HEBREWS. 





wife, a former nun, was executed a few days after 

 him. 



HEBREWS. The appellation of Hebrew, so far 

 as we can learn from history, was first given to 

 Abraham by the people of Canaan, among whom he 

 dwelt. Gen. xiv. 13. It seems to have been ap- 

 plied to him on account of his emigration (about 2000 

 B. C.) from Mesopotamia, beyond the Euphrates, 

 into the land of Canaan (Palestine.) Some, however, 

 consider it as a patronymic derived from Heber, 

 great-grandson of Shem, from whom Abraham was 

 descended. Whatever meaning was attached to the 

 term Hebrews before the time of Jacob (Israel), 

 it appears afterwards to have been limited to his 

 posterity, and to have been synonymous with 

 Israelites. This singular people, which has exercised 

 ;i more permanent and extensive influence by its re- 

 ligion, than polished Greece by her taste, or triumph- 

 ant Rome by her arms ; which has survived the last 

 wrecks of its palaces and cities, and the annihilation 

 of its political existence as a state ; and which pre- 

 sents the wonderful spectacle of a race preserving its 

 peculiarities of worship, doctrine, language, and feel- 

 ings in a dispersion of 1800 years over the whole 

 globe, -presents to the mere philosopher a not less 

 important subject of contemplation than to the theo- 

 logian, who reads in its history a series of direct and 

 striking interpositions of Providence. (See Bossuet, 

 Histoire Universelle.) Its history reaches back to 

 the earliest periods of the world ; its code of laws has 

 been studied and imitated by legislators of other ages 

 and distant countries, and the two religions, which 

 now divide the greater part of the civilized world, 

 have been engrafted on the stock planted by the chil- 

 dren of Abraham. The Hebrew history begins with 

 the patriarch of the nation, with Abraham, but that of 

 the Hebrew state with the acquisition of Palestine. 



I. The History of the Hebrews, as a Nomadic Na- 

 tion, from Abraham till the Establishment of their 

 State in Palestine, B. C. 20001500. Under Abra- 

 ham, Isaac, and Jacob, they merely formed one noma- 

 dic family, whose history exhibits pictures of the wild 

 hunter, the migratory herdsman and the incipient 

 husbandman, and in which we already find the wor- 

 ship of one God, the rite of circumcision, and other 

 traits of the future nation. It was in Lower Egypt, 

 however, whither Israel had migrated, and where his 

 descendants resided 430, or, according to some, 250 

 years, that they became a powerful nation. Joseph, 

 having become grand vizier of Egypt, assigns his 

 brothers a residence in the fertile Goshen. They 

 increase rapidly, and become formidable to the 

 Egyptian monarchs, who require them to build and 

 inliabit cities. The oppressions to which they are 

 subjected, lead them to flee from the tyranny of their 

 hard masters, and they find a leader and deliverer in 

 a lonely exile, who had forty years before committed 

 the crime of slaying an Egyptian officer, and had since 

 resided on the borders of Arabia, tending the flocks 

 of his father-in-law. (See Moses.) The number 

 which left Egypt was 603,550 fighting men, exclu- 

 sive of the Levites. This unarmed, or, at least, un- 

 warlike crowd, is pursued by the Egyptians, but 

 escapes across an arm of the Red sea, the waters of 

 which swallow up the chariots and horsemen of the 

 pursuers. Niebuhr thinks that this passage was ef- 

 fected near Suez, where he himself forded the sea, 

 which is about two miles across. Burckhardt is of 

 the same opinion. The law, a code at once moral, 

 religious, and political, is given to the Hebrews from 

 mount Sinai ; God himself is their leader, their king ; 

 the constitution is strictly theocratic ; a violation of 

 it is sacrilege, and is attended with punishments from 

 heaven; the possession of Palestine is assured to 

 them and they set forward again for the promised 



land. On arriving at the frontiers of their new coun- 

 try, their spies bring them back word, that it is 

 occupied by fierce and warlike people, and they 

 immediately demand to be led back to Egypt. But 

 Moses determines to conduct them again into the 

 desert, to form a new generation of bold and hardy 

 warriors ; there they pass thirty-eight years as a 

 nomadic nation. After the death of their great law- 

 giver, on the summit of mount Nebo, the Hebrews 

 entered the land which contained the bones of their 

 fathers, and the long promised streams and mountains 

 of their God. Joshua assumed the command, led 

 them across the Jordan, and, after a contest of seven 

 years, obtained possession of the country. 



II. Period of the Federative Republic from the 

 Conquest of Palestine to the Establishment of the 

 Monarchy, 1500 1100. This period of 400 years 

 may be considered as the heroic age of the nation, 

 which, after its gradual transition to stationary abodes 

 and agriculture, lived in constant disputes with its 

 neighbours, the Arab nomades, the Philistines, and 

 the Edomites. The country was divided among 

 twelve tribes ; viz. the ten tribes of the sons of Jacob 

 Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Dan, Napthali, Gad, 

 Asher, Issachar, Zebulon, and Benjamin, and the two 

 tribes of the sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh 

 the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh being 

 on the east of the Jordan. The tribes were kept dis- 

 tinct, each preserving its chief and elders, as in the 

 nomadic constitution ; but the worship of Jehovah was 

 a common bond of union, which formed them into a 

 federal state. The preservation of the confederacy 

 and of the Mosaic law, was especially provided for 

 by the distribution of the Levites (a caste of priests) 

 in forty-eight cities throughout the country, and by 

 making the high-priesthood (see High-Priest) here- 

 ditary in the family of Aaron. The judges (sophetim), 

 who appear in times of emergency, delivering their 

 country from the foreign yoke to which it was repeat- 

 edly subjected, were active and heroic military lead- 

 ers, whose authority extended sometimes over a 

 greater, sometimes over a less number of tribes, ac- 

 cording to circumstances, and ceased with the cessa- 

 tion of the danger. Disobedient to the command of 

 Moses to exterminate the former inhabitants of the 

 soil, the Hebrews were often false to their God and 

 their theocratic constitution ; and their folly, if not 

 impiety, was punished by internal disorders, and sub- 

 jection to the hated and despised heathen. During 

 eight years, they were oppressed by the Mesopotam- 

 ian king Cushan-Rishathaim, from whose yoke they 

 were delivered by Othniel ; eighteen years of Moabi- 

 tish and twenty of Canaanitish servitude (from which 

 they were delivered by the heroic exertions of De- 

 borah), were followed by seven years of devastation 

 by the wild Midianites, who were destroyed by 

 Gideon. Jephtha, a captain of freebooters, expelled 

 the Ammonites, who had overrun nearly the whole 

 country, and offered up his daughter as the price of 

 the deliverance. The incursions of these Bedouin 

 hordes were desolating, but transient. The longer 

 oppression of the Philistines, to which even the 

 strength and courage of Samson could not put an end, 

 was accompanied with the captivity of the ark of the 

 covenant, and seemed to threaten the destruction of 

 the state. But Samuel (q. v.), at once a prophet and 

 a judge, restored the worship of Jehovah, reformed 

 the manners of the people, and forced the Philistines 

 to evacuate the country. His design of rendering 

 the judicial dignity hereditary in his family, was 

 frustrated by the corrupt character of his sons ; and 

 the nation demanded a king. Samuel nominated Saul, 

 a youth of a tall person, but of no political importance, 

 to the throne, and a formal constitution was drawn up 

 for the new monarchy, and deposited in the ark. 



