1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was waste and 2 void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.** This great introductory sentence of the book of God is equal in weight to the whole of its subsequent communications concerning the kingdom of nature. It assumes the existence of God; for it is he who in the beginning creates. It assumes his eternity; for he is before all things; and as nothing comes from nothing, he himself must have always been. It implies his omnipotence; for he creates the universe of things. It implies his absolute freedom; for he begins a new course of action. It implies his infinite wisdom; for a kosmos, an order of matter and mind, can only come from a being of absolute intelligence. It implies his essential goodness; for the Sole, Eternal, Almighty, All-wise, and All-sufficient Being has no reason, no motive, and no capacity for evil. It presumes him to be beyond all limit of time and place; as he is before all time and place. It asserts the creation of the heavens and the earth; that is, of the universe of mind and matter. This creating is the omnipotent act of giving existence to things which before had no existence. This sentence assumes the being of God, and asserts the beginning of things. Hence it intimates that the existence of God is more immediately patent to the reason of man than the creation of the universe. And this is agreeable to the philosophy of things; for the existence of God is a necessary and eternal truth, more and more self-evident to the intellect as it rises to maturity. This sentence denies atheism; for it assumes the being of God. It denies polytheism, and among its various forms the doctrine of two eternal principles, the one good and the other evil; for it confesses the one eternal Creator. It denies materialism; for it asserts the creation of matter. It denies pantheism; for it assumes the existence of God before all things, and apart from them. It denies fatalism; for it involves the freedom of the Eternal Being. M. We wander back in quest of the origin of our race and of the world we inhabit till we meet this sublime declaration, In the beginning, God. —We traverse the whole field of speculative philosophy and reach the same sublime result, In the beginning, God. We roam through the interminable ages and cycles of ages in the eras of geology, and the weary mind comes at length to the same terminus, In the beginning, God. Everywhere it is written, There is a God—a living God, a personal God, a present God. Whence came this sublime conception of God, which has never been exceeded by any philosophy since? Whence this wondrously true and accurate outline of the course of creation, in an age of the world when there was no philosophy nor science equal to such conceptions and discoveries—in an age when all the wisdom of the world upon such matters has shown itself to have been utterly and hopelessly at fault? Whence came this account of the creation but from God himself, by direct communication to man? J. P. T. God, who is in a high sense the Author of Scripture, does not argue His own existence any more than a human author begins his book by proving that he himself actually lives. God is. What is the conclusion of long arguments elsewhere is the starting-point of the Bible. The name of God is stamped on the forehead of His book. D. F. By the positive exclusion of eternity from the existence of the universe, and by repelling the idea of accidental creation, the fact of a beginning is raised in the Bible not only above all the entangling speculations of recent philosophy, but above the boldest reasonings of modern scepticism. Those who have pushed the discoveries of science to their present limit tell us that however much further they may hereafter proceed, they have no hope of gaining the least insight into that origination of matter of which the Scriptures speak. This point they regard as beyond the aim of the sciences, for each is restricted to its own facts and laws, and is necessarily silent in reference to history antecedent to itself. “To ascend to the origin of things,” says Sir John Herschel, “and speculate on creation, is not the business of the natural philosopher." W. Fraser. The writer to the Hebrews affirms that this doctrine—God the original Creator of matter—is accepted by faith, i.e. upon the credit of God's own testimony. "By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things that do appear" (Heb. 11 : 3). Not being constructed out of matter previously apparent, they must have been made by the direct production of matter not before existing. H. C. Reason as well as faith demands that we deny independency to whatever is created, and devoutly confess that God is "all in all." In Him, by whom they were formed, "all things consist"—in Him all "live and move and have their being." He is the author and giver of life, and in the strictest sense it may be affirmed that every day, not less than the first, is a day of creation; every moment the word of power is pronounced from the height of the Eternal Throne—"let there be light" and life. This belief constitutes the basement-principle of all religion, and is the sentiment from which piety must take its spring. The notion of independency and of eternity, suggested by the regular movements of nature, are thus thrown off from the surface of the visible world, and go to enhance our impressions of the glories of Him who alone is eternal, unchangeable and independent. I. T. It is an assured truth and a conclusion of experience, that a little or superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline the mind of man to atheism, but a further proceeding therein doth bring the mind back again to religion: for in the entrance of philosophy, when the second causes which are next unto the senses do offer themselves to the mind of man, if it dwell and stay there it may induce some oblivion of the highest cause: but when a man passeth on further and seeth the dependence of causes and the works of Providence, then, according to the allegory of the poets, he will easily believe that the highest link of Nature's chain must needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair. Bacon. The eternity of matter is to this day the foundation of the pagan idea. This principle is not only a metaphysical falsehood; it is the denial of liberty to God and man, a denial which makes an end of all morality. If any matter whatever was necessary to the Creator, He could not have formed a world absolutely good, but only the best world possible; and man can be just as little master over his own body, as God over matter. But this night of darkness and of gloom which overshadows the conception of God, of the world, and of man, is dispersed at the first word of Divine revelation: "in the beginning God created." Everything, substance and form, came into being at the flat of the creative will, which is free and omnipotent. Hirsch. There must have been a commencement of the motions now going on in the solar system. Since these motions, when once begun, would be deranged and destroyed in a period which, however large, is yet finite, it is obvious we cannot carry their origin indefinitely backward in the range of past duration. The argument is indeed forced upon our minds, whatever view we take of the past history of the world. Some have endeavored to evade its force by maintaining that the world, as it now exists, has existed from eternity. But the doctrine of a resisting medium, once established, makes this imagination untenable, compels us to go back to the origin, not only of the present course of the world, not only of the earth, but of the solar system itself; and thus sets us forth upon that path of research into the series of past causation, where we obtain no answer of which the meaning corresponds to our questions, till we rest in the conclusion of a most provident and most powerful creating intelligence. Whewell.—Within a finite period of time past, the earth must have been, and within a finite period of time to come, the earth must again be, unfit for habitation of man as at present constituted, unless operations have been or are to be performed, which are impossible under the laws to which the known operations going on at present in the material world are subject. There cannot be uniformity. The earth is filled with evidence that it has not been going on forever in the present state, and that there is a process of events toward a state infinitely different from the present. Sir W. Thompson. There is not an existing stratum in the body of the earth which geology has laid bare, which cannot be traced back to a time when it was not; and there is not an existing species of plants, or animals, which cannot be referred to a time when it had no place in the world. Their beginnings are discoverable in succeeding cycles of time. It can be demonstrated that man also had a beginning, and all the species contemporary with him, and that, therefore, the present state of the organized world has not been sustained from eternity. Lyell.—These statements corroborate those prophetic descriptions which are definitely historical, and forbid modification (Ps. 102 : 26 ; Isa. 34 : 4 ; 51 : 6 ; 2 Pet. 3 : 10 ; Rev. 21 : 1). W. Fraser. Beginning. Reshith, the Hebrew word for "beginning," is without the definite article. "In Reshith," Moses says, not in the Reshith, Elohim created, etc. "The meaning, then, is" In Reshith (anteriority), i.e. in former times, of old, God created; and the article is omitted to exclude the application of the word to the order of creation. The words refer to "time or duration," not to order, and mean, not "In the beginning of creation he created," etc., but of old, in former duration, God created. How long ago is not said. The Hebrew word is indefinite. McCaul. God. Elohim. From the same Saxon root as good, thus beautifully expressing the Divine benignity as the leading attribute of the most generous term for the Deity, and corresponding almost invariably to two Hebrew words, both from a common root—ul, to be strong. An. Elohim occurs for the most part in the plural, and yet is connected, as here, with a verb in the singular. Bush.—The root probably means to be lasting, binding, firm, strong. Hence the noun means the Everlasting, and in the plural, the Eternal Powers. It is correctly rendered God, the name of the Eternal and Supreme Being in our language, which perhaps originally meant lord or ruler. M. When Moses is describing the primal creative act of God, he joins a singular verb to a plural noun. Language, it would seem, thus submits to a violent anomaly, that she may the better hint at the mystery of several Powers or Persons who not merely act together but who constitute a single Agent. The Hebrew language could have described God by singular forms, such as El, Eloah, and no question would have been raised as to the strictly Monotheistic force of those words. The Hebrew language might have amplified the idea of God thus conveyed by less dangerous processes than the employment of a plural form. Would it not have done so unless the plural form had been really necessary, in order to hint at the complex mystery of God's inner life, until that mystery should be more clearly unveiled by the explicit Revelations of a later day? H. P. L.—Elohim. After carefully considering the various hypotheses, such as that of the plural of majesty of the Rabbins, and the primitive polytheism supposed by certain rationalists, I can see no better reason than an attempt to give a grammatical expression to that plurality in unity indicated by the appearance of the Spirit as a distinct actor in the next verse. Dawson. God is the eternal, independent, and self-existent Being; the Being whose purposes and actions spring from Himself without foreign motive or influence; He who is absolute in dominion; the most pure, the most simple, the most spiritual of all essences; infinitely benevolent, beneficent, true, and holy; the cause of all being, the upholder of all things; infinitely happy because infinitely perfect and eternally self-sufficient, needing nothing that He has made; illimitable in His immensity, inconceivable in His mode of existence, and indescribable in His essence; known fully only to Himself, because an infinite mind can only be fully comprehended by itself. In a word, a Being who, from His infinite wisdom, cannot err or be deceived, and, from His infinite goodness, can do nothing but what is eternally just, and right, and kind. A Clarke.—So great a revelation had never been made to man for it disclosed the existence of the One eternal holy, just and good God,—a God of wisdom and order, as well as purity and truth, and implied His right to our absolute obedience and love, as the work of His hands. There remained only another self-disclosure, of still greater condescension, when He declared Himself to mankind in the person of His incarnate Son. Geikie. Create (bara), give being to something new. It has God always for its subject. Its object may be anything: matter (5 : 1); animal life (5 : 21); spiritual life (5 : 27). The verb in its simple form occurs forty-eight times (of which eleven are in Genesis, fourteen in the whole Pentateuch, and twenty-one in Isaiah), and always in one sense. M.—In the first two chapters of Genesis we meet with four different verbs to express the creative work of God, viz. to create; to make; to form; to build. The word bara is evidently the common word for a true and original creation, and there is no other word in Hebrew which can express that thought. E. H. B.—Bara never appears as the word for human creations, differing in this from the synonyms "asak," "yatzar," "yalad," which are used both of men and of God—it is never used with an accusative of the material, and even from this it follows that it defines the divine creative act as one without any limitations, and its result, as to its proper material, as entirely new; and as to its first cause, entirely the creation of divine power. Delit.—There is one special sense in which God can make and man cannot, viz. that of bringing into existence what had no existence before. Over against this, place the fact that the word "bara" is used of God's making forty-eight times and of man's making never, and we conclude that the Hebrew expressed by this word that distinctive power of God which man never can even approach—viz., the power to give existence to matter, to mind and to life. In passages where this sense of "bara" is appropriate, there can be no question that it is the real meaning. H. C.—It occurs in this chapter only on three occasions, the first creation of matter in the first verse, the first introduction of life in the fifth day, and the creation of man in the sixth day. Barà is thus reserved for marking the first introduction of each of the three great spheres of existence—the world of matter, the world of life, and the world spiritual, represented by man in this visible economy—all three of which, though profoundly distinct in essence, are intimately associated, and together constitute all the universe known to us. Guyot.—As bara is exclusively appropriated to God so God alone is called Barè, Creator. Creation is therefore, according to the Hebrew, a Divine act. The idea of creation out of nothing, that is, that God did not produce the world out of anything outside of himself, is in accordance with the doctrine of Mosaism. How later reflection laid hold of the simple utterances of the record of creation, and carried out farther the thoughts contained in them, is especially shown in Ps. 104 (which is really a commentary on Gen. 1). O.—That the first verse of Genesis teaches that the original creation of the world in its rude and chaotic state was from nothing, while in the remaining part of the chapter the elaboration and distribution of the matter thus created is taught, the connection of the whole section shows sufficiently clearly. Gesenius.—This creation of things from nothing speaks an infinite power. The distance between nothing and being, hath been always counted so great, that nothing but an infinite power can make such distances meet together; either for nothing to pass into being, or being to return to nothing. To imagine so small a thing as a bee, a fly, a grain of corn, or an atom of dust, to be made of nothing, would stupefy any creature in the consideration of it; much more to behold the heavens with all the troop of stars, the earth with all its embroidery, and the sea with all her inhabitants of fish, and man, the noblest creature of all, to arise out of the womb of mere emptiness. Indeed God had not acted as an almighty Creator if he had stood in need of any materials but of his own framing. Charnock. The heaven and the earth. There is no single word in the Hebrew language corresponding to our English word universe. The phrase "the heaven and the earth" is the nearest equivalent to it, and is here doubtless used to signify the whole system of which our earth forms a part: the sun, the planets with their satellites, and the fixed stars, with all that belong to them. So Moses understood the expression, for he afterward wrote: "The Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is." Armstrong.—Consequently these uncounted tenants of the skies, along with our own planet, are all declared to be in existence before the commencement of the six days' creation. The subsequent verses reveal a new effort of creative power, by which the pre-adamic earth, in the condition in which it appears in the second verse, is fitted up for the residence of a fresh animal creation, including the human race. M. The simplest exposition seems to be that ver. 1 is not meant to be a title of the whole, but rather the declaration how a first creation of heaven and earth as prima materia preceded the process portrayed from the second verse onward; compare how Job 38:4-7, supposes a prius preceding the creation of the earth. By the absolute Bereshith the divine creation is fixed as an absolute beginning, not as a working on something which already existed, and heaven and earth is wholly subjected to the lapse of time, which God transcends; compare Ps. 90:2; 102:26. O.—The first verse may be understood as relating to a primeval creation, complete in itself, but which, by some catastrophe, had become desolate and dark (as described in ver. 2)—in which case the work of the six creative days would be a restitution or new creation of the earth which had become desolate. The narrative before us does not decide this point. The writer does not inform us whether the earth had been created "without form and void," or whether and by what process it had become such. Besides this account and the hymn of creation (Ps. 104), we have another description of several points in the process of creation, in Job 37:3, etc. Therein it is declared that when the Almighty founded the earth, the morning stars rejoiced, and the sons of God sang in praise of the divine wisdom and power then displayed. Hence the morning stars and sons of God must have existed previous to the six creative days. K. Inasmuch as every one of the six days' works opens with And God said, it is required by the symmetry of the narrative that the first day's work should begin at ver. 3, and that vv. 1, 2, should be regarded as introductory matter. This being so, we have in it three propositions. First, originally God created the heaven and the earth. Secondly, at a certain time formlessness and darkness prevailed. Thirdly, the Divine Spirit wrought upon this chaotic state. And thus the way is prepared for the six-days' work. Alf.—The length of time that may have elapsed between the events recorded in the first verse (of the first chapter of Genesis) and the condition of the globe, as described in the second verse, is absolutely indefinite. How long it was, we know not; and ample space is therefore given to all the requisitions of geology. The second verse describes the condition of our globe, when God began to fit it up for the abode of man. The first day's work does not begin till the third verse. This is no new theory. It was held by Justin Martyr, Basil, Origen, Theodoret, and Augustine—men who came to such a conclusion without any bias, and who certainly were not driven to it by any geological difficulties. Eadie. Objections. The view that the geological ages might be contained in the time between the beginning and first day, involves a strained interpretation of the passage, and is contradicted by the fact that no chaotic period intervenes between the human period and the preceding tertiary ages. Dawson.—1. The sacred writer gives no intimation of such an interval. There is no indication that it was present to his mind, and no reason for it in the connection. 2. It assumes that the writer has given us only an account of a part of the Creator's work; that for unknown ages the earth was peepled with vegetable and animal life, of which no record is made. 3. Scientific investigation shows that no such conclusion, as is assumed in this theory, occurred at the period preceding the creation of man. 4. It is an unworthy conception of the Creator and his work. Why was the creation extended through six natural days, when a single divine volition would have brought the whole universe into being, with all its apparatus for the support of life, and its myriads of living beings? Its extension through six successive periods, of whatever duration, can be explained only by the operation of those secondary causes, which the structure of the earth itself proves to have been active in its formation, requiring ages for their accomplishment. T. J. C. 2. This verse cuts clear of the universe at large, or even of the solar system, and confines itself to "the earth." This fact would seem to preclude the view advanced by high scientific authorities, that in a subsequent verse the dividing of the waters from the waters was the separation of the earth from the nebula of which it was a part, and forces us to a simpler and narrower explanation. "The earth"—to which our attention is now confined—was after its creation "without form and void," literally "wasteness and emptiness," in other words a chaotic mass, described by two archaic Hebrew words, and in the next breath designated as "the deep;" perhaps because no other than this last term could so vividly describe the vast, confused, unstable, and, it may be, heaving and roaring mass of material in its earlier stages, as the vast ocean abyss. S. C. B.—The verb in this sentence is in the perfect state, and therefore denotes that the condition of confusion and emptiness was not in progress, but had run its course and become a settled thing, at least at the time of the next recorded event. M.—Unless the context forbids, it may just as well be understood in the preter past;—"and the earth had been without form and void." How long no one may know. The toba and bohu may have been a rudimentary chaos which had never yet assumed order—such as we may suppose to have been the condition of perhaps many an elemental world—or it may have been a chaos to which some world or system had been reduced from some previously better state. It may have lain long in ruins; it may have gone through an immense number of older cycles; or it may be that it was now for the first time made the subject of a creation, that is, according to the Latin word, an orderly growing through harmonious laws, or, according to the Hebrew conception, a separating, a dividing, a clearing up, a bringing into order, an arranging of outward relations, by which it comes in harmony with the exact measurements of universal, objective time, and is thus prepared for the abode of life, happiness and rationality. T. L. The Spirit of God. Science cannot tell how the change from the chaotic, the desolate and the empty, was effected. Moses informs us that it was by the action of the Divine Spirit. According to the Old Testament, the Spirit of God is the quickening principle of the world, and all life is an outgoing from God. McGard.—Moved. It is significant that the same science which has bound "the heavens and the earth" in a single belt of law—which has established a positive beginning for them—which has detected the traces of a single hand in the uniform structure of all, and so illustrated the first word of Scripture concerning the origin of the universe,—has given us, as its last solution of the secret of the unfolding earth, the one word, "motion"—motion, of which light, heat, and electricity, are "modes," and of which matter is but the phenomenal vehicle. Is it not curious—after learning from Hebrew scholars that the “moving” of the Spirit (which in the Scripture was followed at once by light) means literally a “trembling,” as of brooding wings—to read from Professor Tyndall’s pen the statement that “the splendor of the starry firmament is the transported shiver of bodies countless millions of miles distant”? After four thousand years, once more man “thinks God’s thought after him”—the word with which science ends its inquiry after the origin of things is the same with which Moses began his “book of origins”—“the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” J. B. Thomas. The word conveys the idea of brooding over—cherishing—the act of incubation which a fowl performs when hatching its eggs, and the particular form of the verb implies a continuance of this action. It was not the self development of powers inherent in matter. The creative movement was made by the will of God; and as if to refute the doctrine of Pantheism, it is expressly stated that the action was not in but upon the face of the waters. Jamieson.—We render it brooded; or it might be translated, hovered. Either of these words would present the primary image, or conception, better than the term in our common version. Any one may be as certain of its meaning as the best Hebrew scholar, by just turning to Deuteronomy 32 : 11,—“As the eagle hovers, or broods, over its young.” It is the same word and the same conception. T. L. The drama of creation opens with chaos, and the Holy Spirit brooded over the waters; then chaos became cosmos, order. The Spirit garnished the heavens. All the beauty of the world, physical as well as spiritual, is from the Holy Spirit. He gives wisdom, inspires prophets, works in regeneration and sanctification, and enkindles love to God. This is not speculation. This is what God reveals. A. A. Hodge. 3. And God said, Let there be light : and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was 4 good : and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the 5 darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. 6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the 7 waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were 8 under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament : and it was so. And 9 God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second 10 day. 9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear : and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth ; and the gather- ing together of the waters called he Seas : and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let 11 the earth put forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit tree bearing fruit after its kind, wherein 12 is the seed thereof, upon the earth : and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, herb yielding seed after its kind, and tree bearing fruit, wherein is the seed thereof, after its kind : 13 and God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day. First Day. Vast in its outline, this remarkable history is yet so scrupulously strict in its minuter details, that it may be read without dubiety, not only in the midst of the exactest records of antiquity, but in the light of those modern discoveries in physical science which bear most directly on its statements. In reliableness and in consistency it stands alone. The myths of heathenism regarding the origin of the world can be easily separated from it. While it contains every element of truth which imparts to them any coherency which they pospossess, it gives no place to their grotesque and deformed traditions. W. Fraser.—When the Pentateuch was written mankind was absorbed in the grossest idolatry; and that idolatry, for the most part, originated in the neglect, the perversion, or the misapprehension of certain truths, which had once been universally known. Moses therefore commences his narrative, by relating the creation of the world by the one true God, in opposition to the Egyptian doctrines of the necessary eternity of the world, and an infinite succession of similar worlds. G. T.—In no other passage, perhaps, does the incomparable pre-eminence of these creative acts of the one Jehovah above the confused and uncertain creative efforts of the Assyrian pantheon so clearly appear. Here is the one God, who unites in himself everything divine which the heathen world divided among its many gods. Here the creation is not a necessitated emanation from his essence, or from wild chaos, but something brought into existence by the free will of the Absolute One. Here is an ascending gradation of acts of creation to the supreme aim. This supreme aim is not, as in the Babylonian account, one or another concurrent cause, not a God, not a new Lord of heaven, but an image of God, “a King of the earth, the synthesis of Spirit and Nature.” We have here, on the threshold of the revelation of God to men, a tradition of creation free from mythological additions; here the true idea of God is announced in the midst of a heathenism sunk far and wide in unbelief and apostasy, and in this announcement we have the foundation of all true religions and culture. In the Babylonian account of creation, a multitude of conceptions concerning God and divine things betrays what we may call the childhood of the people; but the creative agency of God, as exhibited in the first chapter of Genesis, is so perfect that the purest knowledge of God is unable to improve upon it in the least. O. And God said. This is the word which gives the key-note to the narrative, the burden, ten times repeated, of this magnificent poem. To say is both to think and to will. In this speaking of God, there is both the legislative power of His intelligence, and the executive power of His will; this one word dispels all notion of blind matter, and of brute fatalism; it reveals an enlightened Power, an intelligent and benevolent Thought, underlying all that is. At the same time that this word, “And God said,” appears to us as the veritable truth of things, it also reveals to us their true value and legitimate use. Beautiful and beneficent as the work may be, its real worth is not in itself; it is in the thought and in the heart of the Author to whom it owes its existence. Whenever we stop short in the work itself, our enjoyment of it can only be superficial, and we are, through our ingratitude, on the road to an idolatry more or less gross. Our enjoyment is only pure and perfect when it results from the contact of our soul with the Author himself. To form this bond is the true aim of Nature, as well as the proper destination of the life of man. Behind this veil of the visible universe which dazzles me, behind these blind forces of which the play at times terror-strikes me, behind this regularity of seasons and this fixedness of laws, which almost compel me to recognize in all things only the march of a fixed Fate, this word, “And God said,” unveils to me an Arm of might, an Eye which sees, a Heart full of benevolence which is seeking me, a Person who loves me. Godet.—If we remove the term GOD from this chapter, we leave behind a mystery of darkness; when we reinsert the term GOD we import the nobler mystery of light. In a very plain sense there is, so far as the visible creation is concerned, less mystery with a Creator than without one; since there is nothing but mystery on the side of atheism. Here is the Christian standpoint, and here the Christian resting ground—God the mighty and holy Maker of all things. J. P. 3. Let there be light.** The most elegant critic of the heathen world has produced the opening of this narrative, as the most striking specimen of the true sublime which could be presented. “God said—what? Be light; and light was. Be earth, and it was so.” Enc. Mt.—The substantive verb is used here, and not either the words “create” or “made.” It was the manifestation of what had been previously in existence—Let light be, or, rather, Light shall be, not the formation of an element, or matter, which had no being at all till the divine command was issued. Where all had been involved in darkness, there was an alternation of light; and as unbroken gloom had reigned previous to this happy change, so, in describing the physical arrangement that was now established, this natural sequence is preserved, and the evening is reckoned before the morning. Jamieson. It is now an established truth, that Light is in its nature entirely independent of the sun. It is a vibration of the ether, in which the sun is, in our time, no doubt, the chief agent, but which may be produced by the action of many causes. Science proves that there is a light, other than that of the sun, which possesses all the properties required by vegetation, and that this light existed at the beginning of the world. Godet.—The phenomena of light have been proved to be a result of molecular action, and to be dependent upon fundamental qualities of matter as now constituted. Man has ascertained the wave-lengths in the vibration of molecular force corresponding to light of different parts of the spectrum, and also other laws of light. He has found, moreover, that the laws of heat and of electrical and chemical action are so involved with those of light that all these conditions are convertible and one in molecular origin. Dana. 4. God saw that the light was good;** that is, He predestined it for its multiform uses in the economy of vegetative and animal life, and in the development of the human intellect. And it was He who separated the light from the darkness; He retained the control of the force which He had created, and appointed of His foreknowledge the alternations of day and night. In like manner with all the forces of nature afterward to be discovered in scientific research—heat, electricity, galvanic currents, chemical affinities, actinic rays, whatever they were—they came at God's command, they were foreseen by Him as good, and designed for their uses, and they are retained in His power of guidance. Hill.—Every created work is to us an evidence of God's mercy and wisdom; to Himself a source of fresh joy. The expression so constantly repeated, "God saw that it was good," declares to us that God is the holy source of all good, and that in this world there lies no incentive to sin, but sin is the fault of man. Gerl.—The sacred writer has it, from the first, in his purpose to affirm the absolute goodness of the Divine works: and this formula is only another and a more detailed method of saying that all creation followed the behest and the character of its maker, himself all good. Alf. 5. Evening and morning, one day. The evening is mentioned first because the darkness preceded the light. On the ground of this recorded order of things in the sacred narrative, the Jews commenced their day of twenty-four hours from the evening. Bush.—Beyond all question the word "day" is used abundantly (and therefore admits of being used) to denote a period of special character, with no particular reference to its duration. We have a case in this immediate connection (Gen. 2:4), where it is used of the whole creative period (see Eccl. 7:14; Joel 2:2; Luke 19:42, etc.). H. C.—In the Hebrew Scriptures the word day is used: (1) For past or future time, without limit (Isa. 30:8; Prov. 31:25). (2) For a future prophetic period of indefinite limit (Isa. 2:11, 17; Ezek. 38:14). (3) For a period of time, in history (Jud. 18:1; 1 Sam. 8:18). (4) For a season of the year (Prov. 25:13). (5) For a period of life, as of old age (Eccl. 12:3). (6) For any specified time of indefinite length (1 Sam. 3:2). T. J. C. There are the days which God divided—super-naturally divided by his own direct immediate power originating a new thing, or a new work, in nature—and there are the days of which he said, "let the sun divide them," natural days, measured off in the regularly returning course of nature, and marking the interior divisions of that nature instead of being its exterior chronological bound. Here is this wondrous difference patent on the very face of the account. Can we read of these two kinds of days so strikingly contrasted in their natural and supernatural character, their God-made and sun-made modes of division, and yet believe that they must be exactly alike in all the other features with which we are familiar as belonging to our solar periods? . . . The Bible does not teach that the creative days were twenty-four hours long; but leaves a great latitude in this respect, determining nothing about their duration, except that they must be in some kind of conceived harmony with the growths and processes assigned to each. Hence this view of indefinite periods may be applied in various ways. It may be supposed to embrace the whole physical history of our earth from its earliest condition of being, or it may refer merely to the successive steps by which an old chaotic earth was renewed, and a new division of land and water, a new vegetation, a new animal life, etc., were made to succeed older growths and older creations, which had long before run through their cycles. The writer would confess his partiality for the first supposition, as the second burdens the conceptive faculty with the idea of a series of great creations, as well as of great periods in each creation. T. L. 6-8. And God said, Let there be a firmament (expansion, "rakiah") to divide the waters, and he called the firmament Heaven. This was the sky, that pure and transparent expanse of air above us, the atmosphere with its inexhaustible springs of life and blessing, providing the necessary means of nourishment to every kind of living beings that were to appear on earth. This sky rests on the waters of the earth, and like a firm arch supports the oceans of heaven. Thus it divides the upper from the lower waters, the sea from the clouds which rise from it, that in turn they also may become a spring of blessing and fruitfulness to the dry land when it shall have been emancipated from the dominion of the sea. K.—We, describing the expanse, would say that it lay between, or separated, the clouds and the earth. But the historian speaks as things would have appeared to a spectator at the time of the creation. A portion of the heavy, watery vapor was carried into the upper regions, and rested there in dense clouds, which still obscured the sun; while below, the whole earth was still covered with water, for the dry land had not yet appeared. Thus we see the propriety with which the firmament is said to have divided "the waters from the waters." Kit.—This harmonizes with what is known of the processes of evaporation to which the clouds are subject as they float above us—lakes of water in the azure vault. The firmament sustains the waters collected in its scattered clouds, and separates them from those resting on the surface of the earth. Take, in connection with this, what Solomon has written, “All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again” (Eccl. 1:7); and we may fairly press the question, Can any brief description more exactly set forth what has been ascertained as to the settled course of evaporation? W. Fraser.—7. Waters above the firmament. The quantity of water suspended in the atmosphere is enormous; and the rains, the springs, and rivers which fertilize the earth and sustain its inhabitants, are only the overflowings of this vast aerial reservoir, upheld by the laws established by God. Dawson. An unscientific reader knows little about the manner in which the volume of the atmosphere surrounds the earth; but I imagine that he could hardly glance at the sky when rain was falling in the distance, and see the level line of the bases of the clouds from which the shower descended, without being able to attach an instant and easy meaning to the words, “expansion in the midst of the waters.” And if, having once seized the idea, he proceeded to examine it more accurately, he would perceive at once, if he had ever noticed anything of the nature of the clouds, that the level line of their bases did indeed most severely and stringently divide “waters from waters,” that is to say, divide water in its collected and tangible state from water in its divided and aerial state; or the waters which fall and flow from those which rise and float. I understand the making the firmament to signify that (so far as man is concerned) most magnificent ordinance of the clouds; the ordinance that as the great plain of waters was formed in the face of the earth, so also a plain of waters should be stretched along the height of air, and the face of the cloud answer the face of the ocean; and that this upper and heavenly should be of waters, as it were, glorified in their nature, no longer quenching the fire, but now bearing fire in their own bosoms; no longer murmuring only when the winds raise them, or rocks divide, but answering each other with their own voices from pole to pole; no longer restrained by established shores, and guided through unchanging channels, but going forth at His pleasure like the armies of the angels and choosing their encampments on the height of the hills: no longer hurried downward forever, moving but to fall, nor lost in the lightless accumulation of the abyss, but covering the East and the West with the waving of their wings, and robing the gloom of the farther infinite with a vesture of divers colors, of which the threads are purple and scarlet, and the embroideries flame. Ruskin. 8. God called the firmament heaven. We have here an interesting and instructive example of the way in which words expand in their significance from the near, the simple, the obvious, to the far and wide, the complex and inferential. The heaven, in the first instance, meant the open space above the surface in which we breathe and move, in which the birds fly and the clouds float. This is the atmosphere. Then it stretches away into the seemingly boundless regions of space, in which the countless orbs of luminous and of opaque surfaces circumambulate. Then the heavens come to signify the contents of this indefinitely augmented expanse,—the celestial luminaries themselves. Then, by a still further enlargement of its meaning, we rise to the heaven of heavens, the inexpressibly grand and august presence-chamber of the Most High, where the cherubim and seraphim, the innumerable company of angels, the myriads of saints, move in their several grades and spheres, keeping the charge of their Maker, and realizing the joy of their being. M. 9-13. We have now a purer and a clearer sky; but still our earth is drenched with water, and unfit for production. The water must be partly removed, and confined within proper bounds; and this is the work of the THIRD day of creation. “And God said, ‘Let the waters be gathered together into one place; and let the dry land appear.’” The historian adds, “And it was so;” but he gives us no details of the operation. Kit.—The third day witnessed two consecutive and connected acts of creation—the separation of the sea from the dry land, and the clothing of the latter with vegetation. The creative word of the third day set free the earth from the dominion of the sea, which till then had engulfed and covered everything. The dry land is the habitation of the noblest of God’s creatures; therefore the creative word of Omnipotence liberated it from the dominion of the sea, and assigned to the latter its bounds. K. The gathering of the waters into one place implies no more than that they were, from this day forward, to be collected into one vast body, and restrained within bounds in a place by themselves, so as to admit of the exposure of the earth's soil. The "place founded for them" was, of course, the depths and hollows in the earth's crust, into which they were immediately withdrawn, not through direct supernatural agency, but by their own natural gravitation. The configuration of the dry land is not described; but there is reason to believe that the original distribution of land and water was the same, or nearly the same, as it is at present. Whitelaw.—The sacred singer possibly hints at the process in Ps. 104 : 6-8 : "The deep as a garment thou didst spread over it; above the mountains stood the waters. At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. They go up the mountains; they go down the valleys; unto the place that thou hast founded for them." This description is highly poetical, and therefore true to nature. The hills are to rise out of the waters above them. The agitated waters dash up the stirring mountains, but, as these ascend, at length sink into the valleys, and take the place allotted for them. Plainly the result was accomplished by lowering some and elevating other parts of the solid ground. Over this inequality of surface, the waters, which before overspread the whole ground, flowed into the hollows, and the elevated regions became dry land. This disposition of land and water prepares for the second step, which is the main work of this day; namely, the creation of plants. M. The language conveys the thought of a process of some kind, longer or shorter. There is that which looks like a causation, a train of sequences, or, in other words, an energizing of natural powers producing natural results. We have every reason to believe that the earth and water, as they existed at the beginning of the third day, possessed, in the main, the natural properties which they now possess, the same or a similar gravity, the same density, the same resistance, the same laws of fluidity, of pressure, of repulsion; and that the same or similar effects would have followed from their action upon each other, according as that action was slower or more rapid, that is, took place in a longer or shorter time. And so, also, in respect to the processes of evaporation and acidification; they must have had some analogy at least to the same processes as they now take place. This is only saying, that if there is a nature, there must be a harmony, a consistency in it. Such an apparent process of moving waters could not have taken place throughout all the wide earth and ocean, within the time of a few hours, without utterly deranging all such causal dependence, even if we suppose the laws of nature to have been much more rapid in their action than they have been since; of which, however, there is no intimation in the account. T. L. 12. Grass, herb yielding seed, fruit tree bearing fruit.** The plants now created are divided into three classes,—grass, herb, and tree. In the first, the seed is not noticed, as not obvious to the eye; in the second, the seed is the striking characteristic; in the third, the fruit, "in which is its seed," in which the seed is enclosed, forms the distinguishing mark. This division is simple and natural. It proceeds upon two concurrent marks,—the structure and the seed. In the first, the green leaf or blade is prominent; in the second, the stalk; in the third, the woody texture. In the first, the seed is not conspicuous; in the second, it is conspicuous; in the third, it is enclosed in a fruit which is conspicuous. It appears from the text that the full plants, and not the seeds, germs, or roots, were created. The land sent forth grass, herb tree, each in its fully developed form. M.—The earth brought forth plants, yet they were made after their species, and, when made, a new relation was established between solar light and the earth, by which not only a new beauty was given to the world, but a new power of producing those marvellous organic compounds on which animal life, with all its further endowments, would be founded. If one looks at the structure of a leaf, with its vessels and fibres drawing into it the soil water taken up by the stem; its microscopic sac-like cells piled loosely on each other, its hygrometric breathing pores opening and shutting with every atmospheric change, and considers that this delicate organ is fitted for exposure to wind, sun, and rain, and through all to avail itself of undulations transmitted through 90,000,000 of miles of space, by means of which it can convert all the gases of putrescent matters from the soil and air into the endless variety of products of the plant, we have before us a marvel of adaptation perhaps inferior to no other in affording an inductive argument for design. Dawson. An immense advance in the career of Creation is marked by these phrases: "whose seed is in itself, yielding fruit after its kind." These are expressions you would never apply to anything inorganic, but only to living things, which do have seed in themselves, and which do yield fruit after their kinds. These phrases mark the eternal boundary between the organic world and the inorganic; between life and absence of life. Strikingly, too, these phrases, “yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself,” involve the doctrine of the invariability of species. G. D. B.—The doctrine of the transformation of species is most decidedly contradicted by facts. Not only has no new species originated during the period of human history, but even the lignites (or woody coal), which go back to a much earlier time, exhibit the existing flora. The present Swiss Alpine plants are the descendants of the Alpine drift flora, but, though living under different physical conditions, it is impossible to distinguish those of the present day from plants of the drift flora of Iceland and Greenland. It is the same with marine animals. No new species has had its origin since the drift period. Nor is this peculiar to the drift. The same facts are true of preceding geological periods. The same species maintain their existence through long cycles, and often, in all parts of the globe, present precisely the same characteristics. The formation immediately following any earlier period, and belonging to a new epoch, may contain some species inherited from the preceding period, but the greater part of the species show us a new type, and present distinct characteristics. There are no forms which would indicate a fusion of species. Heer. The system of the transformation of species is no less refuted by science than by the instincts of common-sense. It rests upon no tangible fact, on no principle of scientific observation or historic tradition. All the facts ascertained, all the monuments collected in different ages and different places, respecting the existence of living species, disprove the hypothesis of their having undergone any transformation, any notable and permanent change. Guisol.—In the expressions, “yielding seed,” “having seed in itself,” the words describe with wonderful precision the characteristic of a living species, distinguishing it from mineral or inorganic substances. Beings having powers of growth and reproduction were now facts. With reference to the introduction of life, science has no explanation; for no experiments have resulted in making from dead matter a living species. We can only say, “God created.” The growing plant is on a higher level than that of ordinary molecular law; for it controls and subordinates to itself chemical forces, and thereby is enabled to make out of mineral matter chemical compounds and living structures which the forces without this control are incapable of. Only when growth ceases, and death consequently ensues, does ordinary chemical law regain control, and then decomposition commences. More than this, the living being, before it dies, produces germs which develop into other like forms, with like powers; and thus cycles of growth are continued indefinitely. In making its tissues, the living plant is storing force for the sustenance and purposes of beings of a still higher grade—those of the animal kingdom; beings that cannot live on mineral materials. There is, hence, reason for believing that the power which so controls and exalts chemical forces, raising them to the level required by the functions of a plant, cannot come from unaided chemical forces; and much less that which carries them to a still higher level,—that of the living, sentient animal. Dana. Whence came that original first Life? The answer to this question marks the boundary-line between theism and atheism, between plan and chance, between personal will and impersonal law, between first cause and eternal necessity, between God and zero. Whence, then, came that first Life? Is there any better answer, any answer more profoundly philosophical or gloriously satisfying, than the child-like answer of the far-off, hoary witness of the Creation Panorama? “God said: ‘Let the earth bring forth grass.’ God said: ‘Let the waters swarm with the moving creature that hath life.’” This “God said,” this Eternal Word, who in the beginning was with God and was God: this “God said” of Moses and “God Word” of John—this it was who on the Third Day spoke life-givingly, germinatingly; and, lo, in a way perhaps forever inscrutable to us, the Immaterial took on itself the material, the life organized itself into the body. G. D. B. All that God does is in prosecution of a plan, an eternal idea come to utterance. The tree ripens to the grade of a purpose that was ripe before the tree, and before the Third Day. It is all one whether we say that the plan is deposited in the seed, or that God builds the plant each moment against the pattern of His thought, as the mason lays bricks close to the plumb-line. It all sums up into the same result. There are no planless seeds, no purposeless scions. They follow a plan. Nature works from a copy. C. H. P. 14. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the 15 night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years: and let them be for 16 lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God 17 made the two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the 18 night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light 19 upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the 20 darkness: and God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a 21 fourth day. 22 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, 23 and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created the 24 great sea-monsters, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth 25 abundantly, after their kinds, and every winged fowl after its kind: and God saw that it was 26 good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the 27 seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And there was evening and there was morning, a 28 fifth day. 29 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creep- 30 ing thing, and beast of the earth after its kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of 31 the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the 32 ground after its kind: and God saw that it was good. 14-19. On the FOURTH DAY, the Sun and Moon were seen in the firmament of heaven. The fact of their previous creation is involved in the stability of the earth as a member of the solar system. It is not said that they were first created on the fourth day; and of the stars, many of which must have existed myriads of years before their light reached the earth, it is simply said, "He made the stars also," not when He made them. The "fourth day" seems to mark the period during which the air was cleared of its thick vapors so that the heavenly bodies became visible. Stress is laid on their ruling as well as lighting the day and night. God said:—"Let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years." They were designed, as they have ever since been used, to mark out the periods of human life; to inculcate the great lesson that "to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." P. S.—14. He made two lights. The original word for "made" is not the same as that which is rendered "create." It is a term frequently employed to signify constituted, appointed, set for a particular purpose or use. As the rainbow was made or constituted a sign, though it might have existed before, so the sun, moon, and stars may be said to have been made or set as lights in the firmament on the fourth day though actually called into existence previously. Bush.—Lights. Luminaries, or light-bearers, spoken of lamps and candlesticks (Ex. 25:6; Num. 4:9, 16). The narrative only tells what sun, moon, and stars are in relation to the earth. When the clouds and mists are dispelled from its surface, the seas confined within their boundaries, and the first vegetation springs up; then the sky is cleared up, the sun, moon, and stars appear and assume their natural functions, marking days and nights, seasons and years; and God makes or appoints them, the sun to rule the day, and the moon to rule the night. E. H. B. The astronomy which deals especially with the physical nature and structure of the heavenly bodies as they are made known to us by the spectroscope and improved telescope, testifies that the sun and planets have all had a beginning. It even ventures to attempt to fix the date of the sun's beginning. "We may say," writes Professor Langley, "with something like awe at the meaning to which science points, that the whole past of the sun cannot have been over eighteen million years; and its whole future radiation cannot last so much more. Its probable life is covered by about thirty million years. No reasonable allowance for the fall of meteors, or for all other known causes of supply, could possibly raise the whole term of its existence to sixty million years. This is substantially Professor Young's view." Armstrong.—The stars also. The purpose of the sacred narrative being to describe the adaptation of the earth to the use of man, no account is taken of the nature of the stars, as suns or planets, but merely as signs in the heavens. The words in the text may be a kind of parenthesis, not assigning the special time of the creation of the stars. E. H. B. The sun and moon were certainly made to give light upon the earth, and to rule the earth's seasons, whatever other designs may have been in their creation, or their appointment with reference to our own world. The interpretation does not demand it, and yet we may extend the same view to the stars. The light they give the earth could hardly have been in the writer's mind at all, but the other use may have been intended. They rule the seasons and the years; that is, they regulate our knowledge of them; and in the early ages of the world, were almost the only means for this end. They furnished the rule or canon by which they were determined. The first nations had no other almanac than the rolling heavens. Spring and summer, ploughing, sowing, and reaping time, were regulated by the rising and setting of certain constellations. Their use in this respect is referred to, not only by the Greek and Latin poets, but also in the Bible. "Canst thou bring out Mazzaroth in its seasons?" The "bands of Orion" are the iron chains of the wintry frosts and storms; the "sweet influences of Pleiades" represent the return of the genial vernal season, and of that reviviscence of nature of which the heliocentric rising of this beautiful constellation was the well-known rule or signal. Let astronomy be carried ever so far theoretically, the great practical uses of the stars to us will continue to be the accurate determination of the year, the regulation of the seasons, and the safe navigation of ships. For these uses, therefore, if not created, they were at least appointed, and revealed to our earth. T. L. Divide the day from the night. That we may sleep and wake at healthful intervals, the Framer of our bodies and Father of our spirits has mercifully divided the day from the night; at every sunset dropping the curtains of His evening, and so inviting to repose; at every sunrise lifting the curtains of His morning, and so inviting to labor! For days and years. In all ages of the world men have accepted the motions of the heavenly bodies as the measure of duration or time. It is these motions, these sunrises and sunsets, these new and full moons, these morning and evening stars, these transits of the meridian, which have enabled men to divide time into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, seasons, years, decades, centuries, millenniums. It is also to these motions of the heavenly bodies that we owe such words as dial, clock, chronometer, journal, Sabbath, anniversary, era, almanac, calendar, chronology, even that august word - History. Sun, moon, and stars are man's natural chronometer. G. D. B. Without an accurate measurement of the day and year, there could be no chronology; without chronology there could be no history; without history there could be no national or generic experience; without such experience there could be no progress; and without progress there could be no civilization. Take away, then, all outward measures of time, and formed as we now are of soul and body, it would be like removing the regulator, or balance wheel, of the whole system. The inner as well as the outer machinery would run down. Our souls would become chaotic, our thoughts unregulated; our life a dream, in which past phenomena, present sensations, and future imaginations would be mingled in hopeless confusion. For the want of such a regulator, man with his boasted intellect would sink below all that is known of the condition of the savage. T. L. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ 1. And the heaven and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh 2 day God finished his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his 3 work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it: because that in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made. 4 These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth when they were created, in the day 5 that the LORD God made earth and heaven. And no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon 6 the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground; but there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 2. God finished his work.** The rest of the seventh day puts an end to the creative activity, properly so called. The Sabbath, which puts an end to the Divine work in Nature, gives a solemn confirmation to the truth already set forth in the repeated words, "and God said,"—the truth that the earth is the work of an intelligent and self governing Being, who does all things by measure, who sets before Himself, while working, a definite object to be attained, and who, as soon as that object is attained, sets at rest again those productive forces which He had put in motion. Godel.—Since the beginning of this day no new creation has taken place. God rests as the Creator of the visible universe. The forces of nature are in that admirable equilibrium which we now behold, and which is necessary to our existence. No more mountains or continents are formed, no new species of plants or animals are created. Nature goes on steadily in its wonted path. All movement, all progress has passed into the realm of mankind, which is now accomplishing its task. The morning of the seventh is not followed by any evening. The day is still open. When the evening shall come the last hour of humanity will strike. Guyad. "Now begins the seventh day, the day of rest, or the sabbath of the earth"—the day now in progress which has not yet reached its evening, in which God's "work is one of love to man, the redemption;" the creation of "the new man, born anew of the Spirit, in the heart of the natural man." Parallel with the week of Creation, man, a being of a few short years, has his week; and, by God's appointment, as well as Nature's need, his seventh day of rest—"of rest from daily toil, but of activity in the higher world of the spirit." Dana.—God's work of elevating, raising, of making the high in due progression succeed the low, still goes on. But that work is now the fitting and preparing imperfect man for a perfect future state. God's seventh day's work is the work of Redemption. Read in this light his reason vouchsafed to man for the institution of the Sabbath is found to yield a meaning of peculiar breadth and emphasis. It seems to say, God rests on his Sabbath from his creative labors, in order that by his Sabbath day's work he may save and elevate you; rest ye also on your Sabbaths, that through your co-operation with him in this great work ye may be elevated and saved. Hugh Miller. Providence is creation continued. The government of the world is as much of God as the giving of it a being. Creation was a work that ended in six days, but providence is a work that never ends; thus God always worketh, though always at rest. Caryl.—From the first moment of creation unto this hour God has continued His supervision of the works of His hand. He has put forth no creative energy since He brought man into being; but at the end of the world, in the changes that shall produce a new heaven and a new earth, God will resume that creative activity which is now in suspense. Until then He rests. J. P. T.—When the last man has been born and has arrived at the crisis of his destiny, then may we expect a new creation, another putting forth of the divine energy, to prepare the skies above and the earth beneath for a new stage of man's history, in which he will appear as a race no longer in process of development, but completed in number, confirmed in moral character, transformed in physical constitution, and so adapted for a new scene of existence. Meanwhile, the interval between the creation now recorded and that prognosticated in subsequent revelations from heaven (Is. 65 : 17 ; 2 Pet. 3 : 13 ; Rev. 21 : 1) is the long Sabbath of the Almighty, so far as this world is concerned. M. He rested. In these chapters of creation, God is said to hover, to speak, to see and examine, to give names, to approve of his works, to deliberate with himself, to rest, and to repose himself. By these phrases the biblical text loses nothing of its grandeur, and gains immeasurably in distinctness and perspicuity; it describes Divine manifestation for human beings and in a human medium. Kol.—The Holy Scripture knows nothing of a God who in eternal, immovable unchangeableness views all things, past, present, and future, just in the same way, but One who after creating the world, with man its king, partakes by means of His love in the joy and pain of His creation, yet without diminution of His eternal blessedness. Gerl. On the seventh day. The seventh day is distinguished from all the preceding days by being itself the subject of the narrative. In the absence of any work on this day, the Eternal is occupied with the day itself, and does four things in reference to it. First, he ceased from his work which he had made. Secondly, he rested. By this was indicated that his undertaking was accomplished. Thirdly, he blessed the seventh day. Blessing results in the bestowment of some good on the object blessed. The only good that can be bestowed on a portion of time is to dedicate it to a noble use, a peculiar enjoyment. Accordingly, in the fourth place, he hallowed it or set it apart to a holy rest. M.—To "bless" a day was to set it apart to be a blessing; but there was no sense in which God could make any one portion of duration more of a blessing to Himself than another. He being always self contained and infinite in his blessings. To "hallow" the day was to dedicate it to some sacred, moral, and beneficial use; but of course God could not have made one period of time more holy than another to Himself. The sanctifying must have had reference to its use by and for others. This sacred day is God's day, which man should decole to Him in some special or uncommon way, turning aside from the common occupations of life to a separate peculiar observance of this portion of time. Hence this grand day of the Almighty, this on-going day, this day which, dating from the creation of Man as an intellectual creature, shall continue till the world and the present course of time shall close, is the type of the Sabbath, the Rest-day for the creatures of God. J. P. T. God gave the Sabbath his first ordinance to man while he stood the father and representative of the whole human race; therefore the Sabbath is not for one nation, for one time, or for one place. It is the fair type of Heaven's eternal day—of the state of endless blessedness and glory, where human souls, having fully regained the divine image and become united to the Centre and Source of all perfection and excellence, shall rest in God unutterably happy through the immeasurable progress of duration. Of this consummation, every returning Sabbath should at once be a type, a remembrancer, and a foretaste to all who are taught of God. A. C.—With the Sabbath begins the sacred history of man—the day on which he stood forth to bless God, and, in company with Eve, entered on his divine calling upon earth. The creation without the creation festival, the world's unrest without rest in God, is altogether vain and transitory. The sacred day appointed, blessed, consecrated by God, is that from which the blessing and sanctification of the world and time, of human life and human society, proceed. Nor is anything more needed than the recognition of its original appointment and sacred destination, for our receiving the full impression of its sanctity. How was it possible for the first man ever to forget it? From the very beginning was it written upon his heart, Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it. Sartorius. The three elements of Sabbath blessing are, bodily and mental rest, family union and fellowship, and religious meditation and worship, including the highest moral culture and spiritual satisfaction. The rest is to be for the body's sake, and, therefore, must be such rest as is consistent with a good measure of sober bodily refreshment and enjoyment. The rest is for the sake of family intercourse and union, and must therefore be so defined and measured as to be in consistency with the conditions of family union, and, in a right sense, of family festivity, including in the scope of the word family, servants as well as children. Above all, the rest is to be for the sake of, that which is the highest privilege and enjoyment of the day, spiritual meditation and fellowship and Divine worship. Man's spirit cannot be refreshed, exalted, sublimed, without worship. Without worship, man's heart cannot be at rest. Without faith and worship, man's intellect cannot be satisfied. And in proportion as man becomes more completely developed, as he grows into a more thoughtful moral being, with higher aspirations, and in fuller sympathy with the "powers of the world to come," must worship become more and more the necessity, the solace, the strength, the law, of his inmost being. Thus understanding the Sabbath law, all is brought into harmony; bodily and mental rest, family union and intercourse, Divine worship. The rest is in order to the family fellowship and the holy worship. The family fellowship is sanctified by worship; the family union is crowned by united worship in the "great congregation," and around the family altar. Ripp. Two hallowed institutions have descended to us from the days of primeval innocence,—the wedding and the Sabbath. The former indicates communion of the purest and most perfect kind between equals of the same class. The latter implies communion of the highest and holiest kind between the Creator and the intelligent creature. The two combined import communion with each other in communion with God. Wedded union is the sum and type of every social tie. It gives rise and scope to all the nameless joys of home. It is the native field for the cultivation of all the social virtues. It provides for the due framing and checking of the overgrowth of interest in self, and for the gentle training and fostering of a growing interest in others. It unfolds the graces and charms of mutual love, and imparts to the susceptible heart all the peace and joy, all the light and fire, all the frankness and life of conscious and constant purity and good-will. Friendship, brotherly kindness, and love are still hopeful and sacred names among mankind. Sabbath-keeping lifts the wedded pair, the brethren, the friends, the one-minded, up to communion with God. The joy of achievement is a feeling common to God and man. The commemoration of the auspicious beginning of a holy and happy existence will live in man while memory lasts. The anticipation also of joyful repose after the end of a work well done will gild the future while hope survives. Thus the idea of the Sabbath spans the whole of man's existence. History and prophecy commingle in its peaceful meditations, and both are linked with God. God is: he is the Author of all being, and the Rewarder of them that diligently seek him. This is the noble lesson of the Sabbath. M. #### Summaries: Facts and Proofs. The Sabbath is, by Divine law, a day of rest, in order that it may be a day of bodily and spiritual refreshment and of devout worship. The rest of the sacred day is needful for man as man—for his physical well-being, his intellectual health and energy, his family union and happiness, and his moral culture—and therefore ought by human law to be enforced, on the basis of its prescription for man's benefit by the Divine law. The rest of the Sabbath is also requisite, in order to a right and worthy use and enjoyment of the spiritual duties and privileges proper to the day, so that its meaning and blessing, as a day of worship, can only be truly brought out when it is a day of rest. Thus the Divine commandment to sanctify the Sabbath as a day of rest justifies itself on the ground of our human relations and necessities, proves itself to be the guardian of human rights; and, at the same time, in its care for what belongs to our humanity, merely as such, secures also the needful opportunity, while it exhibits the proper motives, for the highest, that is the truly religious and Christian, enjoyment of the day. Thus rest and worship, humanity and religion, man's rights and God's rights, are indissolubly joined together; and provision is made for guarding and honoring all these at once in the observance of that law of the Decalogue which stands as the link between the first and the second tables. Ripp. The law of the Sabbath is fundamental, imperative, and perpetual, like the marriage relation—the two great unchanged and unchangeable institutions saved to man from the ruin of Paradise. The necessity of the Sabbath continues parallel with the necessity of the family. The one can no more be abrogated without involving the moral disorder, degeneracy, and degradation of society, than the other. The Sabbath was made for man in the same high sense that the family was made for man. It is a colossal institution, wide as humanity, perpetual as time, and deeply rooted in the constitution of man's nature. Peck.