considerations: (1.) The uniform tradition both of the Jewish and the
Christian Church down to recent times. (2.) The book professes to have
been written by Moses (1:1; 29:1; 31:1, 9-11, etc.), and was obviously
intended to be accepted as his work. (3.) The incontrovertible testimony of
our Lord and his apostles (Matthew 19:7, 8; Mark 10:3, 4; John 5:46, 47;
Acts 3:22; 7:37; Romans 10:19) establishes the same conclusion. (4.) The
frequent references to it in the later books of the canon (Joshua 8:31; 1
Kings 2:9; 2 Kings 14:6; 2 Chronicles 23:18; 25:4; 34:14; Ezra 3:2; 7:6;
Nehemiah 8:1; Daniel 9:11, 13) prove its antiquity; and (5) the archaisms
found in it are in harmony with the age in which Moses lived. (6.) Its style
and allusions are also strikingly consistent with the circumstances and
position of Moses and of the people at that time.
This body of positive evidence cannot be set aside by the conjectures and
reasonings of modern critics, who contended that the book was somewhat
like a forgery, introduced among the Jews some seven or eight centuries
after the Exodus.
- DEVIL (Gr. diabolos), a slanderer, the arch-enemy of man’s spiritual
interest (Job 1:6; Revelation 2:10; Zechariah 3:1). He is called also “the
accuser of the brethen” (Revelation 12:10).
In Leviticus 17:7 the word “devil” is the translation of the Hebrew sair,
meaning a “goat” or “satyr” (Isaiah 13:21; 34:14), alluding to the
wood-daemons, the objects of idolatrous worship among the heathen.
In Deuteronomy 32:17 and Psalm 106:37 it is the translation of Hebrew
shed, meaning Lord, and idol, regarded by the Jews as a “demon,” as the
word is rendered in the Revised Version.
In the narratives of the Gospels regarding the “casting out of devils” a
different Greek word (daimon) is used. In the time of our Lord there were
frequent cases of demoniacal possession (Matthew 12:25-30; Mark
5:1-20; Luke 4:35; 10:18, etc.).
- DEW “There is no dew properly so called in Palestine, for there is no
moisture in the hot summer air to be chilled into dew-drops by the
coldness of the night. From May till October rain is unknown, the sun
shining with unclouded brightness day after day. The heat becomes
intense, the ground hard, and vegetation would perish but for the moist
west winds that come each night from the sea. The bright skies cause the
heat of the day to radiate very quickly into space, so that the nights are as