Moses, the first of all instructors and legislators, desired to raise his
people above the fate which had ruined other nations, by communicating to
them firmness and perseverance in their adherence to such institutions, as
should keep them a distinct nation from all others. These institutions
were peculiarly appropriate to the time, to the situation, and the
circumstances of the people for whom they were prescribed. It was not his
design that the Children of Israel, when freed from their misery, after
wandering forty years in the wilderness, should mix themselves up with the
Heathens, and adopt their morals and principles. He desired that they
should continue a distinct and holy people, that strangers should be
extirpated, and their country be possessed by Jews alone. Their bounds
were marked out by God himself, and extended from Lebanon and the
Euphrates to the sea; and he commanded them to keep his commandments in
the land which he had bestowed upon them, so that he alone should be their
Lord. Hereupon, as I have before observed, Moses delivered such laws as
were adapted to their situation. But these wanderers of the desert adhered
not to the law delivered to them. We find even during the life of Moses
much obstinacy, and an unbridled inclination to Heathenism was manifested,
by their making objects of idolatrous worship. After the death of Moses,
the seventy-two interpreters collected his doctrines; but they added to
them some, withdrew others, and confused several, by which the pure Mosaic
opinions must have been obscured. And we read accordingly, in the tenth
chapter of Judges, "that the children of Israel did evil in the sight of
the Lord." They served Baal and Ashtaroth, the deities of the Syrians and
Moabites, and even the gods of the Philistines, whom God had commanded
they should not serve.[6] Their hearts became hardened in their apostacy.
The siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnazar, and the captivity in Babylon, had
the most corrupting influence on the purity of the Mosaic doctrines, and
on the laws. The original writings discovered by Hilkiah, were retrenched,
added to, and the order of the events displaced. From the long residence