—The other signal institution of primeval man was that one which lies at the foundation of all outer worship of God and all organized beneficence toward man, the bulwark of society, the supplement of the home, the universal refiner and civilizer, the guaranty of social order and friendly relationship, the institution whereby all other human institutions are preserved and made effective—the seventh sacred day. It clearly is recorded as a part of the preparation of the world for man. Man's whole nature, physical, intellectual, social, moral and spiritual, has been proved over and over to coincide with the Saviour's declaration, "the Sabbath was made for man." S. C. B. We are not poorer, but richer, because we have, through many ages, rested from our labors one day in seven. That day is not lost. While industry is suspended, while the plough lies in the furrow, while no smoke ascends from the factory, a process is going on quite as important to the wealth of nations as any process which is performed on more busy days. Man, the machine of machines, is repairing and winding up, so that he returns to his labors on the Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier spirits, with renewed corporeal vigor. Macauley. As really, if not as obviously, do mankind need the Sabbath rest, as that of night. Its physical benefits, which candid men universally admit, are best secured when it is most sacredly kept in accordance with its higher ends. As piety is conducive to morality, so is the spiritual Sabbath to the physical. The better we become acquainted with human nature, the more significant are the words, "the Sabbath was made for man." We can accept the declaration in Genesis as meaning no less than that a weekly day of hallowed rest enters into the plan of creation. Incorporated into the creation-narrative, and exhibiting the divine example, it indicates to man the divine will—the lesson that, in the natural and moral economy which the Creator has established, there is a necessity created, and a provision made, for a Sabbath. Smythe.—The ground of obligation lay in the divine act; the rule of duty was exhibited in the divine example; for these were disclosed to men from the first for the express purpose of leading them to know and do what is agreeable to the will of God. If such means were not sufficient to speak with clearness and authority to men's consciences, then it may be affirmed that the first race of mankind were free from all authoritative direction and control whatever. We hold by the truthfulness and natural import of the divine record. And doing this, we are shut up to the conclusion that it was at first designed and appointed by God that mankind should sanctify every returning seventh day, as a season of comparative rest from worldly labor, of spiritual contemplation and religious employment, that so they might cease from their own works and enter into the rest of God. P. F.—That the observance of a Sabbath is thus founded in reasons permanent and general, may be properly inferred from two further considerations. It was written by the finger of God upon one of those tables of stone all whose other contents have this character of universality and perpetuity. Each of these commands constitutes one of the laws the Spirit of Christ is to write upon the heart. The circumstances accompanying the annunciation of the Fourth Commandment and the position assigned to it, approve it as occupying in the mind of the divine Legislator a place of lasting consequence and authority. And further, no theory of the Sabbath as a merely Jewish institution fairly embraces these words: "Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy . . . for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath-day and hallowed it." Smyth. The points which the friends of the Sabbath accept and regard as established are the following: 1. That the Sabbath was given to our first parents in Eden, and that it was intended for the race. 2. That we find unmistakable indications of the Sabbath, both in the Scriptures and in heathen literature, between the original command and the giving of the Law. 3. That when the Law was given, the command to hallow the Sabbath was made conspicuous, as one of the ten commandments. It has the same rank as the other commandments, all of which are moral in their character and universally binding. 4. That during the subsequent history of the Jews the Sabbath is referred to by the prophets in a way to show that they classed it with the other commandments, and that they regarded its observance as intimately connected with the prosperity of the nation. 5. That at the time of our Saviour the Sabbath was observed with great strictness; the people assembled regularly for public worship, and Moses and the prophets were read in the synagogues every Sabbath-day. Also, this worship was attended by our Saviour, and while He reproved the superstitious observances and over-scrupulousness that had crept in, he yet recognized the Sabbath as a divine institution, and as "made for man." 6. That after the resurrection of Christ the day was changed, and the Christian Sabbath, with substantially the same ends, has been perpetuated till the present time. The Sabbath authenticates itself as from God in various ways: 1. Regarding man as sinful, taking him as we now find him in every country where the Sabbath is unknown, the very conception of a holy Sabbath would have been impossible. There could have been nothing within him or without him to suggest it. 2. Regarding men as selfish, the rich and the powerful would never have originated an institution, or consented to it, which would not only free laborers and dependents and slaves from labor one seventh of the time, but would require that time for the service of another. 3. As the Sabbath corresponds with no cycle or natural division of time, it must have been impossible for any man, or number of men, to single out one day, and set it apart authoritatively. Man could neither have decided rightly the proportion of time to be set apart, nor have guarded the sanctity of the day by penalties. If the division of time into weeks were wholly unknown, it would be impossible that it should be introduced by man. 4. Man could not have so associated the Sabbath with the grandest ideas made known by revelation, or possible to thought, as the creation of the world, the resurrection of Christ, the outpouring of the Spirit, and the rest of a holy heaven. He could not have made it span the arch from the beginning till the consummation of all things. 5. The Sabbath authenticates its divine origin not only as it thus blends with the highest ideas and interests of man as connected with the past and the future, but by its analogy with the works of God as simple and at the same time touching the interests of the present life at so many points. In this it is like the air and the water, which seem so simple, yet subserve so many uses. As thus impossible to have been originated by man, as connected with the creation of the world, with the resurrection of Christ, with the outpouring of the Spirit, and with the rest of heaven; being analogous to nature, and promoting every interest of time, we say that the religious Sabbath comes to man bearing its own credentials as from God. M. H. 4-6. A condensed description, including the three main stages of the six days' creation. "When no plant was yet in the earth" refers to the first and second and dawn of the third day. "No herb yet grown" to the third, fourth, and fifth days, when there was no rain or human culture. But from the earth, still saturated with moisture, a mist went up and watered the garden where man was placed to dress and keep it. Bicks.—This paragraph forms the introduction to the history of man, and is by no means a second record of creation; but it shows, in supplementing the first chapter, how the earth was prepared for a habitation for man—a sphere for his activity, and a place for the revelation of God to man. O. 4. The word "generations," toledoth, which occurs for the first time in this verse, meets us again continually at the head of every principal section of the Book of Genesis. Thus 5:1, we have "the book (or account) of the generations of Adam," in which the descendants of Adam are traced to Noah. From 6:9 we have the generations of Noah, where the history of Noah and his sons is given. In 10:1 we come upon the generations of the sons of Noah, where the genealogical table and the history of the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japhet are recorded. Ch. 11:10-26 gives us the generations of Shem. Ch. 11:27 begins the generations of Terah, the father of Abram; 25:12, the generations of Ishmael; 25:19, the generations of Isaac; 36:1, the generations of Esau; 37:2, the generations of Jacob, which are continued to the end of the book. The application of the word here is very appropriate. The primary creation of all things had just been recorded; the sacred writer is about to describe more in detail the results of creation. And as the history of a man's family is called the "book of his generations," so the history of the world's productions is called "the generations of the heavens and the earth." E. H. B.—Probabilities favor the supposition of previously written documents, these probabilities arising mainly from the strong presumption that such genealogical records as abound in Genesis, coupled so largely with numbers, would be put in writing before the age of Moses. Men who had the knowledge of writing would certainly appreciate its utility for the preservation of such facts as these. And further; the very use of the word "generations" here in the sense of history, and much more still the statement (Gen. 5:1), "This is the book of the generations of Adam," raise this presumption nearly or quite to a certainty. In making up the historical portions of the Scriptures it seems rational to assume that the Lord moved "holy men of old" to put in writing such facts falling under their personal observation and immediate knowledge as he deemed useful for these sacred records. The divine policy seems to have been (in this case as in miracles) never to introduce the supernatural, the miraculous, to do what the natural might accomplish equally well. On this principle inspired men were moved of God to use their own eyes and minds in writing Scripture history in all cases when the facts came within their certain knowledge. There were facts, like these of the creation, which fell under no human eye, and which therefore do not come under this principle. Some form of direct revelation from God is to be assumed here. H. C. Heaven and earth. While astronomy tells us of the extent of creation, geology informs us of its antiquity; and the impression induced by surveying unnumbered worlds is scarcely more solemn or grand than that which we derive from reviewing unnumbered ages. We pass from the abysses of space only to be lost in the abysses of duration, and we are transported by the retrospect into depths of the past, where all reckoning fails us, and the lapse of centuries is reduced to undiscernible insignificance. King. The first expression, "the heaven and the earth," comprehends all created things, the universe; the second, "earth and heaven," takes in only the earth and that portion of the universe immediately connected with it. The historian first asserts that God is the creator of all created things, then narrates the manner in which this earth was prepared for man's abode by the same Almighty Being, so as to leave no room for the eternity of matter, nor yet for two Creators, one of the high and holy spiritual world, the other of this lower material world. McCaul. The earth. Continents, islands, headlands, all conformed themselves to the great design for man's development and trial; as though in God's book all the members of the great scheme were written while as yet there was none of them. Nor is there any end of wonders, of knowledge and wisdom open to the discovery of man, if he will but patiently trace the great design. In the hot, damp periods, while the beds of coal were forming, who could have told in these the purposes of the Creator? The metals and metallic oxides injected into the veins of the rocks, or mingled with earthy substances—who could have seen in these any significance beyond chance, or sport, or caprice? Yet without the waterfalls, caused by the upheavings or irregular deposits of earth; without the coal, the iron, the silver, the copper, the gold, where would have been the arts, the commerce, the development, the history of man! Nothing appears to have been left out of the Lord's plan! Nothing undesigned! Nothing without amazing foresight, and amazing reach of wisdom! Yet had beings like us stood by at any of these periods, what could they have comprehended of the wonders of Jehovah's works that were transpiring before their eyes? Review. Geology shows us how, among the "many mansions," a "place" was here "prepared" for man—framed, finished, and furnished specially for his needs, before he was introduced. Chemistry tells of the perilous secret of the air, health wrought out of poisons, and these kept in diffusion by a special and beautiful contrivance. Botany tells us of the cereal—the "herb bearing seed"—given peculiarly to man, never originating in the wild state, and kept only by his hand. Paleontology and physiology show and explain the significance of the order of succession, in which the higher forms subject the earlier and lower to their use. The comparative studies of nature and man show how, in the former, ores have been hidden, seas interposed, contrivances introduced, mysteries obtruded, penalties imposed, as if by beckoning, by challenging, and by whip and spur, to bring man onward to his true destiny. J. B. Thomas. Whence do these chapters come? There they stand and ever continue to stand, often as it has been attempted to explain them away; and there they will remain until the end of the world, until the conclusion of God's kingdom on earth joins hands with the beginning, and the light of the beginning will again be recognized in the light of the end, and the light of the end in the light of the beginning, that God may be all in all. Staib. 8. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there he put the man whom 9 he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree 10 of the knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and 11 from thence it was parted, and became four heads. The name of the first is Pishon: that is 12 it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land 13 is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: 14 the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth in front of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. 15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep 16 it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest 17 freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Unlike other ancient historians, Moses has no fabulous ages. There is in his clear, con- sistent, unmatched record, no uncertainty, no fable, no conjecture, no chasm. By its sure and steady light we are conducted through the long night of ages, back to the very threshold of creation, and placed beside the first human pair in the garden of Eden. E. C. W. 8. The Lord God. Elohim, of whom Gen. 1 speaks as the God of the universe, be- comes, in the second and third chapters, Je- hovah, or the God of salvation He becomes such when He plants and prepares the garden of Eden to be the dwelling-place of man, and the starting-point in his history. K.—We live in Messiah's world. The divine Personage who is here called the LORD God, and who spoke to Adam in the garden, was the angel Jehovah, who afterward appeared to the patriarchs, led the Israelites through the wilderness, taber- naoled among men in the form of a man, is still the head of his Church, and will again appear to the world. The angel Jehovah commences a new dispensation, which, when it has passed through its three forms, Patriarchal, Levitical, and Christian, will be terminated by reviving and perfecting the primeval happiness of man- kind, in that future Paradise, of which the gar- den of Eden was but an emblem. G. T. A garden in Eden. The site of Paradise is to be sought for in Babylonia. Eden, as we learn from the cuneiform records, was the an- cient name of the "field" or plain of Babylonia, where the first living creatures had been created. Sayce.—The Garden here described, connected as it is with the well-known names of the Euphrates and Tigris, can hardly be other than a definite area, unknown indeed to us and prob- ably undiscoverable but certainly in the East, and agreeing in general with what appears to have been the starting-point of the history of the human race. We have on the whole two general classes of opinion: the one which places the site of Paradise near the Persian Gulf; the other, placing it somewhere in the highlands of Armenia. H. W. P. 11-14. Of the four rivers mentioned as con- nected with it, two still bear the same names, the Hiddekel or Tigris, and the Euphrates. Near the sources of these streams the other two greatest rivers of Western Asia have their rise; the Kizil-Ermak, anciently Halys, flowing into the Black Sea, possibly the same as the Pison; and the Araxes, which, joined by the Kur or Cyrus, flows into the Caspian, and may have been the Gihon. There can be little reasonable doubt that Eden was situated in the highlands of Armenia, in Asia Minor, somewhere near the sources of these four rivers. W. G. B.—We can at least say that somewhere in this region of Armenia eastward, perhaps on the southern slope of the Taurus, though some would prefer a somewhat more southerly site, it certainly is not unscriptural to find the home of our first parents, as well as (in this general region) of the second set of progenitors of the race. S. C. B. 15. Put the man into the garden. The first human pair have their first earthly want met by their Maker in a home—a quiet, beautiful spot in which trees of beauty for the eve and of nutritious fruitage for subsistence supplied some pleasing occupation for the mind and wholesome labor for the hand; where, happy in each other's love and blessed with the freest communion with their Maker, not a thing was lacking to fill their cup of joy. If it might only last—and for this, nothing more was needful save that their moral nature should be cultured, their faith and love and obedience strengthened up to the point of being thoroughly, fully confirmed: then their lot would have been most blessed. As a requisite means for such culture, God subjected their faith and obedience to one gentle test—to one point of moral trial. To have endured this successfully would have made them morally stronger and have drawn them yet nearer in love and trust to their Great Father. H. C.—The Bible account of the origin of religion is that man began his journey on this globe not as a deserted orphan, turned adrift to seek God as best he could, but in communion with the Father of spirits. God talked with him, and he could talk with God. God marked for him the path of duty, and it lay in his choice to walk in it, or to wander from it. E. R. Conder. The happiness of our first parents in Paradise must have far exceeded anything which we can now imagine. Formed in the image of God, with all their faculties perfect and their appetites in subjection, undisturbed by care, and as yet unassailed by temptation, they walked with God as a man walketh with his friend, and enjoyed communion with heaven, though their abode was upon earth. Bash.—It is apparent, from the account of Moses, that the first man in the state of integrity was (as we have heard Tertullian expressing it) “the intimate friend of God,” that he should “bear heavenly things,” and sustain the approaches of the majestic presence of God without any regret or starting back; that he could maintain a conference or discourse with God (as we have heard Basil speaking) in the same tongue or language. It is likewise evident from the same history, that Adam in the state of integrity had a knowledge of certain things unaccountable upon any other hypothesis but this, that his mind was irradiated with a divine illumination. Ball.—We cannot doubt that the Mediator of this Revelation was the Son of God. Ere sin entered into God's fair universe, and while as yet was no estrangement between Him and any of His creatures, and so no need as yet of atonement and reconciliation, there was, for all this, need of One who should stand between the uncreated and the created life; One who, Himself uncreated and divine, could yet enter into relation with created life as existing through, in, and for Him; One in whom the creature could see, and through whom the creature could know, as much as its capacity could bear and contain of God. Medd. Setting aside all that is purely imaginative, we know that man, in Paradise, was a stranger to disease, deformity, and pain: that the perfect organism of his body made existence a delight, and brought no shadow or depression upon the soul. The mind of man was clear and true. Unlike irrational animals impelled by blind instinct, man was capable of understanding the will of his Maker. When we add that man was originally holy, we do not intend that his holiness was created in the same manner as the faculties of his mind, or that it was involuntary, like the natural instincts and appetites; but simply this, that all his thoughts, affections, and actions were right: that his obedience was perfect—that there was no conflict between the several parts of his nature—that the voluntary obedience of man was so complete, that he was the very image of his Maker—his holy affections, responding unto the holy affections of God. A “golden age” indeed was that when the human conscience spake approvingly, without one impeachment, without one compunction of remorse; man rejoicing in his own conscious innocence, and God pronouncing this his last and greatest work superlatively good. . . . Last of all was worship of the Creator, and God's benediction. The worship of God by sinless man!—not with mediatory rites and sacrifices, not by smoking altars and bleeding beasts, not by typical sacraments and priestly intercessions; but by direct, immediate, personal, sensible communion. With no shame on his cheek, no fear in his soul, man stood erect before his Maker in all the confidence and joy of perfect innocence. Then was it that God abode with man as with his child, smiling upon him morning, noon, and night, and walking with him amid the bowers of Eden. W. Adams. All through the course of the creation, at intervals the narrative has pictured the Creator himself as having a benevolent joy in the perfection of that which He had brought into being. But in Man the narrative presents the Creator as the Father producing a child in His own image, after His likeness; and then with a Father's thoughtful care, providing for every want of his compound nature, for his physical comfort and enjoyment, for the gratification of his tastes and his sense of beauty; for his affec tions and his social nature through the medium of the Family, and of that society which must grow out of the Family; and for his spiritual communing with Himself, the Father of spirits, in that beatific intercourse which was the privilege and joy of man at the beginning. In all these arrangements, designed to be perpetual, we behold the love and the care of God. Wherever these arrangements have failed of their beneficent purposes, it has been solely through the perversity of man; and just so far as man shall return to the original design of the Creator, in the institutions of the Family and of the Sabbath, in the maintenance of pure domestic love and pure spiritual worship, will human society be advanced in integrity and blessedness, and once more approximate to that Paradise which was the glory of its beginning and the realization of which in the hereafter will be that golden age toward which all poetry and prophecy direct our hopes. J. P. T. To dress it and to keep it. No sooner was man created than occupation was found for his whole nature,—body, mind, tongue, soul, and conscience; for even in his state of innocence and holiness, improvement and development were to be gained by exercise. His body was to be exercised, in dressing and keeping a garden; his mind, in studying the animals around him, and the other works of God; his tongue, or power of speech, in conversation and devotion; his soul, in loving his earthly companion, and in loving, praising, and exalting his God; and his conscience, in obeying God's commandments. W. G. B. In the midst of a Nature, the forces of which are henceforth under discipline, man begins his proper work. He asserts his claims as the heir of this beautiful domain, and endeavors to take possession of it by the twofold labor of knowledge and action; he 'dresses the garden,' according to the Scriptural expression; he distinguishes between different objects, and exercises his powers in giving them names; he sets before himself aims, and finds means for their attainment; he modifies things in conformity with his wishes and his needs; he develops the inexhaustible resources of his intelligence and his will,—those twin-sisters, the loyal agents of all our activity. At the same time his feelings awake; his heart opens to the sweet affections of family life, and to the pure enjoyments of nature. It is the drama of the soul's life which is now beginning. What will be its end? Godet. The garden has not only its fruit trees, but it has also its flowers. It always presupposes that there are human beings to enjoy it as well as to take care of it. The idea of God's planting the garden, carries with it the thought that he was fashioning it for something higher than animals; that he was enclosing a choice spot for a creature who could enjoy whatever was comely and pleasant. It was therefore an acknowledgment that when he made the garden, this world was to be given over in its dominion to a higher intelligence than was found among the highest grade of created animals. The ordinance of labor was established at that time. God took man and put him in the garden 'to dress it and to keep it.' This ordinance of the Lord has sometimes been connected with the curse, but that is a very different kind of labor. 'God worketh hitherto and I work,' said Christ. There always was and always must have been the ground and the necessity for the ordinance of work. Billinger.—The blessedness of God is in unwearied and beneficent action; and man, made in his image, was immediately assigned an occupation. Man's first employment was to till that very earth out of which he sprung, and in the bosom of which he is to find his grave. Work and labor are not synonyms. With the latter we associate difficulty—sometimes hard and depressing drudgery—man's work at first was pleasant only, restraining and pruning the exuberance of nature's spontaneous growth; sin has changed that easy occupation for the sweat of the face, and the bending of the back. W. Adams. That which was man's storehouse was also his workhouse; his pleasure was his task: paradise served not only to feed his senses but to exercise his hands. If happiness had consisted in doing nothing, man had not been employed; all his delights could not have made him happy in an idle life. Man, therefore, is no sooner made than he is set to work: neither greatness nor perfection can privilege a folded hand; he must labor, because he was happy; how much more we, that we may be! This first labor of his was, as without necessity, so without pains, without weariness; how much more cheerfully we go about our businesses, so much nearer we come to our paradise. Bp. II.—Paradise itself was not a place of exemption from work. We were none of us sent into the world to be idle. He that made us these souls and bodies has given us something to work with; and he that gave us this earth for our habitation has made us something to work on. If either a high extraction, or a great estate, or a large dominion, or perfect innocency, or a genius for pure contemplation, or a small family, could have given a man a writ of ease, Adam had not been set to work; but he that gave us being has given us business, to serve him and our generation, and to work out our salvation; if we do not mind our business, we are unworthy of our being and maintenance. Secular employments will very well consist with a state of innocency, and a life of communion with God. The sons and heirs of heaven, while they are here in this world, have something to do about this earth, which must have its share of their time and thoughts; and if they do it with an eye to God, they are as truly serving him in it as when they are upon their knees. H. # The Test. # 16. Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat. If there is to be an education of the human race, one of the first acts of the Divine Educator will be, to provoke a struggle between duty and pleasure, between conscious will and blind instinct. This is the meaning of that primeval trial to which man was subjected. What a crisis was here! If the conscious will, supported by the sense of duty, triumphed over natural inclination, then it would see opening before it a career of new conflicts and victories. But if inclination triumphed, man's will was reduced to slavery; and deprived of the free disposal of himself, he would under the dominion of the flesh fall lower and lower. This crisis was then at once inevitable and decisive. It was for man, whatever might happen, the transition from a merely natural life to historic development. Godet. Mark God's mode of teaching. He issues a command. This is required in order to bring forth into consciousness the hitherto latent sensibility to moral obligation which was laid in the original constitution of man's being. A command implies a superior whose right it is to command, and an inferior whose duty it is to obey. The only ultimate and absolute ground of supremacy is creating, and of inferiority, being created. This is man's first lesson in morals. It calls up in his breast the sense of duty, of right, of responsibility. M.—Human character as such, whether innocent or fallen, is made for moral government, for obedience to the law of a superior, and for the acknowledgment of the rights of equals, as well as for the reciprocation of benevolence; so that display of divine justice or righteousness and of divine goodness or kindness would be needed for the education of the race as much if unfallen, as in its present fallen condition. Woolsey. The command has two clauses,—a permissive and a prohibitive. "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat." This displays in conspicuous terms the benignity of the Creator. "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat." This signalizes the absolute right of the Creator over all the trees, and over man himself. One tree only is withheld, which, whatever were its qualities, was at all events not necessary to the well-being of man. All the others that were likely for sight and good for food, including the tree of life, are made over to him by free grant. M.—The vast freedom granted to him proved the goodness of the Creator; the one exception taught him that he was to live under a law; and that law was enforced by a practical penalty, of which he was mercifully warned. We must not regard the prohibition merely as a test of obedience, nor the penalty as arbitrary. The knowledge forbidden to him was of a kind which would corrupt his nature—so corrupt it as to make him unfit, as well as unworthy, to live forever. P. S.—It is quite evident that this knowledge could not be any physical effect of the tree, seeing its fruit was forbidden. It is obvious also that evil is as yet known in this fair world only as the negative of good. Hence the tree is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because by the command concerning it man comes to this knowledge. M. "He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much, and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much;" because it is a property of the moral law that its infraction is not measured by the extent of the transgression, but by the intent of the transgressor. The smallness of the test is an evidence of the delicacy of the poise with which God has adjusted the law to man's moral constitution. Bittinger.—The test of obedience is so far from being trivial or out of place, as has been imagined, that it is the proper and the only object immediately available for these purposes. The immediate want of man is food. The kind of food primarily designed for him is the fruit of trees. As the law must be laid down before man proceeds to an act of appropriation, the matter of reserve and consequent test of obedience is the fruit of a tree. Only by this can man at present learn the lessons of morality. To devise any other means, not arising from the actual state of things in which man was placed, would have been arbitrary and unreasonable. The immediate sphere of obedience lies in the circumstances in which he actually stands. These afforded no occasion for any other command than that which is given. Adam had no father, or mother, or neighbor, male or female, and therefore the second table of the law could not apply. But he had a relation to his Maker, and legislation on this could not be postponed. The command assumes the kindest, most intelligible, and convenient form for the mind of primeval man. M. —The principle of conscious obedience to the divine will is the first step in moral progress, and the essential element of true happiness. Consequently the conscious recognition of that will is the first condition of man's development as a moral being, and of his continued progress in holiness and happiness. Hence a test was required to awaken that conscious recognition, and to give occasion for the exercise of his freedom of choice and action. A test of obedience is, therefore, an expression of the truest love and care; and the more simple the test the better it serves the purpose intended by the love that appoints it. Hence numerous acts of obedience were not made the test. One act was forbidden; all else was allowed. Of the principle of obedience no test could have been more simple and direct, or more easily apprehended; and hence it was a perfect test. T. J. C. There the tree stood before their eyes in the midst of the garden—every sight of it suggesting their Great Father's word—not to be eaten at all on penalty of death. Every time they put down the temptation to eat of it they will become stronger in their spirit of obedience and more happy in God. It was a means of continual culture in holiness, ever leading onward and upward into deeper communion with God and more assured and joyous submission to his will, more strength of purpose in obedience, more delight in whatever self-denial obedience might involve. Surely it is not too much to say that they might make this means of moral culture a priceless blessing to their souls. How could paradise meet the greatest of all their wants—the want of their new-born souls—without this one provision for proving and invigorating their loving obedience to their God? Need we then raise the question—What was God's purpose in this prohibition? The answer is at hand—To accomplish precisely this result; to give the first human pair a test of obedience which should be naturally a means of moral culture and of growth in holiness. It was a natural necessity of their moral nature that this question of obeying God, always and everywhere, should come to issue. As surely as they were moral beings, capable of knowing duty and of doing it, born into being with susceptibilities to happiness which sometimes must be virtuously denied at the demand of God and of the greater good, so surely they must meet this trial sooner or later, in one form or another, until they become so strong in their holy purpose, so fixed in the spirit of love and obedience to God that temptation to sin is of course spurned away and duty is done forevermore without a question. Moral trial, therefore, if not in this precise form, yet in some analogous form, is the necessary means of developing moral strength and confirmed holiness; is therefore the natural pathway to the blessedness of heaven. Thus, with no wavering of doubt, we may vindicate God's ways toward man in this first great moral trial brought on our race. H. C. Adam's trial consisted in the exercise of his faith and dependence on God, and the proper subordination of his sensual appetite to his spiritual affections. His trial was, whether he would so far believe and depend on God as to look forward to the complete attainment of spiritual perfection in conformity with the divine plan, and in obedience to the divine command; or seek an happiness for himself, independent of his Creator, by applying for it to a tempting object of temporal gratification. In short, the grand trial was, what it ever hath been, and what it ever will be till the present world shall cease to exist, a trial between flesh and spirit, between earth and heaven; whether things visible or invisible, things suited to the animal or spiritual condition of the original man, should have the preference with him; in a word, whether Adam would walk by sight, or by faith. Daubeny. All agree that the object of the sacred writer was to describe the first probation of human nature. A special act of obedience was presented, and the conditions of probation were simply these: obey, and retain all the pleasures and rewards of innocence; disobey, and there shall follow the pangs of remorse, and the displeasure of God. Obey, and live; disobey, and die. The thing to be observed is, that obedience—obedience alone, nothing but obedience—describes the original probation of man. There is no mixture of mercy, of forgiveness, in the terms of it. Mercy is a gratuity offered to guilt.* Nothing of this was proposed to original innocence, for it was not needed while innocence was retained. It matters not at all whether the interdicted act be in itself great or small, vast or trivial—it was a test of obedience. Observe the favorable auspices of this original probation. There was no propensity in man's nature to evil. There was no derangement in his constitution inclining him to sin. Body and soul were absolutely perfect in their organization. There was no proclivity, no bias, in the wrong direction. Man was the very likeness of his Maker, with no more disposition or inclination to evil than in the holy nature of God. The terms of the probation were definitely understood. This is essential to all fairness and equity when the principle of obedience is to be tested. Acts which proceed from ignorance or accident are not to be confounded with the intelligent and purposed infraction of positive injunctions. When serpent subtlety suggested the first temptation to the mind of Eve, she quickly repelled it, on the ground that the act to which she was solicited was forbidden by the express interdict of the Creator; thus proving that the first condition of legal probation was complied with, in that the test of obedience was well and perfectly understood. The circumstances of the probation were in all other respects eminently auspicious. The liberty allowed was the very largest. There was no pressure of want to necessitate transgression. All the delights of Eden were at the command of its innocent tenants. The amplest range of enjoyment was afforded; all created things were at their disposal, save that one, which it was their pleasure to avoid, because obedience to their Maker was a delight. Infidelity may scoff at the trivial nature of the act interdicted; but the obvious reply is, that acts are not to be measured by their own littleness or largeness, or the brevity of the time in which they are performed, but by their relations—the smallest serving as a test as well as the largest. With the mention of these several circumstances, we cannot conceive how human nature could have been tested, as to the principle of obedience, on conditions more hopeful, more auspicious, more equitable, than it actually was in Eden. W. Adams. 17. In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Heb., dying thou shalt die. Implying by the utmost emphasis of expression the absolute certainty of the punishment denounced. The threatening we suppose to have embraced all the evils spiritual, temporal, and eternal, which we learn elsewhere to be included in term death as a punishment for sin. The meaning is not that temporal death should be inflicted the literal day on which the offence was committed, but on the day of his eating he was to become dead in trespasses and sins; the seeds of decay and dissolution were to become sown in his body, which should thenceforth become mortal, and finally be brought down to the grave; and he should be made liable to what is usually understood by the pains of eternal death in another world. Adam, indeed, might not at the time have understood the full import of this dreadful sentence, having had no experience of anything which would enable him to do so; but we are taught by the actual result what sense to affix to the terms. Bush. What kind of death God here means, we must gather from the kind of life forfeited. It was in every respect a happy one: the life embraced equally body and soul. In man's soul prevailed right knowledge, and a proper moderation of all desires; his bodily powers were perfect, and so he was entirely free from death. His life on earth, indeed, would only have been a temporal one; but he would have passed on to heaven without pain or dying. Under the word death is comprehended all that is miserable; and to this Adam by his fall became subject. As soon as the judgment was pronounced on him, Adam came under the dominion of death, until grace, which followed thereon, brought the means of salvation. Calvin. Man is represented as from the first placed in direct moral relations with his Maker. A specially prepared home, work, the Sabbath, marriage, and a positive command the test of obedience, bless and test his life. Disobedience is represented as putting him, as it needs must, in a sadly altered relation to God. He is called to account, found guilty, sentenced to the loss of Eden, made subject to death. No explanation is given of that awful word. Nevertheless, man retains his highest privilege, direct converse with his Maker. We see God reasoning even with Cain when his mind is dull with discontent and murderous jealousy, seeking to win him to repentance, and cheering him as Adam and Eve were cheered after their transgression, with words of grace and promise. E. R. Conder. 18. AND the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an 19 help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them: 20 and whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And the man gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but 21 for man there was not found an help meet for him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh 22 instead thereof: and the rib, which the LORD God had taken from the man, made he a woman, 23 and brought her unto the man. And the man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh 24 of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be 25 one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. In the first chapters of Genesis lie the foundations of all the life of the world: marriage and family, labor and raiment, city and state, civilization and art, the relation of man to nature and the world of spirit, nations, languages, religions, etc. There are rich and fruitful hints also for ethics. Auberlen.—Dear, oldest, and eternal traditions of my race, ye are kernel and germ of its most hidden history! Without you, mankind would be what so much else is, a book without title, without first leaves and explanation; with you, our family acquires foundation, stem, and root, back to God. And they are all taken in so simple, child-like a tone, from the mouth of the first tradition among the trees of the eastern land, and are set forth by Moses so true, and one by one as if he found them there, the echo of eternal times. Herder. 18. Not good. Above, it is said, "God saw all that He had made, and, behold, it was very good:" here it is not good, for no other reason than because all was not yet completed. Gerl. 19,20. The man gave names. At his creation Adam was a man in the vigor of physical and mental life. He was taught of God, and not left to gather by slow experience all that he wanted to know. Language must have been supernaturally imparted to him. He had no means of acquiring it but from God. From the same source he must have derived the knowledge he possessed of the properties of the objects and beings around him. Kit.—In the naming of the animals by the first man we have not only the primary truth of his superiority to them, but a further indication that the gift of speech was not the slow growth of ages, but an endowment of man from the first, just as much as any of his other powers or properties. Duse-son.—The paramount thing is certainly the naming of the animals. It was that he might name them that they were brought to the man. What is subsequently said implies that as he thus grew familiar with the life around him Adam became conscious how much alone he himself was. All that we observe of the divine method in dealing with mankind suggests that God would teach man to speak by putting him in the way of making and using a language for himself. The direct divine gift would be in the faculty of language. J. A. Smith. Scripture obviously and unequivocally asserts the divine institution of language. It is not necessary to suppose that Adam was endued with a full and perfect knowledge of the several creatures, so as to impose names truly expressive of their natures. It is sufficient if we suppose the use of language taught him with respect to such things as were necessary, and that he was then left to the exercise of his own faculties for further improvement upon this foundation. But that the terms of worship and adoration were among those which were first communicated, we can entertain little doubt. In addition to the proof from Scripture, it should be remembered that the laws given by God to the first pair, respecting food and marriage, together with the other discoveries of his will recorded in the beginning of Genesis, were communicated through the medium of language; and that the man and the woman are there expressly stated to have conversed with God, and with each other. Besides, in what sense could it be said, that a meet companion for the man was formed, if there were not given to both the power of communicating their thoughts by appropriate speech? Further, the diversity of tongues occasioning the confusion of Babel, and the miraculous gift of speech to the apostles on the day of Pentecost, may render a similar exercise of divine power in the case of our first parents more readily admissible: for surely such supernatural interference was not less called for in the last instance, than in either of the two former. The writer of Ecclesiasticus affirms: When the Lord created man, he imparted to him understanding: and speech, an interpretation of the cogitations thereof (Ecclus. 17:5). Magee. As far as we can trace back the footsteps of man, even on the lowest strata of history, we see that the divine gift of a sound and sober intellect belonged to him from the very first. The earliest work of art wrought by the human mind, —more ancient than any literary document, and prior even to the first whisperings of tradition, —the human language, forms an uninterrupted chain from the first dawn of history down to our own times. We still speak the language of the first ancestors of our race, and this attests from the very first the presence of a rational mind, of an artist as great, at least, as his work. Max Müller. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ 1. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden? 2 And the woman said unto the serpent, Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat: 3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat 4 of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not 5 surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, 6 and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with 7 her, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. Genesis opens with the account of the tempter in the garden, securing the fall of our first parents; and the Apocalypse closes with the prediction of his final overthrow and destruction in company with all those who have persistently adhered to his revolt. The intervening books consistently speak of his character, of his direct antagonism to Christ, and of his schemes and influence during the world's history, and warn us against his snares. W. W. Patton. The narrative of this chapter must be either all plain matter of fact, or all allegory. For no writer of true history would mix plain matter of fact with allegory in the same continued narrative, without any intimation of a transition from the one to the other. If therefore any part of this narrative be matter of fact, no part of it is allegorical. If any part be allegorical, no part is naked matter of fact. If the formation of the woman out of man be allegory, the woman must be an allegorical woman. The man must therefore be an allegorical man; for of such a man only the allegorical woman will be a meet companion. If the man be allegorical, his Paradise is an allegorical garden; the trees that grew in it, allegorical trees; the rivers that watered it, allegorical rivers; and thus we may ascend to the very beginning of the creation, and conclude at last that the heavens are allegorical heavens, and the earth an allegorical earth. Thus the whole history of the creation will be an allegory, of which the real subject is not disclosed, and in this absurdity the whole scheme of allegorizing ends Bp. Horsley. The reasons for regarding the Biblical account of the Fall as historical, are these: It is organically united with the narrative of the creation, which takes the usual formula of Hebrew history—"these are the generations." It appears in a Book which by uniformly and distinctly recognizing one living and personal God, and by distinctly defining man's moral relation to Him, leaves no room for a mythology. It is recorded in the old, simple, objective style of historical narrative; reminding us of the significant fact that, unlike other nations of antiquity with whom the poetic element preceded the historical, Hebrew poetry always looks back to Hebrew history. While the mythological, moreover, is always national, local, and particular, the Biblical account, both of the Creation and the Fall, has the character of true universality. The account also, in connection with that of the creation, forms the introduction to an acknowledged history—that of the Theocracy. It is the only account which, from its view of sin, assumes and really possesses a historical character. In all the ancient accounts, apart from Biblical influence, sin is either an unreal or an eternal thing. Pantheism, as in the Egyptian, Phoenician and Babylonian traditions, by treating sin as an unreality, renounces its historical existence. Dualism, of which Parseeism, Brahmanism, and the later Manichaeism, are forms, by regarding it as eternal, make a first sin, as the act of a free being—impossible. It is only where both the finitude and the individual liberty of man are apprehended, as they are in Genesis, that the nature of sin is recognized, and a first sin is possible. The Biblical account, too, is full of historical details and facts. Thus, it contains a minute geographical description of Paradise: the condition of mankind, threatened in this narrative as a punishment, actually exists: and the account of the same human progenitors, here brought into view, is continuously carried forward as history. Then, again, sin and salvation—the two fundamental ideas of the narrative—form the germ of which the entire Bible is the development. In addition to all which, the historical character of the narrative is repeatedly recognized in the New Testament, where the presence of this spiritual agent in the natural serpent is distinctly recognized. J. H. The narrative of the first sin has not only a consistency that grows on the contemplation, but offers the only solution of the dim traditions of the distant past. It offers perhaps all the help that can be given when it traces the source of the seduction to an outer influence, distinctly explained in the New Testament, as “that old serpent which is called the devil and Satan,” and when it couples with the persuasions of the appetite the specious inducement of a higher good—“ye shall be as gods”—and a pressure applied to the more emotional of the pair. And while the real agent is thus identified with Satan, I see—in accordance with a narrative which described all as it appeared—no fair mode of escaping from the recognition of the actual objective appearance of a serpent, chosen for the reason suggested in the narrative, the subtlety of the movement that comes and goes so stealthily and so unexpectedly, and the association thereby awakened. The one grave objection, that this is the concession of a miraculous transaction for the purpose of deception, is perhaps sufficiently answered by saying that to them it was no miracle,—for there was no adequate knowledge of a settled course of nature,—but an ordinary phenomenon. Striking confirmation is found in the ancient and widespread traditions of the East, pointing definitely to precisely such a transaction. We not only find the sacred tree that gave immortality—the Indian Kalpankham, the Persian Hom, the Arab Tuba, the Greek Lotus, the tree in the coffin at Warka, and Babylon named “the place of the tree of life;” we also find the ruin of the race connected with the eating from a tree, in the Edda of the north, in the Zendavesta, and in the legend of Thibet, and a deceiver also appears, who is in some cases the serpent. Indeed the serpent figures largely in traditions, in Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, Phœnicia and elsewhere, as the enemy of the gods. The confirmation becomes more definite and singular still. We find not only a Babylonian cylinder of the 9th century n.c. showing the sacred tree with attendant figures and eagle-headed guardians, and another cylinder showing the sacred tree with “attendant Cherubim;” but we find another early Babylonian cylinder with sacred tree showing fruit, a seated human figure on each side, each with a hand extended toward it, and a serpent behind the one whose hand is nearest to the fruit. S. C. B. 1-6. Temptation is now presented to the occupants of Eden. Temptation is not sin, but it seems to be implied in the very nature of man’s probation. Here have we the first allusion which, like a hinge or link, connects the history of our race with events which occurred before man was made—a connection which subsists now, and is to continue, in one form or another, when this world is consumed—so binding forever, past, present, and future events of Providence, into one vast and endless system, ever revolving and unfolding. Sin existed in the universe before it blighted Eden. Some of the angels kept not their first estate; and revelation positively instructs us that man’s apostasy, man’s redemption, and man’s final destiny, have direct relations to the history of those who fell from heaven before man was fashioned out of the dust. W. Adams. The characters in this high tragedy are all worthy the grandeur of the occasion. They are Jehovah; a fallen rebel of the spiritual universe; and man, a spirit, in the image of God, combined with a physical body. The test act of the occasion, too—however men of low conceptions have sneered at it—was equal to the character of the parties in grandeur and dignity. It was indeed the simple taste of fruit; but that tasting a high, solemn, sacramental act. It was not simply the eating of fruit, but the touching of the sacramental tree. S. R. 1. The serpent is here called a beast of the field; that is, neither a domesticated animal nor one of the smaller sorts. The Lord God had made it, and therefore it was a creature called into being on the same day with Adam. It is not the wisdom, but the wiliness of the serpent which is here noted. M.—The serpent, as a creature of God, has in itself nothing devilish. The real tempter could not be an animal, but only a higher evil spirit, the devil, who made use of the animal as his instrument. There is no mention in Scripture of any personal bodily manifestation of this evil spirit, and it is altogether impossible. Accordingly, he was obliged to speak through the medium of the serpent. Gerl.—In whatever form appearing, in whatever manner addressing the woman, the real tempter—as elsewhere abundantly declared in scripture—was a spiritual being, already fallen, called here and elsewhere the Serpent, from his insidiousness; called also the Devil, as he is a slanderer and calumniator; called also Satan, as he is the hater and the adversary; called also the Wicked One, as pre-eminent among creatures for his infamous moral character. S. R. That the real personal devil was there, the responsible agent, is surely implied by our Lord (Jno. 8:44). In 2 Cor. 11:3, Paul gives us a plain, historic version of this narrative. But Satan is perhaps most sharply identified in the descriptive points made by John (Rev. 12:9 and 20:2). Our Lord, as also Paul and John, saw in this narrative a real Satan, and also the veritable serpent made his instrument. That Satan should use such an instrument is manifestly within and not beyond his power. It has in certain points its analogy in the demoniacal possessions recorded by the Evangelists. As to power he is spoken of as the god and prince of this world, "the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." H. C.—There is but one "devil and his angels." In Rev. 12:9, we read of the great dragon: "that old serpent, the devil and Satan." In this form he seduced our first parents, and effected the ruin of mankind in their original head. From that period his empire on earth commences, as erected in rebellion against the kingdom of God and his Christ; an empire composed of ignorance, idolatry, impiety, cruelty, and vice; alienation from God, and disobedience to his holy will and law; these are the ingredients and principles of Satan's empire in the world. R. Hall. It is with no cloudy vagueness that the personal existence of the spirit of evil is revealed in Holy Scripture. In history, prophecy and in parable is the Tempter brought before us, and every quality, every action, every attribute which can indicate personality is referred to him in language which cannot be explained away. The records of the old dispensation and the writings of the new, alike depict him as pre-eminent in power among the angels who lost their first estate, and as ever compassing the destruction of the souls of men. We, then, are neither wise nor prudent to talk of allegories, or rhetorical personification, or in bolder unbelief to doubt or deny the existence and the power of the chief of the fallen spirits. It were far wiser to recognize our foe, and to seek the strength with which to contend with him. Perry.—The devil's hatred of us bears date with our very being, and his opposition is as early as his hatred; it is of too active a virulence to lie still and dormant, without putting forth itself in all the actings of a mischievous hostility. The devil hates and maligns us for the privileges of our creation, but much more for the mercies of our redemption: and as soon as ever we list ourselves in the service of the great Captain of our salvation, he bids present defiance to us and proclaims perpetual war against us; which he will never be wanting to carry on with all the force, art, and industry that malice, bounded within the limits of created power, can reach unto. South.—His great business is to draw and drive others to sin; and therefore, as God is "the holy one," so Satan is called "the wicked one." The devil may fitly be called "the evil one," for he is the oldest sinner (1 John 3:8); the greatest sinner (Eph. 6:12); the father of sin (John 8:44). So all the sins in the world are by this furtherance, both actual and original. Again, he hath a great stroke in temptation, that he is the artificer, the designer, the improver of them; therefore he is called "the tempter" (Matt. 4:3). Manton.—Had our first parents actually considered the nearness of God to them when they were tempted to eat of the forbidden fruit, they had not probably so easily been overcome by the temptation. Let us consider that God is as near to observe us as the devil to solicit us; yea, nearer. The devil stands by us, but God is in us. We may have a thought the devil knows not, but not a thought but God is actually present with, as our souls are with the thoughts they think; nor can any creature attract our hearts, if our minds were fixed on that invisible presence that contributes to that excellency and sustains it, and considered that no creature could be so present with us as the Creator is. Charnock. Without temptation Adam would not have fallen; without temptation you and I would not have fallen. But without temptation would any have risen? What would character be without temptation? The revelations of God, and the great redemption of God, with all its accessories, are for the sake of character. Character is treasure laid up in heaven; character is salvation; character is life eternal. And character is in the heart just what intellect is in the mind, and muscle in the body; it is moral stamina, ethical toughness, and nothing toughens but discipline; and discipline means trial, strain, temptation. Therefore we will ever remember that life is a training-school; that its appliances are arranged with reference to the establishment within us of that which is undecaying, and which we may carry over with us into the vast life we are so rapidly entering. We will try and not repine at the warfare we have so constantly to wage against the evil that is within us and without us. Every thorn in the flesh and in the heart, we will remember, has in it a gracious purpose; is pressed by a divine hand and nicely adjusted to our endurance; that there is nothing in life so corrupt that it need defile us, nothing in experience so heavy that it need crush us. Only we will remember that it is not safe for us to go into our wildernesses alone, but like Jesus, who entered there in the power of the Spirit. Under the stress of trial and difficulty of any kind it is only God's grace that is sufficient for us, and in that grace will we find our security. C. H. P. Hath God said? No startling proposal of disobedience is made, no advice, no persuasion to partake of the fruit is employed. The suggestion or assertion of the false only is plainly offered; and the bewildered mind is left to draw its own false inferences, and pursue its own misguided course. The tempter addresses the woman as the more susceptible and unguarded of the two creatures he would betray. M.—It is good to leave off learning where God hath left off teaching; for they which have an ear where God hath no tongue, hearken not unto God, but to the tempter, as Eve did to the serpent. H. Smith. The mode of approach, and the method of the temptation of an intelligent, sinless creature, is worthy the genius of the tempter for subtlety. A blunt, outspoken attack on the covenant would have repelled his victim. So most adroitly, under form of an undisputed truth, he insinuates an enormous lie. Observe the form of his statement: "Yea hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree." This was what God said—and also it was not what God said. Observe, God had said, "of every tree," etc. In that form, the language conveys the idea of generous and almost unlimited freedom. But, as stated by the tempter—while grammatically true—yet it insinuates and is really to the effect, that a tyrannical and useless restraint has been laid upon man. S. R.—Satan here states the exception, as if it had been the rule, and converts a general privilege, with one solitary exception, into an absolute prohibition. And such is ever the treacherous plan of the seducer from the paths of innocence. His grand object is to render, obedience wearisome and constrained; and to this end he conceals every privilege and magnifies every restraint, that he may alienate our affections from the laws of holiness, and from the friends of virtue and of our true happiness. Hifferman. With apparently full reverence for God, he injects into the mind of Eve a doubt as to this command. If God has certainly spoken, he urges, obey; but has He certainly spoken? It is only a doubt; Satan does not deny that God has spoken. He denies nothing, he affirms nothing; he simply questions. Bryan.—He insinuates into Eve's mind thoughts that God rather envied than designed their happiness, in forbidding them to eat of that one tree. Despair, which is the greatest instrument next to that of presumption, by which the devil draws men headlong into the fatal net of perdition, how and by what means does he cause it? Why, by representing God to the soul as a tyrant and a tormentor, rigid and implacable, exacting the utmost farthing from a poor bankrupt creature, that is nor worth it. By such diabolical rhetoric does he libel God to the hearts of His creatures. And he well knows that by these arts he does his business effectually; forasmuch as it is impossible for the soul to love God, as long as it takes Him for an enemy and a destroyer. South. Paradise was made for man, yet there I see the serpent. What marvel is it if my corruption find the serpent in my closet, in my table, when our holy parents found him in the midst of paradise! No sooner he is entered but he tempteth: he can no more be idle than harmless. I do not see him at any other tree; he knew there was no danger in the rest; I see him at the tree forbidden. How true a serpent is he in every point! in his insinuation to the place, in his choice of the tree, in his assault of the woman, in his plausibleness of speech to avoid terror, in his question to move doubt, in his reply to work distrust, in his protestation of safety, in his suggestion to envy and discontent, in his promise of gain! Bp. H.—Balaam could not curse Israel, but he could tempt Israel. The game which Satan had to play was to draw our first parents to sin, and so to separate between them and their God. Thus the Devil was, from the beginning, a murderer and the great mischief-maker. The whole race of mankind had here, as it were, but one neck, and at that Satan struck. The adversary and enemy is that wicked one. H. 2. We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden.** The first assault of the insidious tempter is well sustained by the woman. He insinuates that they had been forbidden the use of every tree without exception. No, says the woman, it is not a prohibition of every tree. The Creator has allowed us the use of all the trees, with one exception. We may not eat of the tree in the midst of the garden. Bush. —3. Lest ye die. Yet her reply was tainted with doubt. The threat, “Ye shall surely die,” she rendered by the words, “lest ye die.” God’s verily was to her only a perhaps, and the death penalty was a risk and not a certainty. Here was the first sin—not the overt act, not the defiance of God’s authority, but the doubt as to a clearly-revealed command of God—questioning hesitancy in the place of prompt obedience. Bryan. 4. Ye shall not surely die. As before he called in question God’s kindness to man, so does he here deny God’s veracity or truth; and deserves the character which our Saviour gives him, of “a liar.” Kidder.—Unbelief is not only a great sin of itself, but one great cause of all other sins. It may be truly called the Mother of sin, as the devil is the Father: for it was that which by his instigation brought forth sin at first into the world; and it is that which still maintains and keeps it. When the old serpent assaulted our first parents, the first attack he made was upon their faith; and when that was once shaken, he soon overcame them. Beveridge. 5. For God doth know. The first accuser that ever was in the world was a false accuser; and that was the devil. The first false report he raised was of the Most High: unjustly accusing God Himself unto our mother Eve, in a few words, of no fewer than three great crimes at once, Falsehood, Tyranny, and Esuiy. He was then a slanderous accuser of his Maker; and he hath continued ever since a malicious accuser of his brethren. Sanderson.—Thus still the Devil draws people into his interest by suggesting to them hard thoughts of God, and false hopes of benefit and advantage by sin. In opposition to him, always think well of God as the best good, and think ill of sin as the worst of evils: thus resist the Devil, and he will flee from us. H. The offered suggestion was “that he should be like unto God” in this, “Knowing good and evil.” Being in his creation invested with sovereignty of all inferior creatures, he was not needy of power or dominion. But being a spirit newly inclosed in a body of earth, he was fitted to be allured with appetite of light and liberty of knowledge. Bacon. Satan is cunning and we are weak, and he will be too hard for us if he do but find us at all staggering in our resolutions to do nothing but what is lawful; or lending an ear to any persuasions for the doing of anything that is unlawful. By this very means he overcame our first mother Eve; and prevailed with her to taste of the forbidden fruit, though it were unlawful, by persuading her that it was expedient. To a Christian that desireth to make conscience of his ways, nothing can be truly expedient that he knows to be unlawful. Sanderson.—Satan gains our souls step by step; and his first allurement is the knowledge of what is wrong. He first tempts to the knowledge, and then to the commission of sin. Depend on it that our happiness and our glory in these matters is to be ignorant, as well as to be guiltless. Oh, thoughtless, and worse, cruel to your own selves, all ye who read what ye should not read, and hear what ye should not hear! How will you repent of your folly afterward! How will you despise yourselves, how weep at what you have brought on you! At this day surely there is a special need of this warning; for this is a day when nothing is not pried into, nothing is not published, nothing is not laid before all men. Newman. 6. Good for food, delight to the eyes, to be desired to make one wise. The threefold appeal of the tempter to the infirmities of our nature may be traced also in the temptation of Christ, the second Adam, who “was in all points likewise tempted, but without sin.” P. S.—There is a noteworthy parallelism between the Temptation which Christ surmounted in the desert and this under which our first parents succumbed in the garden. “When the woman saw” (“through false spectacles of Satan’s making,” as Jackson adds) “that the tree was good for food” (the solicitation of the flesh), “and that it was pleasant to the eyes” (the solicitation of the world), “and a tree to be desired to make one wise” (the solicitation of the devil), “she took of the fruit thereof and did eat.” In that first sin were the lineaments of every other sin, as in Christ’s victory over temptation the lineaments, and very much more than the lineaments, of every other victory. Trench Of the three reasons assigned for eating, each one centres on self, and not one refers, even remotely, to the divine command, and in each of them is there a striking resemblance to the reasons by which men to-day seek to legitimate sin. Thus, the tree was “Good for food.” Practical unbelief makes food an ultimate necessity, and connects life with the natural appetite instead of with God through the natural appetite. We must have bread, say these; and what brings us bread is thereby justified. “Pleasant to the eyes.” “Beauty for beauty’s sake,” cry the athletes, and very impatiently do they resent all moral tests, owning allegiance to an artistic standard alone. Yet beauty cannot rival duty. The word of God must regulate art as it regulates our bread. Immoral beauty is sin, however beautiful it be: and the beauty cannot hide the sin or shield the sinner. "To be desired to make one wise." As in Eve's case, knowledge is often the loss of power; for, while Eve knew good and evil, it was at the cost of her life. She knew evil by becoming evil. So knowledge is not always a blessing. Its value depends on its source. If it is from God, it is power; if from Satan, it is moral impotence and ruin. He is not best that knows most, but he that knows most from God. . . . Here is the genesis of human sin: Doubt, Unbelief, Gratification—each the step to the next. There could have been no gratification without unbelief, and no unbelief without doubt. Bryan. Doubt is awakened whether what God has commanded is really good, and along with this the command itself is exaggerated. Distrust of God was called up, as if He were an envious being who sought to keep man back in a lower stage; and then ver. 4 proceeds to a decided denial of God's word. Only then, when selfishness, rebelling against God's will and God's word, has been awakened, does sensuous allurement, ver. 6, exert its power. In other words, the real principle of sin is, according to the Old Testament, unbelief of the divine word, the selfish elevation of self-will above the divine will, and the presumptuous trampling upon the limits set by divine command. The senses appear as occupying only a secondary place in the production of sin. Thus Gen. 3 disproves the doctrine so often advanced, especially in the Rabbinical theology, that according to the Old Testament the real principle of evil lies in matter, in the body. It is a fundamental doctrine of the Old Testament that evil is originally the denial of the divine will; that sin is sin because man selfishly exalts himself above God and His will. The Old Testament knows of no evil which is merely men's wronging of each other, or a mere retardation of the development of human nature, simple weakness. O. As regards the origin of sin we are not aware that all the philosophic discussions of the world together ever advanced beyond the condensed and inimitable formula of the apostle James: "God cannot be tempted with evil; neither tempteth he any man; but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." Sin originated in no compulsion, no inducement, on the part of God. It is not an accident, or effect of matter. It had its origin in the free-will of man. Involuntary suggestion, the thought, the imagination of the act interdicted, was not sin; but the entertainment of that imagination, the cherishing of that desire, the accomplishing of that thought—this is sin. Such is the sequence in this actual history. She looked—she saw that the fruit was pleasant to the eye, and good for food; desire was enkindled, was cherished: and this, when it conceived, brought forth sin; and sin, when completed in act, brought forth death. All the metaphysics of centuries, whole libraries of discussion, concerning the origin and nature of sin, condensed together, add nothing to this concise statement of historic events. W. Adams. God does not subject us to temptation, that, through sinning, we may illustrate his grace. Trials as tests of our choice of good or evil, of our faith in himself, of our love and devotion, he does appoint for our moral discipline and culture; but temptations that look toward sin and lead to sin, are the prompting of our own desires, when these are loosed from the control of reason and conscience. The sin does not lie in the fact of temptation, nor in the susceptibility to temptation: but when we suffer our susceptibilities to natural good to be wrought upon to such a degree that they entice us to forget reason, conscience, duty to God; when these over-stimulated desires come to a head in the decision of the will to gratify them,—then do they bring forth sin. The counteractive to such temptation is a just conception of our highest good as in God, and from him; a patient, prayerful, unwavering trust in him; and the keeping his word in our hearts as our law and guide. J. P. T. Our own experience has made us familiar with the genesis and progress of sin: we have fallen a thousand times before the very craft, the very device, by which our first parents were ensnared. The desires and lusts which haunt the senses, and the understanding which holds by sense, demand an excessive unlawful gratification. At first reason and conscience withstand the claim. The repulse only whets desire and makes the craving lust more vehement. They return to the attack. If again withstood, they return again, perhaps under some new disguise, always with new force; till at last the resistance of reason and conscience is overcome, and some pretext is found for yielding to the clamorous desire. We have been "drawn aside of lust, and enticed;" in us "lust has conceived, and brought forth sin." The edge and strictness of our scruples have been worn down; the force of high spiritual resolves has been frittered away; the charm of things pleasant to the eye, though not good for food, has grown upon us till we have "consented to sin." We know that every time we yield to temptation we become an easier prey to the wiles of evil; that every hour we neglect or postpone a duty we harden into a more habitual neglect. Do we know it? Let us then listen to the warning: "Take heed lest any of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of his sin;" "lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve by his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity and purity that are in Christ." Cox. The Biblical narrative depicts the sin of our first parents as the result of a temptation which came upon man, and was the cause of his fall, thus intimating the existence of a seducing spiritual power external to man—a view subsequently attaining a more developed doctrinal form, and made of prominent importance in the New Testament. Against no other doctrine, however, is modern consciousness more prejudiced than this. And yet it is the interest of mankind to regard man as tempted, and not as the inventor and first author of sin. Man is not in harmony with sin: he is not Satanic. If he were so, if he had been the originator of sin, he would be incapable of redemption. Sin has not so much proceeded from him as entered into him—a fact which, while it does not extenuate his guilt, alleviates its consequences. Luthardt.