BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings
But it is not only there but also a few lines further down 5 that the same
historian interpolates some words of Moses: ‘Jair, son of Manasseh, took
the whole territory of Argob right up to the border of the Geshurites and
the Mahacathites, and called those places, together with Bassan, by his
own name ‘‘the villages of Jair’’, as it is to this day’.These things, I contend,
the historian added in order to explain the words of Moses which he had
just reported, namely,‘And the rest of Gilead and the whole of Bashan, the
kingdom of Og, I gave to the half-tribe of Manasseh, the whole territory of
Argob with the whole of Bassan, which is called the land of the giants’.
Undoubtedly in the writer’s time the Hebrews knew what the villages of
Jair of the tribe of Judah were but did not know them as ‘the territory of
Argob’or ‘the land of the giants’. He had to explain what these places were
which had been so called long ago, and at the same time needed to give a
reason why in his day they were denoted by the name of Jair, who was of the
tribe of Judah, not of Manasseh (see 1 Chronicles 2.21 and 22).
[4] This is how we explain the opinion of Ibn Ezra and the passages of
the Pentateuch he cites to support it. But he has not said everything, nor
even the most important things.There are other, more powerful points to
be made:
(1) The writer of these books not only refers to Moses in the third person 121
but also makes a⁄rmations about him. For instance,‘God spoke with Moses’. 6
‘God used to speak to Moses face to face’. 7 ‘Moses was the most humble of all
men’ (Numbers 12.3).‘Moses was seized with anger against the commanders of
the army’ (Num. 31.14); ‘Moses the divine man’ (Deut. 33.1). ‘Moses the
servant of God died’. 8 ‘Never was there a prophet in Israel like Moses’, 9 etc.
By contrast, when the Law which Moses had expounded to the people and
written down, is set out in detail in Deuteronomy, Moses speaks and narrates
his actions in the ¢rst person, for instance,‘God has spoken to me’ (Deuteronomy
2.1, 17, etc.),‘I prayed to God’, 10 etc. Later, however, at the end of the book,
when he has ¢nished recording the words of Moses, the historian reverts to the
third person, proceeding to tell how Moses, having ¢nished his exposition of
the Law, gave it to the people in writing, then admonished them for the last
time, and ¢nally died. All of this ^ the manner of speaking, the testimony,
5 Deuteronomy 3.14.
9 Deuteronomy 34.10.
6 E.g. Exodus 30.22, 31.1.
10 Deuteronomy 9.26.
7 Exodus 33.11.
8 Deuteronomy 34.5.
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