the Hebrews.
But conscientiously they adopted them, less perhaps through zeal than
politeness; because, in this curious epoch, on entering a country it
was thought only civil to serve the divinities that were there, in
accordance with the ritual that pleased them.

With the mere mortal inhabitants, Israel was less ceremonious.
Commanded by Jahveh to kill, extermination was but an act of piety. It
was then, perhaps, that the _Wars of Jahveh_ were sung, a paean that
must have been resonant with cries, with the death-rattle of kingdoms,
with the shouts of the invading host. From the breast-plates of the
chosen, the terror of Sinai gleamed. Men could not see their faces and
live. The moon was their servant. To aid them the sun stood still.
They encroached, they slaughtered, they quelled. In the conquest a
nation was born. From that bloody cradle the God of Humanity came. But
around and about it was vacancy. In emerging from one solitude the
Jews created another. They have never left it. The desert which they
made destined them to be alone on this earth, as their god was to be
solitary in heaven.

Meanwhile there had been no kings in Israel. With the nation royalty
came. David followed Saul. After him was Solomon. It is presumably at
this period that traditions, orally transmitted from a past relatively
remote, were first put in writing. Previously it is conjectural if the
Jews could write. If they could, it is uncertain whether they made any
use of the ability other than in the possible compilation of toledoth,
such as the _Book of the Generations of Adam_ and the _Wars of
Jahveh_, works that, later, may have served as data for the
Pentateuch. Even then, the compositions must have been crude, and such
rolls as existed may have been lost when Nebuchadnezzar overturned
Jerusalem.

Presumably, it was not until the post-exilic period that, under the
editorship perhaps of Ezra, the definitive edition of the Torah was
produced. This supposition existing texts support. In Genesis (xxxvii.
31) it is written: "These are the kings of Edom before there reigned
any king over the children of Israel." The passage shows, if it shows
anything, that there were, or had been, kings in Israel at the time
when the passage itself was written. It is, therefore, at least
post-Davidic. In Genesis another passage (xlix. 10) says: "The sceptre
shall not pass from Judah until Shiloh come." Judah was the tribe that
became pre-eminent in Israel aft