—If the sin of the human race rests on a free act of its first parents, that could not be the first cause of it. It must have some other ground. If the thought of breaking loose from God had arisen in their own minds, they would have set themselves against God in their own deep selfishness; evil would not be something foreign to man; man would be evil himself; he would have satanized himself. Just because man is not a devil, must there be a devil. Evil in its human form, where it leaves room for redemption, is to be explained only by temptation. Thus the two ideas at which the natural mind most readily stumbles, the ideas of hereditary sin and of the devil, are manifestly the saviours of the true dignity of man. As the origin of evil in man can only be explained as Genesis does it, by a free act which establishes his guilt and by temptation which makes redemption a possibility, so the Mosaic narrative describes its nature in a way which is self-evidently true. The first act is, that the tempter seeks to loosen the bands of childlike trust which bound man to God by casting suspicion on the eternal love; that he sows first unbelief and then disobedience in the heart of man. To the first suggestion, which does not at once succeed, the tempter gives weight by a second. He drops into their minds the poison of self-exaltation, by asserting that they would rise from their position of dependence and become as God, knowing good and evil. In denying the threatening of death Satan cunningly weaves together truth and falsehood. It is truly the will of God and our destiny, created as we are in the image of God, that we shall become like God. But man has to pass through a course of development under the hand of God to reach this end. Only as a reward for a life of willing subjection and active obedience to God can the free creature receive the crown of eternal life. But the tempter says: "You need only to act and to know yourselves, to live according to your own will; then are ye as God." He perverts the fact of being in the image of God into the deification of self, and pushes the idea of the creature and of obligation aside. Self-seeking, which, putting God aside, makes God of self and makes self the centre of all things, is the second element in the nature of sin. A third makes its appearance in Eve herself. This is desire, love of the world, gratification of the senses. The testing command had this meaning. The tree had no importance in itself. It was of account merely as a means of exercising freedom. This its name tells us. Now, however, this forbidden tree acquires a greater charm than all the unforbidden ones. God has lost reality in her mind and the tree seems to the senses so sweet. The senses obtain the mastery and sin is committed. The flesh has obtained the victory, the true order of life is inverted. All the higher powers have forsaken God, their true ground and rest, the lower powers become dominant. That these three parts of the idea of sin substantially express and exhaust it, is shown not only in the fact that all sin that comes before us in life may be referred to them, but also in the fact that they correspond to the three fundamental elements of man's consciousness, God-consciousness, self-consciousness, and world-consciousness. These have all become corrupted and perverted. They have become respectively alienation from God, selfishness, love of the world. Man has become physical and fleshly. Unbelief is the negative, the union of self-seeking and the lust of the senses the positive element in the idea of sin. Man no longer wishes for God; he is bent on having the creature in both ways—the mental and natural, the subjective and objective; he will have his own self and the world too. According to Genesis, the selfishness is the soul, sensuousness the body of sin. The first is the deep, invisible root, the second the external manifestation. The self, separated from God, seeks in the world the elements on which it lives. Redemption opposes faith to unbelief, love to selfishness, the hope of a new world to the lust of this world. Auberien. Angelic spirits, having been brought into being without dependence upon each other, were placed each for himself upon independent, personal probation, and each stood or fell by his own personal obedience; but we, having been brought into the world by a necessary connection with each other, were put upon trial in the first of our species, who just as effectually evinced what human nature would do as though that nature had been tested in all its possessors. Thornwell. God might have created a universe ruled from first to last by physical law, and so incapable of deviation from the true rule of its action. In such a universe moral evil would have found no place, only because there would have been no creatures properly capable of moral good. Our experience tells us that God has not chosen to stint down His creative activity to these proportions; that we are free agents is not more a matter of faith than experience. We know that God has created beings whose high privilege it is to be able freely to choose Him as their King, as the accepted Master of their whole inward life. But if this privilege is to be real, it also carries with it the implied power of rejecting Him. The alternative risk is the inevitable condition of the consummate honor; it is actually a substantial part of the honor. A moral being must at least have a capacity for disobedience if he is to be able freely to obey. H. P. L.—There is no morality or immorality where there is no choice or freedom: consequently were the actions of men under an absolute control, they would no more be answerable for their doings than a clock is for its motions: and therefore to call on God to make all things work by immediate interposition of His power, for the present reward of virtue and punishment of vice, is a request not consistent with itself; it is desiring God to do that for the sake of virtue, which would destroy virtue and leave no room for the exercise of it, no ground on which to distinguish it from vice and iniquity. Sherlock. Having placed him in a state of probation, surrounded by motives of which some induced to obedience and some to disobedience, but with perfect liberty of choice, an easy duty was enjoined, and the penalty of transgression laid before him His Maker set life and death before him, and left it to his own unforced volition which to choose. Had Omnipotence interposed in these circumstances and exercised a supernatural influence upon man's freedom of will to prevent his sin, He had thereby destroyed the foundation of all the merit of obedience, and put it out of His power to make any trial of him at all. It would have been to govern him not as a free, but as a necessary agent, and any reward for his conduct would in that case have been as absurd as to reward the sun for shining, or the rivers for running into the ocean. Man therefore fell not by any inevitable necessity, but by the abuse of his free agency; and to say that God did not interpose to prevent it, is merely to say that he did not see fit to do violence to the moral nature of the being he formed, but left it to be influenced according to the laws to which he had made it subject. Bush. In neglecting the tree of life which he was allowed to eat of, and eating of the tree of knowledge which was forbidden, he plainly showed a contempt of the favors God had bestowed on him, and a preference given to those God did not see fit for him. He would be both his own carver and his own master; would have what he pleased, and do what he pleased: his sin was, in one word, disobedience; disobedience to a plain, easy, and express command, which he knew to be a command of trial. He sins against great knowledge, against many mercies, against light and love, the clearest light and the dearest love that ever sinner sinned against. He had no corrupt nature within him to betray him; but had a freedom of will, not enslaved, and was in his full strength, not weakened or impaired. H.—The temptation assails him to be as God, i.e., independent—his own master. In this consists, according to the Scripture narrative, the essence, the real character of the first sin, the origin of all after sin of mankind. The desire to eat of the forbidden fruit follows on the inward alienation from God; and so, while the sin was in its real character and origin so great and fearful, its outward form, the act of eating of the forbidden fruit, has the character of a childlike disobedience—in accordance with man's condition—though even then we must not attempt to extenuate the nature of the sin. The form which man's sin assumes—nay, every object of the inward evil desire—is always belonging to the flesh or the world; but its soul, even in its coarsest form of sensuality, is always—self-exaltation. Gerl. The fact of original sin presents nothing strange, nothing obscure; it consists essentially in disobedience to the will of God, which will is the moral law of man. This disobedience, the sin of Adam, is an act committed everywhere and every day, arising from the same causes, marked by the same characters, and attended by the same consequences as the Christian dogma assigns to it. At the present day, as in the Garden of Eden, this act is occasioned by a thirst for absolute independence, the ambitious aspirings of curiosity and pride, or weakness in the face of temptation. Guizot. I believe, that God created man in his own image, in a reasonable soul, in innocency, in free-will, and in sovereignty; that he gave him a law and commandment which was in his power to keep, but he kept it not; that man made a total defection from God, presuming to imagine that the commandments and prohibitions of God were not the rules of good and evil, but that good and evil had their own principles and beginnings, and lusted after the knowledge of those imagined beginnings; to the end to depend no more upon God's will revealed, but upon himself and his own light, as a god; than the which there could not be a sin more opposite to the whole law of God: that yet, nevertheless, this great sin was not originally moved by the malice of man, but was insinuated by the suggestion and instigation of the devil, who was the first defected creature, and fell of malice and not by temptation. Bacon. She took, and did eat; and gave unto her husband, and he did eat. Man's first probation terminated disastrously. That tree which, because of the divine interdict, had been avoided—which had been the test of obedience—through the subtleties of diabolic solicitation, was approached, and the fruit thereof was eaten. The tempter was believed more than God. The desire of self-control, distrust and independence of the Creator, and palpable infringement of his well-known will, were the ripened form and spirit of sin. The bright and happy auspices of the first probation availed nothing; and, notwithstanding circumstances most propitious in aid of obedience, sin entered the world, with all its entailment of woe! W. Adams. The one act was a violation of the whole law (James 2:10)—a rejection of the authority of God; and their conduct, instead of being less culpable owing to the unimportance of the special act prohibited, as rationalists would represent, was on that very account only the more aggravated. It reduced the actual transgressors, and, as the subsequent history proves, all their posterity, into the condition of sinners. Sin is not here mentioned by name, but taking it according to the Scriptural definition as "the transgression of the law," it certainly appears in a form which justifies the Pauline statement: "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin" (Rom. 5:12). The confidence which the parents of mankind had previously reposed in God and the mutual love which they cherished, all at once gave way to distrust, and to recriminations of God and of one another. Shame, fear of God, and mutual estrangement were the feelings which predominated immediately after their transgression, and these plainly declared that they had incurred the penalty against which they had been warned. They were fully conscious that they had forfeited God's favor, in which is life (Ps. 30:5), and had become obnoxious to his displeasure—a state which Scripture designates as "death." D. M. The eyes of both were opened. Both morally and physically they saw before. Morally they saw truth in all its beauty; physically, they saw Eden in all its glory. But they saw now what they never expected to see, and felt what they never expected to feel. They have now the experimental knowledge of good and evil. They felt the remorse which succeeds ever the consciousness of sin. They are bereaved of the comfortable presence of their Maker. The eyes of their mind are opened to the consequences of sin. It is the brief and beautiful expression for that which, in all ages since, to every son of Adam, occurs in one or other degree after a fearful transgression. The fascination of crime loses its spell of enchantment over the soul as soon as the crime is committed, and the terrible experience of millions is herein truly uttered: "Their eyes were opened." The peculiar law of the human soul has furnished the theme in chief for tragedy in every age. S. R.—It did not make them know good and evil altogether, as God knows it, but in an experimental sense, as the devil knows it. In point of knowledge, they became like God; in point of morality, like the tempter. M.—The trial and decision of man, but not his fall and rebellion, were necessary. As the tempter had deceitfully promised, man's eyes were opened; but he only saw his nakedness. He knew what was good, but by the dreadful consciousness of having lost it; he knew what was evil, but in painful experience of the wretchedness which now had become his. He became as God, from having been his representative, he had assumed an independent position. He had constituted himself a god, he had become his own master; but this likeness to God made him exceedingly wretched and poor, instead of rendering him happy. By yielding to the will of the tempter, and rebelling against that of God, man became subject to sin and to death, which is the wages of sin. K. Individual life is an analogue of the dispensation which rules the history of the race. There are crises in the history of each of us—points at which a determinate direction is given to the character, whether intellectual or moral. The will stands face to face with some great question of duty; we debate it; we meditate; there is an earnest and bitter conflict—an agony; the issue gives a tremendous impulse one way or the other! This is pre-eminently the case with religion. The law stands face to face with us; the Spirit stimulates conscience; we struggle; we resist; we evade; matters are finally brought to a crisis—we must decide, and often that decision is final! Oh, the importance of having every decision right! Thornwell. Pride whispers that by treading the path of sin we shall climb to the most desirable heights; sensuality discovers the beautiful in all forbidden fruit; we forget everything except the claim of lust, and, like our first parents, we give to each other the apple of death. But erelong we, like them, have the bandage torn from our eyes, and it appears what bitter truth the tempter spoke in the misleading declaration: "In the day when ye eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened." Alas, what a fearful difference between the light in which the sin appears an hour after and a day before it was committed! V. in. O.—Worldly fathers and despairing mothers take what comfort they can from the easy maxim that young people had better have a free range through scenes of temptation, in order that its attractions may not take them by surprise further on, and that they must "see life," to know how to live. If we could lead out in our time the hopeless profligates of a single generation which that plausible philosophy has betrayed, the joyous households, once pure, that it has wrecked and distracted, the sweet, clean hearts it has defiled, the noble natures it has degraded, the men whose honor it has ruined, and the women whose peace it has crushed,—a very long, a very mournful, and a very admonitory procession it would be. At the head of it move the first human pair, marching in miserable humiliation out of Eden. The tree of the knowledge of "good" was not enough. There hung, in ruddy beauty, the more luscious fruit of the knowledge of "evil" as well. Why not eat of that? Knowledge can do no harm. Seeing things as they are! Nature is a safe study. "Thou shalt not surely die." Six thousand years the story has been told over and over. You need not go for it to the beginning of Genesis. It was acted last night close to where you live,—happy for you if not by some soul that you love. Indiscriminate knowledge, unhallowed curiosity, the lust of the mind looking through eager eyes, is the unceasing temptation of man. So he falls first into sin, then into shame. "Seeing life" turns out to be tasting of death. F. D. H. This, of course, is to be taken in a spiritual sense, for, in anything short of a high typical sense this was not now first true. This is no allegorical sense put upon the words here to serve a purpose; it is the interpretation which accords with the usage of Scripture elsewhere. Thus "Moses saw that by erecting the golden calf Aaron had made the people naked." So Ahaz, by his sinful course, "made Judah naked"—that is, exposed to the wrath of God. S. R.—Then did they feel with what grace they were clothed when, though naked, they were the slaves of no unseemly desires. In their hastening to make an apron of fig-leaves, they appear to have been moved by some mysterious impulse, and to have adopted unwittingly this sign of their punishment—a conviction of sinfulness to themselves. Aug. As the language in ch. 2 : 25 is an expression of purity and peace of mind, so the language used here is the expression of conscious guilt, of self-condemnation and shame. It was the transgression of the divine command that wrought the change. As obedience was the conscious recognition of the divine authority, and the condition of continued connection with the source of spiritual life and peace, so their disobedience was the conscious rejection of that authority, and forfeiture of spiritual life and enjoyment. Man's natural reason, with his appetites and passions, was now in the ascendant; no longer under the control and direction of that spiritual element of his nature, in which he bore the image of God, and lived in happy communion with him. Hence his dread of God, and conscious guilt and shame. T. J. C.—There was no blush in Eden, as there was none in heaven, till sin entered it. That crimson signal of guilt, or offended modesty, betrays the knowledge between good and evil which was first born on earth when transgression invaded Eden. No reproof, no upbraiding, no sentence, as yet had been uttered by their Maker; but the guilty pair had lost, what they never could regain, ignorance of evil, consciousness of innocence, and they were ashamed. Shame is the first-born progeny of sin. We may not explain the nature of the transmitted influence which connects our sin with the sin of Adam. It would be of little use to speculate where we cannot know. We sin, and we are accountable for our own sins. To deny the fact that we sin, that all men sin, that all the human race are deficient in the judgment of the law which requires supreme love to God and disinterested love for our fellows, is to for swear the testimony of facts, the whole drift of history, and the positive affirmations of the inspired Word. Yet dimmed and blighted as they are by the consequences of sin, the original faculties of our nature are not destroyed. United to a life which is endless—brought into play in connection with immortality—they make man a being still, little short of divine, in whose presence we are awed—and the moment we suffer ourselves to think lightly or meanly of man's capacities we lose the last hope of his restoration. The highest proof of man's greatness and worth, is in what God has done for his recovery. The Scriptures exalt man's being beyond all which man himself ever conceived; and this always in connection with his moral apostasy. Scriptural assertion and palpable fact are agreed. Man has intelligence, capacity, conscience, and freedom; but he has not obedience. By what test is obedience to be judged? THE REVEALED LAW OF GOD. Another test was prescribed to the first man, even that he should abstain from an interdicted object. The criterion of human character now is this epitome of divine legislation: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength, with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself." Tried by this rule—and not another—the character of man is defective. Man does not love his maker with all his heart, nor his neighbor as himself. It is a libel on humanity and the perversion of a truth, to affirm that men are as utterly bad as they might be; for besides restraints, social and providential, there are laws, many of which man has himself enacted, the shadows of a greater statute, to which he may be conformed in the practice of all which is generous, honest, and humane; but the testimony of history and Scripture is, that by that divine law which demands the supreme love of the soul to God, the character of the huhuman race is defective. Noble specimens there have been of humanity, especially as redeemed and helped by Christianity; but where and when has there been one, out of all the race, who, in an honest judgment, has obeyed the perfect law of his Maker, without the defection of a thought or the defect of a moment? Change man's circumstances as you will—give him a Christian parentage—place before him a godly example—here is something which may be affirmed of the whole species; they do not fulfil the law which demands perfect and supreme love to God and man. The first probation of human nature, on principles of obedience, terminated disastrously; and tried on the same terms, our common nature has been found defective and depraved ever since. The circumstances of man's condition correspond somewhat to his character. All sin is not to be ascribed to a vitiated bodily constitution; but the human body is subject to strong and ill-regulated appetences—to pain, disease, and death. Fast as the redemptive help is applied to the world, man's physical condition improves; but it were nothing but delusion to affirm that his condition now is what it would have been if sin had not shadowed the earth. It was not misanthropy, but inspired truth, which affirmed that man was born to trouble as sparks fly upward. Innumerable compensations, mitigations, and mercies remain, but every man who is born into this world comes in contact with evils which do not belong to a state of sinless innocence. Sufferings and sorrows, not to speak of wrongs, oppressions, and wars, remind us that we live in a world on which rests the curse of sin, and which is filled with the penalties of transgression. W. Adams. The creation of the first human pair was the creation of a race. In God's eternal thought, which Augustine calls the divine idea, or the primal type, the genus precedes the individual. Or, as Edwards puts it, taking the figure from Stapfer, Adam was the root and humanity the tree; so that the sin of Adam was the fall of man. Or, as Paul has it, "by one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners." And this is the proper beginning of human history. It begins in sin. Sin in the root carries sin into all the branches; not, indeed, as a necessity of fate, else it could be no longer sin, but yet as a perfect certainty of history. As is the root, so are the branches; as in the oak, so in the man. In the man a mystery—but so also in the oak. A mystery, because a life. Only in man the mystery is deeper, because the life is deeper. Choice there must be, to have it sin; but the choice is beyond and beneath our scrutiny. Adam fell into sin; we are born to it. We choose it, indeed; but it is our first choice. But now, besides sin, we have grace also in the problem. Both are inexplicable. Sin is a mystery, which human speculation has never fathomed. Grace is a mystery, into which the angels desire to look. What relief we need, in our perplexed and painful meditations upon human life, may be had by putting the two together, face to face. R. D. H. The lessons of Scripture, while leaving the entrance of evil in its awful mystery, assist our faith by showing first that nothing derogatory to God could be implied in its introduction, and then that God dealing with it as a fact has overruled it for his own glory. The shadow which the entrance of evil casts on God redemption rolls away. It was not for want of power in God that sin entered, for in Christ he defeats it. It was not for want of righteousness, for redemption is one continued death-blow to sin's dominion. It was not for want of wisdom, for the wisdom that cures is higher than the wisdom that was required to prevent. It was not for want of love, for the love that provided the second Adam to humanity could not have been wanting in the trial of the first. There is thus a reply on Calvary to the vexing thoughts that cluster around Eden, and while the mystery remains it loses its terror. And further, the undoubted outburst of the glory of God on the darkened theatre of sin, though we dare not say that the theatre was darkened for the purpose, assists our faith in God. It has been conclusively shown that evil can be overruled for good, that attributes of God are brought out that might otherwise have slumbered, and emotions called forth in his creatures which without danger and deliverance would have been impossible. Where sin abounded grace has much more abounded. God has become more glorious in his dealings with sin for its expulsion; saved sinners more blessed, angels more instructed and confirmed. Cairns. As the fall of man, through the marvellous plan of redemption, has brought greater good to man and higher glory to God, so has it also given to our human melodies greater depth and compass, that we may fitly sing and celebrate this noble triumph. Then was introduced that solemn but sweet minor which unlocks the fountain of tears, and which has carried so much of contrite prayer upward to heaven, till, like that weeping mist that went up to water Eden, it descends again in soft and fertilizing dews. Ker. 8. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. And the LORD God called unto the man, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; 18 thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 19 in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. God was not alienated from man when man was alienated from him. The life of humanity was not ended, at once and forever, by the disastrous issue of its first probation. From all which is told us in revelation, we infer that when the fallen angels sinned retribution followed immediately upon transgression. For them was no reprieve, no redemption, no gospel of forgiveness. Mark the difference. When man sinned, though retribution of one kind followed, yet man was spared. The curtain did not drop before this stage of being, nor the life of man go out in darkness. The waves of oblivion did not roll over the world, nor was a new creation evoked to supply its place; but the world continued, the sun shone, the stars kept on in their courses, time waited, and man was placed on a new and different probation. That second probation forms the great body of human history. The first was a mere prelude to the second. This explains why it is that the narrative of the first is so brief and condensed. It is not pertinent or practical to ourselves at all. We are not deciding our destiny on the same probationary terms which were prescribed to man at the beginning. Our immortal blessedness is not pivoted on the contingency of sinless obedience and unsullied innocence. Mercy presides over the second and main probation of our race; and our destiny turns on our relations and dispositions to the means of redemption. A glimpse of coming hope and relief breaks through the gloom of the curse itself. Promise is mingled with the very utterance of displeasure; nor does the cloud which gathered its blackness, and uttered its thunders over the heads of the guilty, discharge its contents, before the bow of hope is painted on its gloom, to gladden their tearful eyes and desponding hearts; nor have they stepped outside the gates of Eden, before the second probation of human nature begins, under the auspices of restorative help. W. Adams. At the very beginning, under a system of natural religion, Adam was constituted the head and organ of a religious Commonwealth. God entered into a covenant with him, distinctly religious in its character, and which proposed for its end his promotion to the highest spiritual felicity. The tree of knowledge, as the test of man's obedience, was the appointed symbol of God's moral government; whilst the mysterious tree of life was the seal of all the blessings which should accrue from a successful probation. In the institution of the Sabbath a more distinct claim was laid upon the homage and worship of the creature. In the language of Lord Bacon, "Man was thus designated as the interpreter and high priest of nature, to gather up its mute praises, to fill them with his own intellect and soul, and to pour the universal song into the ear of Him, whose glory was reflected in them all." By the force of his position, as the root and representative of all his offspring, he was constituted the prophet, priest, and king of that religious empire. From its origin, the Family, in its idea as it stood before the mind of Jehovah, was THE CHURCH, the temple of his worship. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ 1. And the man knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD. And again she bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door: and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. And Cain told Abel his brother. The Book of Genesis, having thus explained the existence of sin on the earth, proceeds to tell of its ravages—murder in the first family—violence overspreading the Old World—a generation of the ungodly swept away by the deluge—sin in Noah's family immediately after the flood—sin in Sodom and Gomorrah—sin in the families of the patriarchs—sin in Canaan, and sin in Egypt—sin in the dwellers in cities, and sin in the dwellers in tents. To multiply gods, to make idols, to dishonor parents, to kill, to commit adultery, to steal, to lie, to covet—the beginnings of all these sins are found written in Genesis. D. F. Not less brightly did "the heavens declare the glory of God," after the Fall, than they did before. For nine hundred and thirty years did the human eye which had first gazed on Paradise in its primal freshness, and the ear which had there listened to the opening burst of its melodies, continue to be regaled by the same music and the same vernal beauty. Even the "thorn and the thistle" (3 : 13) did not less eloquently speak of the perfections of God, because they served at the same time as memorials of the sin of man. "He left not himself without witness," in that man still found himself in a world, not of mere coincidences, but of speaking signs; a worshipper in a temple whose every object and event possessed a symbolic value, and where the service paused not day nor night. And thus "the invisible things of God from the creation of the world" continued to be "clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and God-head." The illuminated volume of natural theology continued to invite the attention of mankind till the flood came and quenched in death the eyes that should have read it. J. H. 1. She bare Cain. The more generally received doctrine is known as Creationism. Each soul is an immediate work of the Creator: he is perpetually creating souls out of nothing, and infusing them into bodies. He creates each soul at the moment when the body which is destined for it enters really and properly on its inheritance of life. Creationism recognizes that sense of the immateriality of the human spirit which expressed itself falsely in the doctrine of a pre-existence, and which is so seriously compromised by Traducianism. Personal spirit, it is asserted by the Creationist, cannot be transmitted from one created life to another, like animal vitality. Yet Creationism recognizes the truth for which the Traducianists contended against the advocates of the soul's pre-existence, when it maintains that the soul and body are strictly contemporaneous in their origin, and that they have profound and ineffaceable relations to each other. H. P. L. Here the first husband and wife become father and mother. This new relation must be deeply interesting to both, but at first peculiarly so to the mother. Now was begun the fulfilment of the intimations she had received concerning her seed. She was to be the mother of all living. And her seed was to bruise the serpent's head. Her feelings are manifested in the name given to her son and the reason assigned for it. She "bare Cain and said, I have gained a man from Jehovah." The gaining or bearing of the child is evidently the prominent thought in Eve's mind, as she takes the child's name from this. Prompted by her grateful emotion, she confesses her faith. She also employs a new name to designate her maker. In the dialogue with the tempter she had used the word God (Elohim). But now she adopts Jehovah. In this one word she hides a treasure of comfort. "He is true to his promise. He has not forgotten me." M.—The term Jehovah thus employed had special reference to the memorable promise regarding "the seed of the woman," and may indeed be said to originate in the announcement of mercy then made. The name Jehovah had thus a special relation to redemption and the agent through whom the promised deliverance should be accomplished. This is further confirmed by the fact that it is at special epochs in the history of redemption, or in connection with such promises, that it comes most prominently into view; as in the case of Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac, and in the deliverance of Israel from Egypt (Ex. 3 : 14), when the import of this name was so fully revealed. In Eve's case there can be little question that it was in the belief that the previous promise was realized in the birth of Cain. D. M. 2. His brother Abel.** Abel means breath, vanity. Does a sense of the vanity of earthly things grow in the minds of our first parents? Has the mother found her sorrow multiplied? Has she had many daughters be tween these sons? Is there something delicate and fragile in the appearance of Abel? Has Cain disappointed a mother's hopes? Some of these thoughts may have prompted the name. M.—Two of the children of Adam and Eve are alone mentioned: Cain and Abel. Not that there were no others, but that the progress of Scripture history is connected with these two. For the Bible does not profess to give a detailed history of the world, nor even a complete biography of those persons whom it introduces. Its object is to set before us a history of the kingdom of God, and it only describes such persons and events as is necessary for that purpose. A. E. 2. When the two had grown to be men, they chose their callings in life—Cain turning to agriculture; Abel to a pastoral life. No interval of "utter degeneracy" is sanctioned in the Scripture account of the first men; no dismal age of living on roots and shell-fish, or the produce of the chase, as naked savages; they begin in Eden, to work it and watch it; after the Fall they turn to the tillage of the field and the rearing and tending of sheep; occupations from which an advance to other forms of civilization was easy. Geikie.—In the occupation of these two sons of Adam, we trace the two great branches of productive industry pursued by men in an early stage of society. "Abel was a keeper (or feeder) of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground." Here are the beginnings of the pastoral and agricultural modes of life. P. S.—Man in his primitive state was not a mere gatherer of acorns, a hunter, or a nomad. He began with horticulture, the highest form of rural life. After the fall he descended to the culture of the field and the tending of cattle; but still he had a home and a settled mode of living. It is only by a third step that he degenerates to the wandering and barbarous state of existence. And only by the predominance of might over right, the selfish lust of power, and the clever combinations of rampant ambition, comes that form of society in which the highest state of barbaric civilization and the lowest depth of bondage and misery meet. M. 3. In process of time. As there was a worship appointed before Jehovah's presence, there was also a special sacred time appointed for it; so that in his cares in tilling the ground and his weariness from having to eat his bread "in the sweat of his brow," the worship should not be neglected. "At the end of days," says the Hebrew, Cain and Abel brought their offerings. When it is remembered that already the seventh day had been ordained of God, even before Eden: that we find the division of time into periods of seven days universal, though there is no mark in nature, as in the case of days and months and years for such division; and that subsequently the seventh day was thus specially reordained of God, there is no room left for doubt that this "end of days" was the end of the week—the Sabbath day—on which Adam had taught his sons to come for special worship before Jehovah. An offering unto the Lord.** Unless man had been expressly taught to worship God by sacrifices, why should they have presented themselves before God, each with his offering? What should have induced Cain to bring his "offering," even of the fruits of the earth, unless some Divine order had established the offering as an ordinance of worship? S. R.—The cherubim were located in a particular spot, on the east of the garden of Eden; and as the symbols of God's presence were there, it was only natural that the celebration of divine worship should there also have found its common centre. Hence the two sons of Adam are said to have "brought their offerings unto the Lord"—which can scarcely be understood otherwise than as pointing to that particular locality which was hallowed by visible symbols of the Lord's presence, and in the neighborhood of which life and blessing still lingered. P. F. Cain, the fruit of the ground. 4. Abel, also the firstlings of his flock. A gospel had been preached in Eden of a coming Redeemer. A worship had been instituted—a time and place of worship—even before the cherubim and the ineffable brightness at the barred gate of Eden, just as afterward the church worshipped before the cherubim and the brightness upon the mercy-seat. The two sons have been reared under that gospel worship. And now, as representatives of the two great classes into which the race is to be divided—the believers and the unbelieving—they present themselves before Jehovah to worship. There is no wide chasm, ostensibly separating the worshippers any more than in our day between the worshippers according to faith and the worshippers according to reason. Abel, in accordance with his training in the faith, brings his lamb. The apostle declares that it was "by faith" Abel offered the sacrifice and received therein testimony that he was righteous. And Jesus calls him expressly the "righteous Abel;" for he, of all sinners, received the visible assurance of his justification from God. Cain comes also as a worshipper of the same Jehovah at the same time, and, to a large extent, worshipping in the same manner, for in the ritual of worship afterward instituted in the Church, such offering of fruits or corn-sheaves were made a part of the service. Wherein then, the great difference? Just the wide difference that lurks still between the spiritual worship of faith and the worship of rationalism which seems so much the same. The important element in all worship was wanting, the recognition of the great fact of a fallen humanity and of a mediator and atonement for sin. Cain was the first rationalist. Not feeling any burden of sin, not recognizing any fall, he can see no need of any offering of atonement for sin. S. R. Considered merely as eucharistic offerings, Cain's fruits, the products of his own tillage, were not less appropriate than the firstlings of Abel's flock. The only inference is, that the reason of the Divine preference of Abel's sacrifice lay in its piacular nature; that Cain, though sinful like his brother and needing forgiveness, ignored the awful fact of his guilt, and thus converted his professed homage into an act of impenitence and insult. J. H.—"By faith Abel offered unto God." Now the simplest idea of faith, the one element always present in it, is bowing to God's authority with implicit confidence in his word. But in this case bowing to God's authority implies that God had given some word in reference to bloody sacrifices—the offering of a lamb by shedding its blood upon the altar. And if God had given any such word of command, it is certainly to be presumed that he had also given at least this general idea, that the blood of the innocent lamb took, in some sense, the place of the blood of the guilty offerer, so that the sacrifice would imply the confession of guilt, and also faith in a bloody substitute of the Lord's own providing. H. C.—"A more excellent sacrifice than Cain," or as Wicklif's translation with more literal exactness renders it, "a much more sacrifice," i.e., a more full or complete sacrifice. Here by declaring the offering of Abel to have been made by faith, the writer teaches by necessary implication that Cain's offering was not made by faith, and hence undoubtedly it is that the sacrifice of Abel is said to have been more full, complete, and excellent than Cain's. It was distinguished by a principle which the other lacked. Bush. Cain's was only a sacrifice of acknowledgment offered to the Creator: the meat-offerings of the fruit of the ground were no more, and might have been offered in innocency: but Abel brought a sacrifice of atonement, the blood whereof was shed in order to remission: thereby owning himself a sinner, deprecating God's wrath, and imploring his favor in a Mediator. H.—The fruit of the soil offered to God is an acknowledgment that the means of this earthly life are due to him. This expresses the barren faith of Cain, but not the living faith of Abel. The latter has entered deeply into the thought that life itself is forfeited to God by transgression, and that only by an act of mercy can the Author of life restore it to the penitent, trusting, submissive, loving heart. He slays the animal as a victim, thereby acknowledging that his life is due for sin; he offers the life of the animal in token that another life, equivalent to his own, is due to justice if he is to go free by the mercy of God. Such a thought as this is fairly deducible from the facts on the surface of our record. M.—Cain is presented to our view as a child of nature, not of grace—as one obeying the impulse and direction only of reason, and rejecting the more explicit light of faith as to the kind of service he presented to his Maker. His oblation is an undoubted specimen of what man could do in his fallen state to originate proper ideas of God, and give fitting expression to these in outward acts of worship. But unhappily for the advocates of nature's sufficiency in the matter, it stands condemned in the inspired record as a presumptuous and disallowed act of will-worship. Abel, on the other hand, appears as one who through grace had become a child of faith, and by faith first spiritually discerning the mind of God, then reverently following the course it dictated by presenting that more excellent sacrifice of the firstlings of the flock, with which God was well pleased. P. F. Here, at the threshold of the development of mankind, we come upon the mystery of 4000 years—the institution of SACRIFICES. What was their origin, and whence the strange accord by which sacrifices are the central point in the religion of all ancient peoples? Manifestly the Biblical record does not give us light on this subject, but at the same time it seems to imply that God had given instructions concerning, and that He had instituted, this ordinance. K. If we admit that when God had ordained the deliverance of man, he had ordained the means: if we admit that Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; what memorial could be devised more apposite than that of animal sacrifice?—exemplifying, by the slaying of the victim, the death which had been denounced against man's disobedience: thus exhibiting the awful lesson of that death which was the wages of sin, and at the same time representing that death which was actually to be undergone by the Redeemer of mankind; and hereby connecting in one view the two great cardinal events in the history of man, the FALL, and the RECOVERY: the death denounced against sin, and the death appointed for that Holy One who was to lay down his life to deliver man from the consequences of sin. The institution of animal sacrifice seems then to have contained all the elements of religious knowledge. The adoption of this rite would imply an humble sense of unworthiness of the offerer; a confession that death, inflicted on the victim, was the desert of transgression; a reliance upon the promises of deliverance, and an acquiescence in the means for its accomplishment. The sacrifice of Abel was an animal sacrifice. This sacrifice was accepted. The ground of this acceptance was the faith in which it was offered. Scripture assigns no other object of this faith but the promise of a Redeemer: and of this faith the offering of an animal in sacrifice appears to have been the legitimate and consequently the instituted expression. The institution of animal sacrifice, then, was coeval with the fall, and had a reference to the sacrifice of our redemption. And thus SACRIFICE appears to have been ordained as a standing memorial of the death introduced by sin, and of that death which was to be suffered by the Redeemer. Magee. As the promise to Eve was the first dawn of gospel light in prophecy, so the institution of sacrifices was the first hint of it in types. The giving of that promise was the first thing that was done after the fall in Christ's prophetic office; the institution of sacrifices was the first thing by which especially Christ exhibited himself in his priestly office. For the sacrifices of the Old Testament were the main of all the Old Testament types of Christ and his redemption; and it tended to establish in the minds of God's visible church the necessity of a propitiatory sacrifice, in order to the Deity's being satisfied for sin; and so prepared the way for the reception of the glorious gospel, that reveals the great sacrifice in the visible church, and not only so, but through the world of mankind. For from this institution of sacrifices all nations derived the custom of sacrificing. Edwards. That sacrifices were not of human invention, but of Divine institution, appears morally certain from such considerations as these: 1. It is not antecedently probable that God would leave man in ignorance of the manner in which he should acceptably worship Him; and yet the first act of acceptable worship which we find man performing is that of animal sacrifice. 2. This improbability is greatly increased by the fact that God had not only inspired man with hope by the language of promise, but had even condescended to instruct him to clothe his body with a skin-vesture; and surely He who thus condescended to meet man's bodily wants would not abandon him to his own inventions respecting the cravings of his higher nature. 3. The universality of expiatory offerings proves man's deep consciousness of such a want; and yet, if they were not divinely appointed, no provision was made to meet the exigence. 4. If God had left man uninstructed, it is not likely that man would have so early devised any settled method of his own for approaching God; yet here we find the first members of the first family coming before the Lord with offerings as their familiar, established, and only mode of worship. 5. Of all methods of worship, that of shedding blood—of sacrificing an animal—is one of the least likely to have originated in the human mind; and yet here we find a member of the first family—one who had probably never slaughtered an animal for himself—rejecting the more simple and natural oblation of fruits and flowers, and confidently calculating on pleasing God by putting an animal to death. 6. The Divine acceptance of the first sacrifice on record confirms the conviction that the rite was not a human invention, but a Divine appointment. These considerations are confirmed by the significance or symbolical nature of sacrifice. The fundamental idea of sacrifice cannot be that of a gift merely, as an expression of gratitude. Before Adam sinned he was himself an offering, and hence had no need of an offering. But the union of man's will with the will of God no longer existed; sin had dissevered it. The only offering which could now be relevant was one in which man might plead guilty to his disturbed relationship with God, and earnestly aim at reparation. Hence the idea lying at the foundation of all sacrificial worship was that of self-surrender, by substitution, and in the hope of pardon—a deep consciousness of having merited the death inflicted on the vicarious animal, and an intense desire that the insulted Deity would accept the immolation as a means of compensation. It was an acted deprecation, for a reason. Springing from the requirements of holiness in the Divine nature, it responded to the cries of conscience in the human nature. The two natures could not be satisfied with less. Deep called unto deep, "without the shedding of blood is no remission of sins." And, hence, the purest sacrifice was preferred, not only as the most worthy of the recipient, but also as the furthest removed from the guilty condition of the offerer, and most condemnatory of it; and the costliest sacrifice, as most expressive of the fact that there was nothing which he had not forfeited, and which might not have been demanded; and the most voluntary, as that alone which could express the idea of self-abnegation—of the offerer "divesting himself of his own subjectivity" and surrendering his "innermost" to God;—all vividly denoting the idea which forms the essence of true religion—the offering up of self—the readjustment once more, by subordination, of our will to the Divine will, and the consequent recovery of a Divine life. Subjectively, then, the institution of sacrifice finds its reason in man's deep consciousness of guilt and desire of reunion with the Supreme will; and, objectively, in a Divine appointment of holiness and mercy which made such restoration possible. J. H. 4. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering.** Herein are the true footsteps of grace discovered; the person must be the first in favor of God—the person first, the performance afterward: for though it be true among men that the gift makes way for the acceptance of the person, yet in the order of grace it is after another manner; for if the person be not first accepted, the offering must be abominable; for it is not a good work that makes a good man, but a good man makes a good work. The fruit does not make a good tree, but a good tree bringeth forth good fruit. Abel then presented his person and offering, as shrouding both by faith under the righteousness of Christ, which lay wrapped up in the promise; but Cain stands upon his own righteousness and so presents his offering. Abel therefore is accepted, both his person and offering, while Cain remains accursed. Bunyan. Thenceforth, sacrifice presented after the manner of Abel's might be regarded as of divine authority. Whatever uncertainty might hang around it during the brief space which intervened between the fall and the time of Abel's accepted offering, it was from that time determined to be a mode of worship with which God was well pleased. We might rather say the mode of worship; for sacrifice, accompanied with words of prayer, is the only stated act of worship by which believers in the earlier ages appear to have given formal expression to their faith and hope in God. When it is said of the times of Enos, that "then men began to call upon the name of the Lord," there can be little doubt that they did so after the example of Abel, by the presentation of sacrifice. That sacrifice held the same place in the instituted worship of God after the deluge we learn from the case of Noah, who offered burnt-offerings of every clean beast and fowl, from which the Lord is said to have smelled a sweet savor. From the time of Abel, then, downward through the whole course of antediluvian and patriarchal history, it appears that the regular and formal worship of God mainly consisted in the offering of sacrifice with the known sanction and virtual appointment of God. For us, who from the high vantage-ground of a finished redemption can look back upon the temporary institutions that foreshadowed it, there is neither darkness nor uncertainty respecting the prophetic import of the primeval rite of sacrifice. We perceive there in the germ the fundamental truth of that scheme of grace which was to provide for the complete and final restoration of a seed of blessing—the truth of a suffering Mediator, giving His life a ransom for many. 5. Cain was wroth.** The practical religion generally corresponds with the creed. The amiable offerer of fruits and flowers, with his more gentle conceptions of God, could, notwithstanding, get very wroth. So experience has taught the world since. The natural amiableness that demands a soft and soothing view of God, as too good to punish, can yet grow very wroth when the issue comes between its creed and the gospel creed of an atonement. S. R.—What then was the occasion of this capital malice? Abel's sacrifice is accepted; what was this to Cain? Cain's is rejected; how could Abel remedy this? O envy, the corrosive of all ill minds, and the root of all desperate actions: the same cause that moved Satan to tempt the first man to destroy himself and his posterity, moves the second man to destroy the third. It should have been Cain's joy to see his brother accepted; it should have been his sorrow to see that himself had deserved a rejection: his brother's example should have excited and directed him. Could Abel have stayed God's fire from descending? Was Cain ever the further from a blessing, because his brother obtained mercy? Bp. H.—That envy is most malignant which is like Cain's, who envied his brother because his sacrifice was better accepted, when there was nobody but God to look on. Bacon. 6,7. God is here reasoning with Cain, to convince him of the sin and folly of his anger and discontent, and to bring him into a good temper again, that further mischief might be prevented. It is an instance of God's patience and condescending goodness, that he would deal thus tenderly with so bad a man in so bad an affair. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Thus the father of the prodigal argued the case with the elder son. And God with those Israelites, who said, The way of the Lord is not equal (Ez. 18 : 25). God puts Cain himself upon inquiring into the cause of his discontent, and considering whether it were indeed a just cause, Why is thy countenance fallen? Observe, that God takes notice of all our sinful passions and discontents. There is not an angry look, an envious or a fretful look, that escapes his observing eye. H. 7. Sin coucheth at the door.** That is to say, the Divine warning to Cain is, that while he is nursing his angry jealous thoughts, Sin, like a ravening beast, as crafty as it is cruel, is crouching outside the door of his heart, only waiting for the door to be opened by any touch of passion to spring in; and he is admonished to keep the door shut lest he be overcome of evil. Cox.—Sin lying at the door is an Eastern figure. Ask a man who is unacquainted with Scripture, what he understands by sin lying at the threshold of the door; he will immediately speak of it as the guilt of some great crime which the owner had committed. Roberts.—"Sin lies in ambush, like a wild beast, at the door of thy dwelling, that it may spring upon thee when thou goest forth." When the inward declension from God has taken place, an opportunity only is required in order that "lust, after it has conceived, may bring forth sin;" and so the sinful desire may break forth into the sinful deed. Gert.—Sin past, in its unrequited and unacknowledged guilt; sin present, in its dark and stubborn passion and despair; but, above all, sin future, as the growing habit of a soul that persists in an evil temper, and therefore must add iniquity unto iniquity, is awaiting thee at the door. This dread warning to Cain, expressed in the plainest terms, is a standing lesson for all mankind. Let him who is in the wrong retract at once, and return to God with humble acknowledgment of his own guilt, and unreserved submission to the mercy of his Maker; for to him who perseveres in sin there can be no hope or help. M.—There is no inexorable destiny, as some falsely assert, which constrains us to anything evil, so long as we do not ourselves will it; temptation comes no further than the door, if we do not with our own hands remove the bolts. Van O.—If sin be harbored in the house, the curse waits at the door, like a bailiff, ready to arrest the sinner whenever he looks out. It lies as if it slept, but it lies at the door where it will soon be awaked, and then it will appear that the damnation slumbered not. Sin will find thee out (Num. 32 : 23). H.—God talks with Cain as with a sullen child; unriddles to him what slumbers in his heart, and like a beast of prey is lurking at the door. The near approach of sin could not be more truly or more fearfully pictured. And what God did with Cain, that he does with every one, if he will but give heed to his own heart, and to the voice of God. Herder. The moment we let down the standard of Christian action, the moment we mingle with the world as those impelled by no higher and holier purposes, the moment we perform our duties with no thought of their relation to God, that moment we are exposed to fall. The love of gain, an unholy ambition, a selfishness that tramples under foot the rights of our neighbor, or some other of the passions that lie in wait for the defenceless citadel may come in and usurp our best affections, and drive religion from its throne. The true remedy for inconsistent, unfaithful Christians is an immediate and active engagedness in all the duties of religion. If sin has gained possession of thy soul, the only way to drive him from thee is by engaging in those duties of which he shuns the sight; and feeling "how awful goodness is," he will shrink away and trouble thee no more. Homer. — He who warned Cain that the croucher was at his door, would have helped Cain to repel him. He who warns us that sin is our subtle and implacable antagonist, will help us to detect its wiles and to withstand its assaults. It only needs that Christ show himself on our side, and evil will not court another overthrow. Behold He stands at the door—the door so often opened to the croucher—and knocks: and if any man hear his voice, and open the door, He will come in, treading in the steps of the croucher, and with his pure and blessed feet obliterating the foul tracks of evil, making our purified hearts temples not all unmeet for his presence and service and praise. We have only to bid Him enter, and the victor over sin will give us the victory. Cox. And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, 9 and slew him. And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I 10 know not: am I my brother's keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy 11 brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now cursed art thou from the ground, 12 which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a wanderer 13 shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I 14 can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the ground; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth; and it shall 15 come to pass, that whosoever findeth me shall slay me. And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD appointed a sign for Cain, lest any finding him should smite him. 16 And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east 17 of Eden. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a 18 city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch. And unto Enoch was born Irad: and Irad begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: and Methusael begat 19 Lamech. And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the 20 name of the other Zillah. And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents 21 and have cattle. And his brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle 22 the harp and pipe. And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-cain, the forger of every cutting instru- 23 ment of brass and iron : and the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah. And Lamech said unto his wives : Adah and Zillah, hear my voice ; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech : For I have slain a man for wounding me, and a young man for bruising me : 24. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold. 8. Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.** The murderous deed of Cain affords a terrible illustration of the words in which the Lord Jesus has taught us, that angry bitter feelings against a brother are in reality murder, showing us what is, so to speak, the full outcome of self-willedness, of anger, envy, and jealousy. A. E.—When they were in the field, and therefore out of view, he rose up against his brother and slew him. The deed is done that cannot be recalled. Selfishness, wounded pride, jealousy, and a guilty conscience were all at work. Here, then, is sin following upon sin, proving the truth of the warning given in the merciful forbearance of God. M.—Of a creature, come fresh, living, and pure from the beneficent Creator's hands, the least we can think is that there must have been in his soul the principle of all kind affections,—all benevolent sympathies ; a disposition to be happier for the happiness of a kindred being ; a delight in promoting it ; a sense of reciprocal right,—of benevolent justice ; no tincture of a wrongful selfishness ; a state of feeling that would have been struck with horror at the thought of inflicting suffering. Yet in this original family, in the very first degree of the descent, malignity and slaughter began. Men may argue and quibble as long as it will amuse them against our notion of "the Fall."—Here was Fall enough !—and demonstration enough—how deep ! J. F. This is the first triumph of Satan ; it is not merely a death that he has introduced, but a violent one, as the first-fruits of sin. It is not the death of an ordinary person ; but of the most holy man then in being : it is not brought about by the providence of God or by a gradual failure and destruction of the earthly fabric, but a violent separation of body and soul : it is not done by a common enemy, but by the hand of a brother ; and for no other reason than this, the object of his envy was more righteous than himself. Alas ! how exceeding sinful does sin appear in its first manifestation ! A. C.—The first man that ever was born is represented as a murderer ; and the first person that ever died, as murdered. These were the effects of Adam's transgression. The guilt of it was manifested in his first-born, and its destructive consequences in his second. Bp. Conybeare. As Abel leads the van in the noble army of martyrs, so Cain stands in the front of the ignoble army of persecutors (Jude 11). So early did he that was after the flesh persecute him that was after the spirit ; so it is now, and so it will be till the war shall end in the eternal salvation of all the saints and the eternal perdition of all that hate them. See what comes of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness ; if they be indulged and cherished in the soul they are in danger of involving men in the guilt of murder itself. Rash anger is heart-murder (Matt. 5 : 21, 22). Much more is malice so ; he that hates his brother is already a murderer before God ; and if God leave him to himself he wants nothing but an opportunity of being a murderer before the world. Many were the aggravations of Cain's sin. It was his own brother that he murdered ; his own mother's son, whom he ought to have loved ; his younger brother, whom he ought to have protected. He was a good brother ; one who had never given him the least provocation ; but one whose desire had been always toward him. That which the scripture tells us was the reason for which he slew him was a sufficient aggravation of the murder ; it was because his own works were evil and his brother's righteous, so that herein he showed himself to be of that wicked one (1 John 3 : 12). In killing his brother he directly struck at God himself ; for God accepting of Abel was the provocation pretended ; and for that very reason he hated Abel, because God loved him. . . . Death reigned ever since Adam sinned, but we read not of any taken captive by him till now ; and now the first that dies is a saint, one that was accepted and beloved of God ; to show that though the promised Seed was so far to destroy him that had the power of death as to save believers from its sting, yet that still they should be exposed to its stroke. The first that went to the grave went to heaven ; God would secure to himself the first-fruits, the first-born to the dead. The first that dies is a martyr and dies for his religion ; and of such it may more truly be said than of soldiers, that they die in the field of honor. Abel's death has not only no curse in it, but it has a crown in it. H. Who dare measure God's love by outward events, when he sees wicked Cain standing over bleeding Abel ; whose sacrifice was first accepted, and now himself is sacrificed? Death was denounced to man as a curse; yet, behold, it first lights upon a saint; how soon was it altered by the mercy of that just hand which indicted it! If death had been evil and life good, Cain had been slain and Abel had survived; now that it begins with him that God loves, "O death, where is thy sting?" Bp. H.—The early death of Abel can be no punishment; he seemed in fact to enjoy the peculiar favor of God; his offering was graciously accepted. We find, therefore, in this narrative the great and beautiful thought, that life is not the highest boon; that the pious find a better existence and a more blessed reward in another and a purer sphere; but that crime and guilt are the greatest evils; that they are punished by a long and wearisome life, full of fear and care and compunction of conscience. Kalisch. We cannot conceive that the circumstances attending this first infliction of death upon man could have been ordered by providence so as to testify more plainly the great truth of a future state of recompense, had this been the sole purpose for which they were designed. To conceive that a just and merciful God should openly approve the sacrifice of Abel, and yet permit him, in consequence of that very action, to suffer a cruel death, which put a final period to his existence; while his murderer, whom the same God openly condemned, was yet permitted to live; all this is so contradictory to the divine attributes, as to prove beyond possibility of doubt that this event was permitted to take place, partly at least, in order to show that death was not a final extinction of being, but a passage from this world to another where the righteous should be recompensed for their adherence to the will of their heavenly father, in opposition to suffering and death, by a sure and eternal reward. Graves.—The patriarchs before and after Job, and the Israelites before Christ, had a notion of a future state. By sacrifices was plainly shown that a way was open to the divine favor and acceptance; and the favor of God imports happiness; which to Abel, who because he was accepted of God was unjustly slain, could be only in a future state; and dying on account of that faith "he speaketh" an invisible future state of reward. Bp. Taylor.—It is clearly expressed in the Pentateuch that the relation of the righteous to God is not cancelled after death. The blood of the murdered Abel cries to God. The relation into which God entered with the patriarchs continues; for, long after the patriarchs had fallen asleep, he calls himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. "But God is not a God of the dead, but of the living." To him who has an eternal value for God an eternal existence is assured. O. 9. Where is Abel thy brother? This reminds us of the question put to the hiding Adam, "Where art thou?" It is calculated to strike the conscience. The reply is different from that of Adam. The sin has now advanced from hasty, incautious yielding to the tempter, to reiterated and deliberate disobedience. Such a sinner must take different ground. Cain, therefore, attempts to parry the question, apparently on the vain supposition that no eye, not even that of the All-seeing, was present to witness the deed. "I know not." In the madness of his confusion he goes further. He disputes the right of the Almighty to make the demand. "Am I my brother's keeper?" There is, as usual, an atom of truth mingled with the amazing falsehood of this response. No man is the absolute keeper of his brother, so as to be responsible for his safety when he is not present. This is what Cain means to insinuate. But every man is his brother's keeper so far that he is not himself to lay the hand of violence on him, nor suffer another to do so if he can hinder it. This sort of keeping the Almighty has a right to demand of every one,—the first part of it on the ground of mere justice, the second on that of love. But Cain's reply betrays a desperate resort to falsehood, a total estrangement of feeling, a quenching of brotherly love, a predominance of that selfishness which freezes affection and kindles hatred. This is the way of Cain (Jude 11). M.—Those are strangely blind that think it possible to conceal their sins from a God that sees all; and those are strangely hard that think it desirable to conceal them from a God who pardons those only that confess. He impudently charges his Judge with folly and injustice, in putting this question to him, Am I my brother's keeper? H.—We see here, in the sin and in the defiant, hardened state after its completion, as in comparison with Adam's, the progress of corruption. Gerl.—For this complication of crimes, envy, which led him to murder his brother, and then to attempt to hide it by a lie, and by an insolent rebellious answer to God, Cain is styled in the New Testament, a child "of that wicked one" (1 John 3:12), as imitating his works, who through envy seduced our first parents, and was a "liar" and a "murderer" from the beginning. Hales. With regard to worldly concerns, men are proud to acknowledge their power over each other; they make it their boast. But go to such a boaster and ask him what he has done for the souls of his fellow-men; whether he has ever communicated one spiritual truth; whether there has been a religious power speaking forth from his life; whether, in short, the world is any better for his living in it; and he will start from you with surprise, and the language you read in his perturbed countenance is, 'Am I my brother's keeper?' Homer. 11. Cursed art thou.** The first record of justice that was in the world was a judgment upon a murderer, in the person of Adam's first-born, Cain; and though it was not punished by death, but with banishment and mark of ignominy, in respect of the primogeniture or population of the world or other points of God's secret decree, yet it was judged, and was the first record of justice. Bacon.—The curse of Adam's disobedience terminated on the ground, Cursed is the ground for thy sake; but that for Cain's rebellion fell immediately upon himself, Thou art cursed. The wickedness of the wicked brings a curse upon all they do, and all they have, and that curse embitters all they have, and disappoints them in all they do. H. 14. From the face of the land.** The home of his childhood and his fathers. From thy face shall I be hid. That is, from the place of God's special presence, from the seat of his worship, from the habitation of his Shechinah, from the society of his father and family, and consequently from the only church which God then had upon earth. It was therefore a virtual excommunication from the highest religious privileges which could then be enjoyed. If this be the import of the words (and we know of none so probable), it implies that the worship of God was there kept up, and that God was with them. Bush.—Every one that findeth me shall slay me. To the lawless, vindictive Cain, nothing would be more natural than the thought that somewhere in the unknown waste there might be beings like himself, and who might be as malignant to him as he had been to his slain brother. We may say, too, that Cain's awful guilt gave a preternatural power to his imagination. T. L. It is clear from the language of the fratricide, that communion with God had been hitherto maintained in a given locality—that in that scene of the Shechinah Cain now expected his complaint to be heard and answered, but that, if exiled beyond its precincts, he should be driven forth beyond the circle sacred to the worship of God, and to the visible displays of His presence. Upward of a century had then elapsed from the hour of the Fall, and numerous children had probably been born meanwhile, and here, during the long interval, God had graciously met with His first human worshippers, 'from between the cherubim,' and 'communed with' them. J. H. According to hints gathered from ver. 25, the murder of Abel probably took place just before the birth of Seth, i.e., 130 years after the creation of man. We need not suppose that Cain, Abel, and Seth were the only sons of Adam. From Gen. 5:4, we infer that there were others. Cain, Abel, and Seth are mentioned for obvious reasons; Abel for his piety and his early death, Cain for his wickedness and the worldly wisdom of his posterity, Seth because he was the ancestor of the promised seed. There may then, in 130 years, have grown up a very considerable number of children and grandchildren to Adam and Eve. E. H. B.