200 JAMES NEIL, M.A., 
favour of the holding in common of Crown lands, Jehovah Himself 
being the king, and taking the place and privileges of an earthly 
Eastern sovereign. 
And now a word as tothe relevant passages. In Numbers xxxvi. 
8, we read “‘ Every daughter that possesses an inheritance in any 
tribe of the children of Israel shall be wife to one of a family of 
the tribe of her father.” This certainly may refer to the pos- 
session of an inheritance in a sadeh. But what is the nature of 
the inheritance? I hold it to be simply a right to till a shifting 
annually-allotted portion of the lands of her father’s Village- 
Community, and not a freehold in severalty. There is nothing in 
the verse my critic quotes to decide either way. But there is in 
the verse immediately preceding, which gives the reason for the 
enactment, “ For every one of the children of Israel shall keep 
himself to the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers.” It is more 
the tribal or family inheritance than the individual inheritance 
that is kept before us all through the Old Testament; and the 
holding in common by the various tribal communities throws a 
new and vivid light on this peculiar feature of Bible life. 
And this disposes of the allusion in Joshua xvi. 5, 6, which, 
like all the rest of the provisions in this chapter, was distinctly 
tribal. The chapter begins, “ And there was a lot for the tribe of 
Manasseh .. . for Machir, the first-born of Manasseh . . . and he 
had Gilead and Bashan. ... There was also [a lot] for the rest of 
the children of Manasseh by their families” (Joshua, xvii. 1, 2). 
It also disposes of Joshua xv, 16-19, where Caleb’s daughter 
Achsah, on being given in marriage to his nephew Othniel, first 
moved her husband to ask her father for a sadeh, and afterwards 
for the upper and lower springs, presumably in its immediate 
neighbourhood. This occurs in an account of “ the lot of the tribe 
of the children of Judah by their families” (Joshua xv. 1). Here 
Caleb, who must have been at that time the venerable head of a 
large clan of Judah, is said to receive the city of Hebron, appa- 
rently with all its dependencies for miles around, for we find him 
sending out an expedition to conquer Debir (41 Dhoheriyeh) some 
twelve miles away. He then gives a sadeh—to which, of course, 
would be attached the possession of the town or village to which 
it belonged—to his nephew Othniel, also presumably a chieftain, 
for the Village-Community consisting of his family and followers. 
The very fact of the gift of the “springs” cnida, goolloath; some 
would render this word “ reservoirs,” and others “‘ reservoirs fed by 
