A HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL COMMENTARY ON THE OLD TESTAMENT, WITH A NEW TRANSLATION, BY M. M. KALISCH, PHIL. Doc., M. A. "-LEVITICUS. PART I. CONTAINING CHAPTERS I TO X, WITH TREATISES ON SACRIFICES AND THE HEBREW PRIESTHOOD. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, AND DYER. 1867 PREFACE. NINE years have elapsed since the publication of the second volume of this Commentary. But the author trusts that he has with some advantage adhered to the severe rule of the old master, "nonum prematur in annum". For though he devoted a considerable portion of the interval to the composition of his Hebrew Grammar, he never lost sight of the continuation of the work which he has made the task of his life, and which forms the centre of his studies and his reading. However, delay appeared to him, in one important respect, even more than desirable; it seemed to him almost imperative. For a survey of the intellectual history of England during the last decennium will render it manifest that a change has been wrought which it is not too much to describe as an intellectual revolution. The highest questions that concern mankind were discussed in works, which fell upon the public mind with the force of decisive battles, roused a spirit of regenerating enquiry, and tended perceptibly to alter the entire current of national thought. In general history, a new impulse was given by the labours of Buckle, who, ignoring the idea of a supernatural education of our race, attempted consistently, if too sweepingly, to deduce the stages of human progress from psychological principles no less unfailing in their operation than the laws |