—Cain and Abel may have had a considerable number of children and grandchildren at this time; and allowing for other possible children of Adam and Eve, there must have been at the time a considerable number of persons in the world—quite sufficient to account for Cain's dread of being slain for the murder of Abel; and also for his building a city soon after his migration. Kit. 14. Whosoever findeth me shall slay me.** He that feared not to kill his brother, fears now that whosoever meets him will kill him. The troubled conscience projecteth fearful things, and sin makes even cruel men cowardly. How bitter is the end of sin, yea, without end! Cain finds that he killed himself more than his brother. We should never sin if our foresight were but as good as our sense: the issue of sin would appear a thousand times more horrible than the act is pleasant. Bp. H.—And in the remorse and terror that weighed him down and chased him through the land of 'wandering,' haunted by the presence of God and the threatening spectral hand of man, and that made him build his fenced city or stronghold, like some medieval robber's castle, we read by anticipation the vivid pictures of the masters of tragedy and romance, or the facts of actual occurrence. S. C. B.—Mr. Webster, in the trial of the Knapps, described not the extraordinary, but the normal and ordinary workings of conscience in all ages, and for all crimes. 'He had done the murder. No eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe, Ah, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it and say it is safe. True, it is, that, generally speaking, 'murder will out.' Every murderer, like the first one, feels that every man's hand is against him. The guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It must be confessed. It will be confessed. There is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession.' Townsend. 15. We are to bear in mind that God still held the sword of justice in his own immediate hands, and had not delegated his authority to any human tribunal. It is plain that no man has an inherent right to inflict the sanction of a broken law on the transgressor. This right belongs to the Creator, and derivatively only to those whom he has intrusted with the dispensation of civil government according to established laws. The whole dealing of the Almighty was calculated to have a softening, conscience-awakening, and hope-inspiring effect on the murderer's heart. M. The Lord declares that if any one should follow Cain's example, he shall incur a far heavier penalty, as he ought to have been taught by him how horrible the crime was in God's sight.—Appointed a sign. Not put a mark on him, but He gave him a sign as a pledge of His promise, by means of which Cain gained confidence, and felt himself secure notwithstanding his banishment. Gerl.—Accordingly it is well rendered in the Greek, 'God set a sign before Cain to persuade him that whosoever should find him should not kill him.' As to its being a visible mark, brand, or stigma affixed to his person, there is no ground whatever for such an opinion. Bush. The rejection of Cain and the acceptance of Abel was a rehearsal, in the morning of time, of the final judgment. 'This (says F. von Schlegel) is the leading subject of primitive history—the struggle between two races—the first great event in universal history.' It commenced the grand classification of mankind; and implied that all other distinctions are to be merged in the two great classes of the obedient and the disobedient. J. H. 16. Went out from the presence of the Lord. The story of Cain is the story of all ages. Sin, suffering; the one following the other by a law fixed and imperative like that by which pain agonizes a burning hand. So far as the narrative informs us, the suffering of the first murderer was mental suffering. Disease did not blast him, chains did not bind him. He went his way like other men. He had sons and daughters; he built the first city known in history. Tradition says that he founded many cities and became the head of a great empire. Yet Cain lived a life of conscious curse. The serpents coiled within. Cursed in thought and in feeling, cursed in fears and in blasted hopes, cursed in one long despair: such was life to the first man who bore the fruit of the first matured and ripened sin. And such will be the life of the last man who shall go out from the presence of the Lord, bearing the burden of a finished crime unrepented of and unforgiven. Phelps. 16. Went from the presence of the Lord. Signifies going away from the visible symbol of Divine presence in the Cherubim and the brightness as of a gleaming sword, and from the society of the worshippers of Jehovah. In this Cherubim and brightness set up at the east of Eden is the original of the Shechinah of the dispensation of Moses; the symbol of the Divine presence, as seen in the visions of David and Ezekiel, all of which reappear in the visions of John through 'the door opened in heaven,' where the four living creatures that stand around the throne about which are the four and twenty elders and those countless myriads of worshippers who sing 'salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.' It is of special interest, and it throws important light on some of the more intricate portions of the Word of God, to mark this identity of outward worship through the history from the dawn of time onward into the heart of the eternity to come. At the same time this marked identity between the first worship and all succeeding worships reflects light upon this saying: 'Went out from the presence of Jehovah.' It shows that it signified a going forth, as an apostate wanderer, from the society that 'called upon the name of the Lord.' The conflict began between the two men first born of the earth, according to the prediction, becomes a conflict of races, on through successive generations, till the earth, brought under the dominion of the seed of the devil, all, save a single family, is swept away by the waters of vengeance. S. R.—Cain departed from God and seemed to get on well for a while. He built cities, sought out many inventions, his family prospered in the world: their whole life seemed to show how well man can get on without God. And the end of it was 'the flood came,' and 'they were drowned.' An. 17. He builded a city. This furnishes evidence that houses were earlier than tents, towns than encampments, and the settled than the nomad life. The origin of the tent-dwelling life is afterward ascribed to a period long subsequent—the fifth generation from Cain. This is not in accordance with the hypothesis of those who contend that man advanced progressively out of the savage state. In the true record, the first-born man builds a city, and the tent comes later by more than a thousand years. Kit.—The first men were not wandering and ignorant savages, although those who wandered from the parent stock and ceased to have any connection with it, generally fell into a state of barbarism and ignorance. Science, arts, and civilization were confined to those who maintained their connection with the central stock of the first men, or departed in numbers sufficient to enable them to exercise and carry along with them the subdivisions of art and labor necessary to civilized life. R. Forsyth. 19-24. The posterity of Cain follow in the course of estrangement from God on which their ancestor had entered. They invent arts, and they devise the pleasures of life. The Cainite Lamech introduces polygamy, and boastingly confides in his own strength, as in his God. His son Jabal was the ancestor of the nomadic tribes which dwell in tents. Jabal invented stringed and wind instruments, Tobal-Cain was “instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.” These statements, as well as the names of his daughter Naamah (the lovely), and of his wives Adah (ornament, beauty), and Zillah (shade), furnish abundant indications of the peculiar development in the family of Cain. K. Cain’s tendency to trust in his own wit and strength, rather than in the Divine goodness which even his sin could not alienate, rose to its full height in Lamech and his family; the intermediate steps of the progress being passed over by the sacred historian in the case of the Cainites as in that of the Sethites. Lamech is the seventh from Adam through Cain, just as Enoch is seventh from Adam through Seth; and as in Enoch the characteristics of the line of Seth came to a head, so also the characteristics of the line of Cain came to a head in Lamech and his children. They invent the arts, but they also serve the lusts of the flesh. While the Sethites rise into “sons of God,” the Cainites, despite their grand gifts, sink into mere “children of men.” Cox. 19. Lamech took unto him two wives. The first example of polygamy. The origin of this institution is consequently carried back to the race of the accursed one, and placed at the eve of the Deluge, when “all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.” As Knobel has rightly acknowledged, there is here a formal condemnation of polygamy, just as the words of Gen. 2 : 24 give a divine sanction to monogamy. Lenormant.—He is the first of the human race who had more wives than one. The father of a family of inventors, this was his invention, his legacy, to the human race—a legacy which perhaps the larger half of men still inherit, to their cost and ours. Cox.—Polygamy was an infraction of a natural appointment. The inequality which it produced in the distribution of the sex; the distraction of affection; the domestic jealousies; the degradation of the woman; the prison-like surveillance of her movements thus made necessary; the diminished number of healthy children resulting from such concubinage; and their necessary want of parental education—all proclaim that polygamy is a violation of the domestic constitution. The most favorable circumstances in which such an experiment could be made was in Patriarchal times. But those are the very times which denote that in no case can the Divine arrangement on the subject be departed from with impunity. Indeed, the first reference to the evil, in the fragmentary allusion to antediluvian Lamech, is of a kind ominous of a train of alarming results. J. H. In Lamech we have only the extreme type of a large class,—men who take the sensuous view of life. These are they who, without intentional or deliberate wickedness perhaps, forget God, or quietly and habitually ignore him; whose real trust is in their own strength and wit; who believe wisdom to be a defence, and wealth a defence, and trained and organized power a defence, and that they need not go beyond these. They are sufficient to themselves, whether in the toil and conflict of life, or in its hours of ease and relaxation. They can find all the delights they need in music, or poetry, or some of the kindred arts which wait to minister at their call; and they never or rarely rise beyond these, never taste the joys of a spiritual communion with God, or look forward with desire to the services and felicities of the heavenly world. Cox. 20. Jabal was the father of such as dwell in tents. A proof that this was not the primitive manner of life. Contrary to the pagan notion, that man commenced life on the earth as a savage, we here see that he has to retrograde in order to approach that condition. Nor, indeed, have we any trace of the strictly savage or hunting condition of life, until after the Deluge. In the conduct of Jabal, however, who introduced or promoted the change from a settled to a wandering life, we see the way in which a course of retrogradation might easily begin. J. H.—Man had existed thirteen centuries upon the earth before the nomad life began. In Jabal's time men were taught to cast off the restraints of living in towns and villages, and to betake themselves wholly to pastures, dwelling in portable habitations, and removing from place to place for the convenience of pasturage. This is a mode of life frequently brought under our notice in the Scriptures, being essentially that of the patriarchs whose history occupies the greater portion of the book of Genesis, Kit. 21. Jabal appears as the ancestor of those who handle the stringed and wind instruments. It is remarkable how far back in antiquity we encounter musical instruments, and that too in great variety. We cannot find their origin, but they meet us in the full stream. Egypt furnishes both the oldest and most abundant exhibition. "Paintings on the tombs of the earliest times" exhibit their fondness for instrumental music, which blossomed out into a singular variety of instruments. They had their drums, their tambourines of three kinds, clappers, cymbals and trumpets, flutes of reed, wood, bone and ivory, single pipes with three and with four holes, double pipes, and stringed instruments of much greater variety in form and number of strings than are in modern use. Thus the stringed and wind instruments of music antedate all other history than that of the Pentateuch. 22. The third of this family group, Tabal-Cain, was "an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron," or as most modern scholars render it, substantially, a "forger of all tools (or implements) of brass and iron." Here we strike the origin of metallurgy, especially the working of brass—or rather bronze or copper—and iron. It is noteworthy that early researches bring us very little of pure copper; but the main supply of metallic implements is of bronze, a compound of copper and tin. Copper is comparatively fusible and malleable, and is found in combinations much more manageable than iron, and is abundant in the region of Armenia and the neighboring countries. Bronze abounds in Egypt from the earliest times, a cast cylinder bearing the name of Pepi of the sixth dynasty. However far back of the confines of all recorded history except this Pentateuch we go, we encounter bronze coming down from beyond in comparative abundance as one of the very earliest forms of metallurgy, and in the very regions to which it is assigned, and where it is still to be found. S. C. B. A rarely gifted family this, a family to which all the world owes an enormous debt to this very day; and yet a wicked family—forgetting God, and relying on their own great wit and strength. We need to remember that, and to learn from it that there is no necessary connection between gifts and goodness. But we should also mark how frank and honest a book the Bible is. It brands the children of Cain as the ungodly race; but it tells us how splendidly they were endowed, how much we owe them. Let us mark, too, how even ungodly men may serve their race and be God's instruments for good, inventing arts which in purer hands become most helpful and ennobling. Cox.—The scope of this notice of the Cainite race seems to be to represent them as advancing in all worldly arts and arms, and becoming exceedingly prosperous on earth; but unconnected with the worship of Jehovah. The race are never named after this chapter. Alf. 23, 24. The song of Lamech. It is in connection with the later development of evil in the Cainites that Lamech's song is introduced, and with special reference to that portion of his family who were makers of instruments in brass and iron—instruments chiefly of a warlike kind. It is only by viewing the song in that connection that we perceive its full meaning and its proper place, as intended to indicate that the evil was approaching its final stage. He means apparently, that with such weapons as he had now at command he could execute at will deeds of retaliation and slaughter. So that his song may be regarded "as an ode of triumph on the invention of the sword. He can provide more amply for his own protection than God did for Cain's; and he congratulates his wives on being the mothers of such sons. Thus the history of the Cainites began with a deed of murder, and here it ends with a song of murder." (Drechsler.) P. F. In this is uttered that Titanic haughtiness of which it is said (Hab. 1: 11) that his strength is his God, and (Job 12: 6) that he carries his God, namely his sword, in his fist. Delit.—As it was a sword-song, so was it a blood-song, an utterance of "titanic insolence" and ferocity. It well illustrates how polygamy and cruelty, lust and fierceness go hand in hand, and how the antediluvian chivalry that could name its women, "Shade" and "Beauty" and "Pleasantness," and sing to them poetic strains, could summon them to witness its ruthless revenge. In it lay already the expression of the spirit that soon filled the world with violence, and called imperatively for that later edict of God, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” S. C. B. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ I have, for witnesses to what I have said respecting the great length of patriarchal life, all those who have written antiquities, both among the Greeks and Barbarians; for even Manetho, who wrote the Egyptian history, and Berosus, who collected the Chaldean monuments, and Mochus, and Hestiaeus, and those who composed the Phoenician history, agree to what I here say; Hesiod, also, and Hecateus, Hellanicus, and Acusilaus; and besides these, Ephorus and Nicolaus, relate that the ancients lived a thousand years. Josephus. The divine revelations and the facts of history in these early ages might be transmitted with perfect safety, inasmuch as during an interval of 2000 years from Adam to Abraham, they required to pass through the mouth of only two witnesses: Methuselah, the eighth from Adam, lived almost 100 years contemporaneously with him, while Noah was on the earth eighty-four years along with Enos the grandson of Adam, and downward 128 years with Terah the father of Abraham. It was thus possible for Noah to converse with six successive members of the race before him, as well as with nine generations after him, and so to communicate to them orally all that he had himself experienced, as well as what had been transmitted to him by the fathers. C. G. B.—It was easy for Moses to be satisfied of the truth of all he relates in the Book of Genesis, as the accounts came to him through the medium of very few persons. From Adam to Noah there was but one man necessary to the transmission of the history of this period. Adam and Lamech were contemporaries for fifty-six years. Methuselah, the grandfather of Noah, lived to see both Adam and Lamech, and was likewise contemporary with Noah for 600 years. In like manner Shem connected Noah and Abraham, having lived to converse with both; as Isaac did with Abraham and Joseph, from whom these things might be easily conveyed to Moses. Horne. The antediluvian origin of alphabetic writing is thought to be probable from reasons such as these:—That the genealogies of the patriarchs are recorded with an exactness superior to that of tradition: that the poetical address of Lamech possesses no internal recommendation to be preserved during a tract of centuries by tradition, and “yet differs essentially from all the specimens of known ideographic poetry:” that the Mosiac account of the Flood has the air of a description derived from an eye-witness, or placed on record by him: that the formulae, “This is the book of the generations of Adam,” and “These are the generations of Noah,” imply a transcript from authentic genealogical tables regularly kept in the patriarchal families: that the earlier part of the Book of Genesis is marked by differences of style denoting distinct compositions, from which Moses, under Divine direction, compiled his history, and that these archives were authentic memorials of and from antediluvian families: that (even supposing alphabetic signs were not the result of Divine suggestion like articulate sounds) the longevity of the antediluvians was highly favorable to the discovery; and that it is favored by the traditions of the most widely separated nations, and by almost all religions. J. H. There has been much speculation respecting the longevity of the antediluvians. Out of nine men whose ages are recorded, one reached to nearly a thousand (969) years; and with the anomalous exception of Noah’s father, who was cut off prematurely at the age of 777, the lowest of the nine reached 895 years. The average of life, reckoned upon the whole nine, is 912 years. It was God’s purpose to make of one blood all the nations of men that dwell upon the face of the earth—that the tie of brotherhood might the more intimately subsist among them by their derivation from the same ancestors; but that the peopling of the world might not be retarded by this limitation, he gives an immense duration to the lives of the primeval generations, whereby the population of the earth goes on as rapidly as if he had in the first place given existence to twelve or fifteen pairs of human beings. Kit. We may content ourselves with the general principle announced by Delitzsch, that “the duration of antediluvian life depended on circumstances and conditions of the earth which our present knowledge cannot reach.” Not to suggest that “climate, weather, and other natural conditions may have been quite different” and that “life was much more simple and uniform,” we may emphasize the statement that “the after-effects of the condition of man in paradise (destined for immortality) would not be immediately exhausted.” S. C. B.—The longevity of antediluvian life enabled men to acquire inconceivable dexterity in many of the mechanical arts. How great must have been the tact and proficiency resulting from the continued practice of centuries! The prospect of such longevity would encourage men to lay out comprehensive plans, and to enter on vast undertakings with the expectation of completing them, and of enjoying the fruits. Added to which, that in proportion as this longevity was physiologically dependent on superior climatic influences, it would be also conducive to bodily and mental exertion. J. H. We can clearly see that such long continuance of life was absolutely necessary, if the earth was to be rapidly peopled, knowledge to advance, and, above all, the worship of God and faith in that promise about a Deliverer which He had revealed, to be continued. As it was, each generation could hand down to remote posterity what it had learned during the centuries of its continuance. Thus Adam was alive to tell the story of Paradise and the fall, and to repeat the word of promise which he had heard from the very mouth of the Lord, when Lamech was born; and though none of the earlier "fathers" could have lived to see the commencement of building the ark, yet Lamech died only five years before "the flood," and his father Methuselah—the longest-lived man—in the very year of the deluge. On the other hand, it was possible to pervert this long duration of life to equally evil purposes. The rare occurrence, during so many centuries, of death with its terrors would tend still more to blunt the conscience; the long association of evil men would foster the progress of corruption and evil; and the apparently indefinite delay of either judgment or deliverance would strengthen the bold unbelief of scoffers. A. E.—Instead of tending to the good of the species, the great length of life seems generally to have been perverted to evil. The substance of Enoch's prophecy, recorded in the Epistle of Jude (ver. 14, 15), shows how much the men of those days lived in forgetfulness of the judgment to come. W. G. B.—In the primitive world, the Cainites devoted themselves almost exclusively to the advancement of a material civilization; and the degeneracy to which it led was the first of a series of lessons which Providence has ever since been giving to man on the utter inefficiency of mere knowledge, power, and aesthetic progress, to save him from ruin; or rather, on the certainty of their conducting him to it, apart from the supreme influence of religion. The Sethites maintained, for a time, a high religious standing; but, descending from their holy elevation, their morality vanished with their religion, and they sank through the successive stages of a refined but death-struck civilization. J. H. 5. Adam lived 930 years.** By making Adam the depository of the first communication from heaven, and prolonging his life to nearly a thousand years, the Almighty may be regarded as making the wisest and most gracious arrangement for the welfare of his fallen posterity. For in each and all of the myriads to which they had multiplied, Adam would only behold the multiplications of himself, and would therefore be supposed to feel a father's yearning solicitude for their recovery to God. And even as late as "in the days of Noe," the comparative recency of the fall and its immediate results, by rendering these results so much the more impressive and personally interesting; the small amount and the simplicity of the revelation which had then been made, by rendering it so much the easier to be remembered and imparted; the universal prevalence of the same language, by rendering it so much the easier to diffuse that knowledge universally; and the continued longevity of man, by enabling one party to speak with the authority and tenderness of a parent, disposing the other to listen with the docility and faith of children, and giving to each a family interest in the religious welfare of all—afforded facilities for diffusing the knowledge of God, which strikingly evinced his readiness to save. J. H. Adam was witness to the beginnings of that universal corruption which at last brought on the deluge; and when he beheld himself the source of these growing evils, he could not fail, with every succeeding year of his life, to entertain deeper and more appalling views of the enormity of his transgression and the justice of his sentence. This would naturally tend in his case, as in every other, to heighten his estimate at once of the goodness and the severity of God, and endear to him that promise which was the hope of a lost world. Bush. 5. He died.** Although this first thread of life was spun through centuries, it cannot last forever. Although divine long-suffering had delayed the execution of the sentence, no word of it had been retracted. "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return." The tree of life no longer blossoms here below for the transgressor, who has plucked the fruit of sin. God be thanked that we know Him, the second Adam, who out of death, brought by the first into the world, has taken the sharpest sting. Van O.—Death must have originally come to man almost with the startling effect of an appalling revelation. The death of Abel would not, perhaps, on account of its violence, weigh much with the early generations of men as an illustration of the original sentence against sin. But when the first natural death occurred—and, still more, when at length, after the event had been suspended century after century—when he had seen his descendants in the ninth generation—when he had reached his nine hundred and thirtieth year—the report went forth of Adam “he is dead; the father of the race has expired,” what a deep shadow, as from the throne of justice brought near, must have fallen on the face of nature! And as, age after age, it had to be recorded of each individual of all these generations, “and he died,” what an affecting proof was furnished of “the exceeding sinfulness of sin,” what a demonstration of the fidelity of God to His word, and of the amplitude of His schemes who could defer its fulfilment either for a day or for a thousand years; and with what strained gaze, we may suppose, would the survivors labor to pierce the darkness which hung over the grave. J. H. 3-31. Lived and died.** Through the births and deaths of this old Antediluvian Patriarchy there is a moral lesson impressive and sad, giving to these dry numbers a sublime moral dignity. It is not obtrusive; it is not forced upon the notice; to the dull reader these details and repetitions may seem barren, but to the man whose spirit is awake, it is the solemn record of execution on the great judgment pronounced in a previous chapter; it is the commencement of that long death which our humanity has been dying ever since. It is the first great obituary, recorded, not on blank, intervening leaves, but in the beginning of “the volume of the book.” It is the title-page to that true history of the world, written on the tombs, and preserved where all else perishes, even in the dust of the earth. T. L. There is something very impressive in this antediluvian record of deaths; the long periods of life only make it all the more so. It tells forcibly of there being no escape from this law. The cadence of “and he died” recurs with the effect of a tolling bell upon the imagination; and the length of interval between them adds to the solemnity of the lesson so given forth. The great practical truths of religion are not educed by an ingenious process of inference, but lie before us on the surface of the Bible—on the surface of observation. The thing wanted is that we should consider them; and this unvarying register of a mortality which no strength of endurance in the vital principle could exempt from, should speak powerfully home to the fears and the urgent interests of the men who now live in this era of puny and ephemeral generations. T. C. It is reported of one, that, hearing the 5th of Genesis read, so long lived, and yet the burden still, they died, he took so deep the thought of death and eternity, that it changed his whole frame, and set him from a voluptuous to a most strict and pious course of life. How small a word will do much, when God sets it into the heart! But sure this one thing would make the soul more calm and sober in the pursuit of present things, if their term were truly computed and considered. How soon shall youth, and health, and carnal delights, be at a end! How soon shall all the great projects of the highest wits and spirits be laid in the dust! But to a soul acquainted with God, and in affection removed hence already, no thought so sweet as this; it helps much to carry it cheerfully through wrestlings and difficulties, through better and worse; they see land near, and shall quickly be at home; that is the way. The end of all things is at hand: An end of a few poor delights and the many vexations of this wretched life; an end of temptations and sins, the worst of all evils; yea, an end of the imperfect fashion of our best things here, an end of prayer itself, to which succeeds that new song of endless praises. Leighton.—The dead—we speak of them as those who are not. But in this sense there are no dead in the universe; of the mighty catalogue written in heaven’s book of men who have been, not one has passed into nothingness; of every human being, it is true, that when he began to be, he began to be immortal; he may have changed his place and his mode of existence, his dust may have returned to the earth as it was; but yet he lives as truly as he ever did, and will continue to live through ceaseless ages; and what is true of all before us is and will be true of each one of ourselves. There is a “life to come,” and in a very short time we shall be mingling in its scenes with those who have preceded us. E. M. 24. Enoch walked with God.** We are reminded of the saying, that these primeval genealogies are “monuments alike of the faithfulness of God in the fulfilment of his promise, and of the faith and patience of the fathers.” Every generation lived its appointed time; they transmitted the promise to their sons; and then, having finished their course, they all “died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” That is absolutely all we know of the majority of them. But the emphatic and seemingly needless repetition in each case of the words, "And he died," with which every genealogy closes, tells us that "death reigned from Adam unto Moses," with all the lessons which it conveyed of its origin in sin, and of its conquest by the second Adam. Only one exception occurs to this general rule—in the case of Enoch; when, instead of the brief notice how many years he "lived" after the birth of his son, we read that "he walked with God after he begat Methusaleh three hundred years;" and instead of the simple closing statement that "he died," we are not only a second time told that "Enoch walked with God," but also that "he was not; for God took him." Thus both his life and his translation are connected with his "walk with God." A. E. Enoch and Noah, as they alone of the antediluvians were endowed with the spirit of prophecy, so they alone also are said to have "walked with God,"—an expression never used of any who lived in later times, and denoting the nearest and most confidential intercourse, as if they had all but regained the old paradisiacal freedom of communion with Heaven. And as the divine seal upon this higher elevation of the life of God in their souls, they were both honored with singular tokens of distinction—the one having been taken, without tasting of death, to still nearer fellowship with God, to abide in His immediate presence, while the other became under God the saviour and father of a new world. The contemporaries of Enoch had within their reach the means of knowing that in consideration of his eminent piety he was taken direct to a higher sphere, without undergoing the common lot of mortality. That there should have been but one such case during the whole antediluvian period, could not but be regarded as indicating its exceptional character, and stamping it emphatically as a revelation from Heaven. P. F. Enoch is the type of those who take the spiritual as distinguished from the sensuous view of human life; who, while they bear their part in all the labors that are done under the sun, seek in everything they do to do it as to God; and while they frankly accept all the recreative and refining ministries devised by the art or wit of man, accept them as the gifts of God, and so find an added sweetness in them. Like Enoch, they walk with God through all the difficult and tangled paths of life, are sustained by Him in the hours of their weakness, guarded by Him in their times of peril, and find their fellowship with Him grow more intimate, more ennobling, more consolatory, year by year. The end of these respective lines of action is set forth in the several fates of Lamech and Enoch. In Enoch we see the spiritual man rising into the heaven which his life has prepared him to inherit and enjoy; while in Lamech and his children we see the servants of sense sink into the doom for which their course and habits of life had fitted them,—their thoughts growing more evil, their deeds more corrupt, until the flood arose and swept them away. Each goes to his own place. Cox. In proportion as any one draws near to God, and thinks of Him, and prays to Him constantly and earnestly, so does he become familiar with the life beyond the grave, and find it possible and natural to fix his faith there. For with God continually in our thoughts,—God in Christ I mean, for a Christian knows God no otherwise than as approached through His Son,—with God constantly thought of, prayed to, praised, thanked, and served, it is impossible that death should any longer be so great a barrier, or the state beyond it so dark and cheerless. For to God there is no difference of time or state; he is after our death as before it, before it as after it, in all respects the same. And death, which to Him is absolutely nothing, becomes to us also less and less in proportion as we are more entirely His. So it is said that Enoch walked with God, and then it is added, "and he was not, for God took him." He walked with God on earth, and he walked with God in heaven, and the two became blended into one, and the barrier between them melted away into nothing. This is a true type, showing that the sense of death is destroyed by our consciousness of God. He who walks with God faithfully here, all that is said of him will be, "he was not, for God took him;" he will be missed here by us, but to himself it is in a manner all but one life, the latter part the more perfect and the happier, yet both were passed with God. T. Arnold. Very delightful it is to discover in the description of Enoch's character the fact that in its main features the experience of the truly religious soul has been the same in all the ages of human history. The altar may vary, the ritual may change, the priesthood may pass from Melchizedek to Aaron, and from Aaron to Christ; the tabernacle may take the place of the patriarchal tent, and the Temple may supersede the tabernacle, only in its turn to be superseded by the spiritual system of the Gospel; yet, amid all these mutations, those deep experiences of men's souls which constitute the true springs of their religious life have been the same, and to-day no more appropriate description of a good and saintly man could be given than this, "He walked with God." W. M. T.—To walk with God, is to set God always before us, and to act as those that are always under his eye. It is to live a life of communion with God, both in ordinances and providences; it is to make God's word our rule, and his glory our end, in all our actions; it is to make it our constant care and endeavor in everything to please God, and in nothing to offend him; it is to comply with his will, to concur with his designs, and to be workers together with him; it is to be followers of him as dear children. H. Adam died only fifty-seven years before Enoch's translation, and Enoch probably enjoyed the society of that remarkable man for more than three centuries. From Adam's own lips he could learn the story of the creation, he could become acquainted with the primeval bliss of Eden, he could ascertain that law of paradise under which our first parents sinned and fell, he could look with familiar gaze into the dark problem of the origin of evil. By a more minute acquaintance with the events of that mysterious period, he could attain a clearer insight than we into the operations of Providence, and the wisdom of those counsels which were developed in the ruin of the human race. He had moreover the book of nature ever open to him, and those works through which he communed with their divine author were peculiarly rich in illustration of the divine character. In his own sanctified and inspired consciousness he had another and better source of sacred knowledge, and favored as he was by the teachings of that Great Spirit whose society he cultivated, he was no doubt as highly venerated for the extent of his attainments as for the depth of his devotion. Whatever may be thought of the oriental traditions, which ascribe to him the invention of letters and learning, the literal import of his name implies that he was initiated into rare mysteries, and one of his predictions as it is preserved to us by an inspired apostle, discloses a reach of vision which from that remote period, the very beginning of the world's history, could look down through all the lapse of ages to the very last event which is the subject of prophecy, the final judgment of the ungodly. Homer. Of Enoch we know that he not only walked with God as a friend with his friend, but as a prophet he stood forth boldly against the transgression of his age. Van O.—At the time appointed by the Father for the accomplishment of Enoch's prophecy, when the Lord shall come to judgment with ten thousand of his saints (Jude 14), that which was foreshown by the translation of Enoch, and fulfilled in the ascension of the natural body of Christ, shall be brought to pass likewise in His mystical body, the Church, and the members thereof. They shall "not be found" in the ruins of a burning world, because God shall have "translated" them to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away reserved in heaven for them. This is but the completion of that great work begun in them by the Spirit of God in this life. Blessed and holy is he, who hath part in this first "translation" from sin to righteousness, the sure pledge and earnest of the second from dust to glory. Bp. Horne. The miracle of Enoch's translation was another Divine intimation, pointing to the existence of an invisible world. "He was not, for God took him." "He was translated that he should not see death." J. H.—In the case of Enoch alone, we read, not that "he died," but that "he was not, for God took him." This implies two things: that he was exempted from natural death, and that he entered upon a higher and better existence as the consequence of having walked, not with the world, but with God. C. G. B.—Is it even supposable that Moses thought this was annihilation—taking a godly man out of existence? Extinguishing his being because he walked with God! If the Lord had made this problem a special study—how best to teach and impress the doctrine of a future blessed life for the righteous who walk with God on earth, we cannot see how he could have improved upon the method he actually adopted, viz. to take the godly Enoch from earth to heaven without dying. H. C.—If there is no future life, in which virtue receives its appropriate reward, what a reflection is here upon the God of the Hebrews! A man, illustrious beyond all his contemporaries for piety, is cut off in the midst of his days and rewarded with annihilation! The record conveys almost as plain a revelation of a future life as the declaration of the Lord of life himself, "The hour is coming, in the which all that are in their graves shall hear his voice and come forth." E. C. W. The "taking away" of Enoch is one of the strongest proofs of the belief in a future state, prevailing among the Hebrews; without this belief the history of Enoch is a perfect mystery, a hieroglyph without a clew, a commencement without an end. Kalisch.—Enoch does not die, but lives, and not only lives, but is advanced to a new stage of life, in which all the power and pain of sin are at an end forever. This crowns and signalizes the power of grace, and represents in brief the grand finale of a life of faith. This renewed man is received up into glory without going through the intermediate steps of death and resurrection. This translation took place in the presence of a sufficient number of witnesses, and furnished a manifest proof of the presence and reality of the invisible powers. Thus were life and immortality as fully brought to light as was necessary or possible at that early stage of the world's history. Thus was it demonstrated that the grace of God was triumphant in accomplishing the final and full salvation of all who returned to God. M. God "translated him" either in soul or body, or both, to a place and state of happiness:—A most convincing argument and proof of a life after this; and sufficient, one would have thought, to have silenced the Sadducees, who received this book. God gave the world this instance, perhaps to convince them, how he would have dealt with Adam, and all his posterity, had they continued in obedience to his command. Bp. Wilson.—The occurrence was an impressive revelation of the existence, the omniscience, and the holiness of God, which were constantly becoming more and more forgotten; of the eternal separation between those who serve God and those who serve Him not; of the life and immortality especially to be expected after departure from this world. Van O. 29. These words bear testimony to an ardent heart longing for the better inheritance, which even to Lamech appeared to be substantially involved in the promise of the Seed of the woman. This longing was called forth by the curse which burdened the ground, and which, amidst his bitter toils and troubles, seemed to him all the heavier and greater as his experience of the ravages of sin increased. His only comfort under the hardships he endured was to look to the bruiser of the serpent. For this reason he gave to his son the name of Noah—that is, rest,—a name which in sound resembles the Hebrew verb to comfort. From this son he expected consolation and rest. Lamech died five years prior to the deluge, and was the first of the patriarchs who, by a natural death, departed this life before his father. His father Methuselah died just before the flood. The righteous perish, and merciful men are taken away from the evil to come, and enter into peace (Isa. 57: 1). C. G. B. All the patriarchs here, except Noah, were born before Adam died; so that from him they might receive a full and satisfactory account of the creation, paradise, the fall, the promise, and those divine precepts which concerned religious worship and a religious life. So great was the care of Almighty God to preserve in his church the knowledge of his will, and the purity of his worship. H. 1. And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters 2 were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and 3 they took them wives of all that they chose. And the LORD said, My Spirit shall not strive with man for ever, for that he also is flesh: yet shall his days be an hundred and twenty years. 4 The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them: the same were the mighty men 5 which were of old, the men of renown. And the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him 7 at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the ground; both man, and beast, and creeping thing, and fowl of the air; for it repenteth 8 me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. 9 These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, and perfect in his genera- 10 tions : Noah walked with God. And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And 11 the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the 12 earth, and, behold, it was corrupt ; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. 13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me ; for the earth is filled 14 with violence through them ; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood ; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without 15 with pitch. And this is how thou shalt make it : the length of the ark three hundred cubits, 16 the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A light shalt thou make to the ark, and to a cubit shalt thou finish it upward ; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in 17 the side thereof ; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. And I, behold, I do bring the flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breadth of life, 18 from under heaven ; every thing that is in the earth shall die. But I will establish my cove- nant with thee ; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy 19 sons' wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou 20 bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee ; they shall be male and female. Of the fowl after their kind, and of the cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after 21 its kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive. And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and gather it to thee ; and it shall be for food for thee, and for 22 them. Thus did Noah ; according to all that God commanded him, so did he. Having traced the line of descent from Adam through Seth, the seed of God, to Noah, the author proceeds to describe the general spread and growth of moral evil in the race of man, and the determination of the Lord to wipe it away from the face of the earth. M. Constantly, as the well-spring of life flowed on, the stream of human depravity swelled into a deeper and broader flood. There were things in God's earlier procedure that were naturally fitted to check its working, and repress its growth—especially the forbearance and kindness with which He treated the first race of transgressors—the wonderful longevity granted to them—the space left for repentance even to the greatest sinners, while still sufficient means were employed to convince them of their guilt and danger—all seeming to betoken the solicitude of a father yearning over his offspring, and restraining for a season the curse that now rested on their condition, if so be they might be won to His love and service. But it was the evil, not the good, in man's nature, which took advantage of this treatment of God, to ripen into strength and fruitfulness. And, ere long, the very goodness of God found it needful to interpose, and relieve the earth of the violence and corruption which had come to usurp possession of the world. So that, looking simply to the broad facts of history, the doctrine of human guilt and depravity stands forth with a prominence and intensity which could leave no doubt concerning it upon thoughtful minds. P. F. Sixteen centuries—almost as long as from the advent of Christ to this present time—are despatched, in sacred history, in the briefest possible mention. What was the meaning of that immense chasm and void in the life of our race ? The world was full of people ; but it was full of sin. May not this be the import of that historic lesson—to furnish, for all time, one undeniable proof that, left to himself, apostate man had no power or prospect of recovery ? Knowledge of promised relief was limited : all which existed was in the form of tradition, and this growing fainter and fainter, like a dying echo ; providential restraints were few ; so to speak, God seems to have withdrawn himself from the race that sought to be independent of him, that the world might know, for all time, that ruined mind never restores itself ; that the planet which breaks away from the attraction of the sun finds no power within itself by which it is brought back, but its centrifugal force is multiplied with terrific speed, driving it further and further, faster and faster, into the blackness of darkness. Left to itself, the race of man increased in wickedness with such gigantic strides, that the earth and the skies sickened at the spectacle, and the waters of the great deep swept them away. The termination of that first long stage of human history was the Deluge. W. Adams. 2. Sons of God.** In the view of some Fathers of the Church, the Reformers, and in more modern times Dettinger, Hengstenberg, Keil, and others, the expression "sons of God" refers to men, to the pious race descended from Seth, as the name "sons of God" is used in Deut. 14 : 1 ; 32 : 5 ; Hos. 2 : 1 ; Ps. 73 : 15. On this view, the passage refers to the marriage of Seth's descendants with Cainitic women, by which means the corruption of Cain's race spread among the Sethites. Not only is the connection in which the whole story stands to what precedes, but also ver. 3, in which an erring of man, not of the higher spirits, is spoken of, in favor of the latter view; but so also is the expression "they took wives," which is confessedly used in the Old Testament only in speaking of formal marriage. O.—The family of Seth, on account of its adherence to the true religion, were styled "the sons of God;" the descendants of Cain and the other branches of the family who united with him in his impiety, "the sons of men," denoting that they were a carnal, irreligious race. R. Hall. We are not probably justified in saying that there were but two races descended from Adam, the race of Cain and the race of Seth. Adam may have had many sons; but the history of the Cainites is preserved because both of their impiety and of their ingenuity; that of the Sethites, because at least in one line of that race piety and true religion flourished, and of them came the family of Noah which was preserved in the ark. There appears to have been a growing corruption of mankind, more rapid, no doubt, in the family of Cain than in any other race, but still spreading far and wide. The line of the Sethites, traced in ch. 5, alone appears to have kept itself pure, the little Church of God, in the midst of gathering darkness of the world around. This little Church may well have been called "the children of God," a term by no means limited in Scripture to the holy angels. They alone were the salt of the earth; and if that salt should lose its savor, all would become worthless and vile. When therefore some of these "sons of God" went out from their own little home circle, to make mixed marriages with the general heathenized races round them, the elements of corruption were brought from the world into the Church. E. H. B. 1. 2. When man began to multiply, the separate families of Cain and Seth would come into contact. The daughters of the stirring Cainites, distinguished by the graces of nature, the embellishments of art, and the charms of music and song, even though destitute of the loftier qualities of likemindedness with God, would attract attention and prompt to unholy alliances. The godly took them wives of the ungodly as well as the godly families, without any discrimination. "Whom they chose," not for the godliness of their lives, but for the goodliness of their looks. M. "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair;" just as Eve saw the tree that it was pleasant to the eye. Here was the last turning-point of importance of the family probation. Social man was about to repeat the act of individual man, and to take the forbidden fruit. "And they took them wives of all which they chose." The sensual triumphed over the rational and the moral. The sons of God, in their social capacity, apostatized from God. Their self-will came into direct collision with his authority. The family had fallen from its high object of constituting the Church of God. If the time should come when the relations of family to family, and of one community of families to another, shall be employed only to answer sensual, unjust, and impious purposes, every principle of moral government will warrant and call for Divine interference. From the moment when "the sons of God took them wives of all which they chose," the higher design of the conjugal state was defeated; it was prostituted to sensual purposes; and the doom of the family constitution itself, as a distinct economy, was sealed. Hence, the reason assigned by God for terminating the probationary contest with man is (v. 3), "for that he also is flesh." In other words, his own professed worshippers, by joining the sensual for sensual ends had merged the last hope of recovery in profligacy. And being thus perverted into an evil to the individual, the family became also an organization of social oppression and wrong. Brute force bore down law and right. Families banded together for the perpetration of more extensive wrong. Men became renowned in proportion to their deeds of rapine and bloodshed. And "the earth was filled with violence through them" (v. 11). J. H.—If there had not been so deep a deluge of sin there had been none of the waters. From whence then was this superfluity of iniquity? Whence, but from the unequal yoke with infidels. These marriages did not beget men so much as wickedness; from hence religious husbands both lost their piety and gained a rebellious and godless generation. Bp. H. 3. "Jehovah said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man (the Adam); for that they are but flesh, and their days shall be an hundred and twenty years." In the somewhat obscure brevity of this speech, it is difficult to determine the force of each word; but the general sense seems to be: "I will take away from man the life I at first gave him, since he has corrupted himself to mere flesh, and I will limit his time on earth to one hundred and twenty years." That the period thus defined was a space for repentance, seems clear from the context. P. S. The verb (translated "strive") is currently used of judicial transactions—searching out, convincing, convicting; and seems to have a striking analogy in that leading word given us by Christ; “When he is come, he shall reprove the world”—enforce conviction upon the world—as to sin and righteousness. God may right-eously say—may must in honor to himself say—My Spirit shall not plead my cause in man for ever. He is utterly gone over to the flesh, and nothing remains but that he must perish. One hundred and twenty years of merciful respite for patient warning and exhaustive trial must suffice:—then, if no penitence appear, judgment must fall, and that without remedy! Thus God places on record the moral causes and antecedents of this fearful visitation, that its moral lessons may go down to distant ages for their admonition to the end of time. H. C. —From this passage we learn that the Lord by his Spirit strives with man up to a certain point. In this little negative sentence streams out the bright light of God’s free and tender mercy to the apostate race of man. He sends his Spirit to irradiate the darkened mind, to expostulate with the conscience, to prompt and strengthen holy resolve, and to bring back the heart, the confidence, the affection to God. But it is a solemn thought that there is a certain point beyond which he will not go, for sufficient reasons known fully to himself, partly to us. First, he will not touch the free agency of his rational creatures. He can put no force on the volitions of men. An involuntary or compulsory faith, hope, love, obedience, is a contradiction in terms; and anything that could bear the name can have no moral validity whatsoever. Secondly, after giving ample warning, instruction, and invitation, he will, as a just judgment on the unbelieving and the impenitent, withdraw his Spirit and let them alone. M From the method God took in this judgment, first withdrawing his Spirit and then introducing the flood, it appears that God’s taking away his Spirit from any soul is the certain forerunner of the ruin and destruction of that soul. From the expression, “the Spirit’s striving with man,” which always implies resistance from the party striven with, it appears that there is in man’s heart a natural enmity and opposition to the motions of God’s holy Spirit. And from the definitive sentence that God here passes, that his Spirit should not always strive with man, it appears that there is a set and punctual time, after which the convincing operations of God’s Spirit upon the heart of man in order to his conversion will cease and forever leave him. South. Awhile he will strive, he will awaken, he will convince, he will call to remembrance former sins, former judgments, the breach of former vows and promises, the misspending of former days. He will also present persuasive arguments, encouraging promises, dreadful judgments, the shortness of time to repent in; and that there is hope if he come. He will show him the certainty of death and of the judgment to come, yea, thus he will strive with the sinner. But, behold, here is laboring and striving on both sides. The Spirit convinces, the man turns a deaf ear to God; the Spirit saith, Receive my instruction and live, but the man pulls away his shoulder; the Spirit shows him whither he is going, but the man closeth his eyes against it; the Spirit offers violence, the man strives and resists: he “does despite unto the Spirit of grace.” The Spirit parleyeth a second time and urgeth reasons of a new nature, but the sinner answereth, No; I have loved strangers, and after them will I go. At this, God comes out of his holy place, and is terrible; now he sweareth in his wrath they shall never enter into his rest (Ezek. 34 : 13). I exercised toward you my patience, yet you have not turned unto me, saith the Lord. I smote you in your person, in your relations, in your estate, yet you have not returned unto me, saith the Lord. “Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?” Banyan. Such a dispensation upon the part of God, as the withdrawal from a man of his Holy Spirit, is never the result of a dark and mysterious sovereignty. Sovereignty is an attribute of grace. The salvation of every sinner is an act of sovereignty; but the infliction of evil falls within the province of justice, and its reasons are always taken from the character and doings of its subject. Hence, when you read in the Bible of the suspension or withdrawal of divine influences from a man, you always find it represented in connection with some previous wrong conduct on his part, and as a punishment of that conduct. Spiritual abandonment is the judicial result of spiritual resistance. The Spirit of God ceases to strive because he is driven from the human bosom. E. M. There is no more wondrous subject than the patience of God! Think of the lapse of ages, during which that patience has lasted! Think of the multitudes who have been the subjects of it! Think of the sins which have all that time been trying and wearying that patience—their number—their heinousness—their aggravation! The world’s history is a consecutive history of iniquity, a lengthened provocation of the Almighty's forbearance. The Church, like a feeble ark, tossed on a mighty ocean of unbelief; and yet the world, with its cumberers, still spired! The cry of its sinful millions at this moment entering 'the ears of the God of Sabbath,' and yet, for all this, his hand of mercy is stretched out still! An. There is no more affecting view of our human life than that which presents it to us as a scene of the perpetual working of Divine compassion, seeking by every possible agency and avenue to enter in and rouse us from apathy, to break the sinful sleep, to open our eyes on the beauty of holiness in the face of Christ, to unseal our ears that they may hear the voices of a higher world than this, and to draw us into the blessedness of reconciliation and communion with our Lord. The air we breathe is all quick with these gracious ministries. Till we find it out we discern only the surface, we comprehend nothing of the glory, of the common life we are living. It is but a tread-mill march, or a mere scramble of appetites, or a whirl of vulgar intoxications, or a mocking dance of illusions. Strong words are used by Holy Scripture to declare the earnest reality of this Divine solicitation, so much more merciful to us than we are to ourselves. The Spirit strives with man. He pleads, He presses, He teaches, He watches, He pursues, He cries, He wrestles, He agonizes, He maketh intercession with groanings that cannot be uttered. What kind of a nature must it be that can stay indifferent to a Love like that? F. D. H. What mean those oft-formed resolutions to which kindled fears give birth, and what those oft-repeated vows originating in intelligent conviction, if they are not the evidence of some mighty though mysterious agency at work upon the mind? Lo! we carry within us the proofs that the Spirit of God strives with man. Truth, a thousand times heard before without awakening emotion, now rousing us to thought; claims, a thousand times before presented and at best but listlessly received, now securing a prompt and intelligent response from conscience; feeling, quick, deep, permanent, perhaps excited under the demonstrations of the gospel; these as facts defining our own circumstances and testified to by our own consciousness, are the evidences of our subjection to the influences of the Holy Ghost. E. M. What has God done to induce men to do their duty? He has created men; he preserves them in existence; he inhabits their consciences and all their faculties; he enswathes them with manifestations of his Power and Goodness in the natural world; he instructs them by the course of history, general and personal; he places above them Heaven, beneath them Hell, and before them the Cross. Could God do more to induce man to repent and not overpower his freedom of will? Who can say that God, without overpowering or impairing man's freedom, could do more than he has done to persuade man to do his duty? The seven knocks from the Divine Hand, on man's door, are Nature, History, Conscience, Heaven, Hell, Christ, the Holy Spirit; and in all God! In the individual life, in national life, in the life of the world as a whole, God knocks for admission to the human heart with these seven blows. With every birthday, with every hour of sickness, with every bereavement, with every illumination of the soul by the solemnity of solitude, by ten thousand voices from Nature and from history, and from the depths of conscience, God expresses his desire to enter the human soul. The Scriptural teaching as to the knocking of God at man's door shows: 1. That some act of man's free will must go before God's entrance into the soul. Man is to open the door. 2. That man has natural power to do this and a corresponding responsibility. 3. That God's knocking invites, inspires, persuades and enables man to do this act, but that God does not himself force open the door. 4. That God's entrance and man's opening the door are practically simultaneous—the two sides of one indivisible transaction—regeneration and repentance. 5. That God enters and sups with man, and he with God. On condition of the opening of the door, friendship with God follows. 6. That if any man will open the door God will enter. 7. That God stands at all doors knocking. 8. That if any man does not open the door of his soul to God, the fault is that of the man only. 9. That there is a difference between the general and special operations of the Divine Spirit—general while knocking, special after entering. 10. That the duty of immediate opening of the door lies upon all. 11. That every refusal to open adds to man's guilt and peril, and that there must be on the part of the unyielding soul a refusal for every knock, and that the knocking is incessant, and that so the guilt and peril of evil choices mount swiftly to vast magnitudes. Just so the Scriptural teaching concerning man's knocking at God's door shows: 1. That it is an act of man's free will to knock at God's door. 2. That man's want and power and God's promise inspire the desire on man's part to knock at God's door. 3. That man's knocking and God's opening are practically simultaneous—two sides of one indivisible transaction—Repentance and Regeneration. 4. That the law of from less to more prevails here, so that, after the general influences of the Spirit are rightly obeyed, the special influences follow. 5. That if any man will knock God will open. 6. That God invites all men to knock. 7. That if any man does not knock, it is wholly his own fault. 8. That the duty of immediate knocking lies upon all. 9. That every refusal adds to the soul's guilt and peril. There is distinct Scriptural teaching that a time arrives when the gate of opportunity is shut, and the soul knocks at a closed door. J Cook. His days shall be an hundred and twenty years. "In the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark." Judgment was not executed precipitately. One hundred and twenty years intervened between the prediction and its accomplishment. Full scope was thus given for the circulation of the intelligence throughout the then habitable world—full time for the awful tidings to visit every dwelling. E. M. G.—A hundred and twenty years was less than the eighth of the average duration of antediluvian life: and, in respect of warning, was not more to that generation than nine years would be to us. It was, therefore, an interval just long enough for effective warning, without being so long as to allow any man that lived, to deem that he might neglect that warning without danger. Noah himself seems to have been the instrument of making this warning known, and of preaching repentance, since Peter calls him "a preacher of righteousness." But the construction of the ark was in itself a warning the most impressive. It evinced the sincerity of Noah's conviction, that the judgment he declared really impended over mankind; and as its vast proportions slowly rose, the rumor of this immense and strange undertaking must have spread far and wide, with the report of the reasons which the builder gave for its construction. Thus "the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing." Kit. This passage should be viewed in connection with 1 Pet. 3 : 18-20, from which we learn that it was no other than the Spirit of Christ that through the instrumentality of the pious patriarch preached to the disobedient spirits of the old world. Bush.—The spirits are the souls of those now in prison, who once enjoyed a space for repentance on earth. The connection leaves us no room to doubt with respect to those intended by this description. They were the sinners destroyed by the flood. To these, Christ had once preached. How? Did he preach to them personally? The immediate antecedent here is the Spirit, meaning either the Holy Spirit, the third person in the Trinity, or the divine nature of Christ. "For Christ also hath once suffered for our sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, by which," that is, the Spirit, "he went and preached unto the spirits in prison." By the Spirit, Christ preached to the inhabitants of the old world. We are accordingly assured, that the Bible is the word of Christ*, and that the prophets received their messages from his "Spirit that was in them" (Col. 3 : 16 ; 1 Pet. 1 : 11). Noah is called "a preacher of righteousness" in 2 Pet. 2 : 5, and it was the Spirit of Christ which inspired Noah, and spoke, as it were, by the mouth of that holy man. There is plainly allusion here to Gen. 6 : 3, "And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man;" it had striven by the warnings given him; but these warnings shall cease, "for that he also is flesh; yet his days," the term of his probation yet remaining, "shall be an hundred and twenty years." When did Christ preach to the antediluvian sinners? Before the flood. This is evident, not only from the foregoing, but from the following connection: "Which sometime" (formerly) "were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah" (it is not said waited till after Christ's death, which must have been the case, if Christ after his death went and preached to them), but "in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water." All the calls of Noah, every stroke upon the ark, were so many calls of Christ to a rebellious and perishing world (Matt. 10 : 40 ; Luke 10 : 16 ; John 13 : 20). It is the constant representation of the Bible, that the deluge came, when, and not before, God's long-suffering toward that generation had come to a close (Gen. 7 : 1 ; Matt. 24 : 37-39 ; 2 Pet. 2 : 5). "Elsner," as quoted by Macknight, "on this passage, hath produced examples from the Scriptures, and from Demosthenes, to show that the phrase, he went and preached, is a pleonasm for he preached." Among the examples from Scripture, the clearest and most direct is Eph. 2 : 15-17. "Having abolished, etc., he came and preached peace to you who were afar off, and to them who were nigh." For it is certain, that our Lord after his resurrection did not go personally to the Gentiles to preach peace to them. He preached to them by his apostles only. But if Christ is said by Paul to go and do what he did by his apostles, he may with equal propriety be said by Peter to go and do what he did by his prophet Noah. There is nothing then in the words of Peter to sustain the doctrine of a new probation after death. The persons of whom he spoke were antediluvian sinners, who, at the time he wrote, were spirits in the prison of despair. These had been faithfully warned by the preaching of Noah, before they were carried away by the flood. The argument then from this passage, in favor of a second probation to those who die in ignorance, is wholly out of place; since the antediluvians were not ignorant, but enjoyed many advantages under the preaching of Noah, whose frequent and solemn warnings they utterly disregarded and despised. Divine patience could bear with them no longer. Their wickedness is declared to have been total, and peculiarly aggravated (Gen. 6:5-7). Even if Christ be supposed to have preached to them, after their descent into hades, there is not the smallest evidence or intimation, that any of them obeyed his voice during their second term of probation, and were liberated from their prison. If the passage prove anything to the purpose for which it is alleged, it proves more than was intended, namely, that a new probation has been granted to some of the most hardened sinners, and consequently it is possible at least that all mankind will sooner or later attain salvation. The argument is legitimate for Universalists; but overstrained and self-destructive when applied to the defence of any other creed. J. Woodbridge. 4. Giants in those days. Almost every record of antiquity hands down the tradition of a family or race of giants. Nor does their existence appear to be any more enigmatical than the amazing strength, magnitude, and duration of many of the structures of the ancients—the pyramids, for example, and the hundred gated Thebes. Geology points us to past worlds of gigantic ferns, tree-grasses, and lofty mosses; and to reptiles tall and bulky as the elephant, rhinoceros, or hippopotamus. "There were animal-giants in those days;" and why not human giants in later days? The size of the body oscillates between certain extreme limits. During the early period of man's history, the extreme development of his bulk and strength took place to a much greater extent than at present; though the instances of gigantic stature which still occur are more frequent than is commonly supposed. It is erroneously inferred by many that these antediluvian giants sprang from the union spoken of in the context between the sons of God and the daughters of men. Whereas the statement seems constructed expressly to guard against such an inference: "In those days were the (well-known) Nephilim in the earth. Also after that the sons of God," etc. Two periods are spoken of. Giants existed prior to the period of the unions in question, and continued to exist afterward. J. H. On the whole, it seems that the antediluvian world had reached a desperate pitch of wickedness, the climax of which was attained by the fusion of the two races. The marked features of this wickedness were lust and brutal outrage. P. S.—The flood came, not because the race of Cain were corrupt and wicked, but because the generation of the righteous had fallen into disobedience, lust, and tyranny. When the members of the true Church degenerate, the judgments of God are close at hand. Luther. It is happily clear that God is moved by what we would call moral considerations, and not by arbitrary impulse, in his government of mankind. The man who does an action simply to please himself is said to act arbitrarily; the action is not founded upon argument or reason, and is therefore arbitrary. 5. In this case God gives his reasons, and discloses every step in the process of his pathetic and mournful argument. "God saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth." That is the basis of action. God's purpose in creating man had been frustrated; its frustration involved the ruin of man, as if by a suicidal act. God, therefore, seeing that ruin must come, acted judicially, as in the first instance he had acted creatively. J. P.