Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/599

 brother of Moses, and high priest of the Jehovistic faith. That Jehovah should be rather vexed at such ungrateful behavior, after all the trouble he had taken in plaguing and slaughtering the Egyptians, was only natural; but it was surely an extraordinary want of self-control to propose to consume the whole nation at once, reserving only Moses as the progenitor of a better race. Here, as in other cases, Moses showed himself more merciful than his God. He ingeniously urged as a motive to clemency that the Egyptians would say extremely unpleasant things if the Israelites were destroyed; and after his return to the camp he contrived to appease him by inducing the Levites to perpetrate a fratricidal massacre, whereby three thousand people fell. This measure was described by Moses as a consecration of themselves to the Lord, that he might bestow his blessing upon them. It proved successful, for Jehovah now contented himself with merely plaguing the people instead of exterminating them (Ex. xxxii). Thus, he had scarcely finished plaguing the Egyptians before he began plaguing the Israelites in their turn. Indeed he was at this period peculiarly prone to sending plagues of one kind or another. Some complaints of the Israelites in the wilderness were visited by fire which burnt up those who were at the extremities of the camp (Num. xi. 1-3). When they began to pine for the varied food they had enjoyed in Egypt, and to lament the absence of flesh meat, he sent them quails indeed, but accompanied the gift with a very great plague, of which large numbers perished (Num. xi. 4-34). When they were dismayed by the reports brought them concerning the inhabitants of Palestine, and complained of their God for the position he had brought them into, he again fell into a rage and proposed to destroy them all by pestilence except Moses. But Moses a second time appealed to him on what seems to have been his weak side,—his regard for his reputation among the Egyptians. These had all heard of what he had been doing, and would not they and the other neighboring nations ascribe the destruction of the Isrealites in the wilderness to his inability to bring them into the promised laud? Moved by this reasoning, Jehovah consented to spare the people, but determined at the same time to avenge himself upon them by not permitting any of those that had come from