Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 67:268 (Oct 1910)
Article: Res Gestae Exitus Israel
Author: M. O. Smith

BSac 67:268 (Oct 1910) p. 625

Res Gestae Exitus Israel

Reverend M. O. Smith

The accompanying paper is, in point of fact, after all but little more than an extract from two recent works on the Pentateuch by Professor Klostermann at Kiel, with whom the writer has himself of late years more or less been in correspondence.1 Thus, indeed, this may, perhaps, be taken as a fitting sample of still more material of the like sort, which in time to come, should God point out the way, further may be employed yet in other papers. The object of these present lines, however, simply is to direct a share of due attention to that great framework which runs throughout the Pentateuch, and forms forthwith the key to its proper study. This framework in its inner structure is made up of two parts: first of all is the Itinerary, or list of different stations at which the children of Israel halted at successive stages in the course of their journeys; secondly, and as the main point, there occurs the very striking Calendar which fills out all the Pentateuch, and even works its way down to such mere details that we may take in every single day, within its broad provisions, of the forty years of wandering in the wilderness. But all this, once again, is but an excerpt from a still more large and comprehensive Calendar, reaching out through the whole Old Testament; starting from the very end, to take in the entire scope and compass of it, of the second book of the Kings, it may be traced backward all along the intervening chapters to the opening dates of the book of Genesis, gathering up upon

BSac 67:268 (Oct 1910) p. 626

its path within its ample network deeds, incidents, and details, including the long life-times of the different antediluvian patriarchs within the same construction, and furnishing the correct interpretation of those long life-times. As there is nothing after all that is in the least recondite, or in any true sense technical in its nature, in the tracing out of these different stages, it may suffice if we simply quote from the ordinary Authorized Translation in the procedure, and we may make our starting-point, perhaps, best of all at the concluding-stages, at the close of the forty years of wandering in the wilderness, and trace back the various steps in order from that last point to the beginning.

The Forty-First Year Of The Exodus

Josh. 5:10. “The children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho.”

That is to say, the first month of the forty-first of the years counting from the Exodus, when at last they could begin now to breathe more freely from the stre...