—"God saw the thoughts of men that they were only evil continually." They were not cherishing their foul conceptions, pursuing their mad calculations, unwatched, uncared for. There was an eye looking down into their most inward secrets, penetrating the intents of their hearts. And that was the eye of One who desired to make them right within; who had determined that His earth should be purged of its corruptions,—should fulfil all the ends of His creation. And why could He not make it fulfil them, by a fiat of His omnipotence? Because He had made man in His own image; because He had given him a will; because He could only restore and regenerate him by restoring and regenerating his will. Hence we have to read all the Bible through, of floods, famines, pestilences, earthquakes, anarchy, tyranny. It is throughout, the history of an actual government, - throughout, the history of an actual education; a government of voluntary creatures to teach them subjection; - an education of voluntary creatures to make them free. And He who carries on this government and education, is seen, the more He makes Himself known to us, to be not a hard despot, but a loving Ruler; with that heart and sympathy in perfection which He requires in His creatures. If this be so, do you wonder that it is said, "It repeated God that He had made man, and it grieved Him at His heart"? Maurice. Every man might have exhibited the modified excellence of a Seth, an Enoch, or a Noah. Each patriarchal family might have displayed its own distinctive phase of excellence; while it yet stood in harmonious relation with the great whole. Every succeeding year, from the first man to the flood, might have added a new page to the volume of Divine manifestation transcribed from the character of man. There was no necessitating reason why the day that poured down the deluge on a world already drenched with evil, did not see it flooded with heavenly light in approbation of its spiritual proficiency. But by what long travail in sin had man reached his fearful climax! Every sinful man that had lived had tried the patience of God "in his own way," in a manner different from all the rest. Every godless family had varied the great experiment on his long-suffering. What lessons, warnings, and significant intimations each man of many centuries had unconsciously sown broadcast as he walked through life; and what vital seeds, numerous as the spores shed in autumn, had others unconsciously scattered in his path - to be all trodden into the general mire! What myriads of children had come age after age, bringing with them traces of their Divine origin and mission - to be all wrought up into the great organization of evil! What an amount of resistance man must have offered to Divine remonstrances and restraints, in order to break through them all! What miseries he had been content to endure in his prolonged hostility against God! J. H. 6. It repeated the Lord.** All the language of this portion of Scripture is suited to the infant condition of the world. Hence human sentiments are even more than in the later books of Scripture attributed to the Almighty. No sound criticism would see any appearance of myth in this. E. H. B. - When the holy Scriptures speak of God, they ascribe hands, and eyes, and feet, to Him - not that He has any of these members, according to the literal signification; but the meaning is, that He has a power to execute all those acts, to the effecting of which these parts in us are instrumental: that is, He can converse with men, as well as if He had a tongue or mouth; can discern all that we do or say, as perfectly as if He had eyes and ears; and can reach us as well as if He had hands or feet. In like manner, the Scripture frequently represents Him as affected with such passions as we perceive in ourselves; namely, as angry and pleased, loving and hating, repenting and grieving; and yet upon reflection we cannot suppose that any of these passions can literally affect the Divine nature: therefore the meaning is that He will as certainly punish the wicked as if He were inflamed with the passion of anger against them; as infallibly reward the good, as we will those for whom we have a particular affection: and that, when He finds any alteration in His creatures, either for the better or the worse, He will as surely change His dispensations toward them as if He really repented or changed His mind. It is by way of analogy and comparison, therefore, that the nature and passions of men are ascribed to God: so that when He is said to repent or grieve, the meaning must be, not that He perceived anything that He was ignorant of before to give Him any uneasiness (for "known unto God are all His works from the beginning"); but only that He altered His conduct with regard to men as they varied in their behavior toward Him, just as we are wont to do when we are moved by any of these passions and changes of affection. Stackhouse. - A truly comprehensive study of God, and of the real conditions under which he must be revealed, makes it more than doubtful whether we have gained a more accurate, or even a more spiritual conception of God, by discarding what is called the anthropopathic imagery of the Old Testament, - representing God as feeling emotions, joy, grief, pity, like ourselves. The straining after literal accuracy dilutes the vigorous conception. Our God sometimes seems further off than the Jewish Jehovah was, and what we gain to exactness, in our attempts to eliminate these material configurations of Deity, is worse than lost to trust, in the dissipating of the personality. F. D. H. "Repentance with man," says an old divine, "is the changing of the will; repentance with God the willing of a change." In this case the very same principles which would lead him to reward and bless the obedient, would lead him also to punish the perverse and rebellious. The words before us express, with an energy and impressiveness which probably nothing purely literal could have conveyed, the exceeding sinfulness and provoking nature of sin. Bush.—It does not bespeak any change in God's mind; for he is in one mind, and who can turn him? But it bespeaks a change of his way; when God had made man upright, he rested and was refreshed (Ex. 31:17), and his way toward him was such as showed he was pleased with the work of his own hands; but now that man was apostatized, he could not do otherwise than show himself displeased: so that the change was in man, not in God. God repented that he had made man; but we never find him repenting that he redeemed man, though that was a work of much greater expense. H.—As a man, when he repents, changes his course of procedure, so God, when he changes his procedure, is said to repent, seeing that such change would be in man the result of repentance. Yet there is here a change, not as in man, of the will or purpose—but of the work of procedure only. Repentance in man is the changing of his will as well as of his work; repentance in God is the change of the work only, and not of the will, which in Him is incapable of change. Seeing that there is no mistake in his councils, no disappointment of his purposes, no frustration of his expectations—God can never change his will, though he may will to change his work. The cause is, in all these cases, put, by metonymy, for the effect. It would seem that all these expressions, whereby God is presented to the mind as invested with human parts and passions, involve a sort of looking forward to that period in which they would all become proper and appropriate, by our being permitted to view God in Christ, who has carried the real experiences of our nature into the very heavens, where he sits, not as one who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but as one who has been tempted like as we are, yet remained without sin. Had God been, in the Old Testament, set before our mind wholly in the abstract qualities of his being—there would have been a lack of unity in the mode in which he is presented to the apprehension of the heart (we say not of the mind) under the two dispensations. But the Lord, knowing from the beginning the aspect in which he would be eventually presented to the church in Christ, permitted beforehand these humanized indications of himself, that there might be under both dispensations an entire oneness of feeling in regard to him. Kit. 7. The alternation of epochs of tolerance and destruction is in accordance with the workings of God's providence here and now. For though the characteristic of that providence as we see it is merciful forbearance, yet we are not left without many a premonition of the mighty final "day of the Lord." For long years or centuries a nation or an institution goes on slowly departing from truth, forgetting the principles on which it rests, or the purposes for which it exists. Patiently God pleads with the evildoers, lavishes gifts and warnings upon them. He holds back the inevitable avenging as long as restoration is yet possible—and His eye and heart see it to be possible long after men conclude that the corruption is hopeless. But at last comes a period when He says, "I have long still holden my peace, and refrained Myself; now will I destroy." A. Maclaren. 8. Noah found grace. Now for the first time grace itself finds a tongue to express its name. Grace has its fountain in the divine breast. The stream has been flowing forth to Adam, Eve, Abel, Enoch, and others unknown to fame. By the time it reaches Noah it has found a name, by which it is recognized among men to this day. This completes the circle of saving doctrine in regard to God that comes down from the antediluvian times. He intimates that the seed of the woman, an individual pre-eminently so called, will bruise the serpent's head. He clothes our first parents with coats of skin—an earnest and an emblem of the better, the moral clothing of the soul. He regards Abel and his offering. He accepts him that in faith does well. He translates Enoch, who walked with him. His Spirit has been striving with antediluvian man. Here are the Spirit of God and the seed of the woman. Here are clothing, regarding, accepting, translating. Here, then, is salvation provided and applied, begun, continued, and completed. And last, though not least, grace comes out to view, the eternal fountain of the whole. On the part of man, also, we have repenting, believing, confessing, offering, calling on the name of the Lord, and walking with God. 9. The close of the preceding document introduces the opening topic of this one. The same rule applies to all that have gone before. The generations of the skies and the land (ch. 2:4) are introduced by the finishing of the skies and the land (2:1); the generations of man in the line of Seth (5:1), by the birth of Seth (4:25); and now the generations of Noah, by the notice that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. The narrative here also, as usual, reverts to a point of time before the stage of affairs described in the close of the preceding passage. Yet there is nothing here that seems to indicate a new author. The previous paragraph is historical, and closely connected with the end of the fourth chapter; and it suitably prepares for the proceedings of Noah, under the divine direction, on the eve of the deluge. We have now a recapitulation of the agent and the occasion, and then the divine commission and its execution. Noah is here characterized by two new and important epithets,—just and perfect. To be just is to be right in point of law, and thereby entitled to all the blessings of the acquitted and justified. The perfect is the tested in holiness. M.—He was perfect, not with a sinless perfection, but a perfection of sincerity; and it is well for us, that by virtue of the covenant of grace, upon the score of Christ's righteousness, sincerity is accepted as our Gospel perfection. He walked with God, as Enoch had done before him; he was not only honest, but devout; he walked, that is, he acted with God, as one always under his eye; he lived a life of communion with God; it was his constant care to conform himself to the will of God, to please him, and to approve himself to him. God looks down upon those with an eye of favor, who sincerely look up to him with an eye of faith. But that which crowns his character is, that thus he was and thus he did in his generation, in that corrupt, degenerate age in which his lot was cast. It is easy to be religious when religion is in fashion; but it is an evidence of strong faith and resolution, to swim against a stream to heaven, and to appear for God when no one else appears for him: so Noah did, and it is upon record to his immortal honor. H. That there was during this period a growing apprehension of the Divine purpose in redemption among the obedient, appears plain from what is told us of Enoch and of Noah, that they "walked with God," or in his ways; and of the preaching and translation of Enoch, and the preaching of Noah. The statement in Heb. 11: that "these all died in faith, and were persuaded of the promises and embraced them," can only mean that they had such knowledge of God's purpose in redemption so far as then revealed us to be workers together with him in faith. Andrews. 11,12. Three times the sacred text repeats it, that the earth was corrupt, adding that it was full of violence, just as if the watchful eye of the Lord, who "looked upon the earth," had been searching and trying the children of men, and was lingering in pity over it, before judgment was allowed to descend. A. E. Our most veritable, though saddest, impressions of man's greatness, we derive from the magnificent ruin he displays. In that ruin we distinguish fallen powers, that lie as broken pillars on the ground; temples of beauty, whose scarred and shattered walls still indicate their ancient, original glory; summits covered with broken stones, where the palaces of high thought and great aspiration stood, and righteous courage went up to maintain the citadel of the mind,—all a ruin now, "archangel ruined." And exactly this is the legitimate impression of the scripture representations of man, as apostate from duty and God. Thoughtfully regarded, all exaggerations and contending theories apart, it is as if they were showing us the original dignity of man, from the magnificence of the ruin in which he lies. How sublime a creature must that be, call him either man or demon, who is able to confront the Almighty and tear himself away from his throne. And, as if to forbid our taking his deep misery and shame as tokens of contempt, imagining that a creature so humiliated is inherently weak and low, the first men are shown us living out a thousand years of lustful energy, and braving the Almighty in strong defiance to the last. "The earth also is corrupt before God, and the earth is filled with violence." We look, as it were, upon a race of Titans, broken loose from order, and making war upon God and each other; beholding, in their outward force, a type of that original majesty which pertains to the moral nature of a being endowed with a self-determining liberty, capable of choices against God, and thus of a character in evil that shall be his own. They fill the earth, even up to the sky, with wrath and the demoniacal tumult of their wrongs, till God can suffer them no longer, sending forth his flood to sweep them from the earth. Bushnell. 13. Miraculous interpositions were necessary in order to prevent the termination of all progress; and they were to be expected, as parts of a plan from which the Deity has never departed. The world itself originated in miracle; and contains in its bosom the memorials of having been, at distant intervals, the theatre of successive creations. Man himself, originated in miracle, is preconfigured for the recognition of the supernatural as truly as he is for the belief of the natural. Hence, when it occurred, as in the translation of Enoch, it brought nothing new into human belief; the doctrine was there before. When an inspired communication was made, the Divine Being was but continuing the employment of a method for the impartation of religious knowledge, to which man had owed, at first, the elements of even material knowledge— the Parent was but once more speaking to his children on affairs of great urgency; and hence the revelation did but corroborate the pre-existing fears of the wicked and the hopes of the righteous. The seasons selected for such interpositions, too, would be such as to invite, or to excite, the expectation of them; and, when they did occur, so adapted would they be to the exigencies of the time, as to stop nothing natural, and to set nothing unnatural in motion; their tendency being only to impair the force of the evils which threatened to destroy all human progress, and to give to that progress continuity and impulse. "All observation and experience are against a miracle," says the sceptic. "Nature is uniform in her operations. The laws of the human mind compel my disbelief." The error lies in confounding that inner circle called the course of nature, with that larger outer circle—the course of providence, which preceded nature and encompassed it; which originated it, employs it, and, at distant intervals, adds to it, or modifies it, at pleasure. That no similar event has taken place may be true. But is that sufficient to prove that nothing like it ever will or can occur? Experience is, in this sense, against everything till it occurs. The existence of man himself was contrary to all that had previously taken place on the earth. If the proposition that nothing will take place but what has taken place is to be admitted, it must be because it is a principle of the Divine Being; and if it be such at present, it must ever have been such; and if it has ever been such, even before creation began, no creation could ever have taken place. There was no precedent for the creation of a world, any more than there is now said for its destruction. Thus, the objection becomes an intellectual absurdity. J. H. 14. Make an Ark.** It was an enormous undertaking, demanding all the cutting instruments and metallic implements already invented. Observe the material, as congruous to the region as was the shittim or acacia wood of the tabernacle to the region of Sinai. The "gopher" wood of the ark is admitted to be pitch-wood, therefore light and comparatively easy of working. Lexicographers, from the similarity of the consonant elements, incline to suggest specifically the cypress. Now the cypress abounds throughout Asia Minor. It grows to the height of one hundred and twenty feet. Nothing could be more suitable. The pine also abounds in these regions. The cypress or the pine would have furnished the pitch for the caulking; or if we suppose the pitch to be bitubitu-men, we are reminded of the extensive petroleum works now carried on at Buku on the Caspian, and of the bitumen springs still flowing at Is on the Euphrates. And the olive tree of which the dove brought a fresh-plucked leaf, grows also in Armenia, and is found on the south side of Mount Ararat at its foot. S. C. B. 15. Of the shape of the ark nothing is said; but its dimensions are given. It was to be 300 cubits in length, 50 in breadth, and 30 in height. Taking 21 inches for the cubit, the ark would be 525 feet in length, 87 feet 6 inches in breadth, and 52 feet 6 inches in height. Two objects only were aimed at in its construction: the one that it should have ample stowage, and the other that it should be able to keep steady upon the water. P. S.—The ARK was neither intended nor suited for nastical purposes. It was not meant for navigation, but for carrying freight, for which it was much more suited than if it had been constructed according to the principles of shipbuilding. K. 16. The interpretation of Gesenius seems evidently the true, viz. that the unusual word translated "window" (the word in ch. 8:6 is quite another word) means really a set of windows, a window course, a system of lighting. E. H. B.—Noah was to make, i.e., to provide for giving, light to the ark. This might be done by a series of windows or by leaving a vertical space on each side, on the ridge of the roof, and covering this on the top. Aft. Though there were many rooms in the ark, THERE WAS ONLY ONE DOOR. It is said, "And the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof." And so, there is only one door into the ark of our salvation, and that is Christ. "He that cometh not in by the door, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." Sparyron. 17. How impressively did the Divine prediction of the flood proclaim the calm, certain, and majestic movements of justice! The world probably then, as now, derided the idea of its destruction; scientifically demonstrated, in its way, the physical impossibility of a general deluge; proved historically that such an event never had taken place; and congratulated itself on the superior notions which it entertained of the Divine benevolence—notions which rendered it politely horrified at the bare mention of such a catastrophe. But on went the note of preparation, in the building of the Ark, without pause or relaxation. And many a sinner would see in the coming crisis, a prediction, by fact, of the last judgment. And the "preacher of righteousness" would solemnly point to it as an instalment of the great doom predicted by Enoch (Jude 14, 15). J. H. 18. God here makes Noah the man of his covenant, another Hebrew periphrasis of a friend. But with thee will I establish my covenant. The covenant of pre-widener; that the course of nature shall be continued to the end of time, notwithstanding the interruption which the flood would give to it; this promise was immediately made to Noah and his sons (ch. 9 : 8, etc.). They were as trustees for all this part of the creation, and a great honor was thereby put upon him and his. The covenant of grace; that God would be to him a God, and that out of his seed God would take to himself a people. When God makes a covenant, he establishes it, he makes it sure, he makes it good; his are everlasting covenants. The covenant of grace has in it the recompense of singular services, and the fountain and foundation of all distinguishing favors; we need desire no more, either to make up our losses for God, or to make up a happiness for us in God, than to have his covenant established with us. H. We find the key to this great transaction in this saying, With thee will I establish my covenant, etc., in the saying of the apostle (Heb. 11 : 4): "By faith Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his house; by which he condemned the world, and became the heir of righteousness which is by faith." The whole transaction is thus at once lifted above the sphere of the natural. It is no mere record of how a great natural disaster once befell the earth after 1600 years of the reign of man upon it, through some upheaving of the Caspian or other seas. It is the account of how, at the close of the first cycle of the Adam race the corruption became so enormous that judgment ceased to linger and damnation ceased to slumber. It was a transaction that has had no parallel, nor will have until another judgment by fire shall fall upon the earth and the heavens shall melt with fervent heat. Noah, as the end of that cycle, becomes also the Adam—the second ancestor of the human race. Hence, as with Adam, God entered into a covenant of life for himself personally and the race, as represented in him; so now, when about to visit judgment upon man in this his second fall and wind up that first cycle and old order of things, he declares to him whom he has chosen as the germ for the new race, "With thee will I establish my covenant," as before with Adam. This covenant idea is not only the scripture form, but the sublimest form of setting forth the relations bebetween God the Saviour and man the sinner. The very aim and end of the representation is, to distinguish this revealed religion from mere natural religion. The very fact that God has endowed man with moral, rational and religious faculties, at once puts him above the plane of nature, to be operated upon by mere natural laws as the other creatures and works of God. And, accordingly, the Creator is represented as entering into covenant with him—that is, revealing himself as the Infinite Personality binding Himself with the finite supernatural being. Thus man is put above the sphere of mere natural law and natural right, as deducted from the universal nature of things. While, indeed, by reason of his physical nature, still bound like the animal and other creatures of God, yet God gives him more than a natural right by making him the subject of special promises to which the Author of nature binds Himself. The very term "covenant" (co-veniens) signifies in Scripture a coming together of the divine and the human spirit. It involves, therefore, a higher class of ideas than those of nature and natural things. In nature the ideas are of forces, gravities, attractions, affinities, appetites, instincts, etc. In grace the ideas are of covenant parties, promises, agreements, oaths, conditions, fulfilments, perfectness, penalties, rewards, etc. The tendency of the ethics and theology of our times to base the relations of God and man upon the "nature of things," and to determine the place of man by philosophy, obscures all the higher glory of positive law covenant, promise, and the dignity of the human soul as capable, through faith, of standing in forensic and current relations with God. This modern tendency is rather to trace man's relations to the universe than to God the sovereign of the universe. Hence the saying to Noah here, with thee I will establish my covenant (literally make my covenant stand), implies that the covenant with Adam had been impaired; it had fallen down as a covenant with the race and had need now to be raised up. Hence as Tayler Lewis, by whom these thoughts have been suggested, very properly says: "There is no religion without this idea of a personal covenant with a personal God, and therefore all such views as those of Comte, Mill and Spencer are for all moral and religious purposes wholly atheistical. They acknowledge no personality in God; they cannot use the personal pronoun in speaking of him or to him. It may be said in truth that all religion is a covenant, even when religion appears in its most perverted form. It has some appearance of being in the very etymology of the Latin word. Cicero makes it form 're lego,' but a better derivation would be from 'religio,' to bind, bind back—religio is a positive bond (higher than nature) between straying, fallen man and his Maker" S. R. The building of the ark commenced when Noah was four hundred and eighty years old; that is, before any of his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, had been born,—in fact, just twenty years before the birth of Shem. Thus the great faith of Noah appeared not only in building an ark in the midst of a scoffing and unbelieving generation, and that against all human probability of its ever being needed, and one hundred and twenty years before it was actually required, but in providing room for "his sons" and his "sons' wives," while as yet he himself was childless! A. E. 19. The distinction between clean and unclean animals—of the former of which seven of every sort, and of the latter one pair, were to be selected—had even before the flood grown up among men as the offspring of custom, and the closer observation of nature, and had also received the divine sanction. Only the former sort were permitted to be sacrificed to the Lord, and (after or perhaps even before the flood) used as food by man, and hence a greater number of them, seven pairs (the sacred number of the covenant), were to be taken into the ark. Noah was to transfer from the old to the new world, not his mere life, but the pure worship of God, of which sacrifices formed a part. C. G. B. 20. Only the animals necessary to man, or peculiar to the region covered by the deluge, required to be included in the ark. It seems likely that wild animals in general were not included. It is obvious, therefore, that we cannot calculate the number of animals preserved in the ark, or compare the space they would require with its recorded dimensions. We may rest assured that there was accommodation for all that needed to be there. M. 22. Thus did Noah. He prepared the ark; and during one hundred and twenty years preached righteousness to that sinful generation (2 Pet. 2:5). And this we are informed (1 Pet. 3:18, 19, etc.) he did by the Spirit of Christ: for it was only through him, that the doctrine of repentance could ever be successfully preached. The people in Noah's time are represented as shut up in prison, arrested and condemned by God's justice, but graciously allowed the space of one hundred and twenty years to repent in. A. C.—Doubtless Noah continued his "preaching of righteousness," especially as occasions arose from the scoffing curiosity of those who watched his work; but that work preached louder still. And so "the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing." But it waited in vain. The unheeded warning, as is usual, only plunged men into greater carelessness. They went on, "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark; and knew not till the flood came and took them all away." P. S. Methinks I see those monstrous sons of Lamech coming to Noah, and asking him what he means by that strange work; whether he means to sail upon the dry land. To whom when he reports God's purpose and his, they go away laughing at his idleness, and tell one another, in sport, that too much holiness hath made him mad: yet cannot they all flout Noah out of his faith; he preaches, and builds, and finishes. Doubtless more hands went to this work than his; many a one wrought upon the ark, which yet was not saved in the ark. Our outward works cannot save us without our faith; we may help to save others and perish ourselves, what a wonder of mercy is this I here see! One poor family called out of a world, and as it were eight grains of corn fanned from a whole barnful of chaff. Bp. H. He "built an ark to the saving of his house." Here was faith, first, in God's warning—the flood will certainly come; here was faith too in God's promise, or rather in God's command implying a promise—"If I build the ark he has commanded, it will save me when the flood comes." And when a sinner flies for refuge to the Lord Jesus Christ, his appointed Saviour, it is faith that leads him to Christ, and it is exactly thus his faith works. He has been taught at last that God really means something when he threatens destruction to sinful men, and, at the same time, that he may trust his mercy for salvation when, in obedience to his command, he seeks salvation in his Son. "There is the danger," says God, "and there is the deliverance;" the sinner through grace believes him, and he is seen fleeing from the danger to the great deliverance. C. Bradley. 1. AND the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I 2 seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee 3 seven and seven, the male and his female; and of the beasts that are not clean two, the male 4 and his female; of the fowl also of the air, seven and seven, male and female: to keep seed 5 alive upon the face of all the earth. For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the 6 earth forty days and forty nights; and every living thing that I have made will I destroy from 7 off the face of the ground. And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him. 8 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. And 9 Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because 10 of the waters of the flood. Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and 11 of every thing that creepeth upon the ground, there went in two and two unto Noah into the 12 ark, male and female, as God commanded Noah. And it came to pass after the seven days, 13 that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in 14 the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day were all the foun- 15 tains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain 16 was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. In the selfsame day entered Noah, and 17 Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his 18 sons with them into the ark; they, and every beast after its kind, and all the cattle after 19 their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after its kind, and every 20 fowl after its kind, every bird of every sort. And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two 21 and two of all flesh wherein is the breath of life. And they that went in, went in male and 22 female of all flesh, as God commanded him; and the LORD shut him in. And the flood was 23 forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up 24 above the earth. And the waters prevailed, and increased greatly upon the earth; and the 25 ark went upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; 26 and all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits 27 upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that 28 moved upon the earth, both fowl, and cattle, and beast, and every creeping thing that creepeth 29 upon the earth, and every man; all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, of 30 all that was in the dry land, died. And every living thing was destroyed which was upon the 31 face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and creeping thing, and fowl of the heaven; and 32 they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only was left, and they that were with him 33 in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days. Locality of the Flood. There is a remarkable portion of the globe, chiefly on the Asiatic Continent, though it extends into Europe, and which is nearly equal to all Europe in extent; whose rivers (some of them the Volga, Oural, Sihon, Kour, and the Amoo, of great size) do not fall into the ocean, but, on the contrary, are all turned inward, losing themselves, in the eastern part of the tract, in the lakes of a rainless district; in the western parts, into such seas as the Caspian and the Aral. In this region there are extensive districts still under the level of the ocean. Vast plains, white with salt, and charged with sea-shells, show that the Caspian Sea was, at no distant period, greatly more extensive than it is now. With the well-known facts, then, before us, regarding this depressed Asiatic region, let us suppose that the human family, amounting to several millions, were congregated in that tract of country, which, extending eastward from the modern Ararat to far beyond the Sea of Aral, includes the original Caucasian centre of the race. Let us suppose that, the hour of judgment having arrived, the land began gradually to sink (as the tract in the Run of Cutch sank in the year 1819) equably for 40 days at the rate of about 400 feet per day,—a rate not twice greater than that at which the tide rises in the Strait of Magellan, and which would have rendered itself apparent as but a persistent inward flowing of the sea. The depression, which, by extending to the Euxine Sea and the Persian Gulf on the one hand and the Gulf of Finland on the other, would open up by three separate channels the "fountains of the great deep," and which included an area of 2000 miles each way, would, at the end of the fortieth day, be sunk in its centre to the depth of 1600 feet,—sufficient to bury the loftiest mountains of the district; and yet, having a gradient of declination of but 16 feet per mile, the contour of its hills and plains would remain apparently what they had been before, and the doomed inhabitants would see but the water rising along the mountain-sides, and one refuge after another swept away. Hugh Miller. The preceding chapter accounts for a period of 120 years. In the present chapter we reach the end of that period. The ark has been built in the prescribed form with due preparation and capacity. Noah has done according to all that God had commanded him, and now the Lord gives to Noah fuller directions concerning the animals which he was to take with him. 2,3. The boundary line between clean and unclean animals is marked by nature. Every tribe of mankind would distinguish between the sheep and the hyena, between the dove and the vulture. Whether animal food was eaten before the Deluge or not, it is certain that flocks and herds were fed for the sake of their milk and wool, and that of them victims were offered in sacrifice. This alone would separate between the clean and the unclean. It is not improbable, that the distinction even of the names "clean and unclean" had been fully established by custom, long before it was recognized and ratified by the Law. E. H. B.—Many things, established afterward in the law of Moses, obtained before that law, and were generally practised by the worshippers of God: for example; sacrifices (Gen. 4: 8, 13), the paying of tithe (Gen. 14), circumcision (Gen. 17), the right of primogeniture (Gen. 25), making vows (Gen. 28), marrying the brother's wife (Gen. 38: 8). And some of those things, which Moses forbade, were forbidden before his law: as the eating of blood, and murder, which was a capital crime before the law (Gen. 9: 4, 6). And there is no doubt but the difference of clean and unclean beasts, with respect to sacrifice, was known and observed before the Law of Moses, and before the Flood. Bp. Kidder. There remains in these commands concerning food the general truth for all times, that everything outward should by emblem lead us to think of what is inward—that the external symbolic purity, like every other discipline and custom, especially in the service of God, ought to prepare the way for the life of true holiness; and that therefore we can never regard with indifference the emblems of our own sins in the world of creation, nor anything, indeed, which in nature serves to remind us of death and destruction, and of the wild power of unbridled lust. Ger! 4. He went into the ark, upon notice that the flood would come after seven days, though, probably, as yet there appeared no visible sign of its approach, but all continued serene and clear; for as he prepared the ark by faith in the warning given that the flood would come, so he went into it by faith in this warning that it would come quickly, though he did not see that the second causes had yet begun to work. In every step he took he walked by faith, and not by sense. H. 7. His ark was builded and the time was come that he should enter in. There was something formidable in that final and conclusive step. But the patriarch took it. He felt that this contrivance was as mighty as the Divine command, and he rejoiced to be the prisoner of a promise-keeping God. Fearless and unfaltering he stepped in, and felt that he was now the guest of God, and need fear no further ill. And in obeying the Divine command and casting himself on the Providence of God, the believer is like the patriarch entering the dark and unproved ark. He knows not what shall be the issue. There is no crevice by which he can discern the course along which he is drifting; no aperture to cheer him with the sight of emerging peaks or nearer land; no window except one overhead, to teach him that he must look up and look no other way. And many a time the winds are loud and the waters high. But his heart keeps up, till, after long waiting and many a prayer, one day the door open and lets him out on a large and wealthy land, and he finds how good it is to be piloted blindfold to such a pleasant place. To every age the history of Noah has been a burning and shining light, and the great lesson it has taught is the faithfulness of God, the wisdom of simply trusting Him, and promptly complying with His commands; and it tells to every prisoner of hope, and every pilgrim in the dark, The Lord knoweth how to deliver them who put their trust in Him. Hamilton. 8,9. Of beasts and fowls there went in.** He who first miraculously brought them to Adam, that he might give them their names, now brings them to Noah, that he may preserve their lives. A. C. 11. Were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. It cannot be imagined that this is a philosophical explanation of the flood. The use of Scripture is always to describe the phenomena of nature, not to trace their hidden causes. The words here written express only the effect produced upon man's senses. There was a flood of waters from above and beneath. E. H. B.—The beautiful figure of the windows of the skies being opened is preceded by the equally striking one of the fountains of the great deep being broken up. This was the chief source of the flood. A change in the level of the land was accomplished. The waters of the great deep now broke their bounds, flowed in on the sunken surface, and drowned the world of man, with all its inhabitants. 12.** The accompanying heavy rain of forty days and nights was only a subsidiary instrument in the deluging of the land. We may imagine the sinking of the land to have been so gradual as to occupy the whole of these forty days of rain. There is an awful magnificence in this constant uplifting of the billows over the yielding land. M. The Bible does not give us a single picture of the dreadful scenes that followed. It merely tells us that the tops of the mountains were covered, and that every living creature died. It leaves us to conceive the dreadful realities which that statement implies. W. G. B.—The narrative is vivid and forcible, though entirely wanting in that sort of description which in a modern historian or poet would have occupied the largest space. We see nothing of the death-struggle; we hear not the cry of despair; we are not called upon to witness the frantic agony of husband and wife, and parent and child, as they fled in terror before the rising waters. Nor is a word said of the sadness of the one righteous man who, safe himself, looked upon the destruction which he could not avert. But an impression is left upon the mind with peculiar vividness from the very simplicity of the narrative, and it is that of utter desolation. This is heightened by the repetition and contrast of two ideas. On the one hand, we are reminded no less than six times in the narrative who the tenants of the ark were, the favored and rescued few; and, on the other hand, the total and absolute blotting out of everything else is not less emphatically dwelt upon. Peroxene. Were there only eight saved? There were thousands, millions sought. Nor is it justice to God to forget how long a period of patience, and preaching, and warning, and compassion, preceded that dreadful deluge. Long before the clouds rained down death; long before the floor and solid pavement of this earth, under the prodigious agencies at work, broke up, like the deck of a leaking ship, and the waters rushed from below, to meet the waters from above, and sink a guilty world; long before the time when the ark floated away by tower and town, and those crowded hill-tops, where frantic groups had clustered, and amid prayers and curses, and shrieks and shouts, hung out their signals of distress—very long before this, God had been calling an impenitent world to repentance. Had they no warning in Noah's preaching? Was there nothing to alarm them in the very sight of the ark, as story rose upon story; and nothing in the sound of those ceaseless hammers to waken all but the dead? It was not till mercy's arm grew weary ringing the warning bell, that God "poured out his fury" on them. The ark stood useless for years, a huge laughing-stock for the scoffer's wit; it stood till it was covered with the marks of age, and its builders with the contempt of the world; and many a sneer had those men to bear, as pointing to the serene heavens above and an empty ark below, the question was put, "Where is the promise of his coming?" Most patient God! Then, as now, thou wert slow to punish—"waiting to be gracious." Guthrie. 13. Though men were to be reduced to so small a number, and it would be very desirable to have the world speedily repeopled, yet Noah's sons were to have each of them but one wife, which strengthens the arguments against having many wives; for from the beginning of this new world it was not so; as, at first, God made, so now he kept alive, but one woman for one man (Matt. 19 : 4, 8). H. 16. And the Lord shut him in.** By some providential or supernatural agency the door of the ark, which could not have been secured with pitch or bitumen by Noah, was secured and made water-tight. E. H. B.—As he shut him in, so he shut the OTHERS out. God had waited one hundred and twenty years upon that generation: they did not repent; they filled up the measure of their iniquities, and then wrath came upon them to the uttermost. A. C.—These two ideas of closing and excluding are both conveyed by the original as may be seen (Ps. 35 : 3 ; 2 Kings 4 : 4, 5). There is probably at the same time a latent implication that without such protection the ark would have been liable to a violent assault from the desperate multitudes, who, from the character given of that generation, were undoubtedly capable of the most flagrant outrages. And let it be considered that something very nearly resembling this will be acted over again. "As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of man." Not only shall the world, as then, be full of dissipation, but the concluding scene is described in nearly the same words, "And they that were ready went in, and the door was shut!" Bush. There is room enough in Christ for all comers. Those that by faith come into Christ, the Ark, shall by the power of God be shut in, and kept as in a stronghold by the power of God (1 Pet. 1:5). God put Adam into paradise, but he did not shut him in, and so he threw himself out; but when he put Noah into the ark, he shut him in, and so, when he brings a soul to Christ, he insures the salvation: it is not in our own keeping, but in the Mediator's hand. The door of mercy will shortly be shut against those that now make light of it. Now knock, and it shall be opened; but the time will come when it shall not (Luke 13:25). H. 11-20. With a graphic minuteness we have the exact year, the month, the day of the month, when the great rain commenced upon the earth, and Noah went into the ark. Were ever the pictorial and the statistical combined in so life-like a description? Surely the man who first painted this scene must have been in that ark when it was "lifted up," and went walking forth upon the waters; he must have been an eye-witness of that irresistibly rising wave, those disappearing hills, all ending at last in that sky-bounded waste. 19. Under the whole heaven. Who that has any true love or reverence for the Bible would raise an argument, on these words, either for or against the absolute universality of the deluge, or think of interpreting the writer at all by either our modern geography or our modern astronomy! It was all of earth he knew, or that was known to Moses after him. The divine Spirit that employed his vivid conception, as well as his vivid language, has given it to us as the measure and the assurance of his truthfulness; and it is just that truthfulness which, in such an account as this, is of the highest critical value. T. L. 19. All the high mountains. Similar terms are abundantly used where they must certainly be taken in a limited though wide extent. To notice only passages in the Pentateuch itself, although the New Testament supplies even stronger examples: compare Gen. what? Undoubtedly from that which formed the real element of danger—the corruption, enmity, and violence of ungodly men. It was this which wasted the Church of God, and brought it to the verge of destruction. All was ready to perish. It was to save him—and with him, the cause of God—from this source of imminent danger and perdition, that the flood was sent; and it could only do so by effectually separating between him and the seed of evildoers—engulfing them in ruin, and sustaining him uninjured in his temporary home. The direct and immediate object was the extermination of that wicked race whose heaven-daring impiety and hopeless impenitence was the real danger that menaced the cause and people of God,—“the destroying of those (to use the language that evidently refers to it in Rev. 11 : 18) who destroyed the earth.” P. F. 23. Only Noah was left.** The Divine patience had “endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fit for destruction.” For a hundred and twenty years the seasons had revolved. Only the prophetic ark arose; proclaiming that every added day was a winged messenger from the mercy-seat inviting men to repent. As if lingering to see whether some ground might not yet appear for withdrawing the doom, whether the world’s last consummating sin might not be indefinitely delayed, “the long-suffering of God had waited while the ark was a preparing.” But man’s intense depravity was more than a match for even such patience. And now the time had come when the evil must be swept from the earth to make way for yet greater good. The planet over which “the morning stars had sang together,” and which might still have been floating through the heavens to the same strains—the ark of space—now showed only a solitary vessel in the midst of a shoreless waste of waters, freighted with the hardly-saved wreck of a world departed. But that vessel was conveying into the future the precious germs of a new era of the Divine manifestation. For the human incarnation of the Divine—the great manifestation of God by man, as well as to him—is yet to come. J. H. Noah lives; when all about him were monuments of justice, thousands falling on his right hand and ten thousands on his left, he was a monument of mercy; only with his eyes might he behold and see the reward of the wicked (Ps. 91 : 7, 8). In the floods of great waters, they did not come nigh him (Pa. 32 : 6). We have reason to think, that while the long-suffering of God waited Noah not only preached to but prayed for that wicked world, and would have turned away the wrath; but his prayers return into his own bosom, and are answered only in his own escape; which is plainly referred to (Ez. 14 : 14), Noah, Daniel, and Job shall but deliver their own souls. H. In vain doth he fly whom God pursues. There is no way to fly from his judgments, but to fly to his mercy by repenting. The faith of the righteous cannot be so much derided as their success is magnified: how securely doth Noah ride out this uproar of heaven, earth and waters! He knew that he which owned the waters would steer him; that he who shut him in would preserve him. How happy a thing is faith! What a quiet safety, what a heavenly peace, doth it work in the soul in the midst of all the inundations of evil! Bp. H.—How easily might the Lord have translated Noah as Enoch was translated, and have closed the sad record of humanity with the flood! But, in the midst of judgments, he had purposes of mercy; and he put salvation in contrast with destruction by providing for the safety of his servant and his family, and continuing, through him, at once the line of descent from Adam and the line of promise unto the Saviour. How tender and thoughtful was the care that God took of his servant in all the preparations for his comfort during the time of the flood! And how strong were the faith of Noah and his spirit of obedience, that led him, without hesitation, to undertake so vast a work as building and storing the ark upon the bare command of Jehovah! But, as he rode above that mighty sea, that faith was justified, that righteousness was honored, and his ark became the symbol of refuge and hope to the people of God in all after-ages. J. P. T. The account of the flood concerns us all. The sin which brought down that judgment is not a thing of the most remote antiquity; it is of our own days, it is here amongst us, it is everywhere. For what does our Lord mean, when He says, “they ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage”? He is naming, not occasional crimes which disturb society, but society’s most ordinary and most necessary practices; things which are neither crimes nor sins in themselves; things which all may do and must do. It is as if He had said, “They rose in the morning, and lay down to rest at night; they went to their daily work, and were refreshed by their daily recreations; they had their hopes and their enjoyments; they lived as we are living daily.” But then our Lord goes on to say, that the end of this life was, that the flood came and destroyed them all: that is, in the emphatic sense of the word death, which it bears when spoken of as God’s judgment, "the end of all these things was death." Such simply is our Lord's language, with no softening or explanation given. Yet we know that he did not mean that because men ate and drank; and married, and bought and sold, and planted and builded, that therefore they were and would be destroyed. We have here the same sort of language which He employs on other occasions; "Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep." Yet it is no sin to laugh. "Woe unto you that are full, for ye shall be hungry." Yet it is no sin to be full. "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Yet Abraham, the father of the faithful, was rich; and David, the man after God's own heart, had kingly wealth, and kingly state and power also. Why then does our Lord so speak, and that not once only or in one place but on several occasions, as if this manner of speaking were used purposely. We cannot surely be mistaken in believing that He did speak so purposely; that He did mean us to understand that there was a natural danger in the things of which He was speaking, which if left to itself and not earnestly struggled against would most certainly lead to the following judgment; that he who laughed, unless he could laugh in faith, would surely weep; that he who was full, unless he carefully remembered from whom his good things came, would surely be hungry; that they who lived a peaceful, a busy, and a happy life, would be cut off from life eternal, unless they took good heed to live unto God. And further our Lord meant us to see, what experience largely shows, that the things which would take away the poison from laughter, from plenty, from a busy and enjoying life, were not things easily to be procured and at any moment,—things which all when warned of their danger would immediately procure for their safety. Arnold. Extent of the deluge. There can be no doubt that the flood was universal, so far as man was concerned; that it extended to all the then known world. The literal truth of the narration obliges us to believe that the whole human race, except eight persons, perished by the waters of the flood. But the language of the Book of Genesis does not compel us to suppose that the whole surface of the globe was actually covered with water. P. S.—If we carefully consider the nature of the narrative, we shall surely be led to conclude that the deluge is described from the point of view of an eye-witness, not from the point of view of the Omnipotent. That merely is related which actually appeared. The deluge described in Genesis is pictured as it would have presented itself to the eyes of Noah and his family. It is in the highest degree probable that the description is really that which was given by one of such eye-witnesses. The words may certainly mean that the deluge was universal over the whole extent of the world. Yet, if only the inhabited world was inundated, the effect would have been the same to Noah, and would most likely have been described in the same words. Cook. It is not to be supposed that the entire globe of the earth was covered with water. Where was the need of overwhelming those regions in which there were no human beings? It would be highly unreasonable to suppose that mankind had so increased before the deluge as to have penetrated to all the corners of the earth. It is, indeed, not probable that they had extended themselves beyond the limits of Syria and Mesopotamia. Absurd it would be to affirm that the effects of the punishment inflicted upon men alone applied to places in which there were no men. If, then, we should entertain the belief that not so much as the hundredth part of the globe was overspread with water, still the deluge would be universal, because the extirpation took effect upon all the part of the globe which was inhabited. If we take this ground, the difficulties which some have raised about the deluge fall away as inapplicable, and mere cavils; and irreligious persons have no reason left them for doubting the truth of the Holy Scriptures. Matthew Poole, 1670.—In fact, some enemies to the Gospel have seen the historical proof of the deluge to be so strong that they have confessed it to be irresistible. M. Boué, an eminent writer and scoffer of the French school, has said, "I shall be vexed to be thought stupid enough to deny that an inundation or catastrophe has taken place in the world, or rather in the region inhabited by the antediluvians. To me this seems to be as really a fact in history as the reign of Cæsar at Rome." King. The deluge was evidently a local convulsion. The object, that of destroying the human race and the animal population of its peculiar centre of creation, the preservation of specimens of these creatures in the ark, and the physical requirements of the case, shut us up to this conclusion, which is now accepted by the best biblical expositors and which inflicts no violence on the terms of the record. Viewed in this light, the phenomena recorded in the Bible in connection with geological probabilities lead us to infer that the physical agencies evoked by the Divine power to destroy this ungodly race, were a subsidence of the region they inhabited so as to admit the oceanic waters, and extensive atmospheric disturbances connected with that subsidence, and perhaps with the elevation of neighboring regions. Dawson. Nor is it possible to conceive of an assemblage of all the living creatures of the different regions of the earth at any one spot. The Polar bear surely could not survive a journey from his native icebergs to the sultry plains of Mesopotamia; nor could the animals of South America have reached these except by travelling the whole length, northward, of North America, and then, after miraculously crossing Behring's Strait, having pressed, westward, across the whole breadth of Asia, a continent larger than the moon. Or, how could tropical creatures find supplies of food in passing through such a variety of climates, and over vast spaces of hideous desert? Geikie. That the deluge was of limited extent geographically, and not universal, may be fairly assumed on the following grounds: (1.) The moral reasons for a deluge do not seem to require it to be universal, since obviously that corrupt generation whose sins demanded such a judgment did not overspread all the continents and lands of the globe, but appear to have been confined within a quite limited area in Western Asia. (2.) While on the one hand we may not limit the miraculous power of the Almighty; on the other hand, it is not legitimate to assume an expenditure of miraculous power indefinitely beyond what the occasion demands. This objection is designed to apply, not specially to the supply of water requisite to flood the whole earth at once, for there is water enough in the oceans and seas to submerge the continents, provided only that the ocean beds be temporarily uplifted and the continents relatively depressed: but it does apply with great force to the preservation of the living animals and plants of the whole world. The narrative assumes that the deluge will destroy the land animals and the fowls of the air unless they are protected in the ark. It also gives us the dimensions of the ark, and leaves us to estimate proximately how many could be saved alive in it. The narrative, therefore, does not authorize us to resort to miracle for the preservation of these animal races. Now it is entirely certain that only an exceedingly small part of all the land animals, insects and birds of the whole world were saved in the ark. Men versed in natural science estimate the living species of vertebrate animals at 21,000; of articulates, 300,000—numbers by far too great to be provided for in Noah's ark. Yet again: To a great extent the "fauna" (as they are called)—the animal species of the several continents—differ widely from each other. South America has its families, many of them unknown to other continents; Australia has its special group, and Africa its own. It is simply incredible that all or even the mass of these animals came to Noah and were preserved in the ark. If they had been destroyed by the flood, there should be traces of their sudden annihilation in the drift of that flood, and geological research might trace the introduction of new races by special creation to repeople those continents. No such line of proofs for a universal deluge is found. The absence of such traces of destruction and of new creation makes it far more than probable that the flood was limited in extent and not universal. Still further it is urged against a universal deluge—and for aught that appears conclusively—that volcanic cones exist—of Etna in Sicily and of Auvergne in Southern France—which, being composed of loose scoriae and ashes, must have been washed away by any deluge that should reach them. The cones of Etna are estimated to be 12,000 years old. (3.) The apparently universal language of the narrative may be readily explained as other similar language must be in the Scriptures, without assuming a range of meaning beyond the writer's personal knowledge. The writer of this narrative speaks as an eye-witness, especially of the great rain: of the ark borne up upon the waters; of the surging back and forth of the billows, and of their covering "the high hills under the whole heaven," i.e. as far as the eye could reach. The same style of universal language appears frequently in the Scriptures, yet subject to limitations from the known nature of the case; e.g. Deut. 2:25; Acts 2:5; Matt. 3:5. Of the sin it is said repeatedly—"The earth was corrupt before God;" "the earth was filled with violence." Obviously this same "earth," to the same geographical extent and not apparently anything more, was destroyed by the flood. There is every reason to suppose that at this time both the righteous descendants of Seth and the wicked descendants of Cain were living in the great basin of the Euphrates and the Tigris—with great probability not reaching out beyond the area bounded by the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the Caspian, Black, Mediterranean and Red Seas. This, therefore, we may assume to have been the area submerged by this deluge, and we have no occasion to look for its traces beyond these limits. H. C. Traditions of the Deluge. The evidence shows a consentient belief among members of all the great races into which ethnologists have divided mankind. Among the Semites, the Babylonians and the Hebrews; among the Hamites, the Egyptians, among the Aryans, the Indians, Armenians, Phrygians, Lithuanians, Goths, Celts, and Greeks; among the Turanians, the Chinese, Mexicans, Red Indians, and Polynesian islanders, held the belief, which has thus the character of a universal tradition—a tradition of which but one rational account can be given, namely, that it embodies the recollection of a fact in which all mankind was concerned. It is remarkably confirmatory of the Biblical narrative to find that it unites details scattered up and down the various traditional accounts, but nowhere else found in combination. Altogether, the conclusion is irresistibly forced upon us that the Hebrew is the authentic narrative, of which the remainder are more or less corrupted versions. It is impossible to derive the Hebrew account from any of the other stories, while it is quite possible to derive all of them from it. G. R. A recollection thus precise and concordant cannot be a myth voluntarily invented. No religious or cosmogonic myth presents this character of universality. It must arise from the reminiscence of a real and terrible event, so powerfully impressing the imagination of the first ancestors of our race, as never to have been forgotten by their descendants. Far from being a myth, the Biblical Deluge is a real and historical fact, having, to say the least, left its impress on the ancestors of three races—Aryan or Indo-European, Semitic or Syro-Arabian, Chamitic or Kushite—that is to say, on the three great civilized races of the ancient world, those which constitute the higher humanity—before the ancestors of those races had as yet separated, and in the part of Asia they together inhabited. Contem. Rev.—The traditions of the deluge show that there was, as Scripture affirms, a flood by which all mankind except one righteous family were destroyed; and they prove, in further conformity with the Scripture record, that all the existing tribes and nations of mankind are descended from that one family which survived the flood. The details given in the inscriptions describing the Flood leave no doubt that both the Bible and the Babylonian story describe the same event, and the Flood becomes the starting-point for the modern world in both histories. In their main features the two stories fairly agree: as to the wickedness of the antediluvian world, the Divine anger and command to build the ark, its stocking with birds and beasts, the coming of the deluge, the rain and storm, the ark resting on a mountain, trial being made by birds sent out to see if the waters had subsided, and the building of an altar after the flood. All these main facts occur in the same order in both narratives, but when we come to examine the details of these stages in the two accounts, there appear numerous points of difference; as to the number of people who were saved, the duration of the deluge, the place where the ark rested, the order of sending out the birds, and other similar matters. G. Smith. The Greek tradition of the flood is worthy of special notice. The accounts of it vary, but according to Lucian, the flood was sent as a punishment of the sins of mankind, and the whole race perished, with the exception of Dencalion and his family, he being preserved on account of his piety. Ovid has given a somewhat different and more poetical account of the flood. Even among the native races of Central America Humboldt found distinct traditions of the flood. W. G. B. In the Assyrian Department of the British Museum is a series of terra-cotta tablets bearing inscriptions in the cuneiform (i.e., wedge-shaped) character, in which the ancient Assyrian writings are engraved, on one set of which this account is found. Their age is thought by the decipherer to be as old as the seventeenth century B.C., but to represent the traditions of a still earlier age. They record, though imperfectly, the dimensions of the ship of refuge; its bituminous varnish; its inmates, both human and animal; the descent of the rain; the tempest and destruction of life; the duration of the flood, which it places at six days and nights; the cessation of the rain and drying of the earth; and the resting of the ship at a mountain called Nizir. They describe further the sending forth of a dove, a swallow, and a raven; the going forth of the king from the ship, and his erection of an altar at the foot of the mountain; a sacrifice offered by him, and its acceptance by the gods; and lastly, a sort of promise combined with warning, as to the recurrence of Divine visitation in this form by way of punishment for transgression. No one can help seeing how remarkably these inscriptions confirm the Scripture narrative in most respects, and how unaccountable the agreement between them would be except in the supposition that both are founded on a common origin. H. W. P.—When one of the early missionaries to the Sandwich Islands gave an account of Noah and of the flood, the natives said that an account had come down to them of a general inundation, and that two men escaped it on a small emerging point of a mountain ; but the particulars given by the missionary they had not heard (Bib. Sac. xxii. 418). This strange corroboration of the flood from an island of the Pacific, is only one of multitudes of testimonies from the old world, and from the new, and from the islands of the sea, representing a score or more of peoples. Beach. 8 : 1 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that were with him 2 in the ark : and God make a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged ; the fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from 3 heaven was restrained ; and the waters returned from off the earth continually : and after 4 the end of an hundred and fifty days the waters decreased. And the ark rested in the 5 seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month : in the tenth month, on the first 6 day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen. And it came to pass at the end of 7 forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made : and he sent forth a raven, and it went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. 8 And he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of 9 the ground ; but the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him to the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth : and he put forth his 10 hand, and took her, and brought her in unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet other 11 seven days ; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark ; and the dove came in to him at eventide ; and, lo, in her mouth an olive leaf pluckt off : so Noah knew that the 12 waters were abated from off the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days : and sent 13 forth the dove ; and she returned not again unto him any more. And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth : and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, 14 and, behold, the face of the ground was dried. And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dry. 15 And God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, 16 and thy sons' wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee 17 of all flesh, both fowl, and cattle, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth ; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth. 18 And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him : every 19 beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, whatsoever moveth upon the earth, after their 20 families, went forth out of the ark. And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD ; and took 21 of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the LORD smelled the sweet savour ; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, for that the imagination of man's heart is evil from 22 his youth ; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, 9 : 1 and day and night shall not cease. And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto 2 them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air ; with all wherewith the ground teemeth, and all the fishes of the sea, into your hand are they 3 delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you ; as the green herb have I 4 given you all. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. 5. And surely your blood, the blood of your lives, will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it; and at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man's brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man. And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein. 1. The Lord remembered Noah.** He had never been absent from him. Speaking after the manner of men the Lord is said to remember him, whom he had at no time forgotten, when the time had come that he should manifest his knowledge of him, his kindness for him, and his remembrance of him. Kit. 3. Returned continually.** "Going and returning;" such is the expressive idiom of the Hebrew; it is most pictorial language, and denotes a sort of ebbing subsidence having its intervals of standing and sinking until it reaches the lowest and settled state. T. L.—In the sixth month the rain probably ceased altogether. Some time before this, the depressing of the ground had reached its lowest point, and the upheaving had set in. This is the main cause of the reflux of the waters. All this is described, as we perceive, according to appearance. It is probable that the former configuration of the surface was not exactly restored. Hence it is vain to seek for a spot retaining the precise conditions of the primitive Eden. The Euphrates and Tigris may substantially remain, but the Pishon and Gihon may have considerably changed. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the prevalence of the waters begins to turn into a positive retreat. M. 4. The ark rested.** We are told that the ark "rested upon the mountains of Ararat," meaning the mountains of Armenia, for Ararat in biblical geography (2 K. 19:37; Jer. 51:27) is not the name of a mountain, but of a district—the central region, to which the name of Araratia is assigned by the native geographer Moses of Chorene. But nothing is more natural than that the scene of the event should in due course of time be transferred to the loftiest of the mountains of Armenia, and that the name of Ararat should be specially affixed to that one: accordingly all the associations connected with the ark now centre in the magnificent mountain which the native Armenians name Macis, and the Turks Aghri-Tagh. This is the culminating point of the central range of Armenia, the Abus of the ancients. It rises majestically out of the valley of the Araxes to an elevation of 17,260 feet above the level of the sea, and about 14,350 above the valley, and terminates in a double conical peak, the lower or Lesser Ararat being about 400 feet below the other. The mountain is very steep, as implied in the Turkish name, and the summit is covered with eternal snow. Until recently it was believed to be inaccessible, but the summit was gained by Parrot in 1829, and the ascent has been effected since his time. P. S. 6-13. How can any serious soul fail to be struck with this strange combination of the minutely familiar and the inexpressibly sublime? Nothing in the most modern times, fictitious or real, could surpass it in this air of simple verity. And in reading this whole story, so simply yet so grandly told, we are impressed, as by a real passing scene, with the belief that there actually was such a man as Noah in the early world, a very righteous, honest man, who had on his mind, whether deceived in his idea of inspiration or not, a real conviction that there was coming such a flood of waters over the whole known land, that, under the influence of this belief, he built a vessel, that he took into it his family and the known animals of the surrounding country, that in all this he religiously regarded himself as prompted by a divine power, that the waters did come, that they rose gradually as is so graphically described, that they as gradually abated, that he sent forth the dove, that she returned with an olive leaf in the evening as is so touchingly told, that he "put forth his hand and took her and pulled her in unto him in the ark," that "he waited other seven days," and finally came forth from the ark on that very month, and day of the month, of which he had made so careful a register for those who were preserved with him, and for those who should be after him upon the earth. T. L. 9. No rest for the sole of her foot.** Though the heart once gone from God turns continually further away from Him, and moves not toward Him till it be renewed, yet, even in that wandering, it retains that natural relation to God, as its centre, that it hath no true rest elsewhere, nor can by any means find it. It is made for Him, and is therefore still restless till it meet with Him. It is true, the natural man takes much pains to quiet his heart by other things, and digests many vexations with hopes of contentment in the end and accomplishment of some design he hath; but still the heart misgives. Many times he attains not the thing he seeks; but if he do, yet he never attains the satisfaction he seeks and expects in it, but only learns from that to desire something further, and still hunts on after a fancy, drives his own shadow before him, and never overtakes it; and if he did, yet it is but a shadow. And so, in running from God, besides the sad end, he carries an interwoven punishment with his sin, the natural disquiet and vexation of his spirit, fluttering to and fro, and finding no rest for the sole of his foot; the waters of inconstancy and vanity covering the whole face of the earth. Coleridge. 