heat, into the various forms they were desired to bear. This art must have been very ancient: knives, swords, and shears occur to our notice in the history of the patriarchs; and, from the ornaments of silver and gold which are mentioned in the same history, it is evident that men had then learnt how to execute, in gold and silver, works of considerable delicacy and exactness. The great degree of perfection which the arts of working in metal had reached is still more strongly evinced in the account of the works for the tabernacle. The skill which must have been necessary to execute the works described here very clearly intimates that the discovery of the art could not have been very recently made. Goguet omits to observe that the fact of the precious metals having, as early as the times of the patriarchs, become the sign of property (Gen. xiii. 2), the medium of traffic, and objects of valuable ornament, would alone demonstrate the antiquity of their use. For there can be no question that much time was taken before an estimate of their relative value of the metals could be formed, and that the most precious were at first applied to common and mean uses. There was an Egyptian tradition that the art of working gold and copper being discovered in the Thebais, arms were first made to exterminate the beasts of prey, and then tools to cultivate the ground. These were the most obvious purposes to which metals would be applied, whatever metals were first discovered; and accordingly we find instances, in modern as well as ancient times, of gold and silver being applied to the commonest uses of daily life, where the inferior metals were not known.

CHAPTER XXXII.

1 The people, in the absence of Moses, cause Aaron to make a calf. 7 God is angered thereby. 11 At the intreaty of Moses he is appeased. 15 Moses

cometh down with the tables. 19 He breaketh them. 20 He destroyeth the calf. 22 Aaron's excuse for himself. 25 Moses causeth the idolaters to be slain. 30 He prayeth for the people. AND when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, 'Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.

2 And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.

3 And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron.

4 And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

1 Acts 7. 40. 21 Kings 12. 28, Psal. 106. 19.

31 Cor. 10. 7.

5 And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the LORD.

6 And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.

7 And the LORD said unto Moses, 'Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves:

8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

9 And the LORD said unto Moses, 'I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:

10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.

11 And Moses besought 'the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath

4 Deut. 9. 12. 5 Chap. 33. 3. Deut. 9. 13. 6 Psal. 106. 23.

7 Heb. the face of the LORD.

wax hot against thy people, which thou | Moses, the man that brought us up out of hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt the land of Egypt, we wot not what is bewith great power, and with a mighty come of him. hand?

Num. 14. 13. 9 Gen. 12.7, and 15. 7, and 48. 16. 10 Chap. 31. 18. 11 Heb. weakness. 12 Deut 9. 21. 13 Heb. those that rose up against them. 14 Or, And Moses said, Consecrate yourselves to day to the LORD, because every man hath been against his son, and against his brother, &c.

15 Heb. Fill your hands.

Verse 2. "The golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters."-It seems from this passage, that it was customary among the Hebrews, not only for the females, but for the young men to wear earrings. However, that they were not commonly worn by the men appears from Judges viii. 24, where, "because they were Ishmaelites," is assigned as a reason why a great spoil in earrings was taken from the host defeated by Gideon. The earrings required by Aaron were doubtless Egyptian, and the form which they bore will be seen in the cut at the end of chap. iii. Their size and weight, as there exhibited, will show what a large mass of precious metal must have been formed by a general contribution of such ornaments. They do not seem to be rings, properly so called, but round plates of metal with a thick border. The earrings now used in the East are various in form and size. They are generally thick, sometimes fitting close to the ear, and in other instances very large, perhaps three or four inches in diameter, and so heavy as greatly to distend the lobe of the ear, at the same time enlarging in a very disagreeable manner the orifice made for the insertion of the ring.

