ABSTRACT
“A man over the congregation”—one is tempted to emphasise the word, and suggest that in the very choice of it Moses indicated his desire that his successor should be characterized by the manliness that distinguished himself. The Hebrew is Ish, which corresponds to the Latin vir. Both terms connote the male in his finest aspects, the strong, courageous, virile male. Moses was faithful—call him staunch or stedfast, and people will get nearer still, perhaps, to the meaning of the Hebrew. He had character, of course, that he set before himself certain principles of action, and sacrificed everything in order to be true to them. Moral strength was one of Moses’s outstanding attributes. Moses, the resolute man, is also the meekest of men. He is great, but he disclaims his greatness; he is reviled, calumniated, but he says never a word.