11. In her mouth an olive leaf. What messenger of returning happiness could be more appropriate than a dove, the lovely type of purity and atonement, through the Spirit of God, offering an olive-leaf, the symbol of the renewed fruitfulness of the earth? Kalisch.—It was a significant and merciful appointment of God's providence that the dove brought a bough from this useful tree, the oil from the fruit of which is an emblem of the grace of the Holy Spirit. Gerl.—From this event, the olive branch became the symbol of peace, and the dove the emblem of the Comforter, the messenger of peace. After seven other days, the dove being despatched, returns no more. The number seven figures conspicuously in this narrative. Seven days before the showers commence the command to enter the ark is given; and at intervals of seven days the winged messengers are sent out. These intervals point evidently to the period of seven days, determined by the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest. M. 10,12. There is strong probable evidence, from the practice of measuring time by weeks, that the Sabbath was never entirely lost sight of, and that in certain families, at least, it continued to be applied to holy purposes. Not only did the original reason of the Sabbathic appointment remain; it increased with every addition which was made to man's knowledge of God. The impartation of such knowledge to the young would form part of the appropriate employment of the patriarchal Sabbath, as it did subsequently of the Jewish Sabbath, into which probably it was copied. For the pious among the patriarchs could not fail to perceive that the highest design alike, of the Sabbath and of the family economy, was, "that they should make (such truths) known to their children; that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children, that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments;" that the knowledge of the laws and purposes of the Divine manifestation might be carried forward from age to age. In other words, the Divine Procedure in the past is never lost to the present or the future. J. H. 14. In the second month, etc., was the earth dried. The following table will exhibit a tolerably correct calendar of the time of the continuance of the flood and of Noah's abiding in the ark. 600. 2. 17. Noah enters the ark—fountains broken up. " 3. 27. Forty days' rain elapsed—ark borne up and floating. " 7. 17. One hundred and fifty days (including the 40) elapsed—ark rests. " 10. 1. Mountain-tops become visible. " 11. 11. Raven sent out. " " 18. Dove sent out—returned. " " 25. Dove again sent out—returned. " 12. 2. Dove again sent out—returned not. " " 28. Unaccounted for in the narrative. 601. 1. 1. Waters dried from off the surface—the body of the earth still saturated with moisture. " 2. 27. Ground fully dried; Noah leaves the ark. The aggregate is one year and ten days. If, however, as Ainsworth supposes, the Jewish year consisted of only 354 days, six of the 12 months having each 30 days, and the remaining six but 29 = 354, then by adding 11 days for the 27th of the second month completed, the amount will be 365 days, or a full solar year. Bush. 16. The garden of Eden probably lay near the eastern foot of Mount Ararat; and now, Noah and his sons went forth from the ark, to repeople the earth, near the very spot where Adam settled when he went out from Eden. This part of Western Asia is thus distinguished pre-eminently as the birthplace of the human family. And it was not with the seeds of physical life only that this region was charged; intellectual life, and still more, spiritual life, had their sources, not in the same spot, but in the same district. A circle, with its centre at Haran, and a radius of 400 miles, will embrace Eden and Ararat; Babylon and Nineveh, the early seats of learning and science; Mesopotamia, where God revealed himself to Abraham; Phœnicia, where commerce and many of the arts of peace arose; Palestine, the birthplace of prophets, apostles, and evangelists innumerable, and the scene of the birth, labors, and death of our blessed Lord; Tarsus, where Paul was born; and part of Asia Minor, where the labors of the apostles were chiefly carried on. W. G. B. 29. Even after the earth was quite dry, Noah awaited the express command of God before leaving the ark. His first act after that was to build "an altar unto Jehovah," and there to offer "burnt-offerings" of every clean beast, and of every fowl. Nor was it merely in gratitude and homage to God, but also in spiritual worship that he thus commenced his life anew, and consecrated earth unto Jehovah. In bringing an animal sacrifice Noah followed the example of Abel; in calling upon the name of Jehovah he once again and solemnly adopted the profession of the Sethites. But there was this difference between his and any preceding sacrifice, that now for the first time we read of building an altar. A. E. No sooner is Noah come out of the ark, but he builds an altar: not a house for himself, but an altar to the Lord: our faith will ever teach us to prefer God to ourselves. Delayed thankfulness is not worthy of acceptance. Bp. H. —To look back upon the world, and reflect that in so short a space of time all his contemporaries were blotted from existence, while he and his little household were now the sole survivors of an extinguished race; to see the whole face of creation so entirely changed, and no trace of former scenes remaining; and then to think of what he owed to the preserving goodness of God, that had kept him safe in the midst of such an awful catastrophe;—all this could not but inspire him with overwhelming emotions of thankfulness, which he would naturally express. Bush. Every fit animal is included in this sacrifice, as it is expressive of thanksgiving for a complete deliverance. We have also here the first mention of the burnt-offering; the whole victim, except the skin, being burned on the altar. M. 21. And the Lord smelled a sweet savour.** This expression is used in condescension to human thought and language; and is intended to signify that God was pleased with the devout service of Noah, sacrificing to him from a pure heart, as men are wont to be pleased with sweet odors. A comparison taken from things human serves in some measure to illustrate things divine: and though it is not exact, yet it helps to convey a more lively and affecting idea of the thing than could be given without it. "A sweet-smelling savor" is Paul's phrase in the New Testament; where Christ is said to have "given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor." Waterland. —Noah's sacrifice was greatly accepted and highly accounted of by God. Such is God's condescending love to believers, that he looks more at their will than at their work; he minds more what they would do than what they do; he always prefers the willing mind before the worthiest work; and where desires and endeavors are sincere, there God judges such to be as good as they desire and endeavor to be. Brooks. The charming simplicity of man's intercourse with God in the garden of Eden was here renewed through the second father of the race. Noah's first thought, on finding himself once more upon the solid ground, was to render to God gratitude and devotion for the preservation of himself and his family. And God, who ever delights in mercy, and welcomes the least sign of love and gratitude in man, accepted this offering as grateful to his own heart, and responded to it by a new covenant to preserve the earth in the orderly succession of its seasons, in the beauty and fruitfulness of its harvests. Observe how closely related are physical blessings to religious faith and obedience. He who loves and serves God receives not only gifts of grace, but the pledge of divine favor in all things; and the very earth in its teeming prosperity is a witness to the loving faithfulness of God to a righteous man. J. P. T. Noah, Abraham and Isaac built altars wherever they were sojourning and offered bloody sacrifices thereon. We are shut up to this alternative: Either the whole system of altars and bloody sacrifices, as practised by Abel, Noah, Abraham and Isaac, was a thing of no significance, meaning nothing and good for nothing; or, God himself originated the system and enjoined it, and these good men were observing it in obedience to special revelation from God. The first side of this alternative is perfectly precluded by the fact that God approved their sacrifices. God "had respect to the offering of Abel." He "smelled a sweet savor" in the sacrifices offered by Noah. The other alternative therefore, viz. that bloody sacrifices originated in a direct revelation from God—is the only supposition left us. These sacrifices must have been practically valueless unless their expiatory significance was in some good degree understood. That God ordained them for the sake of their moral value, who can for a moment doubt? The conclusion, therefore, seems inevitable that God not only enjoined these bloody sacrifices, but gave his people to understand in general their significance to the extent of fulfilling that unconscious prophecy of Abraham (Gen. 22 : 8) : “My son, God will provide for himself a lamb for a burnt-offering.” These views, if just, are of vast historic value as showing how much God taught his people at that earliest day, pertaining to his great thoughts of redemption for a lost race. H. C. The Bible is the history and development of Christianity, and nothing else. It is “the Gospel according to” Moses and David, Isaiah and Daniel, just as truly as it is the Gospel according to Matthew and Mark and Luke and John. And this is manifest from the unity of idea that underlies all “the divers manners” of the revelation. For of all the books in the world, the Bible is emphatically the “book of one idea.” That idea is the grand enterprise of “the seed of the woman” in conflict with the Serpent and his seed, gathering his elect body, the Bride of the Lamb, out of all the successive ages. It is this Redeemer, Jehovah Jesus, who, assuming transiently the shadowy form of humanity, speaks with Adam and Noah, with Abraham and Jacob, with Moses and Joshua. In these cases, just as truly is it the record of Jesus Christ, as when it is the story of his walking on earth as “the Son of man” or of his communicating his will through the Holy Spirit to his Apostles after his ascension. Not only is this Great Personage the subject of all the revelation alike, but the fundamental articles of its theology, even to the detailed forms of their expression, are one and the same from first to last. The wrath of God appeased, and sin pardoned by vicarious blood, is the theology of Adam, Abel, and Noah. Vicarious blood shed for sin, is the central thought of the theology of Abraham and Moses, of David and Isaiah, just as truly as in that of Peter and John and Paul, who declare “In him we have redemption through his blood ;” and “His blood cleanseth from all sin.” So the central idea of the worship which embodies this theology in ritual form. In the worship of Abel the sacrificial lamb was the peculiar feature. In the worship of Noah and Abraham, and of Moses four hundred years later, it is still the lamb whose blood is sprinkled, and which figures in the gorgeous ritual of the tabernacle. Seven hundred years later, in the visions of Isaiah it is still the “Lamb led to the slaughter.” Again, seven hundred years, and John the Baptist, pointing to Jesus the antitype of all the preceding types, cries, “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world,” and, at the close of the revelation, as John the Evangelist is permitted through “the door opened in heaven” to catch a glimpse of the glorious Church of the future, the worship has still the same central attraction—“the Lamb in the midst of the throne ;” around whom are gathered the shouting myriads who have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” S. R. 22. The gracious announcement that, while the earth remained, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night were not to cease, implies not only His purpose to spare our earth, but also that man might henceforth reckon upon a regular succession of seasons, and that he was to make this earth for the present his home, to till it, and to possess it. A. E.—It is an exceedingly profound and true thought that the normal succession of days and years, on which depend the existence of the earth and the welfare of man’s life and therefore the regular course of nature, are no fixed course of things, but a voluntary gift of divine grace. The unbroken continuance of creation in beautiful harmony and the unbroken development of the history of humanity are the fruit of divine grace, which will not let God’s glorious plan in reference to creation and humanity be frustrated by man’s sin. And that gracious decree is linked to Noah’s name, and was carried out in the sparing of Noah and in the unchecked growth of his posterity, though that posterity became in great part inwardly estranged from God. Orelli. God’s covenant of mercy in the unalterable fixtures of the seasons, is full of heavenly lessons in every part. While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest shall not cease. Seed-time and harvest are of all the Seasons the deepest, most direct, most profoundly thoughtful and suggestive in their instructions and their warnings. There is solemn meaning and warning in a seed ; though it be out of sight, and dead beneath the ground, it speaketh. And every growth from seeds, the fruits, the trees, the harvests good or bad, all are laden with the lessons of character and consequences. Seed-time and harvest cannot come and go as seasons, and their laws cannot be familiarly known to us from year to year, without impressing on the mind a sense of opportunity and responsibility. The great lesson of a moral probation is borne upon the seasons of the year, is hidden in the very processes of nature, even as the seed itself is deposited in the earth, to germinate and be developed. These are stated ministries, knocking at the door of our hearts ; forms of light and suggestion visiting every man that is born into the world. Cheever. The course of nature is always changing. As it is with the times, so it is with the events of time, they are subject to vicissitudes, day and night, summer and winter, counterchanged. Yet nature is constant in this inconstancy; these seasons have never ceased, nor shall cease, while the sun continues such a steady measure of time, and the moon such a faithful witness in heaven. This is God's covenant of the day and of the night, the stability of which is mentioned for the confirming of our faith in the covenant of grace, which is no less inviolable (Jer. 33:20). We see God's promises to the creatures made good, and thence may infer that his promises to all believers shall be so. H.—This promise has been kept. So long and faithfully kept, that even the unbelieving and infidel world has come to believe it. We look for the seasons in their course and duration as a matter of course. Why do we not believe God's other promises as readily and firmly? Have we not experience in matters spiritual as well as temporal? Spurgeon. 9:1-7. He repeated to Noah and his sons the blessing pronounced on Adam and Eve, that they should "be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth," and that the inferior creatures should be subject to them. To this He added the use of animals for food. Three new precepts were given to Noah, in addition to the laws of the Sabbath and of marriage, which were revealed to Adam—namely, the abstinence from blood, the prohibition of murder, and the recognition of the civil authority. P. S. 1. "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth," is a command given to those who had seen and experienced the wickedness of the old earth, with as much emphasis, with as large a benediction, as it was given on the day when the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. Maurice. 2. The old world was buried in the flood, that a new order of things might rise from its grave. For, manifestly, after the mixing up of the Sethite with the Cainite race, an entirely new commencement required to be made if the purpose of God in grace was to be carried to its goal. Hence, also, God once more pronounced upon Noah the blessing of fruitfulness which he had spoken to Adam, and gave him dominion over the lower creation. But in this new grant there was this essential difference—that man's dominion would now be one of force, and not, as formerly, of willing subjection. If God had at the first brought "every beast" and "every fowl" before Adam, as it were to do homage to him, and to receive from him their names, it was now said to Noah and to his descendants, "The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth; into your hand are they delivered." A. E. 3. Two grants were made: one to Adam, and one to Noah. To Adam it was said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree, bearing seed, to you it shall be for meat. To Noah it is said, Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. God's original grant of the use of his creatures for food was confined to the vegetable creation; now for the first time the use of animal food is authorized. Magee. 3-6. Here, the blood of even those animals whose flesh might be eaten by man is forbidden for food; because it is life itself, and therefore sacred to the Author of life. And the blood of man must not be shed by man, except where man is made God's minister of justice, because man is formed in the image of God, and only God has a right to take away, directly or by his minister, the life from one bearing God's likeness. Trumbull. 4. Flesh with its life, its blood, shall ye not eat. The animal must be slain before any part of it is used for food. One design of this restriction is to prevent the cruelty of mutilating or cooking an animal while yet alive and capable of suffering pain. The draining of the blood from the body is an obvious occasion of death, and therefore the prohibition to eat the flesh with the blood of life is a needful restraint from savage cruelty. M.—Though animal food was granted, yet the blood was most solemnly forbidden, because it was the life of the beast; and this life was to be offered to God as an atonement for sin. Hence the blood was ever held sacred, because it was the grand instrument of expiation; and because it was typical of that blood by which we enter into the holiest. A. C.—This law was prior to that of Moses, but it came from the same legislator. It was given to Noah, and consequently obligatory upon the whole world. Moses, however, insists upon it throughout his law. He positively prohibits it four times in one chapter of Deuteronomy, and thrice in one of the chapters of Leviticus. Bruce.—The reason for the prohibition of blood as food is primarily religious and evangelical and not merely natural. The great fundamental fact of this revelation is redemption by blood from first to last—the substitution of life for the forfeited life of the sinner. This was that which gave its significance to all sacrifice. And therefore while sacrifice of bulls and goats continued it behooved that reverence for the blood and the life which is in the blood should fill the souls of men. Nothing would tend so to degrade the notions of the fundamental idea of their religion as in their daily food to eat that blood which in the sacrifices of their worship represented to them their great reliance for salvation. Hence it was subsequently ordained for the Jews in connection with their ritual of sacrifice. The decision in Acts 29 requiring the Gentiles also to abstain from eating blood was chiefly, no doubt, to protect Jewish converts and prevent a seeming irreverence for the method in which they had been reared, of teaching salvation through “the life that is in the blood.” S. R. 5. At the hand of every beast will I require it. That is, any beast that kills a man, shall itself be killed : not as if beasts were to blame if they killed a man ; but this was ordained with respect to men, for whose use beasts were created. God hereby instructed them, that murder was a most grievous crime, the punishment of which extended even to beasts. At the hand of every man’s brother.** And, therefore, “if at the hand of every beast, much more will I require it at the hand of every man.” whom He calls brother, to show that murder is the more heinous on this account, because we are all brethren. Patrick.—God says in effect—Every human life is of great value ; every man must set great store by his own life ; and every man must consider himself in a high degree responsible for the life of his brother,—“Of every man’s brother will I require the life of man.” J. P.—Every man is his brother’s keeper. Every man is shedding his own blood when he sheds his brother’s blood. The word brother was addressed to a family ; Noah and his sons must have interpreted it by their own experience. But the words “every man’s brother” expanded the principle of the family to a higher power. They declared that the race was a family ; they intimated that society was to be built up on the recognition of an actual relationship among the different members of it. Maurice. 6. He that sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.** Such is the accountability to which God holds man for the blood of his fellow-man. The reason for this requirement is added : For in the image of God made he man. He that violates the sacredness of that image in his fellow-man, shall forfeit it in himself. Unquestionably, God here requires that the murderer shall be punished with death, and holds men guilty who disregard the requirement. If he intended by these words (as they are sometimes evasively interpreted) merely to predict that men would, unauthorized and criminally, put the murderer to death, then they are out of place in the connection with his own requirement in the preceding verse, and he follows them here with a reason for the act (“for in the image of God made he man”) that has no force or pertinence. This was not a requirement of the Jewish law, to be abolished with it. It was made binding on all the races of men, descendants of Noah, and has never been revoked. T. J. C. The passage should be construed in harmony with the scope of the context. Its close connection with the use of animals for the food of man and with the “requiring” of human blood shed by the violence of beasts compel us to find here precept and not prediction. Still more does the historic place of this precept, standing upon the ruins of the old world and in the presence of the yet unwanted bones of thousands whose wickedness had culminated in such recklessness of human life that “the earth was filled with violence.” It was pertinent to lay a new and more effectual foundation for maintaining the peace of society and the sacredness of human life. The solemn lessons of the past required, not a prediction of retributive vengeance under the social law of self-preservation, but a divine precept demanding it and enforcing it with its logical reason—that “God made man in his own image.” You may take the life of the lower animals for no higher cause than human sustenance—food for man’s wants ;—but let no man put forth his hand against the blood of man, for he bears the very “image of God.” To make this new law the more solemnly impressive, man must himself be the executioner of this divine behest—“By man shall his blood be shed.” Society itself must commit to some of its members this solemn function and they must take the murderer’s life. Nothing less can shield the life of man from bloody violence ; nothing less will duly honor God’s image in man. . . . It was doubtless wise for God to begin as he did with Cain ; but when the race started anew after the flood, the Lord advanced to the true doctrine and enjoined on social man the solemn duty of shielding human life by taking the murderer’s blood. “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” This was one step of manifest progress in the revelation of God’s will as to the responsibility and duty of men in their social and governmental relations. It was progress in the origination of society—progress built on the great lessons of human history H. C. As Luther says, God has here instituted the temporal sword. This law is to be put into execution "by man," who in God's room inflicts God's punishment. Hence the divine right of the magistracy. However much the reason of man may speak and write against the punishment of death, here it stands as a divine enactment, and this is practically enforced through the whole Sacred Scriptures. C. G. B.—By man shall his blood be shed. Chal. "With witnesses by the sentence of the judges shall his blood be shed." The welfare of society requires that capital punishments should be inflicted, not by the stroke of private revenge, but by the arm of the authorized magistrate, and through the medium of a judicial sentence (Rom. 13:1). Bush.—Against murder the Lord thus provided by an early law, enacted and published before him out of whose loins the whole world after the flood was to be repealed: to show that it was not meant for a national and temporary ordinance, but for an universal and perpetual law. Bp. Sanderson.—For in the image of God made he man. Murder is a great trespass upon God, as it destroys His likeness. And self-murder upon this account is forbidden, as well as the killing of others. Bp. Kidder.—Death is ordered to be punished by death, not because one is equivalent to the other, for that would be expiation and not punishment; nor is death always an equivalent for death. But the reason upon which this sentence is grounded seems to be, that this is the highest penalty that man can inflict, and tends most to the security of mankind by removing one murderer from the earth and setting a dreadful example to deter others; so that even this grand instance proceeds from other principles than those of retaliation. Blackstone. The passage recounts the renewed covenant of God with spared and restored man—the terms of his new lease of the earth. He was sanctioned in killing and eating every living animal inferior to man—"every creeping thing that liveth." Here is the fallen creature, liable to passion, and open to temptation, now to be familiarized to the frequent use of the slaughtering knife; and open, at the same time, to the consciousness that a similar act would as easily remove a rival or avenge an injury. The Author of the permission proceeds, therefore, at once, in close association with the permission to slay and eat flesh, to throw the protection of a further law round his frail and mortal creature, man. "And surely the blood of your lives will I require at the hand of all that liveth." Then the law proceeds, "From the hand of man, from the hand of each his brother, or man his brother, will I require the life of man;" i.e. the Lord has a controversy with every man that takes away the life of his fellow-man, and will follow out that controversy and make inquisition for blood. And then the Lord proceeds to show how he will deal with such men, what his law is in such a case, and what, as the result of that law, he authorizes to be done. "The shedder of the blood of man"—i.e. in the force of the Hebrew idiom, "when a man sheds the blood of man" (and evidently in the same deliberate and intentional way in which he has just been authorized to shed the blood of the beast; for that, and not casualty or mortal accident, is the case in point)—"by man his blood shall be shed." Fair interpretation can make nothing of this but the authorizing the judicial punishment of death. The Lord knew that he was legislating for a race that would gather into society, that would take cognizance of crime. When he instituted a special society, he so interpreted his own law, and authorized the Israelites to slay the murderer; and universal man, throughout all ages, has so understood it. The only plausible way of escaping from this meaning, is to assume that the sixth verse is not a law, but a prediction; that at a solemn moment, when the communication was most unquestionably institutive and legislative, a sudden change should take place in its grammatical character and mood; and that a prediction should be uttered of what should afterward occur as a matter of casualty. The objection to this is, first, its inconsistency with the tenor of the passage. The words lo tocalu, "thou shalt not eat of it," in the fourth verse, are, though in the future tense, evidently imperative. Why should we interpret the future tense in the sixth verse as only predictive? If the one is to be read as predictive, then the other should; but it would be a false prediction that men should not eat the flesh with the blood in it; for many do. The consistency, then, of the whole passage requires to translate both these verbs in the same imperative mood and tense. Again, if it is a prediction, it is a false and failing one; and then, upon this very point of our postdiluvian lease stand the terms of a prophecy which God has not fulfilled. It is not true that, in the certain providence of God, every wilful shedder of blood has been brought to a condign and sanguinary death. An. 8. AND God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish my 9 covenant with you, and with your seed after you; and with every living creature that is 10 with you, the fowl, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you; of all that go out of 11 the ark, even every beast of the earth. And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of the flood; neither shall there 12 any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual 13 generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant 14 between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, 15 that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more 16 become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living 17 creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth. 18 And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: 19 and Ham is the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah: and of these was the whole earth overspread. 20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and planted a vineyard: and he drank of the wine, 21 and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, 22 saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth 23 took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's 24 nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his youngest son had done unto 25 him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. 26 And he said, Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem; And let Canaan be his servant. 27 God enlarge Japheth, And let him dwell in the tents of Shem; And let Canaan be his servant. 28 And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years. And all the days of Noah 29 were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died. 8-17. In addition to these promises and precepts, God made with Noah a COVENANT—that is, one of these agreements by which he condescended again and again to bind himself toward man; not more sacred with him than a simple promise, but more satisfying to the weakness of our faith. Of these covenants, that made with Noah on behalf of his descendants may be called the Covenant of God's forbearance, under which man lives to the end of time. It repeated the promise that the world should not be again destroyed by a flood; and it was ratified by the beautiful sign of the rainbow in the cloud, a natural phenomenon suited to the natural laws of whose permanence it was the token. It is important for us not to suffer our relations to Adam as our first father, or to Abraham as the father of the faithful, to overshadow our part in God's covenant with Noah as the ancestor of the existing human race. P. S. Already we have studied two of these Seven Testaments or covenants. First, the Eden covenant with sinless man, guaranteeing the establishment in immortal bliss on condition of perfect obedience, which covenant failed at the fall. Second, the covenant of grace with the guarantee of redemption, by the seed of the woman, of all who believe on the offered Redeemer, which again utterly failed, except in the case of a single family, and was prevented from becoming an utter and final failure only by the destruction of the whole corrupted race for the sake of saving the eight persons of the family. Having considered in previous chapters the elucidation and history of the outworking of these covenants, we come now to the third great covenant, which, after a like elucidation in a few chapters, is followed by the fourth great covenant, with Abraham as the representative man, organizing the church as a visible government separate from the world at large. Then, after a brief history of the outworking of that covenant in the patriarchy, comes the covenant mediated by Moses, which is the fifth great covenant, organizing a nation as a temporary shell to protect the church, with a special location assigned to it, along the highway of nations, where all the world must see and know it as a peculiar nation. Then, when at last the promise of that territory is completely fulfilled, and the nation sealed in it, comes the sixth great covenant with David organizing it as a typical kingdom. Then when the fulness of time is come and Messiah's work is finished, comes the seventh and last—the "New Testament"—in the blood of Christ actually shed, and the gospel of the one nation made the gospel of all nations. The Old Testament is thus actually the history and illustration of six Testaments (or covenants); this transaction with Noah being the third of the sixth in the history of redemption. S. R. 8. God spake.** Let us not fail to notice those wonderful and beautiful ways of God with his children, coming down in such condescending and most familiar communion, talking with them apparently almost as man talks with his dearest friend; and this not in Paradise only before the fall, but after the fall scarcely less; and onward as the narrative indicates in the case of Enoch and of Noah. What more could he have done to reveal a personal God to mortals? H. C. 13. I do set my bow in the cloud.** It was now that the rainbow was appointed by God to be a memorial both of his justice upon the old world, and of his mercy to the new. Bp. Wilson.—"Behold I have set my bow in the cloud"—my bow that I created when I gave both origin and law to nature. It was the very symbol of constancy, coming forth so beautifully, as it does, and so regularly after the storm. They wanted nothing startling. They had had evidence enough of the great power of God, whether regarded as miraculous, extraordinary, some awful change in nature, or directly supernatural; and now they needed the other assurance that the helm of nature had not been lost, but was still held by the same firm, constant hand that had ordained it in the beginning. The design now was to allay fear; the peace-speaking rainbow was to be an attestation of unfailing goodness—not of power or retribution. T. L.—How appropriate an emblem of the action of Divine grace always returning after wrath! Grace still sparing and preserving even when clouds of judgment have been threatening to desolate and destroy! And as the rainbow throws its radiant arch over the expanse between heaven and earth, and as with a wreath of beauty unites the two together again, after they have been engaged in an elemental war, it strikingly images to the thoughtful eye the essential harmony that is still to subsist between the higher and the lower spheres. Such undoubtedly is its symbolic import, as the sign peculiarly connected with the Noahic covenant; it holds out by means of its very form and nature an assurance of God's mercy, as engaged to keep perpetually in check the floods of deserved wrath, and continue to the world the manifestation of his grace and goodness. P. F. 16. I will look upon it, that I may remember.** God did not "set this bow in the clouds" for His own sake, to engage His attention, and revive His memory whenever "He looked on it;" though that be the expression which the Holy Spirit, speaking after the manner of men, has thought fit to make use of: but for our sakes was it placed there, as an illustrious symbol of the Divine mercy and goodness, and to confirm our belief and confidence in God. And therefore, whenever we look upon the rainbow, we do well to "praise him that made it; very beautiful it is in the brightness thereof. It compasseth the heaven about with a glorious circle, and the hands of the Most High have bended it" (Ecclus. 43: 11, 12). Stackhouse. We know that this covenant is in the nature of an oath, for in Isaiah he tells us, "I have sworn that the waters of Noah shall no more go over the earth." There stands the rainbow preaching the fact that for the sake of redemption the world is spared. Hence it is that we find the seal of the covenant, as part of the symbols of redemption, figuring in the prophetic views of the glory of the incarnate God. When Ezekiel had his vision among the captives of the Chebar—that vision of the real worship of the Universe, though the temple had been destroyed—he saw among the living creatures, and above the firmament over their heads, and there was a throne, and the appearance of a man upon it; and around about the throne “as the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the brightness round about.” So when John in apocalyptic vision saw the door opened in heaven, beheld a “throne set in heaven and One sat on the throne; and there was a rainbow round about the throne.” S. R. Cultivate the spirit of moral interpretation if you would be wise and restful: then the rainbow will keep away the flood; the fowls of the air will save you from anxiety; and the lilies of the field will give you an assurance of tender care. And so with all things God has given us as signs and tokens: the sacred Book, the water of baptism, the bread and wine, the quiet Sabbath, the house of prayer;—all these have deeper meanings than are written in their names; search for those meanings, keep them, and you will be rich. J. P. 18,19. The two verses form a connecting link between the preceding and the following passage. After the recital of the covenant, comes naturally the statement that by the three sons of Noah was the whole land overspread. This forms a fit conclusion to the previous paragraph. But the penman of these sentences had evidently the following paragraph in view. For he mentions that Ham was the father of Canaan; which is plainly the preface to the following narrative. M. The world began anew, in the person and family of the selected patriarch, whom alone “the Lord had seen righteous in that generation.” Now then for a better race,—if the human nature were intrinsically good, or corrigible by the most awful dispensations. But, all in vain! The Flood could not cleanse the nature of man; nor the awful memory and memorials of it repress the coming forth of selfishness, pride, ambition, anger, and revenge. J. F. 20. The manufacture of wine is the next recorded fact of progress. This again is far the oldest mention of a process, that of making and using fermented drinks, which is nearly if not absolutely universal. And inasmuch as Noah the husband man “planted a vineyard,” the extent and plan of the planting would render it probable that the practice was older than Noah. It is, however, not every region of the earth that offers the vine for that purpose. A great variety of fermented drinks have existed, such as at least seven kinds of beer, made from malt, maize, millet, milk, cava, rice, rye, and several kinds of wine, as they are called, made from the apple, pear, sugar-cane, from the agave in a large part of Asia, and from the palm far more extensively than from the vine, as in Chili, India, the Pacific Isles and all of Africa. But in Armenia none of these resorts were called for. Its fertile soil, abounding in other fruits, yields an abundant supply of grapes. S. C. B. As far as we know, the old world was free from the curse of drunkenness. Noah’s discovery (if it was such) was a dark harbinger of woe to the new world, of which he was to be the father. The consequences to which it led in his own case were but a type of the mischief which it was to work in the world at large. It was the lot of the successive fathers of mankind to bequeath to their children an element of misery. Between Adam’s apple and Noah’s vine, lamentation, and mourning, and woe have overspread the globe. W. G. B. 21. Noah drank of the wine and was drunken. The Holy Ghost, when he hath to do with sin, gives it its own name; drunkenness must be drunkenness, murder must be murder. It is neither the goodness of the man, nor his being in favor with God, that will cause Him to lessen or mince his sin. Noah was drunken; David killed Uriah; Peter cursed and swore in the garden, and also dissembled at Antioch. This is not recorded to the intent that the name of these godly should rot, but to show that the best men are nothing without grace, and that “he that standeth should not be high-minded, but fear.” They are also recorded for the support of the tempted, who, when they are fallen, are oft raised up by considering the infirmities of others. “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.” Bunyan. One hour’s drunkenness bewrays that which more than six hundred years’ sobriety had modestly concealed; he that gives himself to wine is not his own: what shall we think of this vice, which robs a man of himself, and lays a beast in his room? Drunkenness doth both make imperfections, and show those we have to others’ eyes; so would God have it that we might be doubly ashamed, both of those weaknesses which we discover and of that weakness which moved us to discover. Bp. H. 21. It is a strong argument of the veracity of Moses, that throughout his history he has drawn no character so fair, as not to leave some blemishes still abiding on it. And it is an act of singular kindness and benefit to us that God has ordered the faults and miscarriages of His saints so constantly to be recorded in Scripture; since "they are written for our admonition," to remind us of our frailty and to alarm our caution and fear. The example of Noah, who had escaped the pollutions of the old world, and was now overcome in a time of security and peace, calls perpetually upon "him that thinketh he standeth, to take heed lest he fall." Blackhouse.—God has left this miscarriage upon record to teach us, 1. That the fairest copy that ever mere man wrote since the fall had its blots and false strokes. It was said of Noah that he was perfect in his generations, but this shows that it is meant of sincerity, not a sinless perfection. 2. That sometimes those who, with watchfulness and resolution, have by the grace of God kept their integrity in the midst of temptation, have, through security and carelessness and neglect of the grace of God, been surprised into sin, when the hour of temptation has been over. Noah, who had kept sober in drunken company, is now drunken in sober company. The consequence of Noah's sin was shame. He was made naked to his shame, as Adam when he had eaten forbidden fruit. Yet Adam sought concealment; Noah is so destitute of thought and reason that he seeks no covering. This was a fruit of the vine that Noah did not think of. Observe here the great evil of the sin of drunkenness. It discovers men; what infirmities they have they betray when they are drunken, and what secrets they are intrusted with are then easily got out of them. Drunken porters keep open gates. It disgraces men, and exposes them to contempt. As it shows them, so it shames them. Men say and do that when drunken, which, when they are sober, they would blush at the thoughts of. H. Noah may have been but little used to strong drink, and hence may not have known that it would so soon overcome him; yet we may well follow the wisdom of Calvin, and say, "Leaving all this in uncertainty, let us learn from Noah's intemperance how foul and detestable a vice drunkenness is." The Holy Scriptures never conceal the sins even of God's greatest saints, and the sins of saints are sure to meet with chastisement. Noah's piety is plainly recorded. It is also plainly recorded that he fell into sin, whether partly of ignorance or wholly of infirmity; that sin brought with it shame, and, as is so often found, was the occasion of sin to others, and led on to consequences disastrous to the descendants of all those who in any degree shared in the guilt of it. Noah sinned, Ham sinned, perhaps, too, Canaan sinned. So there was a heritage of sorrow to the descendants of Noah in the line of Ham, to the descendants of Ham in the line of Canaan. E. H. B. 22. Ham would not have mocked his father, when overcome with wine, if he had not long before cast from his soul that reverence which, according to God's command, children should cherish toward their parents. Luther.—What he did was only an index to his character; open acts give occasion for punishment, but the punishment is earned by, and is administered for, the depravity out of which open acts spring. Told his two brethren. Clearly not that they might do what they did, nor in any such spirit; but jestingly and undutifully. Alf. 24. Youngest son. Many writers of great authority, both Jewish and Christian, understand by the term here used, "his younger (little) son," not his son Ham, but his grandson Canaan. This would correspond with the tradition mentioned by Origen that the sin of Ham was shared by Canaan, or it may have been that the chief sin lay with Canaan, and hence that he especially inherited the curse. Many have adopted this opinion, and it would certainly solve most of the difficulty. E. H. B. 25-27. The manner of Scripture here is worthy of particular remark. First, the prediction takes its rise from a characteristic incident. The conduct of the brothers was of comparatively slight importance in itself, but in the disposition which it betrayed it was highly significant. Secondly, the prediction refers in terms to the near future and to the outward condition of the parties concerned. Thirdly, it foreshadows under these familiar phrases the distant future, and the inward, as well as the outward, state of the family of man. Fourthly, it lays out the destiny of the whole race from its very starting-point. These simple laws will be found to characterize the main body of the predictions of Scripture. Further, Scripture sees the race in the father, traces up its unity to him, discerns in him the leading traits of character that often mark his remotest posterity, and identifies with him in destiny all those of his race who continue to take after him. Thus Adam denotes the whole race, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, its three great branches. Attention to this law of the unity, continuity, and identity of a race, will aid us much in understanding the dealings of Providence with the several branches of the human family. M. These words of Noah are of the greatest importance for the conception of the general history of mankind given in the Old Testament: "Cursed be Canaan; let him be a servant of servants to his brothers." "Praised be Jehovah the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant." "May Elohim give enlargement to Japheth, and let him (Japheth) dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be their servant." According to our translation, the passage declares that God is to Shem the God of revelation, while he is for Japheth's descendants only the transcendent Divinity, but at the same time it points to a participation by Japheth in the blessing assigned to Shem: Japheth shall dwell in the tents of Shem, gaining domestic rights there, which in history has been spiritually fulfilled in the most glorious manner. . . . The race of Shem, to whom Jehovah is God, is chosen as the bearer of divine revelation; on Japheth the blessing is conferred through Shem; on Ham, and mainly on Canaan, the curse of slavery is to press. On the other side, the establishment of that world kingdom which is at enmity with God, proceeds from the Hamites (10 : 8 ff.), whose first seat appears to have been Babel. Here begins the distinction between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world which runs through the whole Bible. The unity of the race of man is broken up into peoples and tongues; but while in the view of the heathen the diversity of peoples and castes is original, and universal brotherhood is to them a chimera and to a degree an abomination, Mosaism, in its list of the nations, preserves the consciousness of the blood-relationship of all nations, which are again to be united in time to come by one blessing of God. O. A threefold development of humanity is foreseen in this oracle. One portion of it (Shem) will be received into a specially intimate relation to God, who reveals himself to it as Yahveh. It will be the depository of the history of revelation and redemption. Another (Japheth) will extend prosperously in the world and acquire lasting renown, by the favor of the God who makes everything go well with all who fear and honor him by right conduct. It will be the depository of culture, and the heroic race of history. A third for its ungodliness will bear the curse of history, subjected and enslaved by its brethren, laden with the world's ban. It is not meant that all Shemitic nations will be united with Yahveh and all Hamitic nations laden with the curse, still less that all individuals among these nations will assume their ancestors' attitude to God. But regarding history as a whole, we see that certain characteristics are hereditary in families of nations. On these leading types, which will be more or less reproduced in their posterity, blessing and curse are here pronounced. Orrilli. 25. Cursed be Canaan.** The ancient prophecies must be understood, not of single persons, but of whole nations. The curse of servitude pronounced upon Canaan, and the promise of blessing and enlargement made to Shem and Japheth, extend to their whole race; as afterward the prophecies concerning Ishmael, and those concerning Esau and Jacob, and those relating to the twelve Patriarchs. The curse, therefore, upon Canaan was properly a curse upon the Canaanites. God, foreseeing the wickedness of this people, which began in their father Ham, and greatly increased in this branch of his family, commissioned Noah to pronounce a curse upon them, and to devote them to the servitude and misery, which their vices and iniquities would deserve. Bp. Newton.—They suffered both for their own sin and that of the founder of their race. The long-suffering of God did not hasten their perdition. He allowed them to grow and prosper during the ten generations from Noah to Abraham, and the five following centuries from Abraham to Joshua; their fields and vineyards yielded abundant harvests, and their land was full of strong and populous cities; but their evil deeds accumulated, and they forfeited the land which their vices had contaminated. Kalisch. Servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. The word brethren, in Hebrew, comprehends more distant relations. The descendants, therefore, of Canaan were to be subject to the descendants of both Shem and Japheth: and the natural consequence of vice in communities as well as in single persons is slavery. Several centuries, 800 years, after the delivery of this prophecy, the Israelites, who were descendants of Shem, under the command of Joshua, invaded the Canaanites, smote above thirty of their kings, took possession of their land, slew several of the inhabitants, made the Gibeonites and others servants and tributaries; and Solomon afterward subdued the rest. The Greeks and Romans too, who were descendants of Japheth not only subdued Syria and Palestine, but also pursued and conquered such of the Canaanites as were anywhere remaining; as the Tyrians and Carthaginians, the former of whom were ruined by Alexander and the Grecians, and the latter by Scipio and the Romans. And ever since the miserable remainder of this people have been slaves to a foreign yoke; first to the Saracens, who descended from Shem; and afterward to the Turks, who descended from Japheth; and they groan under their dominion at this day. Bp. Newton. At present, every vestige of the race of Canaan, and even their name, has disappeared from the earth. Generally, however, Ham's posterity are to this day subjected to political servitude and the bondage of heathenism; and shall so remain until for them also the word shall be fulfilled (Ps. 78:31), "Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands unto God,"—a prophecy for whose accomplishment the way is now being paved. C. G. B. 26. Instead of blessing Shem, the aged father blesses Jehovah, the God of Shem, whom he sees in intimate union with Shem. The oracle of blessing is thus turned into praise of Him who is the source of blessing. Shem's highest happiness is that he has this God for his God. Here for the first time we find the genitical combination common afterward: God of a man, a nation. When humanity parts into different branches, the universal Deity also is specialized. To one portion of humanity the true living God stands in a relation of mutual possession. Orelli.—Noah could only give utterance to his grateful emotions: Blessed be Jehovah, the God of the covenant with his professed people, the God of all blessings, of everenduring love and faithfulness! What will he not do for his chosen people, brought into relations to himself so near and so dear! In this line the sweep of his prophetic eye took in the Hebrew race—Abraham and the patriarchs; Moses and the piouskings and holy prophets; and above all, the Great Messiah—to be born of David's line and to be the incarnation of God's mercy to a lost world. No wonder his soul was moved to devoutest adoration—Blessed be Jehovah who reveals himself as the God of Shem! H. C.—Jehovah was the God of Shem—that in the word of Noah was declared to be his peculiar distinction. In like manner, Jehovah from the first made himself known to Abraham as his God; nay, even took the name of "God of Abraham" as a distinctive epithet, and made the promise, "I will be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee," a leading article in the covenant established with him. And as the peculiar blessing of Shem was to be held with no exclusive design, but that the sons of Japheth far and wide might share in it, so Abraham is called not only to be himself blessed, but also that he might be a blessing,—a blessing to such an extent, that those should be blessed who blessed him, and in him all the families of the earth should be blessed. P. F. 27. God shall enlarge Japheth.** In the Hebrew there is a plain allusion to Japheth's name, which signifies enlargement; as there is to many others in Scripture. Japheth was enlarged both in territory and in children. As to territory, his posterity possessed, besides all Europe, the lesser Asia, Media, part of Armenia, Iberia, Albania, and those vast regions to the north, which anciently the Scythians inhabited, and now the Tartars; and it is not improbable that the new world was peopled by some of his northern descendants going thither by the straits of Anian. As to progeny, from the next chapter it appears that Japheth had seven sons, whereas Ham had only four, and Shem only five: and the northern hive was always remarkable for its fecundity, continually sending out colonies southward both in Europe and in Asia, both in former and in latter times. He shall dwell in the tents of Shem. By this may be meant either that God or that Japheth shall dwell in the tents of Shem. In either sense it has been fulfilled. In the former sense literally, when the Shechinah or Divine Presence rested on the ark and dwelt in the tabernacle and temple of the Jews; and when "the Word, who was with God and was God," pitched his tent and "dwelt among us." In the latter sense it was fulfilled, first, when the Greeks and Romans, who sprung originally from Japheth, subdued and possessed Judea and other countries of Asia belonging to Shem; and again, spiritually, when they were proselyted to the true religion; and they who were not Israelites by birth became Israelites by faith, and lived, as we and many others of Japheth's posterity live at this day, within the pale of the Church of Christ. Bp. Newton. Wide room (an allusion to his name) may God make for Japheth! For wide room is to his race the condition of prosperous development, and also its consequence. As matter of fact, Japheth has spread, not merely over an important part of Asia, but over the distant broad island continent of Europe. And to this geographical extension correspond his conquests in the intellectual field. In all branches of culture he has borne off the palm. Japheth is to have the lion's share, not only of the possession of the world but of the glory of history. Orelli.—As a German writer expresses it: "What are we all but descendants of Japheth, who dwell in the tents of Shem; and what is the language of the New Testament, but that of Javan spoken in the dwellings of Shem?" A. E. 28,29. Noah lived 950 years; 20 more than Adam, and but 19 less than Methuselah; this long life was a further reward of his signal piety, and a great blessing to the world, to which, no doubt, he continued a preacher of righteousness, with this advantage, that now all he preached to were his own children. God put a period to his life at last; though he lived long, yet he died, having, probably, first seen many that descended from him, dead before him. Noah lived to see two worlds, but being an heir of the righteousness which is by faith, when he died he went to see a better than either. H.—Noah lived for 350 years after the Flood, and died at the age of 950, just halfway, according to the common chronology, between the Creation and the Christian era. He survived the fifth and eighth of his descendants, Pe'eg and Reu; he was for 128 years contemporary with Torah, the father of Abraham; and died only two years before the birth of Abraham himself. Looking backward, we find that he was born only 126 years after the death of Adam, and fourteen years after that of Seth. He was contemporary with Enos for 84 years, and with the remaining six antediluvian patriarchs (except Enoch) for centuries. These computations show by how few steps, and yet by how many contemporary teachers, the traditions of primeval history may have been handed down—from Adam to Noah, and from Noah to Abraham, and, we might add, from Abraham to Moses. P. S. The history of Noah is now closed, in the customary form of the fifth chapter. This marks a connection between the third and fourth documents, and points to one hand as the composer, or at least compiler, of both. The document now closed could not have had the last paragraph appended to it till after the death of Noah. But, with the exception of these two verses, it might have been composed hundreds of years before. This strongly favors the notion of a constant continuator, or, at all events, continuation of the sacred history. Every new prophet and inspired writer whom God raised up added the necessary portion and made the necessary insertions in the sacred record. And hence the Word of God had a progressive growth and adaptation to the successive ages of the church. The present document stands between the old world and the new. Hence it has a double character, being the close of the antediluvian history, and the introduction to that of the postdiluvian race. It records a great event, pregnant with warning to all future generations of men. And it notes the delegation, by God to man, of authority to punish the murderer by death, and therefore to enforce all the minor sanctions of law for breaches of the civil compact. It therefore points out the institution of civil government as coming from God, and clearly exhibits the accountability of all governments to God for all the powers they hold, and for the mode in which they are exercised. This also is a great historical lesson for all ages. M. 1. Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood. 2 The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah. And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. Of these were the isles of the nations divided in their lands, every one after his tongue; after their families, in their nations. 6 And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Put, and Canaan. And the sons of Cush; Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabteca: and the sons of Raamah; Sheba, and Dedan. And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land he went forth into Assyria, and builded Nineveh, and Rehoboth-Ir, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah (the same is the great city). 13. And Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim, and Pathrusim, and 14 Casluhim (whence went forth the Philistines), and Caphtorim. 15. And Canaan begat Zidon his firstborn, and Heth; and the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and 16 the Girgashite; and the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite; and the Arvadite, and the 17 Zemarite, and the Hamathite: and afterward were the families of the Canaanite spread 18 abroad. And the border of the Canaanite was from Zidon, as thou goest toward Gerar, unto 19 Gaza; as thou goest toward Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboiim, unto Lasha. 20 These are the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, in their nations. 21. And unto Shem, the father of all the children of Eber, the elder brother of Japheth, to him 22 also were children born. The sons of Shem; Elam, and Asshur, and Arpachshad, and Lud, 23 and Aram. And the sons of Aram; Uz, and Hul, and Gether, and Mash. And Arpachshad 24 begat Shelah; and Shelah begat Eber. And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of the 25 one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided: and his brother's name was Joktan. 26 And Joktan begat Almodad, and Sheleph, and Hazaraveth, and Jerah; and Hadoram, and 27 Uzal, and Diklah; and Obal, and Abimael, and Sheba; and Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab; 28 all these were the sons of Joktan. And their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest toward 29 Sephar, the mountain of the east. 30 These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after 31 their tongues, in their lands, after their nations. 32. These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and of these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood. The tenth chapter of Genesis has furnished the basis of a vast amount of investigation and called forth a singular amount of admiration, being, in Bunsen's language, "the most learned of all ancient documents, and the most ancient among the learned;" or, as Johannes Von Müller puts it, "history has its beginning in this table." S. C. B. The tenth chapter of Genesis is the most re- markable historical document in existence; re- markable, because associated with facts in the past which have been established, and with facts in the future which could only be known to one supernaturally instructed. No page of history can be made parallel with it. The records of succeeding centuries confirm it, and the present condition of the world is its commentary. W. Fraser.—The evident purpose of this chapter is to present in an ethnographic chart the illus- tration of the outworking of God's providence in the fulfilment of the prophecy to Noah. And it furnishes another strong proof in confirma- tion of the superhuman character of this his- tory, that it thus so boldly ventures upon such a detail of facts, which historical science may put rigidly to the test. Bishop Butler well re- marks in the analogy (pt. 2, chap 7) how the historic character of these sacred records, and especially the great length of time which they cover, and the great extent and variety of sub- jects whereof they treat, gives the largest scope for criticism, and if the narrative be not true this should render the task of confuting it very easy. Can any man believe that if such a his- tory, dealing with the affairs of all the greatest nations of antiquity, were a fictitious narrative- modern historical science, with its searching methods and its exact and extended knowledge, would not long since have completely overthrown the historical authority of the sacred volume? But what is remarkable of modern historical inquiry is that as it has found histories and monuments long buried and unlocked the stores to increase in extent and exactness the knowl- edge of primeval times—instead of contradic- tion, all harmonizes with and confirms this chart as valid historical statement. We have seen how the narrative of Eden and the fall of man, and also the subsequent destruction of the flood, have been attested by all the traditions of the nations and ages. Now we approach the era when scientific history may delve out from the ruins of the ancient ages at least sufficient facts to test the only historic narrative in exist- ence of the first thousand years after the flood. This book volunteers a general statement of the repeopling of the earth. The first feature of the statement is that it enumerates the nations under three heads—the sons of Japheth, the sons of Ham and the sons of Shem. Now the most advanced modern ethnological science having set itself by a careful analysis of facts to establish a classification of races, has formed a precisely similar triple division of mankind into the Semitic, the Aryan and the Turanian, or "Allophylian." And when we proceed to examine the groups into which this 10th of Genesis has thrown the races, we find a most re- markable agreement with the conclusions to which ethnological science has come from a consideration, independent of the Bible history, of the facts of human language and physical type. Prichard and Bunsen and Max Müller, Rawlinson and Wilkinson but indorse the older learning and diligence, in another line of inquiry, as pursued in the methods of Bales, of Faber, of Buchart, of Leclerc, of Sir William Jones, who before them had labored so successfully in these inquiries, and the results of whose conclusions corroborated this general statement in Genesis 10th. S. R. Whether Chaldean or Phoenician, Egyptian or Arabian, Greek or Roman, Mongol or Tartar, Indo-Germanic, Celtic, Belgic or Briton—all find the germ of their nationality in this wonderful chapter, and all concur to swell and substantiate the proof that the human race sprang from Noah and that we have no occasion to look for pre-Adamic men or for tribes that escaped the flood and have no pedigree among the sons of Noah. All the light that comes up from the comparative study of the languages of the race helps us still to follow the track of the emigrating tribes as they diverged from the ancient home of Noah's family. The Science of Ethnography begins with this chapter of inspiration. H. C. The Scriptural ethnography which divides the human family into three great families, the Semitic, Japhetan, and Hamite, is confirmed from so many sources, from tradition, from monuments, from names of tribes and places, from affinities of language, from profane history, that its correctness, apart from all reference to the divine authority of the Bible, cannot be reasonably questioned. B. &F. Ec. Rev.—What could be more fitting than to recognize in this narrative the account of the division of Central Asiatic mankind into those three great world-historical races, which form in themselves a unity, and to which we are now in a position to trace back all the peoples of Asia and Europe known to us by their speech? Research respecting these three races, the Turanians, the Semites, and the Aryans, leads us to a great common centre—the district bounded by the mountains of Central Asia—the Caucasus, Ararat and the Altai. Bunsen. According to the Scriptures, the terrestrial Paradise, the birthplace of the human race, was located on the high table-lands of Central Asia, affording an outflow to the four great rivers named in Genesis. From this centre, the fountain of populations, the nations of the Old World whose history is recorded in the Bible, flowed down toward the south along the channels of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and westward toward Palestine, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Europe. In this way the unity of the race is maintained, all the modern peoples being derived from a common centre, and connected by intimate ties of blood and language plainly legible after so many ages of separation from the original root. D. Sherman. The fifth document (chaps. 10 :—11 : 9) relates to the generations of the sons of Noah. It presents first a genealogy of the nations, and then an account of the distribution of mankind into nations, and their dispersion over the earth. This is the last section which treats historically of the whole human race. Only in incidental, didactic, or prophetic passages do we again meet with mankind as a whole in the Old Testament. The present chapter signalizes a new step in the development of the human race. They pass from the one family to the seventy nations. This great process covers the space of time from Noah to Abraham. During this period the race was rapidly increasing under the covenant made with Noah. M. I. The ethnological table, to which the first verse forms, as it were, the general title, is immediately connected with the genealogical table of chap. v. It gives us the only true and certain basis for the history of the most ancient nations, and of the gradual spread of the posterity of Noah in segregated races over the countries of the globe. The stronger the light which, in these modern days, has been cast upon the study of countries, nations, and languages, the more have the notices in this and the following chapters been confirmed, as historically and geographically true. C. G. B. This genealogical table shows us the connection and the severance of the nations of the old world, according to their position toward the history of the kingdom of God. Those nations which had most influence on it in its course are minutely reckoned up; others, which had but a remote connection therewith, are scarcely touched on. Gerl.—No ethnology in his period, no history, no philology, could have taught that to Moses; but now the historian, helped by all the monuments of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, and Palestine, and the philologist and the ethnologist all agree, after their marvellous researches in this century, that the tenth chapter of Genesis exactly describes the distribution of the race. Where did Moses get these chapters from? He did not get them from science. He got them from God! Crosby. Sons of Noah. The descent of all mankind from Noah is, of course, a renewed testimony by Scripture to the unity of the human race—a doctrine so intimately connected with the Divine plan of Redemption, and so vital to the brotherhood and mutual sympathy of man with man. Geikie. The earth was again peopled by the descendants of the three sons of Noah—Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Shem is the Assyrian Samu, "alive e dored," Ham is Khammu, "burned black," and Japheth Ippat, "the white race." The tribes and races which drew their origin from them are here enumerated. The arrangement of this chapter, however, is geographical, not ethnological; the peoples named in it being grouped together according to their geographical position, not according to their relationship in blood or language. Hence it is that the non-Semitic Elamites are classed along with the Semitic Assyrians, and that the Phoenicians of Canaan, who spoke the same language as the Hebrews, and originally came from the same ancestors, are associated with the Egyptians. When this fact is recognized, there is no difficulty in showing that the statements of the chapter are fully consistent with the conclusions of modern research. Sayce. 1. The territories of JAPHETH lie chiefly on the coasts of the Mediterranean, in Europe and Asia Minor, "the isles of the Gentiles," but they also reach across Armenia and along the north-eastern edge of the Tigris and Euphrates valley, over Media and Persia. The race spread westward and northward over Europe, and at the other end as far as India, embracing the great Indo-European family of languages. This wide diffusion was prophetically indicated by the very name, Japheth (enlarged), and by the blessing of his father Noah. In Greek mythology the Titian JAPETUS is the progenitor of the human race, and Milton has not scrupled to call his son Prometheus "Japheth's wiser son." 2. The race of SHEM occupied the south-western corner of Asia, including the peninsula of Arabia. Of his five sons, Arphaxad is the progenitor both of the Hebrews and of the Arabs and other kindred tribes, whose origin is recorded in the Book of Genesis. North of them were the children of Aram (which signifies high), in the highlands of Syria and Mesopotamia. Asebur evidently represents Assyria; and the eastern and western extremities were occupied by the well-known nations of the Elymaans (children of Elam) on the south-eastern margin of the valley of the Tigris, and the Lydians (children of Lud) in Asia Minor. 3. The race of HAM (the swarthy, according to the most probable etymology) presents very difficult but interesting problems. Their chief seat was in Africa, but they are also found mingled with the Semitic races on the shores of Arabia, and on the Tigris and Euphrates, while on the north they extended into Palestine (the land of the Philistines), Asia Minor, and the larger islands, as Crete and Cyprus. In Africa, Mizraim is most certainly identified with Egypt; Cush with Ethiopia, above Egypt; and Phut probably with the inland peoples to the west. Among the sons of Mizraim, the Lubim correspond to Libya; and those of Cush represent tribes which crossed the Red Sea and spread along the southern and eastern shores of Arabia, up the Persian Gulf and the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. P. S. The intimations given in the earlier chapters of Genesis on all matters of purely secular interest, are incidental only, and exceedingly obscure. And yet enough is said to indicate how much there lay beyond and outside of the narrative which is given. The dividing of the tribes of the Gentiles among the descendants of Japheth, conveys the idea of movements and operations which probably occupied long intervals of time, and many generations of men. The genealogy of Shem neither does, nor professes to do, more than to trace the order of succession among a few families only out of the millions then already existing in the world. Argyll. We have in our museums, inscribed on cylinders and tablets of clay, the literature of the nations who of old inhabited these ancient lands. We also possess translations of writings in the language of Accad (G. 10:10), made when that town was passing out of memory for the libraries of Assyrian kings, and which, even in this form, are themselves anterior to the Christian era by six or seven centuries. These writings are childishly polytheistic and full of fable, but it is remarkable that they cover much the same ground as the earlier narratives of Genesis. R. P. S.—Traditions, legends, and historic annals have been exhumed illustrating, in a most remarkable manner, not merely those portions of Scripture in which the wars of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings are chronicled, but, strange to say, the very earliest narratives in the book of Genesis. Inscribed tablets, which have lain buried for two thousand five hundred years beneath desolate mounds on the plains of Assyria and Babylonia, contain, in a language until very recently unknown to scholars, accounts in some points substantially identical with the Mosaic narrative of the creation, the fall, and the deluge. The Bible represents those great plains as the home of our first parents, the site of Eden, the scene of the deluge and of the confusion of tongues, the birthplace of Israel, the centre from which the human race was dispersed, and the common nucleus of those mighty empires which for ages ruled the destinies of the world—Chaldea, Babylonia, Assyria, Media, and Persia. The Record chambers of Nineveh, recently discovered, have supplied documents which confirm the Biblical annals. J. L. P.