by 23, and you will obtain 620,517, the number of males in the generation of Caleb, and there D. C. stops. But unfortunately for him, the generations do not stop, as may be seen

p. 97. After Caleb comes Hur, so that you must multiply again by 23, and then you get 14,271,891. But after that comes Uri, which gives 328,253,493 for the generation of Uri. But after that comes the generation of Bezaleel, which gives 7,549,830,339; and yet there are two more generations if we go on to Joshua But when, by taking 23, D. C.'s rate of increase, we get seven thousand five hundred and fortynine millions as the male population of Israel, we may be satisfied that his statement is a gross exaggeration, without adding the other generations. D. C. can only prove his statement by arbitrarily cutting down the ninth, eighth, seventh, and sixth generations of the different families into four. His assertion is only true, if you grant false premises. Take the true premises, and the results are ridiculous. It may be remarked also, the number of 2,000,000 can be thus made out without referring to the number of circumcised slaves and heathen, who must have been incorporated with the tribes, and reckoned in the numbering. How large or how small that number may have been, it is impossible to say, but it cannot have been inconsiderable.

BISHOP COLENSO, CHAP. XVIII. The Danites and Levites at the time of the Exodus.

Here D. C. objects, first, to the number of the tribe of Dan. "Dan," he says, "in the first generation has one son, Gen. xlvi. 2; and, that he had no more born to him in the land of Egypt, and therefore had only one son, appears from Numb. xxvi. 42, where the sons of Dan consist of only one family. Hence we may reckon, that in the fourth generation he would have had 27 warriors descended from him, instead of 62,700, as they are numbered in Numb. ii. 26, increased to 64,000 in Numb. xxvi. 43. In order to have this number born to him, we must suppose that Dan's one son, and each of his sons and grandsons, must have had 80 children of both sexes."

Now, first supposing that Dan had no children in Egypt. The question is, How many had his son Hushim? D. C. supposes him to have had only three sons, and this to have been the rate of increase. But by what authority does he assign this small number? Can this be called "being fruitful, and multiplying, and swarming, and filling the land?" And why does he stop at the grandsons of Hushim, instead of going on to the fifth and sixth, or eighth generation? Simply to make out his case. His objection has no force, unless all the Israelites came out in the fourth descent from the sons of Jacob; and this we

have shown above, from the genealogies quoted by himself, to be false. His extravagant assertion, that to make out the required number, this one son of Dan must have had 80 children, and each of his sons and grandsons have had the same number, is based on the same falsehood. 40 × 40 × 40 will give 64,000. But this only brings us to the generation of Caleb; continue it to Hur, and the tribe of Dan will have 2,560,000 males; and continue it to Uri, and you have 102,400,000: and this, without going on to the generation of Bezaleel, or Zelophehad's daughters, is quite enough to show the incorrectness of D. C.'s figures. Take the right number of generations as given by D. C. on p. 97, or calculate the number of generations that may occur in 215 years; seven generations, if you count each at 30 years, 83 if you count 25 for each, and the falsehood of D. C.'s figures and reasonings will immediately appear. He says, Hushim must have had 40 sons, and thinks perhaps that this is something incredible. But Ahaziah, king of Judah, had at least 42 brothers, who were slain by Jehu. Ahab had 70 sons, 2 Kings x. 1-14. "Gideon had 70 sons, for he had many wives;" and besides, "Abimelech by a concubine." Jair had 30 sons, Judg. x. 4. Ibzan had 30 sons and 30 daughters. Abdon had 40 sons, and 30 sons' sons, Judg. xii. 9-14. When with this we com

pare what has come within our own knowledge, that one husband had by one wife 21 children, and another by one wife 22; these numbers, in the case of many wives and concubines, are nothing surprising. But, taking the right number of generations, we require no such high numbers to bring out 62, or 64,000. Suppose that Hushim, the son of Dan, had two sons less than his grandfather Jacob, that is, ten, and that each of these had six sons, and that the males increased in this ratio, we should have in the seventh generation from Dan, i. e. in the generation of Bezaleel, 77,760 males, exceeding the statement in Numbers by about 15,000. This is all on the supposition of Dan having only one son. But that does not follow because the sons of Dan in Numb. xxvi. are all called Hushites. The children born in Egypt were all reckoned under the 70 who came into Egypt. But D. C. has another objection. He says, "We may observe also, that the offspring of the one son of Dan, 62,700, is represented as nearly double that of the ten sons of Benjamin, 35,400. Numb. ii. 23.” But this is nothing surprising, much less impossible or improbable. The family may have been weakly, and may not have increased in the same proportion as others. Some of his sons may have died without any children, a supposition rendered likely by the fact, that in the

second numbering, where the children of the twelve patriarchs are named, Numb. xxvi., only five of Benjamin's sons are mentioned.

In the genealogies and numbers of the Levites D. C. finds still greater difficulties. Levi had three sons, Gershon, Kohath, Merari. Two sons of Gershon are mentioned. Kohath has four sons mentioned. Merari has only two sons mentioned. And yet at the numbering, Numb. iv., Gershon had 2630, Kohath 2750, Merari 3200; and the total, 8580 males between thirty and fifty years of age; whereas, according to D. C.'s calculation, there were in the fourth generation only forty-four Levites altogether. But here, as in reference to the whole population of Israel, he assumes, first, that Gershon, Kohath, and Merari had no more sons than those named; and that the rate of increase is determined by the sons and grandsons actually named. But that his assumption is groundless is proved by the lists under consideration. Gershon has two sons, Libni and Shimei, but no grandsons mentioned; and so Merari has two sons mentioned, Mahali and Mushi, but no grandsons. Thus, according to D. C.'s principle, as no grandsons are mentioned, there were no grandsons; and, therefore, Levi's posterity was continued only in the line of Kohath. But when we come to Numbers iii., then we find that Libni and Shimei, Mahali and Mushi