of the Bible gives expression to the feeling. "The word 'meek,'" says Dean Stanley, "is hardly an adequate reading of the Hebrew term which

should rather be much enduring;' and, in fact, his onslaught on the Egyptian, and his sudden dashing the tables on the ground, indicate rather the reverse of what we should call 'meekness.'"* The same feeling was long ago expressed by Luther, who translates that Moses was, not meek, but, "geplagt," smitten, afflicted. In deciding the question, then, whether we should cling to some such translation as our own, or adopt in its place some such reading as that which Luther's German suggests, we ought to remember that our translators, at all events, chose that which had the leading Hebrew authorities on its side. Consciously and intelligently chose it, we might venture to say; for they could not have been ignorant that the fundamental idea of so common a Hebrew word

as this was that of affliction, and not that of meekness. Yet even Gesenius, who is not wont to be particularly tender towards received translations, when comparative philology does not run upon exactly

* Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. Art. Moses.

the same lines with them-but even he admits* that meek is the import of the word in the passage before us. And so our translators, it may be believed, deliberately rejected the sense of 'much enduring,' which is the more common, but by no means universal significance of the word, and chose the reading 'meek' with all the train of ideas that the word entails, because it had the preponderance, and even, so far as I know, the monopoly of Hebrew authority in its favour. Rashi comments upon the adjective in two words, and says it means here, "lowly and patient." Aben Ezra expands the same idea at somewhat greater length. The meaning of it is, he says, that Moses sought not eminence above his brethren. The Chaldee Targum represents it by a word which indeed comes from the same root as the Hebrew word, but which Buxtorf in his great Lexicon translates, "humble, meek, mild," and which is, moreover, identically the same word as that with which the Chaldee paraphrases the term in Zech. ix. 9: Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy king cometh

*

Sola mansuetudinis significatione legitur Num. xii. 3. Ges. Thesaurus Ling: Heb. et Chald., p. 1049.

unto thee he is just and having salvation: lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass." The Hebrew word, in short, which the sacred writer applies to Moses, does no doubt mean primarily, "stricken, afflicted, having much to bear:" but gathering together such authorities as these, we may say that it also describes the disposition of one who has borne that much well and nobly; that it designates that chastened, unresentful temper, not always unallied with a self-forgetful courage that may be disastrous or even fatal to an aggressor, when it is stirred to the vindication of another's wrong—that temper, which is in the highest sense "much enduring," because it is the product of a long experience in the art of doing so; which is neither weak, nor languid, nor unintelligent, nor cowardly; and which deservedly goes far to entitle him who has acquired it to be signalised as "meek."

SUPPLEMENT

TO CHAPTER I.

SINCE the early sheets of this work were in type, a friend, who has been good enough to read my proofs, has more than once drawn my attention to a passage of Scripture which I have left unnoticed in the argument of my first Chapter. I cannot do better than give his remarks in his own words. He says:

'And

"I still think that 2 Chron. ix. 11, bears very strongly on the subject you have in hand. the king made of the algum-trees terraces to the House of the Lord, and to the king's palace, and harps and psalteries for singers: and there were none such seen before in the land of Judah.' My Bagster has this note to terraces: or stays; Hebrew, highways.' The Septuagint has 'kai éπoinσev ἐποίησεν ὁ βασιλεὺς τὰ ξύλα τὰ πεύκινα ἀναβάσεις τῷ οἴκῳ TOU KUρíov.' Vulgate, 'gradus in domo Domini.' Here you have the word forgoings up,' and also a

word of which gradual' is the derivative. Hence it would be scarcely too much to argue, that this verse gives an account of the first makings of those 'steps;' of their connection with vocal and instrumental sacred music; and of their being devised originally by Solomon."

66

It may be remarked, that the Hebrew word here translated "stairs" in the Margin, is not the identical word employed in the Titles of the Gradual Psalms. This fact might, at first sight, appear to invalidate the argument sketched above. In reality, however, it does not do so. For no less an authority than Rashi explains that the Hebrew word in the Chronicles means steps." It is a derivative of the same root that, according to Radak, gives us the term "Selah," a word which is generally admitted to be a musical term of some kind or other, and therefore, perhaps, to be expected in a series of Orchestral Psalms, but which nevertheless, it was long ago observed by S. Gregory of Nyssa,* does not occur in the Gradual Psalms.

S. Greg. Nyss. in Pss. cap. x. p. 320, ed. Paris, 1638.