But it is difficult to reconcile it with another statement in Gen. xv. 16, where it is said that ‘in the fourth generation’ the children of Israel should return to Canaan. As the words were spoken to Abraham, the fourth generation would be that of Joseph himself. Since this seems out of the question, they are usually interpreted to refer to Moses and Aaron, who are placed in the fourth generation from Levi. Moses and Aaron, however, did not ‘come again’ to Palestine, and the genealogy of the daughters of Zelophehad (Num. xxvii. 1) makes the generation that did so the seventh from Joseph. Time, in fact, cannot be reckoned by generations; we do not know how many links in the chain may have been dropped, ‘son’ in Semitic idiom being frequently equivalent to ‘descendant,’ while the names are often merely geographical, like Gilead and Machir in the genealogy of Zelophehad, and therefore have no chronological value. It was, however, the mention of ‘the fourth. generation’ which produced the rabbinical gloss, alluded to by S. Paul (Gal. iii. 17), according to which the four hundred and thirty years of Gen. xv. 13 did not mean the time during which the Israelites were ‘afflicted’ in Egypt, but—in spite of the definite assertion to the contrary—a period which included the lives of the patriarchs as well as the government of Joseph. If the statements in regard to the period of the Israelitish settlement in Egypt are contradictory, the statements in regard to the lapse of time from the conquest of Canaan to the building of Solomon’s temple are still more so. In 1 Kings vi. 1 we read that the foundations of the temple were laid in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign, and four hundred and eighty years after the Exodus from Egypt. If we add together the numbers given in the book of Judges, they amount to four hundred and ten years, thus leaving only seventy years for the wanderings in the desert, the judgeships of Eli and Samuel, the reigns of Saul and David, and the first four years of Solomon! The endeavours that have been made to get over the difficulty have all been fruitless. Wellhausen and others, for instance, have conjectured that the four hundred and eighty years are intended to represent twelve generations, each being reckoned at forty years, and the seventy years assigned to the five ‘lesser judges’ being overlooked. But the conjecture is destitute of support, and is contrary to such notices as we have of the number of generations which covered the period of the judges. Moreover, the five lesser judges do not constitute a group by themselves.