History of the Kingdom of God Under the Old Testament. Transl (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871 Excerpt: ...during their residence in Egypt, they were divided into tribes and families. Every tribe had its prince--a regulation which dates beyond the Mosaic time; for we nowhere read that it was made by Moses, and indeed it is at variance with his whole administration: comp. Num. ii. 29. The heads of the greater families or tribes, the ninBK'D or ITON 'ru (the former is the proper termin. tech.; on the other hand, the latter appears also of the individual family, and of the whole face: comp. Ex. xii. 3; Num. iii. 15, 20), were called heads of the houses of the fathers, or simply heads. They appear also under the name of elders, or COpT, which is not a designation of age, but of dignity: comp. Ex. iv. 29, according to which Moses and Aaron begin their work by collecting the elders of the people. Kurtz (Gesch. des A. T. ii. 8) is quite wrong in maintaining that the elders of the tribes and the heads of the families were distinct. In Deut. xxix. 10, to which he appeals, "your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers,"-the magistracy and the people are first of all contrasted; then the two classes of magistrates, the natural rulers or elders, and the scribes, a sort of mixture of the patriarchal constitution, --jurists, who in Egypt, where the condition of the people had assumed a more complex character, had come to be associated with the natural rulers. We find the same constitution among the Edomites, the Ishmaelites, and the present Bedouins, among the ancient Germans, and the Scotch: comp. Michaelis, Mos. R. i. 46. These rulers were also the natural judges of the people. Yet in the times of the Egyptian oppression only a shadow remained of their judicial power. We have already pointed out the error of the common assumption that ...