The Amalekites would have responded to no such system of bribery as
Moses offered the Israelites, who did respond with intelligence, if not
always with enthusiasm.
The same is true of the Mosaic legislation which Dr. Budde curtly
dismisses as impossible to have come from Moses, [Footnote: _Religion of
Israel to the Exile_, 31.] as presupposing a knowledge of a settled
agricultural life, which "Israel did not reach until after Moses' death."
All this is an assumption of fact unsupported by evidence; but quite the
contrary, as we can see by an examination of the law in question. Whatever
may have been the date of the establishment of the cities of refuge, I
suppose that it will not be seriously denied that the law of the covenant
as laid down in Exodus XX, 1, Numbers XXXV, 6, is at least as old as the
age of Moses, in principle, if not in words; and this legal principle is
quite inconsistent with, if not directly antagonistic to, all the
prejudices and regulations, moral, religious, or civil, of a pure nomadic
society, since it presupposes a social condition which, if adopted, would
be fatal to a nomad society.
The true nomad knows no criminal law save the law of the blood feud, which
is the law of revenge, and which prevailed among the Hebrews much earlier.
In the early Saxon law it was expressed by the apothegm "_Factum
reputabitur pro volunte_.
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