—The historical records and public documents of the Assyrians were kept on tablets and cylinders of baked clay. To the height of a foot or more from the floor these chambers were entirely filled with them; some entire, but the greater part broken. The largest tablets were flat and measured about 9 inches by 6½; the smaller were slightly convex. Loyard. Men have been enabled not only to find out the meaning of the remarkable cuneiform character, but also to bring out from its grave a language—nay, two, three languages—that were altogether dead, of which not one single word or syllable was known to us before; and now those languages have their grammars and their dictionaries and their reading-books, and we can study them in our homes as we can study Hebrew or Greek. There is the Assyrian language especially, of which there is now found an immense literature, the literature especially of the kings of Assyria, a language which is the old parent of the Hebrew—the Sanscrit, so to speak, of the Semitic dialects; and there is the Akkad language, as it is called, or one of the Turanian stock, belonging to Southern Babylonia; and then, also, there is the Median language; and these three languages, that thirty years ago were not known to exist, have now their full development in grammar and dictionary. In these remarkable remains have been found the tablets written with the cuneiform character by kings some of whom reigned 2000 years before Christ, in the time of Abraham and before him; and in some of these tablets we have long and particular records of all the events of their reigns; and it is interesting for us, in examining these records, to find at times the mention of Palestine and the kings with whose names we are so familiar in Holy Writ. Crosby. This history is, moreover, corroborated by contemporary writers of other nations, as far as they touch upon the same times and places. It has been, and is still, receiving striking and frequent confirmation of its statements from the undoubted monuments of the past, from the stamps on the bricks of Babylon, the arrowheads on the tablets of Nineveh, the hieratic writings on the papyri of Egypt, and the inscriptions on the stones of Persia, Media and Palestine. It is more remarkable still that the sacred history of the Bible is the most trustworthy source to which antiquarians can resort for substantial aid in the decipherment of inscriptions and the identification of places coming within the range of its records. Hence, it appears that this history is not only true in itself, but at the same time detects and corrects history in other documents bearing upon the same events. M. If we trace back the thread of human history, we have modern Europe, the Middle Ages, the Goths, Vandals, and Huns, Rome. We can follow the Roman history to seven hundred and fifty years before Christ. Before the Romans were the Greeks. We can trace them back through Demosthenes, Thucydides, Herodotus, Homer. Solon was about 600 B.C.; Lycurgus about 900 B.C. Back of that we place the Trojan war, about 1200 B.C., the Lycians, the Lydians, the Carians, etc.; and there, excluding certain confused ideas of Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Etruscan, and Phoenician history, one thread was lost, excepting the earlier Hebrew chronicles, written about 1500 B.C. But modern research has laid bare the Egyptian and Mesopotamian annals, and we know now more of the daily life of the Memphian and Theban monarchies than we do of the Romans before the Punic wars. The long-sealed records of ancient Babylonia, India, Phoenicia, Palestine, Persia and Moab have also been more or less illustrated by archaeological inquiry. Southall. To take THE NAMES OCCURRING IN THE TABLE OF NATIONS as applying merely to single individuals or to founders of tribes, is to misunderstand the eastern mode both of viewing and of writing history. They chiefly refer to groups of nations, the later name of a nation being transferred to its ancestor, as according to oriental ideas a tribe and its founder are in reality one. Besides in many cases the same name applies both to the land and its inhabitants. Thus the names Canaan, Aram, etc., were in the first place transferred from the country to the nation and then from the latter to its founder, who represented the nation in its totality and unity. When the personal name of the founder of a tribe was not preserved by the remembrance of events connected with him, it gradually sank into oblivion, and the name of the nation took the place of that of its founder. K. There is a most remarkable agreement between the actual arrangement here made and the conclusions to which the theoretic reasoning of modern ethnologists have come, from the facts of human language and of physical type. Thus this chapter has classified together of the sons of Japheth—the Cynry or Celts (Gomer), the Medes (Madai), and the Ionians or Greeks (Javan); and thus has actually anticipated what is known in modern times as the "Indo-European theory" of the essential unity of the Aryan (Asiatic) races with the principal races of Europe—the Celts and the Ionians. So in this chapter are thrown together as the "children of Shem" the Assyrians (Asshur), the Syrians (Aram), the Hebrews (Eber), and the Joktanian Arabs (Joktan), the four principal races which modern ethnology recognizes under the heading of the "Semitic" races. So again under "the children of Ham" this tenth chapter arranges Cush, the Ethiopians, Mizraim, the Egyptians, Sheba and Dedan, the Southern Arabians, and Nimrod, an ancient people of Babylon. And, accordingly, between these four races the latest linguistic researches have established the closest affinity. Indeed, the whole tendency of modern ethnological inquiry has been to put almost beyond question the accuracy of this "Book of the Generations of Noah," and to create a feeling among the true scientific ethnologists, well expressed by Sir Henry Rawlinson in saying, "It is the most authentic record we possess for the affiliation of nations." And, as even the rationalistic Kalisch, the recent German commentator, says, "It is an unparalleled list, the combined result of reflection and deep research, and no less valuable as a historical document than as a lasting proof of the brilliant capacity of the Hebrew mind." Any one who will carefully study the essay of Sir Henry Rawlinson "On the ethnic affinities of the nations of Western Asia" (Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. 1st, appendix essay 11th) will find this whole subject treated in a most masterly and comprehensive manner, and will see how remarkably modern investigations confirm the ancient ethnographic chart. S. R. Is it not very significant to find the descendants of Japheth, Ham, and Shem, separately described as peopling the earth "after their families and after their tongues"? From these families, it would seem, have all the languages in the world been gradually evolved; and is it not perfectly consistent with this Bible statement to find eminent philologists of all ranks concurring in the conclusion, that the languages and dialects of the world are reducible to three distinct families or groups—the Aryan, the Semitic, and Turanian? "Comparative Philology," says Bunsen, "would have been compelled to set forth as a postulate the supposition of some such division of languages in Asia, especially on the ground of the relation of the Egyptian language to the Shemitic, even if the Bible had not assured us of the truth of this great historical event. It is matter of astonishment: it is more than a mere astounding fact, that something so purely historical, and yet divinely fixed—something so conformable to reason, and yet not to be conceived of as a mere natural development—is here related to us out of the oldest primeval period; and which now, for the first time, through the new science of philology, has become capable of being historically and philosophically explained." W. Fraser.—Two points Comparative Philology has gained. 1. Nothing necessitates the admission of different independent beginnings for the material elements of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech: nay, it is possible even now to point out radicals, which, under various changes and disguises, have been current in these three branches ever since their first separation. 2. Nothing necessitates the admission of different beginnings for the formal elements of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech; and though it is impossible to derive the Aryan system of grammar from the Semitic, or the Semitic from the Turanian, we can perfectly understand how, either through individual influences, or by the wear and tear of grammar in its own continuous working, the different systems of grammar of Asia and Europe may have been produced. Max Müller.—Although it may not be possible simply to assign all Semitic tongues to the descendants of Shem, Aryan to the descendants of Japheth, and Turanian to the descendants of Ham; it is still observable that comparative philology seems to have reduced all languages to three distinct stocks, even the rapid degeneracy of barbarian dialects not wholly obscuring their relationship to one of these three families. I. H. B. 2-5. The Sons of Japheth. Fourteen of the primitive nations spring from Japheth. We discover their ancient seats around the Caspian, the Euxine, the Ægean, and the north of the Mediterranean. From these coast-lands they seem to have spread over Europe, northern, western, and southern Asia, and, both by Behring's Strait and the Atlantic, they at length poured into America. So true is it that Japheth was enlarged, and that by them were "the isles of the nations divided." M. 2. The Assyrian inscriptions have thrown a good deal of light upon the names contained in it. Gomer, the son of Japheth, represents the Gimirrai of the inscriptions, the Kimmerians of classical writers. Madai are the Medes, a title given by the Assyrians to the multifarious tribes to the east of Kurdistan. They are first mentioned in the inscriptions about 820 B.C. Javan is the Greek word "Ionian," but in the Old Testament it is generally applied to the Island of Cyprus. Sayce. 4. Tarshish is doubtless the famous Phoenician port in Spain, outside the Strait of Gibraltar, between the two mouths of the Guadalquivir, or "great river." It was famous from the earliest antiquity for the abundance of silver and other metals yielded by its mines; and no less for its corn. Already in the time of Solomon, a thousand years before Christ, the huge vessels which sailed to it were known as Tarshish ships, as in later days we spoke of "Indiamen," and the name even came to be applied to any very large merchantmen, to whatever port they sailed. By KITTIM or CHITTIM, the next in the list of the "sons" of Javan, that is of the offshoots of the Greek stem, a people is indicated whose country is described as an island or coast land. The "islands of Chittim" are, indeed, frequently mentioned in Scripture. Josephus, in the generation after Christ, had already identified the name with that of Cyprus. Geikie. 5. Isles of the nations. The word here rendered isle is used either of islands or of places on the sea-coast. By the phrase "Isles of the Gentiles" were understood those countries of Europe and Asia Minor to which the inhabitants of Egypt and Palestine had access only by sea. E. H. B. "There was a time," says Max Müller, "when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Selaves, the Greeks and Italians, the Persians and the Hindoos were living together beneath the same roof, separated from the Semitic and Turanian races." And again: "There is not an English jury nowadays which, after examining the hoary documents of language, would reject the claim of a common descent and a legitimate relationship between Hindoo, Greek, and Teuton." Ethnological science, we see, regards it as morally certain, as proved beyond all reasonable doubt, that the chief races of modern Europe, the Celts, the Germans, the Graeco-Italians, and the Selaves, had a common origin with the principal race of Western Asia, the Indo-Persian. Now this result of advanced modern inductive science—a result which it is one of the proudest boasts of the nineteenth century to have arrived at—is almost exactly that which Moses, writing fifteen hundred years before the Christian era, here states as a simple historical fact. G. R. 6. The sons of Ham. Thirty primitive nations sprang from Ham. Of these, only four were immediate descendants. Cush has left traces of his name perhaps in the Caucasus, the Caspian, and Chuzistan. To Ethiopia the name generally refers in Scripture. Mizraim is the ordinary name for Egypt in the Hebrew scriptures. Put has with one consent been placed beyond Egypt, in the north of the continent of Africa. Canaan settled in the country called after his name. M. 6-20. It is the simplest and best interpretation of this passage to understand it as asserting that the four races—the Egyptians, Ethiopians, Libyans, and Canaanites—were ethnically connected, being all descended from Ham; and further, that the primitive people of Babylon were a subdivision of one of these races—namely, of the Cushite or Ethiopians, connected in some degree with the Canaanites, Egyptians, and Libyans, but still more closely with the people which dwelt upon the Upper Nile. G. R. The posterity of Ham spread itself over Southern, Central, and Eastern Asia, Southern Europe and Northern Africa, and constitutes the stock of the African and Turanian races, as well as probably of the American tribes. It presents itself in early postdiluvian times as the first representative and teacher of art and material civilization. The Hamite race is remarkable for the early development of pantheism and hero-worship, and for the artificiality of its culture. It presents us with the darkest colors, and in the vast solitudes of Africa and Central Asia its outlying tribes must have fallen into comparative barbarism a few centuries after the Deluge. Dawson. 6. These are the first notices of Egypt which occur in Holy Scripture. The word Mizraim, which is here simply transliterated from the Hebrew, is elsewhere, except in 1 Chron. 1:8, uniformly translated by "Egypt," or "the Egyptians." It undoubtedly designates the country still known to us as Egypt; but the origin of the name is obscure. The Hebrew "Mizraim" is a dual word, and signifies "the two Mizrs," or "the two Egypts," an expression readily intelligible from the physical conformation of the country, which naturally divides itself into "Upper" and "Lower Egypt," the long narrow valley of the Nile, and the broad tract, known as the Delta, on the Mediterranean. 8-10. That this passage refers to Babylon will scarcely be disputed. The words "Babel" and "Shinar" are sufficient proof. "Babel," elsewhere generally translated "Babylon," is the exact Hebrew equivalent of the native Babil, which appears as the capital of Babylonia in the cuneiform records from the time of Agu-kakrimi (about n.c. 2000) to the conquest of the country by Cyrus (n.c. 538). "Shinar" is probably an equivalent of "Mesopotamia," "the country of the two rivers," and in Scripture always designates the lower part of the Tigris and Euphrates valley, the alluvial plain through which the great rivers flow before reaching the Persian Gulf. That Babylonia became at a very early date a settled government under a king is confirmed by Berosus, by Diodorus Siculus, and by the monuments. The founder of this monarchy bears the name of Nimrod; its site is the land of Shinar, or Babylonia; its ethnic character is Cushite or Ethiopian, for Nimrod is the "son," i.e. descendant "of Cush;" its great cities are four, Babel or Babylon, Erech, Accad, and Calneh. Recent researches in Mesopotamia have revealed to us, as the earliest seat of power and civilization in Western Asia, a Cushite kingdom, the site of which is lower Babylonia, a main characteristic of which is its possession of large cities. Babel, Accad and Erech (Huruk) are names which occur in the early geographic nomenclature of this monarchy. . . . Another sign of the reality of Nimrod's rule is to be found in the attachment of his name to various sites in the Mesopotamia region. The remarkable ruin generally called Akkerku, which lies a little to the south-west of Baghdad, is known to many as the "Tel-Nimrūd;" the great dam across the Tigris below Mosul is the "Sahr-el-Nimrūd;" one of the chief of the buried cities in the same neighborhood is called "Nimrūd" simply; and the name of "Birs-Nimrūd" attaches to the grandest mass of ruins in the lower country. G. R. The site of Babel (Babylon) has been discovered in certain ruins near Hillah, chiefly on the opposite or eastern bank of the Euphrates, where there is a square mound called Babil by the natives. Erech has been traced also on the east bank of the Euphrates, about one hundred miles south-east of Babil, or half way between the city and the confluence of the rivers. It is the Orchoe of the Greeks, and the ruins now bear the name of Urka, or Warka. This name appears as Huruk on the cuneiform inscriptions of the place. Akkad Colonel Taylor finds in Akkerku, north of Babel, and about nine miles west of the Tigris, where it approaches the Euphrates. Here there is a hill or mound of ruins called Tel Nimrud. The sites of these towns fix that of Shinar, which is evidently the lower part of Mesopotamia, or, more precisely, the country west of the Tigris, and south of Is, or Hit, on the Euphrates, and Samara on the Tigris. It is otherwise called Babylonia and Chaldea. M. It is an important fact that while the Assyrians and later Babylonians spoke a Semitic language, the most ancient inscriptions discovered in the region of Babylonia show that the earliest inhabitants of the great cities there founded spoke a Turanian or Cushite tongue. J. L. P. —Its vocabulary is decidedly Cushite or Ethiopian, and the modern languages to which it makes the nearest approaches are those of Southern Arabia and Abyssinia. The old traditions have thus been confirmed by comparative philology, and both are side-lights to Scripture. H. Rawlinson. —This agrees with the Mosaic statement that Nimrod, the founder of Babel and Erech, was a son of Cush. That dialect of the Turanian which was used in primeval Babylonia is called Akkadian, and a penitential psalm written in it is among the cuneiform texts recently published. The Akkadians were Hamites who inhabited Babylonia in prehistoric times, and were connected with the nomad races both on the north and south, in Africa and Asia. They were among the first to practise the art of writing, and they were from the earliest period devoted to the study of astronomy and the occult sciences. In their primitive tongue were preserved all the scientific, theological, and mythical records of Babylonia. They seem to be identical with the Chaldeans (Hebrew, Kasdim) of the Bible, one of whose chief seats was Ur, and who were instruments, simultaneously with the Sabeans, in the affliction of Job. In later times the name Chaldean was applied to the learned, and the language of the Chaldeans was that through which scientific and religious education was given. For this reason the prophet Daniel himself was made "master of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers" in Babylon. Semitic tribes invaded Chaldea and Babylonia at an early period. At first they lived side by side with the Cushites, as is evidenced in the case of Abraham's family. They founded the Assyrian Empire about the thirteenth century before Christ. Recent research has discovered the sites and remains of the ancient cities of Erech, Akkad, and Calneh. They are vast mounds of brick, scathed by fire, and left bare and desolate by the action of the elements for more than two thousand years. Their names have been seen in inscriptions upon the earliest monuments, and upon tablets and cylinders found amid the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. Akkad, which probably gave its name to the Akkadian tribe of Cushites, was a city famous for its science, especially astronomy. It may have been a school of Chaldean learning. The monuments of Assyria and Babylonia also corroborate in a most singular manner the legends on the tablets and the narratives in Genesis. In the very earliest sculptures on cylinders, and on the slabs which once lined the chambers of palaces, we find representations of the tree of knowledge, the serpent tempter, the tree of life guarded by cherubim, the ark, and many other things, which show how thoroughly imbued the minds of the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians were with the whole facts recorded in the early chapters of the Bible. J. L. P. 11. Out of that land he went forth. Nimrod “went out into Assyria” (ver. 11, marginal rendering), “and builded Nineveh”—the remarkable circumstance here being that each time four cities are mentioned in connection with Nimrod: first, the four cities of his Babylonian empire, of which Babel was the capital, and then the four cities of his conquered Assyrian empire, of which Nineveh was the capital. Now all this tallies in the most striking manner with what we read in ancient history, and with those Assyrian monuments which within our own lifetime have by the labors of Layard and Loftus been exhumed from their burial of many centuries, to give witness for the Bible. For, first, we now know that the great Asiatic empire of Babylon was of Cushite origin. Secondly, we are made aware that Babel was the original seat of the empire; and, strangest of all, that the earliest Babylonian kings bore a title which is supposed to mean “four races,” in reference to “the quadruple groups of capitals” of Babylonia and Assyria. Lastly, we know that, as stated in the Bible, “the Babylonian empire extended its sway northward” to Assyria, where Nineveh was founded, which in turn succeeded to the empire once held by Babel. In all these respects, therefore, the latest historical investigations have most strikingly confirmed the narrative of Scripture. A. E. The reading “From this land he went out into Assyria,” is the rendering of all the Targums, of Nachmanides, and, after them, of Drusius, Bochart, Le Clerc, De Wette, Baumgarten, Tuch, Gesenius, Knobel, Delitzsch, Kalisch, and most modern interpreters. The syntax fully admits of this interpretation; and the general sense of the passage requires it. Nimrod is the subject here treated of. Asshur, the son of Shem, was at least a generation older than Nimrod, who may probably have first colonized the country called after him, Asshur (or Assyria). E. H. B.—The probabilities in favor of this translation are the following: 1. The discourse relates to Nimrod. 2. The words admit of it. 3. The word Asshur has occurred hitherto only as the name of a country. 4. Asshur, the person, was considerably older than Nimrod, and had probably given name to Asshur before Nimrod’s projects began. 5. Asshur would have been as great a man as Nimrod, if he had founded Nineveh and its contiguous towns; which does not appear from the text. 6. The beginning of his kingdom implies the addition to it contained in these verses. 7. And the phrases in the land of Shinar, out of that land, and the need of some definite locality for the second four cities, are in favor of this rendering. M.—This translation is favored by Micah 5:6, where “the land of Nimrod” appears to mean Assyria. Sayce.—Assyria was a country intersected by the Tigris. It included the part of Mesopotamia north of Shinar, and the region between the Tigris and Mount Zagros. Its extension westward is undefined by any natural boundary. M. 12. Nimrod’s capital was Babylon, but he founded also three other cities in the plain of Shinar, namely, Erech, Accad, and Calneh. Thence he extended his empire northward along the course of the Tigris over Assyria, where he founded a second group of capitals, Nineveh, Rehoboth, Calah, and Resen. P. S.—Nineveh lay opposite the present town of Mosul, and it is from the remains of its chief palace, now buried under the mounds of Kouyunjik, that most of the Assyrian inscriptions in the British Museum have been brought. A few miles to the south of Nineveh, on the site now known as Nimrod, was Calah, a town built by Shalmaneser I, who lived n.c. 1300. Calah subsequently fell into ruins, but was rebuilt in the ninth century before our era. “Between Nineveh and Calah” stood Resen, according to Genesis. Resen is the Assyrian Ris-eni, “head of the stream,” which is once mentioned in an inscription of Sennacherib. Rehoboth ‘Ir, or “the open spaces of the city,” must have denoted the suburbs of Nineveh. Sayce. 13,14. The Lehabim are the Libyans, while the Naphtuhim may be the people of Napata in Ethiopia. The Caphtorim or inhabitants of Caphtor are the Phoenician population settled on the coast of the Delta. From an early period the whole of this district had been colonized by the Phoenicians, and, as Phoenicia itself was called K-ft by the Egyptians, the part of Egypt in which they had settled went by the name of Keft-ur or "greater Phœnicia." Sayer. It must have been at a very early period after the dispersion that MIZRAIM and his company, directing their march southward, reached at last the banks of the Nile, and laid the foundations of the great empire of EGYPT. It is beyond all doubt that Egypt was not only a very ancient kingdom, but that it possessed a very ancient and very wonderful civilization. Before the call of Abraham, the massive forms of some of the largest pyramids were already to be seen in the plain of El Gizeh. Already the walls of many tombs and temples were covered with those inscriptions which the scholars of the nineteenth century are laboring to explain. W. G. B. The descendants of Mizraim were settled in Africa with the exception of the Philistines, who migrated into the country to which they gave their name. M.—The Philistines occupied the Shephelah, or that portion of the Mediterranean coast which forms the south-western boundary of Palestine. Like the inhabitants of the northern section of the same coast, though not by any means to the same degree, the Philistine people became widely known beyond their own territory. Even at the time of the Exodus they had acquired a high reputation as a powerful and warlike nation (Ex. 13:17). W. Lee. 15-19. From Canaan are descended eleven nations. Zidon is styled his first-born. The name is retained in the well-known town on the coast of Phœnicia, which is accordingly of the highest antiquity among the cities of that region. The Sidonians were reckoned co-extensive with the Phœnicians, and are mentioned by Homer. Heth. This tribe dwelt about Hebron and in the mountains around, and perhaps still further north in the districts extending toward the Euphrates. M. 15. In "Sidon" and "Heth" we seem to have the names of individual men; but when it is added that he also "begat the Jebusite and the Amorite," etc., it is clear that we are dealing not with single generations, but with a condensed abstract of the origin and growth of tribes. No definite information is given in such abstract as to the lapse of time. Argyll.—Here Sidon represents the race of which it was the early prominent seat of activity, being mentioned in Joshua as already "great Sidon" (Josh 11:8). And in denominating Sidon "the firstborn of Canaan," the narrative records the great historic fact that at a period estimated (by many) to be some four thousand years ago, "a tribe speaking a Semitic tongue abandoned the nomad habits of their ancestors, and building some rude huts beside a creek, sheltered by an inland breakwater, took to the sea, and called themselves 'Sidonians' or 'Fishermen.' It was a memorable day for humanity, when the first colonizing and commercial power which the world had seen, launched its rude craft tentatively on the Mediterranean. On that day the arts and culture of the East may be said to have set out on their journey to the West, and the long process to have begun by which the sceptre was transferred from the primeval 'river kingdoms' to the republics of the Inland Sea, and from these passed over to the 'ocean empires' of modern times." S. C. B. 16. The Jebusite had his chief seat in and around Jerusalem, which was called Jebus, from his chief; and the citadel of which was wrested from him only in the time of David. The Amorite was one of the most important and extensive tribes. Five kings of this nation dwelt in the mountains afterward occupied by Judah, and two on the east of the Jordan, in Heshbon and Bashan, north of Moab (Nu. 21:13; Deut. 4:47). The eastern Amorites were conquered under Moses, the western under Joshua. A remnant of them were made bondsmen by Solomon. They survived the captivity (Ez. 9:1). The Girgashite seems to have lived on the east of the Jordan. 17. The Hivite was found at Shalem, Gibeon, and also at the foot of Hermon and Antilibanus. The Arkite probably dwelt near a town called Arke or Cæsarea Libani, lying some miles north of Tripolis, at the foot of Lebanon. Its ruins are still extant at Tel Arka. The Sinite is supposed to have dwelt in Sinna, a town mentioned by Strabo, not far from Arke. 18. The Arvadite dwelt in Arvad, Aradus, now Ruad, a Phœnician town on an island of the same name. The Zemarite has been traced in the town Simura, the ruins of which were found by Shaw at the western foot of Lebanon, under the name of Sumra. The Hamathite was the inhabitant of Hamath, at present Hamah. It is situated on the Orontes, and held an important place in the history of Israel. The land of Hamath was of great extent, including the town of Riblah (2 K. 25:21) and reaching even to Antioch. The entrance of Hamath, the northern part of the valley between Lebanon and Antilibanus, formed the utmost boundary of Palestine to the north (Nu. 13:21; Jos. 13:5; 1 K. 8:65). Its king was in alliance with David (2 S. 8:10). M. The name of Canaan (low country) is always exclusively applied to the country west of Jordan. It is as much the name of the people as of the country. The strange circumstance that a land so decidedly mountainous should obtain such a name becomes only intelligible by this historical statement in the table of nations, according to which the Canaanites had first settled in the low country of Phoenicia, whence they gradually spread to the Dead Sea. The name Palaistine is the Greek mode of pronouncing the word which originally applied to the territory of the Philistines along the southern shore of the Mediterranean, but was extended by the Romans to the whole country. In the Bible the following names also occur: the land of the Hebrews (Gen. 40 : 15); the Lord's land (Hosea 9 : 3); the holy land (Zech. 2 : 12); the coast, or the land of Israel (Judges 19 : 29; Ezek. 7 : 2); the land of promise (Heb. 11 : 9). K. By this account it appears that the posterity of Canaan were both numerous and rich, and very pleasantly seated; and yet Canaan was under a curse, a divine curse, and not a curse causeless. Those that are under the curse of God may yet perhaps thrive and prosper greatly in this world; for we cannot know love or hatred, the blessing or the curse, by what is before us, but by what is within us. The curse of God always works really and terribly: but perhaps it is a secret curse, a curse to the soul, and does not work visibly; or a slow curse, and does not work immediately; but sinners are by it reserved for and bound over to a day of wrath. H. After the conquest of Canaan under Joshua, the residue of the Canaanites wandered northward to the foot of Lebanon, and the coast of Northern Syria; others crossed the sea to Africa, Carthage, Greece (Cadmus), and the other Phoenician colonies of the Mediterranean. Hence the expression (v. 18) "afterward were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad." C. G. B. In point of political intercourse with Shem Japheth in early times sinks comparatively into the shade, and Ham assumes the prominent place. Babylon, Cush, Egypt, and Canaan are the powers which come into contact with Shem, in that central line of human history which is traced in the Bible. Hence it is that in the table of nations special attention is directed to Cush, Nimrod, Mizraim, and to the tribes and borders of Canaan. M. 21-31. The sons of Shem. The history of the growth, development, and early migrations of the Semitic race, and its subdivision into the various families of Elam in Persia, Asshur in Assyria, Arphaxad in Northern Assyria, Joktan in Arabia, Lud in the highlands of Armenia, and Aram in Mesopotamia and Syria is here given in a concise form. To these details ethnological investigations may add some interesting facts, but to their accuracy and clearness they add little more than corroborating evidence. E. H. Palmer.—Heber, the founder of the Hebrew race, is classed among the sons of Shem, through Arphaxad, and along with Elam, Asshur, Lud, and Aram. In other words, the Hebrews are connected by common descent, with the people of Elymais or Elam on the Persian Gulf, east of the Tigris; with the Assyrians on the north-east of that river; with the people of Arphaxad, still further north, among the mountains of Southern Armenia, immediately east of what is now the Lake Van; with the Lydians and the Semitic peoples of Asia Minor; and with the Aramean or Syrian nations stretching thence, south-east, to the Euphrates. Geikie. 21. Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber. As Ham is specially called the father of Canaan, so probably Shem is designated as the father of Eber. The Hebrews and the Canaanites were brought into constant conflict and exemplified respectively the characters of the Hamites and the Shemites, their characters and their destinies. E. H. B. 22. Twenty-six of the primitive nations are descended from Shem, of which five are immediate. Elam was settled in a part of the modern Persia, to which he gave name. M.—Elam—the High Land—an extensive country on the east side of the lower Tigris, bordered on the west by the province of Babylon, on the north by Assyria and Media, and on the south by the Persian Gulf. It thus embraced parts of the present Laristan, Chusistan, and Arabistan: a picturesque, mountainous region: its capital, at least in later times, being the famous city of Shushan, so often mentioned in Daniel as a royal residence of the kings of Babylon, and in Esther as a favorite with the kings of Persia. Geikie. Asshur seems to have originally occupied a district of Mesopotamia, which was bounded on the east by the Tigris. M.—It is plain from the context that Arphaxad must signify Chaldea; and this conclusion is verified by the fact that the name might also be pronounced Arpa-Chesed, or "border of Chaldea." Chesed is the singular of Casdim, the word used in the Old Testament to denote the inhabitants of Babylonia. Sayce.—Lud is usually identified with the Lydians, who by migration at length reached and gave their name to a part of the west coast of Asia Minor. Aram gave name to the upper parts of Mesopotamia and the parts of Syria north of Palestine. Hence we read of Aram Naharaim (of the two rivers), Aram Dammesek (of Damascus), Aram Maakah on the south-west border of Damascus, about the sources of the Jordan, Aram Beth Rechob in the same neighborhood, and Aram Zoba to the north of Damascus. From Aram are descended four later nations. 23. Us is the chief of a people having their seat in the north of Arabia Deserta, between Palestine and the Euphrates. From this Uz it is possible that the sons of Nahor and of Seir (Gen. 22:21; 36:28) obtained their name. Job dwelt in this land. M. 24. Salah begat Eber. The name Salah appears to signify sending forth, extension, as Eber, the name of his son, signifies passing over. Many of the names in these genealogies are significant, and were probably given to their bearers late in life, or even historically, after their deaths. Salah and Eber seem to point to this fact, that the descendants of Arphaxad were now beginning to spread forth from the first cradle of the Semitic race. E. H. B. 25. It has rightly been supposed that this verse furnishes an approximate indication of the time of the Dispersion. Some have fixed the date in the year 101 after the flood, being the year of the birth of Peleg. But the expression "in his days," seems to indicate a later period, when Peleg was a man of note; and also the impossibility that so many persons as would have been requisite for the building of the tower should have existed at that period. Peleg lived 239 years, and we may therefore place this event toward the close of the third or the commencement of the fourth century after the flood. K. —The genealogy is now specially concerned with the descendants of Shem and the ancestry of the promised race, which is here traced down to Peleg to be continued further in ch. 11:18, sqq. The two races, which sprang from Eber, soon separated very widely from each other, the one, Eber and his family, spreading north-westward toward Mesopotamia and Syria, the other, the Joktanides, southward into Arabia. There is a general consent in favor of the colonization of Southern Arabia by the descendants of Joktan, with the names of whom correspond several of the districts and cities of that country. 28. Sheba. We read much of Sheba, a country in Arabia Felix, abounding in gold, precious stones, frankincense, and famous for its merchandise. The Arabic and Greek accounts of the Sabæans, a people, whose capital was Saba or Mariaba, three or four days' journey from Senaa, correspond thoroughly with all this. 29. Ophir. On no geographical question has a greater diversity of opinion existed than on the site of Ophir. The position of Ophir, as a son of Joktan, and the settlement of the other Joktanides in Arabia, form a strong argument in favor of placing Ophir in Arabia also. The historical notices, however, in the books of Kings and Chronicles have inclined many to place Ophir either in India or in Africa: whilst others have thought, that two Ophirs are mentioned in Scripture, one in Arabia, the other in India or Ceylon. E. H. B. From a review of these lands it is evident that Shem occupied a much smaller extent of territory than either of his brothers. The mountains beyond the Tigris, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Levant, the Archipelago, and the Black Sea, bound the countries that were in part peopled by Shem. Arabia, Syria, and Assyria contained the great bulk of the Shemites, intermingled with some of the Hamites. The Cushites, Canaanites, and Philistines trench upon their ground. The rest of the Hamites peopled Africa, and such countries as were supplied from it. The Japhethites spread over all the rest of the world. In this table there are seventy names, exclusive of Nimrod, of heads of families, tribes, or nations descended from the three sons of Noah, fourteen from Japheth, thirty from Ham, and twenty-six from Shem. It appears that the subdivisions are traced further in Ham and much further in Shem than in Japheth, and that they are pursued only in those lines which are of importance for the coming events in the history of Shem. 32. This passage explains the table of nations, in which they are said to be distinguished, not merely by birth and land, but "every one after his tongue." It is therefore attached to the table as a needful appendix, and thus completes the history of the nations so far as it is carried on by the Bible. At this point the line of history leaves the universal, and by a rapid contraction narrows itself into the individual, in the person of him who is to be ultimately the parent of a chosen seed. M. One modern view of Biblical inspiration is to the effect, that while the writers of Scripture are to be held as infallible guides in whatever relates to religion and morality, on all other matters they are to be considered as simply on a par with other men, equally limited in their knowledge, equally liable to error, not a whit superior to their contemporaries, or in advance of their age. The accordance of the ethnology of Genesis with the latest results of modern ethnographical science, seems to deal a rude blow to such a theory. Origen's argument has always seemed sound, that if in the material world God has wrought every minutest part to a finish and a perfection the highest that is possible to conceive, much more is it to be believed that in the far more important treasure of his word he has left nothing incomplete, but has given to every jot and tittle his full care, the utmost perfection of which it was capable, so that the whole is designed and is the utterance to man of absolute wisdom. G. R. The Bible is a Book of Numbers. It is a trait maintained consistently throughout. From the exact nativities of the Antediluvian ages, from the precise dates of the rising and subsiding waters of the flood, from Noah's almanac, as we may say, down to Haggai's diary, or careful noting of the very year and month and day of the month in which the word of the Lord came unto him, it is all of a piece, one consistent number giving, time-keeping record. The Jews, if there is any truth in their history at all, were a journalizing people, a genealogizing people; the Bible is their family book of entries, just as we now employ certain pages of it as a register of births and deaths. Precise statistics are everywhere, and everywhere purporting to be from men who knew, and who are, in the main, supposed to be recording known present or passing facts. There is nothing like it in the history of any other people on earth; certainly not in any early history. Let any one compare the 1st volume of Grote's History of Greece with the Pentateuch, the confused and utterly unchronological annals of the Doric, Hellenic, and Eolic races with even the earliest part of the Mosaic writings or the history of the Patriarchs, and he will see at once the difference. Darkness, confusion, shadows, deformities, painful perplexities or hopeless riddles, in the one,—the clear geography, the direct chronology, the fact consistency, the lifelike minuteness of coloring, the strange combination of the marvellous in such perfect affinity with the familiar and the domestic that it loses its marvel,—all this in the other. Even after the commencement of what is called the "historical period," or the introduction of the Olympiads, the Grecian chronology is full of obscurities. It is not easy to fix the times of the historians themselves; there is a doubt about Herodotus; the Heraclidæ and Lycurgus fail of being precisely determined by some centuries; but more than a thousand years before Herodotus, the Hebrew writings set forth a regular chronology. Before Hellenians and Dorians had set foot in Greece, many centuries before even the Pelagi "were in the land," we are told the time of life, and have the means of reckoning the very year, when Abraham went forth from Ur of the Chaldees. There is no escape from it: the Jewish history is the boldest of lies, the most unscrupulous of f. Igeries, and, at the same time, the most inexplicable of literary enigmas, or it is the truth, attested inwardly and confirmed outwardly, as no other ancient historical account was ever attested in the multiplied annals of the race. T. L. The Bible unfolds the oldest history in the world. No other comes within sight of its earliest records. The Pentateuch was written by Moses a thousand years before Herodotus recited his history at the public games of Greece and the boy Thucydides wept lest he might fail in future rivalry, and more than twelve hundred years before the two Egyptian writers, Manetho and Eratosthenes, endeavored to explain the revolutions of their country. Ctesias and Berosus, the one thirty and the other a hundred and fifty years later than Herodotus, followed him with their somewhat conflicting accounts of Chaldean and Assyrian struggles and triumphs. The earliest Greek historian was thus the contemporary of Ezra and Nehemiah; and, long before Manetho had arranged the details of Egyptian dynasties, the prophet Malachi had closed the Old Testament record. The ancient testimonies which monuments and written documents have most opportunely supplied within the present century, indeed in a large measure within the present generation, have not only demolished all the old reasoning against the Bible, but have so vindicated its historical trustworthiness, that "Moses and the Prophets" are now left in undisturbed possession of the watch-towers from which many centuries ago they spoke to the Israelites, and through them to the whole world. In closely examining the tenth chapter, we find such diversity of history as precludes exact classification, but its general statements are beginning to admit of comparatively easy historical exposition. To this chapter, as an ethnological table, scholars of opposite religious tendencies have united in paying homage. W. Fraser. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ 1. AND the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they 2 journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they 3 said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick 4 for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name; lest we be scattered 5 abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the 6 tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is what they begin to do: and now nothing will be 7 withholden from them, which they purpose to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound 8 their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore was the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. The same record that affirms and traces the original unity of the race, also gives us the old- est and the only account of its dispersion, its early locations, migrations and movements. We are in a track otherwise untrodden. It is but recently that we have been able fully to test the correctness and value of this ancient source of information. S. C. B. 1,2. This account of the confusion of the language of men and the dispersion of nations over the earth, is in the order of thought and of time anterior to the ethnological chart in the tenth chapter. The tenth chapter presents really the results which followed the confusion of the "lip," as recorded in the eleventh chap- ter. The record gives us to understand that this confusion occurred during the era of Peleg, the fifth in descent from Noah. "The whole earth was of one language and one speech." To take the Hebrew Saphah literally, "was of one lip and one stock of words." In the previous chapter the word "tongue" is used to describe what is here expressed in two words. "One stock of words" refers to the substance and material of language, as the "one lip" refers to the mode and manner of using and connecting the matter of speech. Until this time then the original language taught Adam as we most sup- pose by inspiration had continued without change. The occasion of the change was that as certain families became enterprising, and pressed on from the original seat of the family of Noah, in the highlands of Armenia, they came to the plains of the Euphrates and the Tigris, very fertile, and affording the means of rapid advance in wealth and population. And a determination is immediately formed to make here not only a permanent abode, but a grand centre of empire. S. R. Man's "evil imagination," which remained after the flood, now took a different direction, and shows itself in an impious attempt to unite the whole of mankind in rebellion against God. The first land peopled after the flood was Shinar, Mesopotamia, or Babylonia. The two great rivers, Euphrates and Tigris, water this tract of country, which in ancient times was re- owned for its fertility, though now a barren plain. The vast plain has a gentle declension from west to east. The Euphrates, when the snow melts on the mountains, overflows its banks, and descends into the level country of Mesopotamia. From this circumstance the in- habitants were induced, at an early period in its history, to convey the water by means of canals over the whole country; so that in time it was entirely intersected by these tributaries from the Euphrates and Tigris. Herodotus speaks as an eye-witness of the astonishing fer- tility of Babylonia. Gerl. The very greatness of the new beginning of humanity on earth evinces that the primitive man was a magnificent being even in his wicked- ness. There is no hint here of any gradual de- velopment from savagery. If not scientific and civilized in our modern sense, he was at least a being of great power both of body and mind. If he had everything to learn, man learned most rapidly. Even aside from the inspired history the researches among the earliest monuments of man's existence reveal a degree of knowledge supposed to belong only to modern times. The skill in mechanical arts and manufactures, whether gained scientifically or not, was evidently the result of mental and bodily power of the highest order. These early men had great aims, attempted great things, and accomplished great things. Though, as we have seen in chapter 10, there are but a few words concerning their doings, yet these are stirring words. Nimrod, the mighty hunter, taking the kingdom of Babylon; settlements rapidly following it on the Upper Euphrates; cities sprang up. It was an era of city builders, empire founders. Along with the pioneer and colonizing spirit are exhibited all the tendencies to associated effort. In this respect the inspired account here is fully confirmed by all the researches of our age among those earlier monuments of human existence upon earth. S. R.—The further we ascend toward the commencement of human enterprise, the greater do we find the combination of skill and effort in the production of imposing and colossal works of art. Probably the labor bestowed on the tower of Babel—certainly that bestowed on many a structure in Egypt, pyramid, labyrinth, or temple—would suffice to build a modern city of very respectable dimensions. The truth is, for several centuries after the flood, something of the antediluvian spirit and fashion seems to have prevailed among mankind. Everything was designed and executed on a grand scale, and in the most durable style. Linds'ey. 1-9. We have here the scriptural account of the meaning of the name "Babel," the primitive term which the Greeks converted into "Babylon," but which remains even now attached to a portion of the ruins that mark the site of the great city, almost in its original form. It would not have been surprising if profane history had contained no notice of this matter, since it belongs to a very remote antiquity, a time anterior to records. But the fact seems to be that the Babylonians either recorded at the time, or at any rate bore in memory, the transaction. Two Greek writers, who drew their Babylonian histories from native sources, noticed the occurrence, and gave an account of it, which is in most respects very close to the biblical narrative. Alexander Polyhistor said, that "Once upon a time, when the whole race of mankind were of one language, a certain number of them set to work to build a great tower, thinking to climb up to heaven; but God caused a wind to blow, and cast the tower down, at the same time giving to every man his own peculiar speech. On which account the city was called Babylon." Abydenus, a somewhat later historian, treated the subject at greater length. "At this time," he said, "the ancient race of men were so puffed up with their strength and tallness of stature, that they began to despise and condemn the gods, and labored to erect that very lofty tower, which is now called Babylon, intending thereby to scale heaven. But when the building approached the sky, behold, the gods called in the aid of the winds, and by their help overthrew the tower, and cast it to the ground. The name of the ruins is still called Babel; because until this time all men had used the same speech, but now there was sent upon them a confusion of many and diverse tongues." These passages have long been known, and have been adduced as probable evidence that the native Babylonian records contained a notice respecting the tower of Babel and the confusion of human speech. But it is only recently that such a record has been unearthed. Among the clay tablets brought from Babylonia by Mr. George Smith, and deposited in the British Museum, is one unfortunately much mutilated, which seems clearly to have contained the Babylonian account of the matter. G. R. 3. The Babylonian soil furnished splendid architectural materials for such a purpose. There abounds a fine clay, mingled with sand, which, even sun-dried, forms a good material. But for this great work, to make it ever-during, they will burn them thoroughly. Then the pits or springs of asphalt furnish a cement which hardens into stone. It was a grand conception, even in its wickedness. S. R.—Herodotus describes the building of the walls of Babylon much as the sacred history describes this building of the tower of Babel. He says a deep fess was dug all round the city, from which the mud was taken in large bricks and burnt in furnaces. Then for mud or mortar, they used hot bitumen, and so built the walls of the city. He mentions a town called Is, with a river of the same name near it, about eight days' journey from Babylon, where much bitumen was obtained and carried to Babylon for the building of the city. E. H. B.—It is interesting to notice how exactly what we know of early Babylonian architecture tallies with what we read in Scripture: "Let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime (or rather, bitumen) had they for mortar." The small burnt bricks laid in bitumen are still there; not only in the tower but in the still existing ruins of the ancient palace of Babel, which was coeval with the building of the city itself. A. E. 4. There appears a threefold design. "Let us make us a name"—"whose top may reach to heaven"—"lest we be scattered abroad,"—severally evincing pride, arrogance against God, and a conspiracy to establish a universal temporal monarchy in opposition to the divine purposes. In the prediction of Noah (chap. 9 : 25), and in the benediction of Jehovah (chap. 9 : 1, 7), it was intimated that men should spread themselves abroad, and that servitude should be the lot of harm. In both ways they attempted to resist, and independently of God to carry their own will into effect. C. G. B. The sons of Noah were to be "divided after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations." This dispersion and these distinctions are a part of the original divine order; the fulfilment of God's designs for the race which He had made after His own likeness. To overturn that order, to frustrate that design, the wandering tribes met on the plain of Shinar, and said (in other words), let us build a society, not upon faith in the unseen God and His covenant, but upon faith in brick walls. Let us provide securities against the divine power lest it should crush us. The plan was confounded: they left off to build the tower. The earth was overspread, though they determined that it should not be. Distinct families and nations were established, in spite of this attempt to reduce all into one indistinguishable mass. But we are told also that a Babel society was established by a mighty hunter, in whom all have recognized the beginner of the great Asiatic tyrannies. Politics rose up based upon a worship of natural powers, feared, not trusted; whose cruel purposes were to be averted by such a means as human wit and strength could devise. The rulers of these kingdoms owned no Lord of man after whose image they and their subjects were formed; they bowed to the powers which they thought they discerned in the storm, or in the darksky: powers to which they attributed their own qualities; with which they had no sympathy; whose dominion was shadowed forth in their own. Such is society according to man's conception and arrangement of it. Society, of which self-will is the king, and animals are the subjects. But this was not God's society. Maurice. It should ever be borne in mind that the whole race during the space of 500 years after the flood had the opportunity to be thoroughly evangelized. They had the revelation of God to the antediluvian world, enlarged and confirmed in the covenant with Noah, the germinal gospel of Eden already springing forth and shooting up to the view of all in the sacrifices, the typical distinction of clean and unclean, the reverence for human life. They had the instruction of Noah, the great preacher of righteousness, for three hundred and fifty years; and the teaching of Shem, who had been contemporary with Lamech and Methuselah a century before the flood. And the argument could now be enforced by the recent terrors of the flood. Yet in face of all this, men set themselves to resist and defy the revelations of Jehovah. The very existence of heathenism in the world at all evinces the intense enmity of fallen humanity to the true God. If man had not been as depraved as the Scriptures represent, there need never have been any heathenism. S. R. How do these men reckon without God! "Come, let us build;" as if there had been no stop but in their own will; as if both earth and time had been theirs. Still do all natural men build Babel; forecasting their own plots so resolutely, as if there were no power to countermand them. It is just with God that peremptory determinations seldom prosper; whereas those things which are fearfully and modestly undertaken, commonly succeed. . . . Pride ever looks at the highest: the first man would know as God; these would dwell as God; covetousness and ambition know no limits. And what if they had reached up to heaven? some hills are as high as they could hope to be, and yet are no whit the better; no place alters the condition of nature: an angel is glorious, though he be upon earth; and man is but earth, though he be above the clouds. The nearer they had been to heaven, the more subject should they have been to the violences of heaven; to thunders, lightnings, and those other higher inflammations; what had this been, but to thrust themselves into the hands of the revenger of all wicked insolencies? Bp. H. 5. The Lord came down. The interposing providence of God is here set forth in a sublime simplicity, suited to the early mind of man. 6. In like simplicity is depicted the self-willed, god-defying spirit of combination and ambition which had now budded in the imagination of man. The people is one,—one race, with one purpose. And they have all one lip. They understand one another's mind. This is their beginning. The Lord sees in this commencement the seed of growing evil. And now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Now that they have made this notable beginning of concentration, ambition, and renown, there is nothing in this way which they will not imagine or attempt. M. 7. In allusion to the boastful language in which the builders of Babel and of its tower had in their self-confidence stated their purpose: "Go to, let us make brick," etc., Jehovah expressed His purpose of defeating their folly, using the same words: "Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language." And by this simple means, without any outward visible interference, did the Lord arrest the grandest attempt of man's rebellion, and by confounding their language "scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth." "Therefore is the name of it called Babel, or confusion." What a commentary does this history afford to the majestic declarations of the second Psalm! A. E.—He could have hindered the laying of the first stone; and might as easily have made the trench for their foundation the grave of the builders; but he loves to see what wicked men would do, and to let fools run themselves out of breath: what monument should they have had of their own madness and of his powerful interruption, if the walls had risen to no height? To stop them in the midst of their course, he meddles not with either their hands or their feet, but their tongues; not by pulling them out, not by loosing their strings, nor by making them say nothing, but by teaching them to say too much: here is nothing varied but the sound of letters; even this frustrates the work and befools the workmen: how easy it is for God ten thousand ways to correct and forestall the greatest projects of men! He that taught Adam the first words, taught them words that never were. Bp. H. The diversity of tongues is still God's will,—is something abiding and good: but sin was the cause of the false unity and of the separation, and severed the one body into many members; so that now the members are strange and hostile to one another. The Gospel of Christ appeared to teach men that they were all of one blood, all had one common head, all had one God as their Father; then the tongues of men, divided through pride at Babel, were united by love and humility at Zion. Gerl.—Multiplicity of language had not been given by the Holy Ghost for a blessing to the Church, if the world had not been before possessed with multiplicity of languages for a punishment: hence it is that the building of our Sion rises no faster because our tongues are divided; happy were the Church of God if we all spake but one language. Bp. H. The building of the tower stands as the boundary between the unity of the primitive world and the conflicting movements of diverse tribes in subsequent ages. It explains what otherwise would have remained inexplicable—a manifold diversity of language, with a singular unity of apparently original structure. The moral cause of the dispersion has been thus stated: "The unity which had hitherto bound together the human family was the community of one God, and of one divine worship. This unity did not satisfy them; inwardly they had already lost it; and therefore it was that they strove for another. There is therefore an ungodly unity which they sought to reach through such self-invented, sensual, outward means; while the very thing they feared, they predicted as their punishment." (Delitzsch) Their purpose was defeated by the confusion of their tongues, or rather by the sudden use of three languages instead of one. The introduction of three tongues or languages would cause such confusion as would put an end to the undertaking. It would have been inconsistent with the method of the Divine government, so far as we can judge, to introduce a multitude of dialects, and make each man unintelligible to his companion; and it appears from the record itself that the confusion was orderly or regulated, for we are told anticipatively in the tenth chapter, that the descendants of Japheth, of Ham, and of Shem, were divided "after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations." Of each of the three, successively, is the same account given. W. Fraser. In this matter the account singularly accords with the highest results of modern comparative philology, which concludes that all languages were from one centre originally, and are all divided into three great branches. The one primitive tongue was made manifold by diversifying the law of structure without interfering with the material of which it was composed. The bases or roots of words may remain, while the etymological laws then work and form vocables. Thus from the root fer we have in Latin ferre, ferens, fert, ferebat, etc.; in Greek phere, pherein, pheron, etc., and in the Hebrew perch, paureh, etc., according to the primitive law of each language. Now, the confusion at Babel was of the "lip," the formative laws of language, without effecting the substance. This was, of course, effective. They could no more converse together than an Englishman and a German. As the result of this confusion, the language of the earth divided into three great stocks, from which, according to the ethnologists, all of the near three hundred languages of the earth have sprung as variations. S. R. What the original language was, common to the race up to this point, has been much debated by learned men without arriving at uniform and satisfactory results. Whether it was, as some suppose, the veritable Hebrew tongue; or as others think, the Aramaic, i.e. the Chaldee; or whether it is utterly lost—these are the alternatives; but for the choice between them we can have no very positive data. That the Aramaic (Chaldee) tongue, closely allied to the Hebrew, held its place for ages in the valley of the Euphrates, strongly favors its claim to be, if not—the very tongue of Noah, at least of the same family. These points suggest probabilities but fall short of certainty. H. C. There is no reason why we should think the confusion of tongues the work of a moment; for details could not be given in so short a notice. Who does not see that the early days of the human race are here given with the utmost brevity, and that the annals of many years are crowded between a few commas? It is more likely that discord was first sent among men, and that from this cause, leaving the work unfinished, they scattered into neighboring regions, and gradually wandered further and further off; and that their languages gradually changed as they were thus isolated over the face of the earth. The facts may have been brought succinctly together by Moses in his compendious narrative, but those interpreters surely err who think that they were carried out to completion by God almost as quickly as the verses themselves are read. Clerici. 8. Scattered them abroad upon the face of the earth.** The migrations of the three primitive families took place from the central regions of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria; and, by successive colonizations, established far distant communities, and various modes of society and government; the Phoenicians, Arabians, Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Libyans, southward; the Persians, Ethiopians, Indians, and Chinese, eastward; the Scythians, Celts, and Tartars, northward; and the Goths, Greeks, and Latins, even as far as the Peruvians and Mexicans of South America, and the Indian tribes of North America, westward. All these various inhabitants of the globe retain a striking affinity in the leading principles of their language, customs, and religions, however diversified in process of time from each other by local circumstances: such affinity evincing their common descent from one and the same parent stock. Hales. Those tribes that earliest found and retained their near and permanent abodes, other things being equal, earliest developed and best retained the highest forms of life and art. Such was the case in Chaldea, Babylonia, India, with their fertile and productive plains and mighty streams, and, above all, Egypt with its marvellous position close along the banks of its matchless river of clock-work overflow, and its wonderful facilities and resources, and means of luxury, and also along the eastern and northern parts of the Mediterranean, where everything invited to commerce, to invention and production—climate, soil, minerals and harbors, especially in Phoenicia, with her two noble harbors in convenient nearness to the trade and civilization of the more ancient East and to the new products of the rising West. The tribes that drove each other through the length of Europe, through its grim forests and over its mountains, across its rushing streams, and through its winter snows, never developed the higher traits of human life till they too at last became stationary, and that was only after they had nearly extinguished what may have been the settled civilization of their earlier home. S. C. B. Upon the dispersion, as men travelled further from their original residence into colder, more sterile or unhealthful climes, into mountainous regions, impervious forests or deserts, especially when the colonies were small and indifferently furnished with artisans and mechanics or with implements and utensils of agriculture and carpentry, in such circumstances it is easy to account for the speedy degeneracy of numerous tribes, and for their lapse into a barbarous and savage state. Thus, Northern Asia, the greater part of Africa, the islands of the Mediterranean Sea and of the ocean, Europe and America, appear to have been inhabited by rude and migratory hordes as far back as history and tradition extend; while the same history and tradition, together with Scripture, assure us that Chaldea, Assyria, Phoenicia and Egypt, perhaps India and other eastern countries, were civilized and polished from the remotest times or from the beginning. And these have proved the fountain of civilization, letters and the arts, to every other part of the globe. From the building of Babel to the period at which Egypt appears on the page of authentic history, a great and flourishing empire famed alike for wealth and power, for wisdom and science, the interval is short; the steps are few and easily marked. Lindsley. The great law of dispersion of the nations has had a steadfast and uniform assertion in the providence of God over the nations and over His church. It is not the purpose of God to permit these universal empires under a fallen and depraved humanity. And well, indeed, for the human race that it is so. In their ambitious dreams, the Nebuchadnezzar, the Alexanders, the Cæsars, the Napoleons, have thought to defy the ordinance of separation enacted in the confusion of languages at Babel. But most notably have they failed. Nay, the Jehovah—Head of the Church—has not intrusted even His imperfectly sanctified people to exist in a universal empire, however earnestly men have struggled to actualize their ideal of an external universal empire in the world, for the spiritual government of men. True, indeed, such an ideal of universal empire figures in all the prophetic visions of Messiah. But that shall be only in an era when humanity shall be universally regenerative and under the rule of the only universal King, who is “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” The history of the Christian Church has developed the same tendency of human nature to the centralization of spiritual power, and the like checks have been interposed by Divine Providence. As soon as Christianity became corrupted and tending to apostasy, then, under the same propensity which showed itself at Babel, spiritual Babel-builders attempted to “make to themselves a name” by a universal ecclesiastical empire concentrating its power in Rome, and ever since the effort for that sort of church unity by external bonds has manifested itself. S. R. Till very lately it used to be confidently believed that a vast mound, bearing the name of Birs Nimroud, about six miles to the southwest of the modern town Hillah, on the Euphrates, and near the site of Babylon, was the remains of the Tower of Babel. It is a huge brick mound, oblong in form, measuring above 700 yards round, and rising on one side to the height of 200 feet. But in 1854 Sir Henry Rawlinson carefully examined the Birs, and deciphered an inscription which contains its history. From it he gathered that the Birs was not situated in Babylon at all, but in Borsippa; its name was “The Stages of the Seven Spheres;” it was dedicated to Nebo or Mercury; it was repaired by Nebuchadnezzar, whose name appears on the bricks and the cylinders at the corners; but it was built by a former king. W. G. B.—Whatever its history, the ruin, Birs Nimroud, composed so largely of burnt brick laid in bitumen, commemorates the mode of construction peculiar to Babylonia. Indeed we can ascend almost to the date of this tower of Babel. For we have but to cross the Euphrates to the ruins of Mugheir—Ur of the Chaldees—to find in the basement of its temple this combination in its most primitive form. The burnt bricks are of a small size and inferior quality, laid in bitumen, facing a solid mass of sun-dried brick and forming a solid wall outside of it, ten feet in thickness. S. C. B. On a fragment of a tablet found by the late Mr. Smith among the ruins of Nineveh is the story of the first erection of the tower. Though it is greatly mutilated, yet we can gather from its broken sentences the general outline of events. Between this fragment and the narrative in Genesis the points of agreement are: The sin of the people; their uniting to build a tower; the anger of God; he confounds their speech; the building is abandoned; the people are scattered. Babylon was thus abandoned, and it remained so for a time; but its history is again taken up in the Assyrian records, just as it is in the Bible. J. L. P. The counterpart to this confusion of languages, and dispersion of nations, is to be found in the history of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the communication of the gift of tongues, by means of which, what contradiction and pride had severed, was once more united in love and humility. In the kingdom of God, the whole human race is to be congregated as one flock under one shepherd. C. G. B.—That was certainly a most stupendous miracle which led to the dispersion of mankind over all the countries of the world. But there was another miracle equally stupendous, and a miracle of tongues too, by which the people of all various languages were recalled to the Faith from which they had departed. By the first, God raised up barriers for the segregation of the species into distinct communities. By the second, He threw down these barriers, that the bearers of the heavenly message might range freely over the world, and gather out of all nations the family of the faithful. T. C.