4. "Fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf."-This description is very obscure. Dr. Boothroyd reads:-"He fashioned the form of it, and made a molten calf." He however imagines that the figure was of wood overlaid with gold; but as in this case it could not have been a molten image, as it is repeatedly said to have been, we incline to read:-" He fashioned it (the mould) with a graving tool, and afterwards made a molten calf."The present is the earliest instance on record of the art of forming a statue. Sculpture in stone was however certainly known at this time, since the Israelites were forbidden to make images of stone. Yet the instance before us probably exhibits the primitive form of statuary; for we are disposed to concur with Goguet in thinking that the art of casting in moulds preceded that of sculpture. Men might take the hint of this by observing the shapes assumed by soft substances when they happened to fall into the cavities of more compact and solid bodies. The same observation would teach them the use of moulds. They had only to follow the hints thus naturally furnished. They would search for earth of such a quality, that, although solid, it might be readily softened and kneaded. At first they would only mould clay, plaster, &c. ; but men would not long be content with the brittle forms thus produced; the desire of rendering their works more durable and solid would soon lead them to think of employing metals, when it became known that metals might be rendered fluid at pleasure. Metallic personal ornaments were probably thus cast in the first instance, and then it would naturally occur to cast in metal, images and other objects which had formerly been made with clay. Instances of molten images are so common in the history of the ancient idolatries, that it seems superfluous to specify particular examples. That the image now before us was no less after Egyptian models as a work of art than as an idol, seems clear from Deut. xxix. 17, where the Egyptians are expressly stated to have had gods not only of wood and stone, but of silver and gold. See the note there for some remarks on the origin of sculpture properly so called. "These be thy gods, O Israel."-In Joshua xxiv. 14, it is expressly said that the Hebrews had, while in Egypt, served the gods of that country; and, had this information been wanting, the fact of their predilection for the idolatry of Egypt would be sufficiently apparent from their conduct on the present and various other occasions. It is not at all questioned that the idol to which they turned aside at this time was an Egyptian god; and it is also very generally agreed that this god was no other than the Apis of the mythology of Egypt. But the precise position of this god in that mythology has not been quite determined, it being still questionable whether Apis was a god on his own account, or only a living and visible representative for another. The most general and probable opinion is, that he was regarded as a symbol of their chief god Osiris, or the sun; and that the latter was reverenced in the homage paid to Apis, whose

worship was not sectional, it would seem, like that of most of the other animal gods of Egypt, but was general through the country. This Apis was a living bull, possessing certain marks which identified him as the god or vice-god in question. These marks were-that it was black, with the exception of a triangular (or square) white spot on the forehead. It had also the figure of an eagle (or, as some say, a crescent) on the back; the hairs of the tail double, and a knot, or something, under the tongue in the form of a beetle. When a creature answering this description was found, he was conducted with great state and infinite rejoicing to the temple of Osiris, and was kept there in an apartment ornamented with gold, and was there worshipped till death, when he was buried with great solemnity and mourning, after which another bull with the same marks was sought for. Several years sometimes elapsed before it could be found, but when this happened there was a great festival throughout the country-such a festival, probably, as that with which the Israelites welcomed the image. It is said that Apis was not allowed to live beyond a certain age, on attaining which he was drowned in a sacred fountain. While he lived he might always be seen through the window of his apartment, and was sometimes brought out to gratify the curiosity of strangers. It is a singular fact, and in some measure diminishes our surprise at the conduct of the Israelites, that foreigners, who, although idolaters themselves, were generally quite sensible of the grossness of the Egyptian idolatry, seem to have concurred in speaking with great respect of the deified bull. Pliny relates with much solemnity, that Apis refused food from the hand of Germanicus, who died soon after. Herodotus, long before that, relates how the Persian king Cambyses inflicted on the Egyptian god a wound in the thigh, of which he died; and, farther on, when he comes to mention how that king himself received his death from a wound accidentally inflicted by his own sword, fails not to call attention to the fact that the wound was in the very same part of the body in which he had himself wounded the Egyptian god.

Thus, as the Israelites were tainted with the idolatry of Egypt, and as Apis was one of the most conspicuous objects in that idolatrous system, a sufficient explanation seems to be given of the direction taken by the first apostacy of the Israelites from Him who had recently given them such large and manifest evidences of his mercy and regard. To render the identification of the "calf" with Apis more complete, it may be proper to add, that while the bull was worshipped in person at Memphis, he had in other places representative images, sometimes in the form of a bull, but also, and perhaps more frequently, in a human figure with a bull's head. Several of the ancient Fathers speak of the "golden calf" as an image of the latter description. What a rooted predilection for the worship of Apis the Hebrews entertained is evinced by the facility with which king Jeroboam (who had resided in Egypt) was enabled, several centuries later, to lead Israel to sin by worshipping the golden calves which he set up in Dan and Bethel; and the worship of which seems to have prevailed generally among the ten tribes to the time of the captivity.

