409 
But what have we to do with “ a little straining” ? (Cheers.) 
“This number of adult males would imply a total population of about 
6,000 — a manageable number. But I must frankly avow my belief that the 
word thousand, eleph, is an insertion.” 
And is this to be so in sixty different cases ? Has there been a casual 
insertion of the word “ eleph” in sixty different passages ? Yet this opinion, 
such as it is, we find in the subsequent discussion on the paper supported by 
the following remark, made, I believe, by Mr. Bow : — 
“ I think I take a safe ground in supposing that these numbers might pro- 
bably have been merely transposed out of other then existing books, out of 
which the confusion has originated ; those previously existing books having 
been composed, not from authentic documents or careful comparison of 
numbers, which we know is very difficult, but from general or popular 
belief.” 
Now against two such conjectures I have in my paper simply set the 
two censuses of the twelve tribes so carefully taken under Divine direction 
by Moses and Aaron, and the fact that every man who was numbered 
had to give his half-shekel ; and the additional fact that in the account 
given of the silver of these half-shekels in the construction of the Taber- 
nacle the figures exactly tally. In doing so I claim to have proved the 
error of both opinions ; and I now assert that neither on the former 
occasion nor the present has Mr. Bow given any just reply to my argument 
In turning now to the passage in which the smiting of the men of Beth- 
shemesh is recorded, I may, perhaps, be allowed first to state that a few days 
ago I lighted on another instance of the omission of the preposition 72 — 
from or out of . It is in Joshua iii. 13, — “The waters of Jordan shall be 
cut off from the waters that come down from above.” The translators 
of the authorized version have noted this omission in the usual way by 
printing the word from in italics. To one of my remarks on Dr. Thornton’s 
version of the words in 1 Sam. vi. 19, there is in the printed paper which I 
hold in y hand a professed reply. In his paper he had said, as an intro- 
duction t r this version, — “ I think I shall be pardoned if I suggest that in 
the old t jbrew character the symbols of ‘ out of a thousand ’ and 4 fifty 
thousand ’ might be most easily mistaken for one another.” My remark on 
these words was this : — “Now let the symbols for ‘out of a thousand’ and 
for 4 fifty thousand ’ in the old Hebrew character be produced, that the facility 
with which one might be mistaken for the other may be seen. I cannot my- 
self regard the suggestion to be pardonable without this.” It is evidently to 
these words that reference is made by Dr. Thornton, in the following passage : 
“ The following remark applies to the Bev, H. Moule’s paper, 4 Israel in Egypt.’ 
The following are the old Hebrew letters to which I referred.” The letters are 
then given. Here, however, there is no symbol either for fifty thousand or for 
“ out of a thousand” (whatever that might be). And even if there had been, 
there would still r have remained that insuperable difficulty in the way of 
VOL. V. 2 I 
