389 
the very inartificial manner in which, those numbers were 
represented. The letters of the alphabet were employed to 
signify units, tens, and hundreds ; two dashes or dots after a 
letter made it represent so many thousands. A smear, there- 
fore, or a blot would raise an authentic into a highly exag- 
gerated number. Again, numbers might be mistaken for 
words, and words for numbers A 
• 2 f‘ ?° W D tl l e " Se of H . ebrew letters on the Maccabean coins 
is a fact. Bat their use m the original manuscripts of the Old 
testament is not by any means an established fact. On the 
contrary, the oldest Hebrew manuscripts known invariably 
express numbers m words. And considering the scrupulous 
regard of the Jews for the integrity of the sacred text, we 
may fairly conclude that it was ever so done. This conclu- 
sion is confirmed, too, by the fact that the Septuagint 
translators did the same. Discrepancies and difficulties, some 
of which are given in the paper to which I refer, led Glassius 
and others to conjecture that these had arisen from an early 
use of numerical letters. _ This is the only ground for the 
conjecture. Yet this conjecture is now converted into a fact • 
and asserted to have been “ the most fertile source of errors 
m the text of ScriptureA 
29. Happily, the one attempt in the paper to apply this one of 
the five reasons to the elucidation of a text— one of the texts 
singularly enough, on which Glassius grounds his conjecture- 
tails to convince. It is the passage which states the number 
of men smitten at Bethshemesh, because the men of that 
place looked into the ark.* The Authorized Version of the 
words (with which the Septuagint and the Vulgate nearly 
agree), is this:— “And He smote the men of Bethshemesh, 
because they had looked into the ark of the Lord ; even He 
smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten 
men. 1 must say I consider this translation anomalous. 
the exaggeration,” therefore, here does not of necessity 
exist in the Hebrew text. By Dr. Waterland, and others", 
another rendering is given, which removes this exaggeration : 
He smote the men of Bethshemesh because they looked into 
tfie ark of the Lord, and he smote of the people threescore 
and ten men out of fifty thousand.” One objection to this 
rendering m the paper on “ The Numerical System of the Old 
testament- is, that fifty thousand for the male population of 
so inconsiderable a town as Bethshemesh is an improbable 
iium . er ' 0 ^his I reply that the text intimates that on an 
occasion of suck great national and religious interest, the 
* 1 Sam. vi. 19. 
