171 



solve the acknowledged difficulties of the text, have been 

 briefly indicated, and it only remains for us to clear ourselves 

 from the charge of inconsistency which might be plausibly 

 urged against our admitting the servitude under Chusan to be 

 calculated exclusively, which we do not permit in any other 

 instance. It is because the historian evidently records it to 

 have followed the government of the elders, and from the 

 conclusion of tliis servitude commenced the peculiar expres- 

 sion, " the land had rest forty years," viz, to the defeat of 

 Eglon. But there is another reason still more valid, viz. that 

 of allotting 25 years to Joshua and the elders from the con- 

 quest, as has been usually the principle and opinion of the 

 earlier fathers of the church, in whose time many records 

 still existed, to influence and direct them ; and computing all 

 the years of the reposes and Judges together, as we find them 

 recorded in the text with the 84 years of the kings, the ag- 

 gregate, including the period in the wilderness, is 472 years, 

 8 less than the period designated in the text, (1 Kings, 6. 1.) 

 which clearly refers to this first oppression, succeeding the 

 authority of the elders. 



In a word, by this manner of arranging the supputation of 

 the times, we collect the just calculus required by the text; 

 and independent of the several advantages, already detailed, 

 which it possesses over the systems of those whose principles 

 would lead them to extend the interval; it avoids the incon- 

 sistencies which have been remarked in the hypotheses of 



Marsham 



