s
sons to be his own by adoption, as I have before related.

5. When they set up the tabernacle, they received it into the midst of
their camp, three of the tribes pitching their tents on each side of
it; and roads were cut through the midst of these tents. It was like a
well-appointed market; and every thing was there ready for sale in due
order; and all sorts of artificers were in the shops; and it resembled
nothing so much as a city that sometimes was movable, and sometimes
fixed. The priests had the first places about the tabernacle; then the
Levites, who, because their whole multitude was reckoned from thirty
days old, were twenty-three thousand eight hundred and eighty males; and
during the time that the cloud stood over the tabernacle, they thought
proper to stay in the same place, as supposing that God there inhabited
among them; but when that removed, they journeyed also.

6. Moreover, Moses was the inventor of the form of their trumpet, which
was made of silver. Its description is this:--In length it was little
less than a cubit. It was composed of a narrow tube, somewhat thicker
than a flute, but with so much breadth as was sufficient for admission
of the breath of a man's mouth: it ended in the form of a bell, like
common trumpets. Its sound was called in the Hebrew tongue Asosra. Two
of these being made, one of them was sounded when they required the
multitude to come together to congregations. When the first of them gave
a signal, the heads of the tribes were to assemble, and consult about
the affairs to them properly belonging; but when they gave the signal
by both of them, they called the multitude together. Whenever the
tabernacle was removed, it was done in this solemn order:--At the
first alarm of the trumpet, those whose tents were on the east quarter
prepared to remove; when the second signal was given, those that were
on the south quarter did the like; in the next place, the tabernacle was
taken to pieces, and was carried in the midst of six tribes that went
before, and of six that followed, all the Levites assisting about the
tabernacle; when the third signal was given, that part which had their
tents towards the west put themselves in motion; and at the fourth
signal those on the north did so likewise. They also made use of these
trumpets in their sacred ministrations, when they were bringing their
sacrifices to the altar as well on the Sabbaths as on the rest of the
[festival] days; and now it