AMALEK OVERCOME.

JUST after the miraculous supply of water obtained by Moses for the Israelites, by smiting the rock in Horeb, the king of Amalek came upon that timid people with a mighty army and threatened to exterminate them. Moses, accompanied by Aaron and Hur, the latter supposed to be the husband of Miriam and consequently their brother-in-law, "went up to the top of the hill," in order to see the battle and encourage the children of Israel. He bore in his hand the miraculous rod, the mysterious ensign of the Divine agency, and to which is supposed to have been attached the Hebrew banner; so that when he lifted it up, the Israelites were encouraged and exerted themselves with redoubled energy; but when he dropped it, in consequence of his arms declining from fatigue, their spirits drooped and the enemy, taking advantage of their panic, obtained a momentary ascendency. In order, therefore, to sustain the courage of God's chosen people and secure the victory, Aaron and Hur "took a stone, and put it under Moses, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword." The artist has represented the Jewish lawgiver, in accordance with the views of many respectable commentators, as raising his hands in solemn supplication to Heaven. He is seen on he top of the hill," probably Horeb, which was in this neighbourhood, with Aaron and Hur on either side of him sustaining his hands, which he had lifted up in prayer for the success of the Israelites who appear in the plain below, discomfiting "Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword." An altar was eventually raised on the spot where Moses sat, in commemoration of this signal victory, and was called Jehovah-nissi, or "The Lord, my banner."

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MOSES RECEIVING THE TABLES.

THREE months after the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, they encamped in the plain at the foot of Mount Sinai. Here it was that God summoned Moses to ascend the sacred hill and receive the tables of the law. Moses accordingly ascended the mountain, and received from the hands of God "when he had made an end of communing with him upon Mount Sinai, two tables of the testimony, tables of stone written with the finger of God."* In the picture, the summit of the holy mountain is seen enveloped in dark clouds, which surround as with a girdle, and veil from human sight what is passing upon it. Moses appears upon his knees in the divine presence, reverently taking from the Almighty Dispenser of good those tables of the moral law which were to be binding upon Jews and Christians to the end of time. The tables are presented from a cloud by an invisible hand, and received by the Jewish lawgiver in an attitude of deep and solemn devotion. As a token of his entire subserviency to the Almighty will, he has with him the rod through whose agency he performed so many miracles, for God had made it a vehicle of the divine power. Though the Godhead was not visibly revealed to Moses, he was nevertheless conscious of this august presence by the celestial light that illumined the consecrated spot to which he had been summoned. From the summit of this holy hill the Deity proclaimed in an audible voice the terms of the covenant which he made with his chosen people, together with the precepts of the moral law; and when this was done, he delivered to his accredited ministers Moses, the tables of stone upon which these precepts were "written with the finger of God," and designed to be a rule of life" for perpetual generations."