stones, and plaister them with plaister, and thou shalt write upon them all the words of this law.] Before the use of paper was found out the ancients, particularly the Phoenicians and Egyptians, wrote their minds upon stones. This custom continued long after the invention of paper, especially if they desired any thing should be generally known, and be conveyed down to posterity. PATRICK, in loc.

No. 760.—xxxi. 19. Put it in their mouth.] That is, says Bp. Patrick, that they might sing it, and thereby preserve it in their memory. It was always thought the most profitable way of instructing people, and communicating things to posterity, to put them into verse. Aristotle (probl. 28. sec. 19.) says, that people anciently sung their laws, and that the Agathyrsi continued to do so in his days. The laws of Charondas (as Athenæus informs us out of Hermippus) were sung at Athens over a glass of wine, and were therefore written in some sort of verse. Tully also reports, that it was the custom among the old Romans to have the virtues and praises of famous men sung to a pipe at their feasts. This he apprehends they learned from the ancient Pythagoreans in Italy; who were accustomed to deliver verses containing those precepts which were the greatest secrets in their philosophy, and composed the minds of the scholars to tranquillity by songs and instruments of music.

No. 761.-xxxii. 40. For I lift up my hand unto heaven.] This was an ancient mode of swearing, or taking an oath, Gen. xiv. 22. So when God promised to bring the Israelites into Canaan, he is said to lift up his hand, Exod. vi. 8. Nehem. ix. 15. from hence some think the word promittere is derived, signifying, to engage by stretching out the hand; and that from hence

sprang the custom of stretching out and lifting up the hand when they took an oath. Thus also Virgil,

Suspiciens cœlum, tenditque ad sidera dextram.

Thus Agamemnon swears in Homer:

En. xii. 196.

το σκηπτρον ανεσχεθε πασι θεοισιν.

To all the gods his sceptre he uplifts.

Il. vii. 412.

No. 762. xxxiii. 19. And of treasures hid in the sand.] Scheuchzer, in his Physica Sacra, on the place, refers this to the river Belus, which ran through the tribe of Zabulon, and which, according to Strabo, Pliny, and Tacitus, was remarkable for furnishing the sand of which they anciently made glass. But it seems much more natural to explain the treasures hid in the sand, of those highly valuable murices and purpuræ or purple fish, which were found on the sea-coast near the country of Zabulon and Issachar, and of which those tribes partook in common with their heathen neighbours of Tyre, who rendered the curious dyes made from those shellfish so famous among the Romans, by the names of Sarranum Ostrum, Tyrii Colores. See GOGUET, Origin of Laws, part ii. b. 2. ch. 2. art. i. vol. ii. p. 95. Edinburgh.

No. 763.-xxxiv. 8. And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days.] It was usual in the East to mourn for such persons as were absent from home when they died, and were buried at a distance from their relations. Irwin relates, (Travels, p. 254.) that one of the inhabitants of Ghinnah being murdered in the desert gave birth to a mournful pro

cession of females, which passed through the different streets, and uttered dismal cries for his death. Josephus expressly declares it was a Jewish custom, and says that upon the taking of Jotapata it was reported that he (Josephus) was slain, and that these accounts occasioned very great mourning at Jerusalem. It was after this manner that the Israelites lamented the death of Moses. He was absent from them when he died, neither did they carry him to the grave, but they wept for him in the plains of Moab. The mourning for Aaron, who died in mount Hor, might probably be of the same kind. Numbers xx. 25-29. HARMER, vol. iii. p. 392.

L

No. 764.-JOSHUA vii. 6.

And put dust upon their heads.

THIS was an expression of great grief, and of a deep sense of their unworthiness to be relieved. With this view it was a very usual practice with the Jews, 1 Sam. iv. 12. 2 Sam. i. 2.; it was also imitated by the Gentiles, as in the case of the Ninevites, Jonah iii. 6. Homer also describes Achilles lamenting the death of Patroclus, by throwing dust upon his head, and lying down in it, (Iliad E. 23, 24.) Thus also Virgil:

It scissâ veste Latinus,

Conjugis attonitus fatis, urbisque ruina,
Canitiem immundo perfusam pulvere turpans.

Latinus tears his garments as he goes,
Both for his public and his private woes;
With filth his venerable beard besmears,
And sordid dust deforms his silver hairs.

En. xii. 609.

DRYDEN.

See also Oriental Customs, No. 100, and 433.

No. 765.-xvii. 16. Chariots of iron.] This does not intimate that the chariots were made of iron, but that they were armed with it. Such chariots were by the ancients called currus falcati; and in Greek Spɛnavo@upa. They had a kind of scythes of about two cubits long fastened to long axle-trees on both wheels: these being driven swiftly through a body of men made great slaughter, mowing them down like grass or corn. See Xenophon, Cyro-Pædia, lib. vi. Quintus Curtius, lib. iv. cap. 9.

No. 766. xxiv. 30. And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnath-Serah.] This place is in Judges ii. 9. called Timnath-heres, because of the image of the sun engraven on his sepulchre, in memory of that famous day when the sun stood still till he had completed his victory. This is asserted by several of the Jewish authors. Memorials alluding to particular transactions in the lives of great men were frequently made use of to adorn their tombs. Tully has recorded concerning Archimedes, that a sphere and a cylinder were put upon his monument. PATRICK, in loc,