CHAPTER XII SPOKEN RHETORIC AND THE 'BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY' Oratory or Spoken Rhetoric THE department of Oratory, or Spoken Rhetoric, is represented in the Bible partly by the elaborate speeches already noted in the Drama of Fob, attractive by their flowing eloquence and their pointed gnomic sayings. Therc are again numerous speeches scattered through the Old and New Testament, which, however, cannot well be appreciated from the literary standpoint, owing to the condensed form in which they are reported. Perhaps here also should be reckoned, in a class by themselves, the formal Prayers, or Addresses to God, of which Solomon's Dedicatory Prayer, and the apocryphal Prayer of Manasses are the chief examples. But the department includes one work of the highest literary importance in the fifth book of the Pentateuch, called by its Greek name of Deuteronomy. This book of Deuteronomy might have for its second title' The Orations and Songs of Moses before his ascent of Pisgah.' The vast historic importance of the book, from its influence on later Biblical writers, and the difficult questions surrounding its origin, have tended to divert attention from the literary interest attaching to its contents.1 There is, perhaps, no other work in which so much is gained by attempting to read the whole at a sitting. For this exercise some preparation should be made, in the way of separating the substance from accessories. To begin with, there are some long parenthetic Deuteronomy as a literary work 1 It may be well to remind the reader that questions of literary history are excluded from the present work. The analysis of Deuteronomy is analysis of the book as it stands, apart from any question how it has reached its present form. xii-xxvi explanations, which are obviously not to be understood as part of the speeches in which they occur: in modern phraseology they are foot-notes, and they should be marked off. Other verses should be separated as prefaces, titles, colophons, and the like.2 But in addition to these brief passages there is a lengthy section of fifteen chapters which may be understood as the 'Book of the Covenant' that is being mentioned continually in the speeches; however important in itself, this section should, in such an exercise as I am describing, be taken as read, and not allowed to disturb the succession of orations. When, with these preparations, the whole book is reviewed at a sitting, an intense interest is thrown upon the orations from the pathetic situation in which they are delivered: the leader of the Hebrews in their wanderings alone realising that promised land from which he alone is excluded. This thought from time to time breaks out in the cry-"The Lord was angry with me for your sakes"; and when not spoken in words it is none the less present as inspiration of the passionate appeals and denunciations with which Moses seeks to make the Covenant, of which he has been the interpreter, a power with the people when he is no longer present to uphold it. There is also a crescendo of interest throughout the book: narrative review, appeal, ceremonial and terrible denunciation, farewell and personal tenderness, a climax of song, simple story of the solemn and pathetic end. Read in any way, Deuteronomy reveals its rhetoric richness; read at a single sitting, it is seen to be oratory arranged to produce all the effect of Drama. FIRST ORATION MOSES' ANNOUNCEMENT OF HIS DEPOSITION i. 6-iv. 40 The people are indicated as gathered together in the deep hollow that makes the bed of the Jordan, on its eastern side. Moses, standing before them, commences in the calm tone of historic sur 1 They are: ii. 10-12; ii. 20-3; iii. 9 and 11 and again 14; x. 6-9. 2 See throughout analysis in the Literary Index. vey. He goes to the central incident of the people's history – the giving of the law on Horeb and tells how the first movement forward revealed the growing numbers of the people, so that he could no longer support the cumbrance and burden and strife of so vast a nation. The LORD, the God of your fathers, make you a thousand times so many more as ye are, and bless you, as he hath promised you! It thus became necessary to appoint captains of hundreds and fifties and tens; and in such organised form the people passed through the great and terrible wilderness, and reached KadeshBarnea. There the order came to advance on the foe. But though the spies sent on to explore brought back word of a good land, yet they made the heart to melt with their tale of cities great and fenced up to heaven, and children of the Anakim until the people forgot the Lord their leader in the wilderness. Moses reviews how the Lord's wrath brake forth at the murmuring, and he sware that none save the faithful spies should enter the land: the children and little ones should alone inherit. Here for the first time comes the sad plaint that the Lord was angry with Moses for the people's sake, and he, too, must not pass over Jordan. The history continues to tell of the presumptuous courage that went up to the battle without the Lord, and was visited with defeat and rout. Then there is the turning back to the wilderness, and the eight and thirty years wandering while all the men of war of that generation were being gradually consumed: a wandering, nevertheless, that lacked not the Lord's watchfulness. The LORD thy God hath blessed thee in all the work of thy hand: he hath known thy walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the LORD thy God hath been with thee, thou hast lacked nothing. With the crossing of the brook Zered the new era begins: the dread and the fear of Israel falls upon the peoples. In vain Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan resist their cities are taken, their people smitten and extirpated, their land divided among the tribes that had much cattle. It now appears how these signs of Jehovah's favour to his people stirred the personal hopes of Moses. And I besought the LORD at that time, saying, O Lord GOD, thou hast begun to show thy servant thy greatness, and thy strong hand: for what god is there in heaven or in earth that can do according to thy works, and according to thy mighty acts? Let me go over, I pray thee, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon. But the LORD was wroth with me for your sakes, and hearkened not unto me: and the LORD said unto me, Let it suffice thee; speak no more unto me of this matter. Get thee up into the top of Pisgah, and lift up thine eyes westward, and northward, and southward, and eastward, and behold with thine eyes: for thou shalt not go over this Jordan. But charge Joshua, and encourage him, and strengthen him: for he shall go over before this people. So, then, the office of Moses is to be ended: the words he has commanded are not to be added to, nor diminished from: it remains that the people shall keep them, and this shall be their wisdom and their understanding in the sight of the peoples, for no people can have a god so nigh or statutes so wise as theirs. But they must remember the occasion of the lawgiving, and how the mountain burned with fire unto the heart of heaven, and they heard the voice but saw no form; they must take heed lest they make the form of anything in heaven or earth, to worship it; and lest when they behold the sun and moon and all the host of heaven their hearts be lifted up and they worship these — these which the Lord has divided unto all the peoples under the whole heaven, whereas Israel he has chosen for his own inheritance. And he will be jealous over the people with whom he has made his covenant. For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and from the one end of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it? Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live? Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? Unto thee it was shewed that thou mightest know that the LORD he is God; there is none else beside him. Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might instruct thee: and upon earth he made thee to see his great fire; and thou heardest his words out of the midst of the fire. And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed after them, and brought thee out with his presence, with his great power, out of Egypt; to drive out nations from before thee greater and mightier than thou, to bring thee in, to give thee their land for an inheritance, as at this day. Know therefore this day, and lay it to thine heart, that the LORD he is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath: there is none else. And thou shalt keep his statutes, and his commandments which I command thee this day, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee, for ever. SECOND ORATION THE DELIVERY OF THE COVENANT TO THE LEVITES AND ELDERS The second oration of Moses is connected with a public ceremony: the handing over the Book of the Covenant into the custody of the Levites and Elders. The scene of the preceding oration is repeated, and Moses appears, with officials grouped round him representing the Levites and Elders, holding in his hands the Covenant of the Lord, now for the first time reduced to writing. As in the former speech, he goes for a starting-point to the scene at Horeb; he recites the commandments one by one as delivered by the great Voice amid fire and darkness; and he reminds the people how they came to him with words of panic: We have seen this day that God doth speak with man, and he liveth. Their petition was that Moses might stand in their stead before the |