5. "To-morrow is a feast to the LORD."-Under all the circumstances, this is a most remarkable expression, and will probably favour the conclusion that the crime of the Hebrews consisted not in an utter apostacy from Jehovah to the gods of Egypt; but in an unauthorised, and indeed interdicted, intrusion of Egyptian ideas and practices into the worship of Jehovah. If they had wholly forsaken the Lord, what interest had they in his feast to be held on the morrow? It would therefore seem that, as they had formerly worshipped Osiris through Apis, so now they purposed to worship Jehovah through the same sensible symbol. This view we seem also to gather from other passages of Scripture, as, Psalm cvi. 20, “they changed their glory (the invisible Jehovah) into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass." This was a monstrous desecration, and directly counter to the divine command. See Deut. iv. 12-23; where Moses repeatedly reminds them that, in that awful day when the law was delivered on Sinai, they saw no shape-no manner of similitude,-only they heard a voice; and as repeatedly cautions them against making an image of any shape whatever. This remarkable passage seems to imply, not merely an interdiction of images in honour of false gods, but also the introduction of images as symbols or representatives of Jehovah under the idea of doing him honour, or of diminishing the distance between the worshippers and the worshipped by the intervention of a sensible image. In fact all image-worship, with whatever ulterior object, seems to have been considered idolatry, and as such liable by the law to capital punishment. This sufficiently accounts for the strong terms of reprobation with which the worship of the golden calves is on all occasions mentioned; while at the same time we cannot gather from the terms in which the intention is expressed, that it was intended as an act of total apostacy from God; or, from the terms in which censure is conveyed, that it was regarded otherwise than as the unworthy act and dangerous practice of a disobedient, but not an apostatizing, people. But although not perhaps, in its first intention, an act of entire departure from God, it was a great step towards total apostacy; for the mind would soon learn to rest on the visible symbol, and then the step to new gods and new images was narrow and easy to take. This was the great danger; and its reality is evinced by the addiction of the ten tribeswhich worshipped the calves in Dan and Bethel-to Baal, Moloch, and the other gods of the neighbouring nations. In estimating the great difficulty which was experienced in leading the Israelites to entertain proper ideas of God as a spiritual being, and to honour him as such, we are apt to form too low an idea of their character from judging them by the standard which Christianity has produced, without sufficiently considering that the new principle required them to dismiss all the ideas and practices in which they had been brought up; and that all the nations known to them were wholly immersed in idolatry, and afforded no example of worship and conduct in any degree resembling that which was required from themselves.

It may be well to recapitulate the history of this chapter: Moses having been more than a month absent in the mount, the people despaired of his return. And as he was the agent through whom their deliverance had been effected, and had stood as it were between them and God, there seemed a vacancy in their system, which, as the priesthood and the regular course of religious service were not yet established, led them to think of a system of their own, or rather of a partial adaptation of their new principles to the practices with which they were familiar. They therefore applied to Aaron to give effect to their intention. His duty seems to us sufficiently clear; and although his easy compliance on this occasion has been extenuated by some writers, the culpability of his conduct is unquestionable, for we are told in Deut. ix. 20, that the Lord was very angry with him, and would have destroyed him, had not his brother interceded on his behalf. It is possible that his own faith failed; and that, concurring in the belief that Moses was dead, he shrunk from the task of attempting to control the inclinations of a multitude, whose unruly disposition had already been sufficiently manifested; and he may have satisfied his conscience by resolving on the half measure of keeping the Lord as much as possible in their view as the ulterior object of the homage paid to the image. Hence he no sooner perceived the feeling with which the people received the golden calf, than he proclaimed the feast to be held on the morrow in honour of Jehovah. It is also thought by some, that, in the first instance, his meeting their proposal by demanding their precious personal ornaments with which to manufacture the image, was in the hope that their unwillingness to comply would lead them to forego their intention. Their zeal however was not to be thus repulsed. But there is no end to such conjectures. We must be content to know that he acted wrong, whatever were his motives. Moses directly charges him with his crime in verse 21; and the excusatory narrative which he gives in reply, with the confused account, with which it terminates, of his own share in the transaction, as if conscious of error