more attention than is wont to be bestowed upon it perhaps a more exact comparing them together may afford fome growing light into the affairs of those times, especially if we join fome modern acts of civility, which travellers have related, to thefe of more ancient date. 1 Chron. xii, clofe, mentions the things that were carried to David at Hebron; the 2 Sam. xvii. 28, 29, those which he received on the other fide Jordan. The lifts follow. I fay flour or meal, for though our tranflators render it meal in Chronicles, and flour in Samuel, the original word is the fame in both places, and fhould not have been different in our version. Beans The Reader may fuppofe that this catalogue from Chronicles is incomplete, as our tranflators have mentioned bread and meat. But the Septuagint feems to me more juft, which understands the fecond word as fignifying food in general, and certainly it doth not fignify flesh in particular; and the first as meaning not a noun fubftantive (bread), but a pronoun and prepofition (to them): the Hebrew words fignifying these two very different things being fo alike, as eafily to be miftaken one for the other. They brought "them on affes, &c, victuals,-meal, cakes "of figs, &c." However, let the lift of particulars be drawn up one way or the other, they are fo different, though the cafes in general are fo much alike, that one would imagine the variation must be occafioned, partly by the difference of the feafons-the one in the Spring, the other in autumn; and partly by the different circumstances in which the attendants found themselves-in one cafe, extremely deftitute and tired, in the other, at cafe, and even in a ftate 9 a ftate of joy. The difference can hardly be attributed to differing cuftoms, or difference of productions, in the two diftricts from which the provifions were brought: the neighbourhood of Hebron, and from thence all along to Iffachar, Zebulun and Naphtali, in the one cafe, and the country beyond Jordan in the ather. To these two catalogues it may be agreeable to fubjoin a third, taken from the Sieur Roland Frejus's relation of a voyage from the coaft of Africa into an inland part of Mauritania', in which he has given us an account of the provifions prefented to him by the Moors and Arabs in a journey of eight days; after which I would make fome obfervations on the whole. The particulars, as to Frejus, were as followeth. His journey from the coaft into the country was in the latter end of April, A. D, 1666. Beans, according to Dr. Shaw, are usually full podded the latter end of February, or beginning of March, and continue during the whole fpring; which, after they are boiled and ftewed with oil and garlick, are the principal food of perfons of all diftinctions. Frejus's voyage was, accordingly, in April, who was twice prefented with beans. David's flight from Abfalom appears, for the fame reason, to have been in the fpring. The lentiles fent to David are another proof. After Frejus arrived at the capital city, the Moorish king fent him, we are told', along with other things, two great veffels of butter, two of honey, and two of fweet oil; not one word of oil, when travelling among the country- people, but butter is daily mentioned. This obfervation tends to make us less furprised that butter only is spoken of as given to David in the land beyond Jordan, no oil: it being Spring-time, butter was most plentiful; perhaps most pleasant. Oil, and figs, as well as raifins, were brought What the word is in the French I know not, the term ufed in the English is odd; what he meant is not diftinctly known, but perhaps fomething eaten as a falad by the French, but boiled in the Eaft, was the thing intended. a P. 70. 2 to Hebron, from the country-people of Galileeś when Ifrael affembled to recognize David as king over the whole nation; is it not then probable that that affembly was held in autumn, when all these things had been newly gathered in, and were in the greatest plenty? If the folemn receiving David as their king, by all Ifrael, was in autumn, then Saul must have been flain in the spring, since his death was seven years and an half before, according to I Chron. iii. 4, 2 Sam. ii. 11. ch. v. 5. Is it not reasonable to fuppofe, that the ancient Jews, in general, dried their grapes, their figs, their dates, &c, in fuch quantities, as to laft them through the winter only, 'till the spring-food came to hand, and were not, in common, folicitous to preserve them all the year round, in order to have a more grateful variety of food? Such feems to be, at prefent, the inattention of the countrypeople of Mauritania to the luxury of continual variety, fince we meet with no account of figs or dates in the whole eight day's journey of Captain Frejus, and but once of raifins, all which, however, might be cured in Some doubtlefs were preferved, fo Ziba prefented King David at this time with an hundred bunches of raifins, 2 Sam. 16. 1; and David furnished himself with them and with figs, when, in the fpring, he was engaged in continual expeditions of a warlike nature, 1 Sam. 30. 12. thofe |