—In this first attempt to found a vast kingdom of this world, which God brought to naught by confounding the language of its builders and by scattering them over the face of the earth, we see a typical judgment, of which the counterpart in blessing was granted on the day of Pentecost; when, by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, another universal kingdom was to be founded, the first token of which was that gift of tongues, which pointed forward to a reunion of the nations, when the promise would be fulfilled that they should all be gathered into the tents of Shem! A. E. It pleased God, in His own good time and manner, to realize the presumptuous design of the Babel builders, and to unite together in one central institution the scattered families of man. In the mediation of His blessed Son, He hath reared up a Tower whose top reaches to heaven, while its base is accessible to the heirs of sinful flesh and blood,—a Jacob's ladder, whereby the communications of prayer and praise may pass upward to Him, and those of grace, mercy, and peace, may descend to His creatures. Clustering round the base of this Tower is a city which He hath founded, and which is designed to be indeed world-embracing. The members of the community thus formed are united together by strong and efficacious bonds, although such as are invisible to the eye of sense. They have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of them all, who is above all, and through all, and in them all. Daily they approach a common mercy-seat, as a refuge from sin's condemning guilt. Daily they draw nigh to a common Throne of Grace, as a refuge from sin's domineering power. Daily they pursue the same pilgrimage through the wilderness of this world, with the same auspices and under the same guidance. Daily God communes with them out of His living oracles, speaking to them, as their case requires, in accents of warning, encouragement, or consolation. Continually is their failing strength renewed by the bread which came down from heaven, imparted to them through a special channel ordained for its conveyance. The same hope animates, the same word guides, the same bread feeds, the same Providence directs, the same blood cleanses, the same grace quickens and consoles them. Gowburn. Compare three well-known pictures presented by the Holy Scriptures:— Gen. 11: The human race, as one nation, speaking one language. They attempt to preserve this unity by building a metropolitan city, where the whole race might dwell, under one government and one chief. Their leading idea was that oneness of nationality, of speech, and of government would bind the whole race in the closest bonds of brotherhood. But God was left out of their thoughts. To stop the human plan and thwart sinful intention, God interfered by confounding their language, and the race was split up into fragments, which became the starting points of nations, and peoples, and kindreds and tongues; and men became, henceforth, Barbarians, Scythians, bond, free—anything but Brothers. Acts 2 is the companion picture. The two should be studied side by side. That showed how men became strangers and aliens: this shows how God unites them into one family. On the Day of Pentecost visible tongues descended upon the Church of Christ, and forthwith, being filled with the Holy Ghost, each member thereof began to speak with foreign tongues "the wonderful works of God." And the whole community was really cemented into one brotherhood, and had all things common. This indicated God's way of uniting them: not by all dwelling in one city, or kingdom, or speaking one tongue; not by any external bond; but by giving each individual man His Holy Spirit. They may speak all the languages of the earth, but their voice is one, the leaven is one, their communion is one; all kindreds and tongues, nations and people, are being gathered together from the dispersion caused by sin. Rev. 7: 9, 10 is the third picture. It is a scene in heaven, where all is completed which was only signified at Pentecost. The whole family are gathered together—once separated physically by seas and continents, and morally by sin. This great family is composed of the same diversities that existed on earth. They are still kindreds, and nations, and peoples, and tongues, and yet they are united—one family, all speak the same praises, all sing one song. Ask, What has made them so? Clearly not one tongue, as was attempted at Babel, but it is the possession of one spirit, which has attuned them all, and brought them into fellowship with the Father and the Son. "The Lamb is the light thereof," and His magnetic power attracts these once-scattered units, now no longer under the centrifugal power of sin, but under the centripetal influence of the Holy Spirit. Morgan Dix. 10. THESE are the generations of Shem. Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arpach- 11 shad two years after the flood : and Shem lived after he begat Arpachshad five hundred 12 years, and begat sons and daughters. And Arpachshad lived five and thirty years, and 13 begat Shelah : and Arpachshad lived after he begat Shelah four hundred and three years, 14, 15 and begat sons and daughters. And Shelah lived thirty years, and begat Eber : and 16 Shelah lived after he begat Eber four hundred and three years, and begat sons and 17 daughters. And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg : and Eber lived after 18 he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters. And 19 Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu : and Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred 20, 21 and nine years, and begat sons and daughters. And Reu lived two and thirty years, 22 and begat Serug : and Reu lived after he begat Serug two hundred and seven years, and 23 begat sons and daughters. And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor : and Serug lived 24 after he begat Nahor two hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. And Nahor lived 25 nine and twenty years, and begat Terah : and Nahor lived after he begat Terah an 26 hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters. And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran. 27 Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran ; and 28 Haran begat Lot. And Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of 29 his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees. And Abram and Nahor took them wives : the name of Abram's wife was Sarai ; and the name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter 30 of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah. And Sarai was barren ; she 31 had no child. And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife ; and they went forth with 32 them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan ; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years : and Terah died in Haran. The history of Noah's children divides itself into two branches ; the general peopling of the earth by the descendants of his three sons, and the particular line of the chosen family. The former subject is briefly dismissed, but with notices full of interest ; and the latter is pursued down to Abram, on whose migration to Canaan we again come in contact with the other races of men. P. S.—The CHRONOLOGICAL thread of sacred history is now connected with the GENE- ALOGY OF SHEM, as before the flood it had been with that of Seth. Here as before, differences of numbers occur in the Hebrew text, as com- pared with the LXX. and the Samaritan. K 10. The usual phrase, These are the genera- tions, marks the beginning of the fifth docu- ment. We now enter upon a new phase of hu- man development. The nations have gradually departed from the living God, and have fallen into polytheism and idolatry. The knowledge of the one true God is on the verge of being en- tirely lost. Nevertheless the promises, first to the race of Adam that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head, and next to the family of Noah that the Lord should be the God of Shem, were still in force. It is obvious from the latter promise that the seed of the woman is to be expected in the line of Shem. 10-26. This passage contains the pedigree of Abram from Shem. From this it appears that the sacred writer here reverts to the second year after the flood, — a point of time long before the close of the preceding narrative. Shem was the son of a hundred years, or in his hundredth year, two years after the flood, and therefore in the six hundred and third year of Noah, and con- sequently three years after Japheth. Abram was the twentieth, inclusive, from Adam, the tenth from Shem, and the seventh from Heber. M. We have here the third genealogical table. The 1st was given in ch. 5 from Adam to Noah ; the 2d in ch. 10, the genealogy of the three sons of Noah, the descendants of Shem being traced down as far as Peleg. Now we have the line of Shem further carried down to Abraham, the father of the faithful, the ancestor of the promised seed. In ch. 10 no account is given of the length of the generations or of the duration of life; but here as before in ch. 5, both these are supplied. We mark at once the transition from the antediluvian to the postdiluvian duration of life. Noah lived 950 years, Shem only 600, Arpachshad, the firstborn of Shem after the deluge, only 438; when we come to Peleg, who seems to have been contemporary with the dispersion, life is still shorter; Peleg lived 239 years, Reu 239, Serug 230, Nahor 148. E. H. B. Table of Hebrew and Septuagint Texts. | | Hebrew Text. | | Septuagint. | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | Years before birth of Son. | Whole Life. | Years before birth of Son. | Whole Life. | | Shem... | 100 | 600 | 100 | 600 | | Arpachshad... | 35 | 438 | 135 | 535 | | Kalman... | | | 130 | 460 | | Shelah... | 30 | 433 | 130 | 460 | | Eber... | 34 | 434 | 131 | 464 | | Peleg... | 50 | 239 | 130 | 339 | | Reu... | 32 | 239 | 132 | 339 | | Serug... | 30 | 239 | 130 | 339 | | Nahor... | 29 | 148 | 170 | 304 | | Terah... | 70 | 205 | 70 | 200 | | Abram... | | | | | On the whole, the predominant view has been to accept the Hebrew as the true text. But it is to be borne in mind that we have but one Hebrew manuscript as old as the year 580 A.D., and that we in no case seem to get back of a Masoretic revision; while the Septuagint represents a text which dates 250 years B.C. Whatever the decision as to relative correctness, the phenomenon must raise questions and doubts, as it shows somewhere the hand of the emendator. When now we attempt to follow down this second line of early consanguinity, the Shemite, with its figures, we find ourselves at once dealing with several extremely difficult and complicated questions, on which in the present state of our knowledge no man can offer an absolute solution, but only suggestions which look toward a solution. These questions concern the relation of the individuals to each other in the line of succession; the length of life ascribed to them respectively; and the total duration thus indicated from the Creation to the Deluge. Reversing the order of these questions, there meets us that of the length of time prior to the Deluge, and thereby somewhat directly the duration of man's history on the earth, involved chiefly in this period. For the length of time from the Christian era to the birth of Abraham can be reckoned without any large range of variation—perhaps 200 or 300 years; and the period from Abraham to Noah offers us two Biblical Chronologies (Hebrew and Septuagint) admitting, to some degree, possible confirmatory or corrective collation with semi-historic events. But the previous period stands alone. No figures whatever are offered from any source except the Pentateuch. While making all allowance for possible exigencies, I do not as yet see valid reason to adopt any view of the time of man's existence very greatly in excess, if not of Usher's, yet of Hale's Chronology, 5411 B.C. All definite records and distinct traditions go up to a limited distance and stop there, this side even of the date thus gained. Thus the latest and most careful authorities. Chinese investigators now find nothing solid in the antiquity of China earlier than eleven or twelve hundred B.C.; we find no Iranic civilization earlier than 1500 B.C., nor Indian earlier than 1200. The Trojan epoch does not probably reach further than 1200 to 1300 B.C., nor the subjacent cities than 2000. The latest result in regard to Phoenicia gives but the sixteenth or seventeenth century B.C. Sayce and Lenormant place the beginning of Assyria about 1500 B.C., and Smith and Lenormant the beginning of Babylon 2300 B.C. In the case of Egypt one only of the prominent Egyptologists (Mariette Bey) insists on finding no contemporaneous dynasties, but makes all successive; and his estimate of 5004 years B.C. to the accession of Menes still falls within the limits of Hale's Chronology, while Poole's and Wilkinson's estimates subtract more than 2000 years from Mariette's figures. If we accept the Biblical antediluvian narrative as it stands, all eastern history is a simple and natural phenomenon, thoroughly consistent with itself and with all known facts. And in this line a very striking coincidence is mentioned, viz.: "Taking as a basis the annual increase of population in France (which has the best statistics for the past two hundred years) at $\frac{1}{2}$ a year, six persons (say Shem, Ham, and Japheth, with their wives) would increase to 1,400,000,000 in 4211 years. But in 1863, the estimated population of the earth was 1,400,000,000, and 4211 years would carry us back from that time to 2348 B.C., the common date of the Flood." S. C. B. Christian apologists have shown unnecessary anxiety as to exactness in dates. The admitted elasticity or differences in Bible chronology should make us willing to grant a liberal margin. What specially concerns us is the harmony of histories. While exact dates are in their own place most valuable, they are not to supersede the cumulative evidence which the recognized harmony of profane with sacred history is bringing to the side of the Christian apologists. No one can recall the perpetually recurring depreciation of the Bible through the greater part of the last half century, on the plea that its historical statements were either mythical, or, when valid, had been written out after other histories had been published, without deep thankfulness for the striking vindication of all its statements which contemporary histories have of late been giving. W. Fraser. 26. Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran.** Haran dies before his father, leaving behind him Lot, his son, Terah's grandchild, already a grown-up lad. The 70 years assigned to Terah must consequently be his age at the birth of Haran, his first born. Abram's birth may be inferred from chap. 12 : 4 ; according to which he was 75 years old when he departed out of Haran, where Terah died, being at the time 205 years old. Abram was 75 years old at his father's death, and consequently he was born when his father was 130 years old. Abram's name stands before that of his brothers for no other reason but because he was the heir of the promise. C. G. B. Shem could tell Abram, with whom he was contemporary one hundred years, nearly what Lamech, his grandfather, had reported to him, and who lived also contemporary with Adam fifty years ; nay, what Methuselah had told Shem, after being contemporary with Adam 243 years. Thus it will be found that the first 2000 years of the world's history is reduced to the testimony of but two of our generations—the testimony of a grandfather, through father to the son. Even as late as the birth of Isaac there stood Shem to report and testify what Lamech and Methuselah had told him from Adam. S. R.—This genealogy here ends in Abram, the friend of God, and leads further to Christ, the promised Seed, who was the Son of Abram, and from Abram the genealogy of Christ is reckoned. Put ch. 5, 11, and Matt. 1 together, and you have such an entire genealogy of Jesus Christ as cannot be produced concerning any person in the world, out of his line and at such a distance from the fountain-head. And laying these three genealogies together, we shall find that twice ten, and thrice fourteen, generations or descents passed between the first and second Adam, making it clear concerning Christ, not only that he was the Son of Abraham, but the Son of man and the Seed of the woman. H. 27-32. This passage forms the commencement of the sixth document, as is indicated by the customary phrase, These are the generations. The sense also clearly accords with this distinction ; and it accounts for the repetition of the statement, "Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran." This passage and the preceding one form the meet prelude to the history of Abram, —the one tracing his genealogy from Shem and Heber, and the other detailing his relations with the family out of which he was called. . . . God has not forsaken the fallen race. Out of Adam's three sons he selects one to be the progenitor of the seed of the woman ; out of Noah's three sons he again selects one ; and now out of Terah's three is one to be selected. Among the children of this one he will choose a second one, and among his a third one before he reaches the holy family. M. 28. Ur of the Chaldees.** Mugheir, which bore the exact name of Ur or Hur, is entitled to be (at least provisionally) regarded as the city of Abram (so Professors Rawlinson, Porter, Eadie, Loftus, Ayre, etc., after Sir Henry Rawlinson). Ur or Hur, now Mugheir, or Um-Mugheir (= the bitumened, or the mother of bitumen), is one of the most ancient, if not the most ancient, of the Chaldean sites hitherto discovered. It lies on the right bank of the Euphrates, about six miles from the present course of the stream, nearly opposite the point where the EUPHRATES receives the Shat-el-Hie from the Tigris. It is now not less than 125 miles from the sea ; but there are grounds for believing that it was anciently a maritime town, but now inland from the rapid growth of the alluvium. The remains of buildings cover an oval space, 1000 yards long by 800 broad. The most remarkable building near the northern end of the ruins is a temple of the true Chaldean type, built in stages of bricks laid chiefly in bitumen, and bearing the name of Urukh, who is regarded as the earliest of the Chaldean monumental kings, B.C. 2000, or a little earlier. Ur, the capital of this monarch, retained its metropolitan character for above two centuries, and, even after it became second to Babylon, was a great city, with an especially sacred character. It is in the main a city of tombs. Dic. B. The inscriptions which connect the name of Urukh with the cities of Niffar, Warka, Senkereh, and Mugheir, constantly speak of the last of these places as the city of Ur or Hur. This word appears to contain the essential part of the word Hurki, the moon-god, of whose worship, in early Chaldean times, this city was a principal seat. This notion is confirmed by the indirect testimony of Eupolemus, a Jewish writer of about 150 B.C., who says that Abraham was born in Camarina, a city of Babylonia, which some call Uria, i.e. a city of the Chaldeans. Now the word Camarina appears to be a Greek name, derived from an Arabic word, kamar, which means “the moon.” Thus in the two words Uria and Camarina the name of the place and its meaning appear to be brought together; and thus, if any single place is to be regarded as the site of Ur of the Chaldees, Mugheir has the strongest claim to be selected for that purpose. Mugheir was visited by the old Italian traveller Pietro della Valle, early in the seventeenth century, on his way from Basrah to Aleppo. He says that he had no idea what place he was surveying, but that the ruins consisted of large well burnt bricks, stamped and inscribed with characters unknown to him, but which appeared to be very ancient. “I carried away,” he says, “one of the bricks, and noticed that they were joined together in the building not with mortar, but with bitumen, with which these plains abound, so that the Arabs call the hill of ruins Muqejer, i.e. ‘the pitchy.’” H. W. P. The site of Ur was discovered about twenty years ago. It is marked by a number of large mounds in which were found embedded cylinders and bricks of the oldest type, showing that this was one of the earliest cities built by the Cushite Akkadians. The Chaldeans were fire-worshippers, and Ur (which signifies “fire” or “light”) appears to have contained one of their chief temples, which, at a somewhat later period, was dedicated to the moon, the second great “light” of heaven. In Ur, and among the ruins of other early Chaldean cities, multitudes of bricks have been found, stamped with the name Urukh. This king founded many of the oldest temples in Babylonia, as his name is upon the bricks dug up from their ruins, and also upon tablets. One inscription reads: “Urukh, king of Ur, who the house of Ur built.” He built the temple of the moon at Ur; he also built the temple of the sun at Larsa (the Ellasar of Gen. 14 : 1); the temple of Venus at Erech; the temples of Bel and Beltis at Nipur (Calneh); and the temple of Sarili at Zirgulla. These facts, while they show the all-pervading and inveterate idolatry of the ancient Chaldeans, strikingly illustrate the reason assigned by Joshua for the migration of Terah and his family from Ur. Had he remained there, he and his household would have been exposed to unceasing persecution and temptation. To have adopted the worship of the true God and renounced idolatry would have been, humanly speaking, impossible in such a country and among such a people. Their worship, as stated in the inscriptions shown on their monuments, was grossly polytheistic. J. L. P. In Shinar idolatry, which had insensibly commenced in Armenia, and proceeded till it had almost superseded the worship of the one true God, was perfected. As the human mind never tolerates any violent or sudden change in received and well-confirmed opinions, the ancient idolatry is supposed to have originated in slow and imperceptible innovations, alterations, and perversions of the pure patriarchal religion; till it became a strange and monstrous compound of Demonolatry, Sabianism, Materialism, Polytheism, and cruelty. G. T.—It is very remarkable that wherever men went, they forsook the pure worship of the true God, and instituted religious rites and practices of their own. The most lamentable thing about idolatry was, that when men began to give license to their fancy in fashioning their gods, they made them like themselves, with their own weaknesses, passions, and lusts. Instead of being elevated by fellowship with a Being of purest and noblest mould, the worshippers were debased by the contemplation of beings of low passions and propensities, whom it was regarded a duty to resemble. W. G. B.—Idolatry is the religion of sight in opposition to that of faith. Instead of the unseen Creator, man regarded that which was visible—the sun, the moon, the stars—as the cause and the ruler of all; or he assigned to everything its deity, and thus had gods many and lords many; or else he converted his heroes, real or imaginary, into gods. The worship of the heavens, the worship of nature, or the worship of man—such is heathenism and idolatry. A. E. Abraham, the highest born of the whole Semitic stock, is described as dwelling at Ur, a large and wealthy town, the chief seaport upon the Persian Gulf, though now left far inland by the deposit of the silt brought down by the Euphrates from the highlands of Armenia. The place was originally peopled by the Accadians, a race descended from Japheth, and who are proved by the large remains of their literature to have been a wealthy, learned, and highly civilized people. The cuneiform method of writing seems to have been their invention, and clay their ordinary though not their only writing material. Papyrus was used by them at a very early date; and so common was the use of writing, that all the ordinary transactions of business were carefully recorded, and numerous tablets in our museums refer to matters of the most insignificant kind. R. P. S. Ur was one of the most ancient cities of Chaldee, and at the time of Abram must have been one of the most splendid. The Cushite population on the Lower Tigris and Euphrates had already conquered the Accadians, and were mingled with them; to form in the course of time the race known as Babylonians. The city was then flourishing; the arts and sciences were cultivated; astronomers watched the heavens; poets composed hymns and epics, and patient scribes stamped, on soft clay tablets, the books which have in part come down to our day. For the ancient race which lived in these lands were, beyond most, given to writing and reading. There were libraries at Senkereh, Babylon, Borsippa, Cutha, Accad, Ur, Erech, Larsa, Nippur, Kalah Chergat, Calah, and Nineveh. Geikie. The Shemitic family of languages may be divided into four groups: 1. The Southern group—Arabic, Ethiopic, etc. 2. The Aramaic group—Syriac, Chaldee, etc. 3. The Hebrew group—the Phoenician, Hebrew, etc. 4. The Assyrian and Babylonian. These languages have given us a considerable literature; they were spoken by cultivated nations of the ancient world, mediating between the great centres of primitive Turanian culture—the Euphrates and the Nile. Everything seems to indicate that they all emigrated from a common centre in the desert on the south of Babylonia, the Arabic group separating first, next the Aramaic, then the Hebrew, while the Babylonian gained ultimately the mastery of the original Accadian of Babylonia, and the Assyrian founded the great empire on the Tigris. Now the book of Genesis represents Abram as going forth from this central seat of Ur of the Chaldees, going first northward into Mesopotamia, and then emigrating to Canaan, just as we learn from other sources the Canaanites had done before him. The monuments of Ur reveal that about this time, 2000 B.C., it was the seat of a great literary development. The father of the faithful, whose origin was in that primitive seat of culture, and who lived as a chieftain of military prowess and exalted religious and moral character among the nations of Canaan, and who was received at the court of Pharaoh—that other great centre of primitive culture—on friendly terms, could not but have, to some extent at least, made himself acquainted with their literature and culture. Briggs. Brought up amid such influences, Abram, if not a person of education, must have been a man of great intelligence; and his subsequent life proves that he also possessed unusual prudence and a superior judgment. When God's revelation came to him, it was to an enlightened mind. His renunciation of idolatry and his adoption of the worship of the true God, were not the result of impulse, but of an intelligent, deliberate choice, under special divine guidance. S. Merrill.—No reasonable doubt can be cast upon the assertion that the difference between Abram and the Chaldees lay in his being a worshipper of one God, while they worshipped many. Nor can we find any explanation of the monotheism of Abram and his clan so simple and reasonable as that given by his possession of such histories as those contained in the earlier chapters of Genesis. R. P. S. 28. Abram's wife was Sarai.** Abram says of Sarai, "She is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother" (Gen. 20:12). In Hebrew phrase the granddaughter is termed a daughter; and therefore this statement might be satisfied by her being the daughter of Haran. Lot is called the brother's son and the brother of Abram (Gen. 14:12, 16). If Sarai be Haran's daughter, Lot is Abram's brother-in-law. This identification would also explain the introduction of Iscah into the present passage. Still the studied silence of the sacred writer in regard to the parentage of Sarai, in the present connection, tells rather in favor of her being the actual daughter of Terah by another wife, and so strictly the half-sister of Abram. For the Mosaic law afterward expressly prohibited marriage with "the daughter of a father" (Lev. 18:9). And the text does not state of Iscah, "This is Sarai," which would accord with the manner of the sacred writer, and is actually done in the Targu a of Pseudo-Jonathan. 31. To go into the land of Canaan.** Terah was two hundred years old when he undertook the long journey to the land of Canaan; for he died at two hundred and five, when Abram was seventy-five. They came to Haran and dwelt there. Filial piety, no doubt, kept Abram watching over the last days of his venerable parents, who probably still hope to reach the land of his adoption. Hence they all abode in Haran for the remainder of the five years from the date of Abram's call to leave his native land. And Terah died in Haran. This intimates that he would have proceeded with the others to the land of Canaan if his life had been prolonged, and likewise that they did not leave Haran until his death. We have already seen that Abram was seventy-five years of age at the death of Terah. It follows that he was born when Terah was one hundred and thirty years old, and consequently sixty years after Haran. Abram is placed first in the list of Terah's sons, simply on account of his personal pre-eminence as the father of the faithful and the ancestor of the promised seed; he and his brother Nahor are both much younger than Haran, are married only after his death, and one of them to his grown-up daughter Milcah; and he and his nephew Lot are meet companions in age as well as in spirit. Hence also Abram lingers in Haran, waiting to take his father with him to the land of promise, if he should revive so far as to be fit for the journey. But it was not the lot of Terah to enter the land, where he would only have been a stranger. He is removed to the better country, and by his departure contributes no doubt to deepen the faith of his son Abram, of his grandson Lot, and of his daughter-in-law Sarai. This explanation of the order of events is confirmed by the statement of Stephen: "The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran. Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Charran; and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell" (Acts 7:2-4). M. In Haran, charmed probably by the fertility of the country, and claiming the right of a first choice, Nahor settled. We shall find his family here in the next two generations, bearing a character suited to the motive thus suggested (G. 24:10; 27:43). P. S.—Haran lies in one of the extensive plains of Mesopotamia (to the south-east of Edessa), and is specially adapted for a residence of Nomadic tribes. This accounts for the fact that the progress of the emigrants was arrested, and that Nahor remained there. K.—As far back as the Accadian epoch, the district in which Haran was built belonged to the rulers of Babylonia; Haran was, in fact, the frontier town of the empire; the name itself was an Accadian one signifying "the road." Sayce. It is strange to think what a great part the descendants of the Chaldean shepherd, Terah, have played in the history of the world. Those of Nahor gradually formed a great kingdom which only passed away before the rising power of Syria and the fierce attacks of Edom. The twelve tribes sprung from Ishmael scattered themselves over the vast pasture and desert regions of Arabia, Syria, Mesopotamia, the shores of the Persian Gulf, and the east of the Jordan. The sons of Keturah, in the same way, grew into similar tribes, to whom the desert solitudes have ever since been the chosen home. The Arab race, indeed, over the world, are the posterity of Nahor and Abraham. Nor have they been without their great part on the stage of the world, for it is to an Arab that more than 200,000,000 of men look to-day as the great prophet of God, and the empire they founded in the first days of Mahometanism stretched from India to the Strait of Gibraltar, and by its culture and civilization prepared the way for the revival of Letters in Western Europe. But the supreme interest of mankind centres in the Hebrew, not in the Arab descendants of Abraham. Geikie. 32. Two hundred and five years. There was an observable gradual decrease in the years of their lives; Shem reached to 600 years, which yet fell short of the age of the patriarchs before the flood; the three next came short of 500; the three next did not reach to 300; after them, we read not of any that attained to 200, but Terah; and, not many ages after this, Moses reckoned 70 or 80 to be the utmost men ordinarily arrive at: when the earth began to be replenished, men's lives began to shorten; so that the decrease is to be imputed to the wise disposal of providence, rather than to any decay of nature. H. Without these first eleven chapters of Genesis we should be in the deepest darkness in reference to the origin and nature of the world and of man. In these chapters we have true light on the beginning, in the prophecies on the end; in the former on the originating principle, in the latter on the issues of history; in the one on the reason or cause, in the other on the purpose of the world. Without this light, a universal history and philosophy of history are impossible. Prophecy itself has its roots in these chapters. All later revelation is founded on them. Auberlen. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ 1. Now the LORD said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and 2 from thy father's house, unto the land that I will shew thee : and I will make of thee a great 3 nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great ; and be thou a blessing : and I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse : and in thee shall all the 4 families of the earth be blessed. So Abram went, as the LORD had spoken unto him ; and Lot went with him : and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran ; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan : and into the land of Canaan they came. From this point, through forty chapters, the sacred historian leaves the history of the world to dwell on the records of three biographies. For not only is the individual life sacred to God, but those three patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—were the fathers of the chosen people. They lived peaceful and, for the most part, uneventful lives in their pastoral tents ; they were but men ; they were not sinless ; they sometimes fell into acts of meanness and deceit. But even with all their human weaknesses they were men eminently good, and their one great distinguishing feature was faith in God. It is this which, more than anything else, differen- tiates one life from another. We are helped to grasp the lesson by the striking way in which each one of them is silently contrasted with another who has his good things in this life— Abraham with Lot, Isaac with Ishmael, Jacob with Esau. Few lessons are more instructive than those which spring from drawing out this contrast in its details and in its results. But the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews points out to us the great lesson that it was faith which lit up their characters with every virtue and every grace ; it was like one sunbeam brighten- ing jewels of many colors. Farrar. For nearly four centuries, at the briefest com- putation, the new race, saved from the flood, had been left to multiply and spread and cor- rupt itself, without anything that we know of, better than tradition, to keep alive a pure faith or the memory of God's past dealings with man- kind. Like the four hundred years in Egypt, or the period of the Judges or the interval from Malachi to John the Baptist, these centuries formed one of those longer pauses in the suc- cession of divine communications to mankind, which have sometimes served to sharpen the ears of the few who did hearken for God's voice, as well as to accentuate that voice when it spoke again. When this interval of silence was over, two results of it were found to mark the condi- tion of mankind. For one thing, the world was left broken up into states, tribes, and races held well apart from one another, partly by varia- tions of dialect, and partly by blood-affinities and repulsions. In the next place, a system of nature-worship, which tended rapidly to deify the chief forces and phenomena of matter, was found to have spread itself, though under vary- ing forms, over all lands. The former of these facts made the separation of a single tribe, for the purpose of being divinely educated in re- ligion, a possible step ; the latter made it a need- ful one. The time was ripe for the interposi- tion of Heaven, that in one sheltered and se- lected family at least might be unfolded an up- ward religious progress under supernatural im- pulses, to serve for a counterpoise or corrective to the downward movement everywhere else in progress. In a word, the beginnings must be made of a kingdom of God, if more and more the kingdom of fallen spirits were not to be suf- fered without challenge to engulf humanity. Dykes. Even with the advantage on the side of right eousness gained by the terrific judgment of the Deluge, the same sinful tendencies soon began to develop themselves anew after that event ; within a few generations the miracle at Babel was necessary to confound the projects of men, combining in one vast scheme to thwart the purposes of heaven ; and even the posterity of Shem, which had some kind of general distinc- tion conferred on it in Divine things by the prophecy of Noah, was ready to be engulfed in the swelling stream of pollution. It was necessary, therefore, to adopt another course, and, for the sake of the general good of the world, to select a particular channel of blessing. This is the principle of the Divine government of which Abraham became the first living representative — individual election to special privileges, hopes, and obligations; primarily, indeed, for the behoof of those more immediately concerned, but mainly for the benefit of others, with the express object and design that the particular in this respect might become the universal. Gosse — The revelation, promise, and favor bestowed on Abraham are only vouchsafed to him in order, through him and his descendants, to pour on the whole human race the same blessing of the knowledge of God, and communion with Him. While God confines His grace to a single chosen family, He declares it is intended for all men. The first revelation to the great forefather of the Israelites shows that the Old Testament knows nothing of a Jewish national God, to whom the rest of the world is alien. Gert. It was needful that there should be a particular nation separated from the rest of the world, to receive the types and prophecies to be given of Christ, to prepare the way for his coming; that to them might be committed the oracles of God; and that by them the history of God's great works of creation and providence might be upheld; and that so Christ might be born of this nation; and that from hence the light of the gospel might shine forth to the rest of the world. These ends could not well be obtained, if God's people, through all these two thousand years, had lived intermixed with the Heathen world. So that this calling of Abraham may be looked upon as a new foundation laid for the visible church of God, in a more distinct and regular state, to be upheld and built upon this foundation from henceforward, till Christ should actually come, and then through him to be propagated to all nations. So that Abraham being the person in whom this foundation is laid, is represented in scripture as though he were the father of all the church, the father of all them that believe; as it were a root whence the visible church thenceforward through Christ, Abraham's root and offspring, rose as a tree, distinct from all other plants; of which tree Christ was the Branch of righteousness; and from which tree, after Christ came, the natural branches were broken off, and the Gentiles were grafted into the same tree. So that Abraham still remains the father of the church, or root of the tree, through Christ his seed. It is the same tree that flourishes from that small beginning, that was in Abraham's time, and has in these days of the gospel spread its branches over a great part of the earth, and will all the whole earth in due time, and at the end of the world shall be transplanted from an earthly soil into the paradise of God. Edwards. From the selection of one particular nation onward every revelation of God clusters around that nation, in order to prepare it so that ultimately the climax and the final aim of all revelation, the incarnation of God, might be attained in the midst of that people, and thence a salvation issue, adapted not only to that nation but also to all other nations. The basis of this history is a covenant into which God entered with that nation, and which, amid all the vicissitudes and dangers attending every human development, He preserved and directed till its final aim was attained. This covenant, whose object was a salvation which was to be accomplished, is designated the Old Covenant, in contradistinction to the New Covenant which God made with all nations, on the basis of a salvation which, in the fulness of time, had actually been accomplished. Sacred history commences with the creation of the world, while the history of the Old Covenant only begins when God entered into covenant with Abraham. The ultimate aim and the highest point of the Divine covenant activity, in all its manifestations, is the incarnation of God in Christ. The purpose of all Divine operation and co-operation in the Old Covenant is to typify it and to prepare for it. The law, the word of prophecy, the general leadings of the chosen people, and the individual leadings of its more prominent members—in fine, every miraculous interposition points toward this. The law is the mirror where the ideal of that Divine perfection, which, since the entrance of sin, can only be realized in the God-man, is reflected; prophecy is the canvas on which the hand of the divinely-enlightened seer traces the lineaments of the God-man. The whole course of this history implies a continual descending and condescending to man on the part of the Divine Being. K. With the Life of Abraham the Mosaic history may be said to commence: all that precedes being introductory to it. If we consult the map of the countries through which Abraham passed, and consider at the same time the probable amount of the population of the earth at this period, we shall find that Abraham, in complying with the Divine command, preached the true religion to the great majority of mankind, G. T. — No other name in all history forms so conspicuous a starting-point for the developments of after time. "Abram the Hebrew" stands at the head of many a great stream of history, like the river of Eden which parted into four. Of the leading faiths of the world, there are three which cherish his name with equal veneration; and these three are the only monotheistic faiths. To the Jew, the Moslem, and the Christian alike, the prophet Abraham forms a common ancestor. Trace these three forms of belief to their fountain-head, and they meet in the tent of that ancient confessor, exiled in the dawn of the world for his faith in the unity of God. Divided in so much else, the Englishman and the Turk, the Moor and the Arab, the Catholic and the Jew, agree in deriving their spiritual, if not also their natural, descent from that primeval "friend of God." Most literally has the promise of his new name been fulfilled. He has become a "father of many nations." Dykes. The stream of sacred history first of all starts with Adam as its fountain-head; and next, Noah forms a new fountain-head for the race after the flood; so now the history takes a new departure from Abraham and continues its course onward from Abraham till inspiration closes. And accordingly it will be found that through all the remaining history Abraham is the prominent name, rather than that of Adam or of Noah. For, in the subsequent books of the Bible, while there are some seven references to Adam and eight to Noah, there are more than one hundred references made to Abraham. And these are not mere historical allusions, but the references are to Abraham as the most prominent of all the actors in the covenant of grace with the Church of God. S. R.—In some fourteen or fifteen passages of the New Testament we find his place in the unfolding of revelation distinctly referred to. In several of these passages incidents of his career are carefully discussed, in order to illustrate or confirm cardinal principles of the gospel. Our Lord himself in his controversy with the Jews, Paul in his two leading theological epistles, James, and the anonymous writer to the Hebrews, all devote long passages to the exposition of Abraham's position or of the lessons of his life. In fact, the section of the Book of Genesis in which this patriarch's career has been recorded may be called the principal as well as the earliest seed-plot of evangelical teaching. Dykes. How is the fact to be explained that the three greatest religions of the world, in which the unity of the Deity forms the key-note, are of Semitic origin? Mahometanism, no doubt, is a Semitic religion, and its very core is monotheism. But did Mahomet invent monotheism? Did he invent even a new name of God? Not at all. And how is it with Christianity? Did Christ come to preach faith in a new God? Did He or His disciples invent a new name of God? No. Christ came, not to destroy, but to fulfil, and the God whom He preached was the God of Abraham. And who is the God of Jeremiah, of Elijah, and of Moses? We answer again: The God of Abraham. Thus the faith in the One Living God, which seemed to require the admission of a monotheistic instinct, grafted in every member of the Semitic family, is traced back to one man; to him "in whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed." And if from our earliest childhood we have looked upon Abraham, the Friend of God, with love and veneration, his venerable figure will assume still more majestic proportions, when we see in him the life-spring of that faith which was to unite all the nations of the earth, and the author of that blessing which was to come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ. And if we are asked how this one Abraham passed, through the denial of all other gods, to the knowledge of the one God, we are content to answer that it was by a special divine revelation, granted to that one man, and handed down by him to Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, to all who believe in the God of Abraham. We want to know more of that man than we do; but even with the little we know of him, he stands before us as a figure, second only to One in the whole history of the world. Max Müller. 1. Now the Lord said. Before he left Ur Stephen tells us, what also appears most likely from the history in Genesis, that God appeared to Abram "when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran." Cook.—Get thee out from thy country.** Abraham is chosen to be the head of a new dispensation, as Noah was; but with this difference, that the world is not taken away this time, but only left to walk in their own ways. But, while the world is not taken away from Abraham the coming man, Abraham the coming man is taken away from the world. Abraham and his descendants are to be separated to the life of faith and hope and holiness, separated to "walk with God." We shall find that God trained him by separation; by a series of separations. This is a key-thought of Abraham's life. Gibson.—From thy kindred, thy father's house. It was to sunder three ties,—country, kindred, and home,—and he was to go by faith. He is chosen as the founder of a new family, and a new order of things. Jacobus. It was grace that honored him with the call. It is very important to have this fully in mind if you would understand the force of Paul's reasoning from this case of Abraham to prove that "we are justified before God by faith only, and not from our own deservings" (Gal. 3 : 8). His argument is that to Abraham, while yet ungodly and idolatrous, God preached the gospel and promised the blessings of His grace. S. R.—He was singled out from the world's inhabitants to begin a new order of things, which were to bear throughout the impress of God's special grace and almighty power; and he must separate himself from the old things of nature, to be in his life the representative of God's holiness, as in his destiny he was to be the monument of God's power and goodness. It is this exercise of faith in Abraham which is first exhibited in the Epistle to the Hebrews, as bespeaking a mighty energy in its working. "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise." P. F. 2,3. The promise advances in six degrees upward, until in the highest the Messias is perceptible, who was to be of the race of Abraham. "I will make of thee a great nation," both of thy bodily and spiritual seed;—"I will bless thee," and yet he possessed not a foot of land;—"make thy name great," and yet it behoved him to be a stranger in a strange land. Abraham's name did become great. C. G. B.—I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee; this made it a kind of a league, offensive and defensive, between God and Abram. Abram heartily espoused God's cause, and here God promises to interest himself in his. He promises to be a Friend to his friends, to take kindnesses shown to him as done to Himself, and to recompense them accordingly. God will take care that none be losers, in the long run, by any service done for his people. He promises to appear against his enemies; there were those that hated and cursed even Abram himself; but while their causeless curses could not hurt Abram, God's righteous curse would certainly overtake and ruin them (Num. 24 : 9). This is a good reason why we should bless them that curse us, because it is enough that God will curse them. In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed; this was the promise that crowned all the rest; for it points at the Messiah, in whom all the promises are yea and amen. H.—This promise is repeated seven times. It is the third prophecy of the Messiah, and is here attached to a single person,—then to his family,—afterward to the people that descended from them,—and finally expands itself to all the nations of the earth. C. G. B.—The wealth of blessing which lay folded up in this germ took more than two thousand years to ripen into fruit. But from the very first God left it in no doubt that when the fruit of that chosen vine should at last be ripe, it should be for all nations. In God's great plan, whatever is narrow, elective, or individual, contemplates in the long run a wider good. God is not the God of Shem only. For a time He was Shem's God in a peculiar sense, only that in the end both Japheth and Ham may partake in the blessing. God is not the God of Abraham alone; but He blessed Abraham in an eminent degree, that at last the blessing of Abraham might come on the nations through Jesus Christ. Dykes. Here are two distinct covenants or blessings: the first temporal, which respects only Abram and his family; the second spiritual, which has regard to Christ and the whole world. And all future prophecies have regard to these two covenants. Ishmael, and Esau, and all the family of Abram, had a right to the blessings of the first; and all the world to the blessings of the second. The Jews indeed expect, by virtue of the last, to bear rule over the whole world; but surely this would be no great blessing to the rest of the nations of the world, whatever it might be to them. Therefore, saith Paul with respect to this promise, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus," the promised seed in which all the families of the earth were to be happy. From this time a particular providence attended the people of Israel, his posterity by his sons Isaac and Jacob; correcting, trying, punishing, redeeming them out of the hands of their enemies, until the promised seed came. Bp. Wilson. The expression "all families," repeated four times, is the centre of all promises, and that round which all the others revolve. The knowledge and the love of the one, true, living God—his covenant with Him—this was the unspeakably rich blessing which Abram possessed, the source of all other benefits which he enjoyed. This blessing was through him to pass to all people. The beginning of the Great Promise which is annexed to his family declares this only with clearness—that the knowledge of God, and covenant with Him, shall one day be the possession of all nations through Abram. Geri,—Christ is the essential kernel of the promise; and the seed of Abraham, rather than Abraham himself, was to have the honor of blessing all the families of the earth. But in Abraham as the living root of all that was to follow, the whole and every part may be said to take its rise; and not only was Christ after the flesh of the seed of Abraham, but each believer in Christ is a son of Abraham, and the entire company of the redeemed shall have their place and their portion with Abraham in the kingdom of God. P. F. Hitherto deliverance had been expected through the seed of the woman; now the circle narrows and all nations of the earth are to be blessed in Abraham's seed. The history which commences with Abraham continues unbroken till the judgment which Titus was called to execute against the covenant-people. The giving of the law on Mount Sinai is only a high point, although the most prominent, in the history between Abraham and Christ. It is not the commencement of a new history. True, it is called a covenant, but it does not differ essentially from that with Abraham. It does not stand in the same relation to the Abrahamic as the latter to the Noachic covenant. The covenant with Noah was made with all mankind; the covenant with Abraham was made with him as the ancestor of the holy people, while that on Sinai was made with the people as the seed of Abraham. K. 4. So Abram went, as the Lord had spoken to him. It is the Divine method and law that man should co-operate with God, and that God should act by means of men who are fitting instruments; and this law implies that those who are God's instruments possess real character of their own in correspondence with their mission. A man who throws off the chains of authority and association must be a man of extraordinary independence and strength of mind, although he does so in obedience to a Divine revelation. So the recipient of a new revelation must have self-reliance, otherwise he will not believe that he has received it; he will not be sure of it against the force of current opinions. Abraham comes before us as a person who lives in the future, whose mind is cast forward, beyond the immediate foreground of his own day, upon a very remote epoch in the history of the world, and fixed upon a remarkable event in the most distant horizon of time, the nature of which is vague and dimly known to him, but which is charged with momentous consequences, involving a change in the whole state of the world. The revelation is made to him, "In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed;" he looks onward perpetually to the accomplishment of this prediction. Our Lord himself has singled out this prophetic look of Abraham as something unexampled in clearness, certainty, and far-reaching extent. "Your father Abraham saw my day and was glad." This was a revelation made to him indeed; but he is equal to the revelation, he embraces it and concurs in his whole power of mind with it. Mosley. Abraham, like Paul, "confers not with flesh and blood." He instantly believes and accepts the offer. It calls him to go out, not knowing whither he went, on the simple promise of God. There were many things to try his faith. His children were to become a great nation, and yet, though now seventy-five years old, he is childless. That he felt this difficulty, his after conduct in stumbling at it shows. S. R.—The writer of the biblical narrative occupies himself in no respect with the question, How God had spoken to Abram. God is, for him, present and an actor in the history just as much as Abram is; the intervention of God has in his eyes nothing but what is perfectly simple and natural. The same faith animates Abram; he issues forth from Chaldea and wanders through Palestine, according to the word and under the direction of the Eternal. Guizot. Abram heard and recognized God's voice; he bowed to his authority and went. This first recorded illustration of his faith in God and obedience made its impression upon future ages—as we may see in the words of Joshua (24:2, 3); of Nehemiah (9:7, 8); of Stephen (Acts 7:2-5); and of the writer to the Hebrews (11:8-10). H. C.—The Father of the Faithful "went out not knowing whither he went!" And every true descendant in the lineage of faith will but rejoice in that ignorance which urges him to cling the closer to his immortal Friend; which bids him gladly, for intimations which could but be obscure at best, substitute omniscience itself, and teaches him to cry, "Lord, I know but faintly what it shall be, and I ask not to know! Only assure me that Thou wilt be there." W. A. B. God cut him off from kindred that He might draw him closer to Himself. The emigration of a godly man at God's call forces him to lean much on God, who becomes his only constant comrade and unfailing helper. It throws him back at each emergency upon the spiritual resources of faith, and trains into full maturity the graces of his religious nature. Inwardly, Abram could hardly have become the spiritual hero he was in later life, if he had not been forced to walk through the long trials of his exile with nothing but the unseen eternal God for his "shield," and compelled to brood through nomeless years over the mighty thoughts which God had uttered to his faith. Dykes. Does God give "the reason why" in the case of every command? Certainly not. Where he does not give a reason he gives in reality the best reason of all. To give a promise is to show that the reason though undisclosed is all-sufi- cient, for in the case of the All-wise a promise is the harvest of which a reason would be but the bare seed. We can understand a promise where we could not understand a reason: the reason may be too high or too recondite for our faculties; but a promise is practical, positive, literal, and if we have faith in the speaker we know that if the promise be so good the com- mand which precedes it must be founded upon a reason equally valid. In reality we have noth- ing to do with the reasons upon which God's commands are founded. We are to walk by faith, not by sight. To have faith in God is to comprehend all reasons in one act. . . . Life is a discipline. Shrewd men want to know whither they are going before they set out on a journey; but men of higher shrewdness, men of Christian faith, often go out into enterprise and difficulty without being able to see one step before them. The watchword of the noblest, truest souls is, "We walk by faith, not by sight;" faith has a wider dominion and a more splendid future. Life is to be spiritual; not made up of things that can be counted and valued, but of ideas, convictions, impulses, and decisions that are Divine and imperishable. The world of faith is large, and rich, and brilli- ant. Those who live in it dominate over all lower worlds. J. P. Abram was seventy and five years old when he left Haran. He was an hundred and seventy-five when in Canaan he closed his eyes. Through all that long interval had it been literally true of him, that "if he had been mindful of the country from whence he came out, he might have had opportunity to re- turn." There was nothing to forbid a return. It was only the unfulfilled promise which held him fast. "This land will I give," God had said. So in "this land" he waited, and wait- ing died. Dykes. 5. His brother Nahor stayed behind in the plains of Haran: to become the father of twelve Arab tribes—the Nahorites—as Abraham was to be that of twelve tribes of Hebrews. But the descendants of Nahor were to wander in Edom, on the Euphrates, and over Mesopotamia; in Bashan, and to the east of Jordan, and in North- ern Arabia, almost unknown and wholly insignificant in history, while those of Abraham were to form the people of God, and to give man- kind His Incarnate Son, the Saviour of the world. Nor is it unworthy of notice, in convec- tion with their divergent futures, that Abra- ham's posterity alone, of all the tribes descended from Terah, abandoned the nomadic for a set- tled life. . . . That Abraham set forth at the head of a large body of tribesmen is evident, from his taking with him all his herds, and all the male and female slaves born in his tents, or whom he had bought in Haran; a multitude so large in the aggregate as to enable him, a few years later, to select from among them three hundred and eighteen men trained to the sol- dierly defence of the camp, to pursue Chedor- laomer. Gelkie. After crossing the Euphrates, Abraham skirted the northern border of the great Syrian desert, passed through Damascus, and then followed the ancient road from that city to Egypt. W. H. —The pilgrims passed through the plain of Jezreel, which, so to speak, formed a large gate- way into the land, and then turned to the moun- tains of Ephraim. Shechem (the present Nabu- lus) lies in the beautiful and fruitful valley which divides Mounts Ebal and Gerizim; to the south, the broad plain of el-Mukhna joins this valley. K. Into the land of Canaan they came. Palestine is a small country, but it presents great varieties of soil, climate, and water sup- ply in various districts. We have the tropical Jordan Valley and the arctic region of Upper Hermon and Lebanon. We have rich volcanic corn plains in Bashan and round Jezreel, and sandstones covered with pines and cedars, and hard limestones over which perennial streams flow between fine woods of oak and terebinth in Galilee, and yet more in Gilead. We have flat maritime plains, bounded by ever-rolling dunes, but well watered by sluggish streams from the clear springs at the mountain foot. These plains run from Carmel to Gaza, ever widening, and supporting rich harvests. We have the low chalk hills, with their luxuriant olive-yards and wells of living water, all along the eastern side of the maritime plains. Above, rise mountains 3000 to 4000 feet high, and on the north attain- ing to 10,000 feet. These are generally rugged and bare, but carefully terraced and partly cul- tivated. The vine flourishes on these higher ranges, where the frost and mist aid the strong reflection of heat from the rock to ripen the grapes. But besides these richer districts, we have the old deserts unchanged from the days of Abraham and of David; the flat marly plateau of Beersheba, where the nomads feed their flocks and herds as Isaac did before them; the desolate peaks and gorges of the Jeshimon, where the dun partridge and the brown ibex roam as they did when David hid in these fastnesses from Saul, among the "rocks of the wild goats." The land is still as fertile as of old; still well watered in certain districts; still with a sufficient rainfall; and when a just and stable government exists (as in the Lebanon) the country still flows with oil and wine. We learn from a study of the land and of history the desolation wrought by human means in Palestine. We see that poverty and decrease of population, the decay of roads and aqueducts, the ruin of the old cisterns, the destruction of the woods, terraces, and vineyards, are the causes of the present desolation. And experience proves that, given a just and strong government in the country, Palestine might become, like Southern Italy, a garden of the world. Cander. Not by accident did that strip of Syrian territory become the theatre of sacred events, the home of the covenant people, and the seat of divine revelation. There was no other region on the earth's surface which could have answered so well. It unites, as no other does, the two indispensable conditions of central position and yet of isolation. To lie in the midst of the nations, at the focus and gathering-place of those mighty and cultured empires, whose rivalries ruled the politics, as their example led the civilization, of antiquity, yet at the same time be shut off from such contact with them as must of necessity prove injurious, seemed to be opposite requirements, very hard to be reconciled. To a curious extent they are reconciled in the land of promise. It lies at a corner where Asia, Africa, and Europe meet, or all but touch. The six ancient states of Babylon, Assyria, Media, Persia, Phœnicia, and Egypt stood round about it. The main lines of ancient traffic ran close past its border. Whenever, for purposes of war or trade, bodies of men sought to pass from the populous and powerful states of the north, whose centre lay along the Euphrates, to the populous and powerful states of the south, whose centre lay along the Nile, there was only one road by which they could travel. "Syria," says Ritter, "is bounded by a great sea of sand on the east, as by a great sea of water on the west. Across that natural barrier of sea and sand, there is but one convenient highway." Palestine is like "a bridge arching across a double sea of desert sands and of waters which the want of harbors made useless to it. It connected the Euphrates with the Nile." While thus set in the middle of all lands, it stood strangely apart from all. "No great highway," says the same authority, "led through it from nation to nation; all went by it, over the roads which skirted it without traversing it; and which all found their type in the sea-line which ran from the harbors of the ancient Phœnician cities to Egypt, along a shore which was almost devoid of havens." In fact, it was so isolated, that if its people chose they could dwell apart. On the west, a harborless coast; on the north, great mountain ranges; on the east and south, vast waterless wastes; yet alongside it, and close by its very borders, there must pass, by fatiguing and hazardous journeys, the long caravans or laden ships which carried traffic from one civilized state to another, and the cumbrous armies by which rival empires sought to crush each other. Geographically, politically, commercially, "no country is so situated in relation to three great continents and five great bodies of water; none unites such amazing contrasts,—perfect isolation and independence, with the ability to go out from this isolation and establish relations with all the greatest nations of antiquity." Dykes. Divine tuition, under its earlier form of mere paternal superintendence, was cut short by sin, before as yet the race had begun to be cradled. Then came that other form, the redemptive, which was at once inaugurated, and which, from then till now, has inspired and determined the whole course of human history. The Serpent-Bruiser was not yet born, was only promised, and foreshadowed by type and symbol; but the Logos economy began to work, and, like the central wheel of some gigantic machinery, sent its motion to the farthest points. Christ began to rule the world long before he entered it through the Virgin's womb. It was he that vitalized the pious civilization of Seth. It was he that cursed the godless race of Cain, and drowned the reeking plains of Western Asia beneath the Deluge. It was he that divided the earth among the three great races that came of Noah. It was he that elected the race of Shem as the special nurse and guardian of the great religions of the world. It was he that appeared to Abraham, and evoked, through him, the Hebrew people to their stupendous destiny. From that hour, till he appeared in person to tread its mountains and its valleys, Palestine became, and remained, the central country of the globe. Diminutive in territory, embraced None of those antique civilizations were native to the soils that nourished them. Rome took her light from Greece; Greece from Egypt; Egypt from Western Asia; and Western Asia was where the race was twice cradled, where Adam lived and died, and where the Ark rested. Each of these civilizations, it is true, had something peculiar to itself, in obedience to other laws; but they all proceeded, by natural descent, from one original; and that original was a survivor of the Deluge, the bequest of an elder, perished world, and, in its last analysis, an inspiration of God himself. The only civilizations, of much historic interest, which failed to play an important part in preparing the way for Christianity, were the Hindoo and the Chinese. Why these had nothing to do, is obvious: They stood apart, outside of the line of march. But neither were they indigenous. They both proceeded from Western Asia, shooting eastward, as the more important historic civilizations shot westward, from the central stem. As to the ordering of these events, the fact of a general Divine superintendence is hardly to be questioned. Such adaptations indicate design; and such design necessitates the inference of a competent designer. R. D. H. 6. And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem, unto the oak of Moreh. 7 And the Canaanite was then in the land. And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared 8 unto him. And he removed from thence unto the mountain on the east of Beth-el, and pitched his tent, having Beth-el on the west, and Ai on the east: and there he builded an altar 9 unto the LORD, and called upon the name of the LORD. And Abram journeyed, going on still toward the South. 6. Shechem. See N. T., vol. 1, pp. 96, 98, and 100 for Sketch Maps and Illustrations. B.—The western side of the Plain of Shechem, El Mūkhna, is bounded by the abutments of two mountain ranges, running from east to west. These ranges are Ebal and Gerizim. Exactly opposite Jacob's Well is the opening between them. A mile and a half above the well, and out of sight of the plain, is Nablous, the modern Shechem. Geographically and historically we are here in the central spot of the Holy Land. So exactly is Shechem in the centre between east and west, that the streams, which burst forth copiously from springs within its walls, run from the east gate down to the Jordan; and those which dash over the pavements, at the west end of the town, find their way through the Plain of Sharon to the Mediterranean. For distinctness and variety of detail the view from Gerizim has no superior. Once more Hermon rose before us in spotless purity far beyond and above Tabor, Gilboa, and the lesser hills of Galilee. On our right we could trace the trans-Jordanic range from the Sea of Galilee, Bashan, Gilead, down to Moab. On the left the Mediterranean formed the horizon from Carmel perhaps to Gaza; while Joppa and Cassarea could be distinctly recognized. The southern view was shut in by the hills of Benjamin. At our feet was spread the long plain of Mūkhna, into which the vale of Shechem debouches, where Jacob pastured his flocks, and where there was ample space for the tents of Israel when gathered there by Joshua. All Central Palestine could be taken in at a glance. H. B. T. Robinson, who entered the valley of Sychem through Mūkhna, describes it as one of the most attractive portions of Palestine. "All at once the ground sinks down to a valley running toward the west, with a soil of rich black vegetable mould. Here a scene of luxuriant and almost unparalleled verdure bursts upon our view. The whole valley was filled with gardens of vegetables and orchards of all kinds of fruits, watered by several fountains, which burst forth in various parts and flow westward in refreshing streams. It came upon us suddenly, like a scene of fairy enchantment. We saw nothing to compare with it in all Palestine." Such then must have been the first view which Abram got of the land of promise. The plain (or rather the wood) of Moreh, where Abram settled, probably derived its name from the Canaanitish proprietor of that district. K. A site so fair and lovely invited, like Damascus by its many waters, the earliest settlement of mankind: destined by nature to be a city, in which man, wherever he exists at all, is sure to congregate. As old as Damascus and Hebron, older than any other known city of Syria, Shechem was a city while Abram yet tarried in Chaldea. It is the artery through which all commerce between north and south must pass. The history of Shechem first dawns when Abram made his first encampment in the Land of Promise, under the terebinth of Moreh, at Shechem. "The Canaanite was then in the land," when the Father of the Faithful, under the shade of that tree, erected the first altar ever raised in that land to the honor of Jehovah; and the pledge that his seed should possess it was renewed to him. H. B. T. The Canaanite was in the land on the arrival of the first Hebrew immigrant. So open was the face of the country, that Abram found no hindrance to his pasturing extensive flocks both in the centre and in the south. There was plainly room for all. As yet we have to conceive of Abram as free to shift his black haircloth tents and spreading herds from spot to spot over the face of the country; and free, wherever he encamped, to erect his altar and worship the God of his fathers, as Abel worshipped, with innocent blood, the first-fruits of his simple sheep. Dykes. 7. And the Lord appeared unto Abram.** This is the first mention of a distinct appearance of the LORD to man. His voice is heard by Adam, and he is said to have spoken to Noah and to Abram; but here is a visible manifestation. Was it an angel personating God? This question has been answered by many in the affirmative. Or was it a manifestation of the Son of God, a Theophany, in some measure anticipating the Incarnation? This opinion was held by the great majority of the fathers from the very first. . . . The fact, that the name Angel of the Lord is sometimes used of a created Angel, is not proof enough that it may not be also used of Him who is called "the Angel of the covenant" (Mal. 3: 1): and the apparent identification of the Angel of God with God Himself in very many passages leads markedly to the conclusion, that God spake to man by an Angel or Messenger, and yet that that Angel or Messenger was Himself God. No man saw God at any time, but the only begotten Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, declared him. He, who was the Word of God, the voice of God to His creatures, was yet in the beginning with God, and He was God. E. H. B. The forms which revelation takes in patriarchal history are chiefly either that of immediate inward communication, when God speaks in the soul of man without employing the medium of the senses, or that of Theophany, when, by way of revealing Himself, He assumes human form. The latter manifestation was either internal, being then a vision or a dream; or external, when He appeared in bodily form. The principal, and perhaps the only form of this second mode of Theophany, is by means of what is designated as the Angel of the Lord, in whom Jehovah appears and manifests Himself to the senses. This mode of manifestation occurs for the first time in patriarchal history. K.—If the end of the Divine ways is the realization of the perfect union between the God of love and man, His beloved creature, in one and the same person, the God-Man, then there could be no more natural or rational preparation in view of this aim, than those transitory visits or apparitions of God to the patriarchs. Later on, they will transform themselves into those glorious visions granted to the prophets, and will eventually end in the permanent Incarnation which the New Testament recounts. And this view of the apparitions of God in the life of the patriarchs may be applied to all the miracles of sacred history. They are all like so many steps on the way that leads from the calling of Abraham to the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. They are like the links of a chain of which these two events are the first and last circles. Break these and the chain will fall to pieces of itself. Consequently, all there is of superhuman in the Old Testament is implicitly contained in the incarnation and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is on the ground of the New Testament that the question of the supernatural in the Old must be settled. It is before the open grave of Jesus Christ that we must discuss concerning Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Elijah. Godel. Unto thy seed will I give this land. The Most High unfolds his counsels and promises gradually; rewarding one degree of faith with such intimations of mercy as will beget another. He at first signified his purpose of merely showing to Abraham a distant land in which he was to sojourn. He now speaks of giving it, but not immediately to himself, but to his seed. This promise is still further amplified in chapter 15. Bush.—Behold, Abraham takes possession for that seed which he had not, which in nature he was not like to have; of that land whereof he should not have one foot, wherein his seed should not be settled for almost five hundred years after: the power of faith can prevent time, and make future things present; if we be the true sons of Abraham, we have already, while we sojourn here on earth, the possession of our land of Promise: while we seek our country, we have it. Bp. H. And there he builded an altar unto the Lord. The first recorded act of religious worship since that of Noah on emerging from the ark—very simple in outward form and circircumstance. A few stones piled up—perhaps a green sod laid upon them; on that rude altar some produce of the earth, some firstling of the flock, offered up in sacrifice; Abram before it, bowing in lowly adoration, calling upon the name of the Lord. W. H. Here, at the foot of Ebal and Gerizim, in the holy heart of the land, he received from God his earliest intimation that this was the destined home of his future seed—the land in search of which he had travelled so far. Under the branches of that sacred tree, which, after looking down on the cruel and impure rites of many more generations, was still to stand, a venerable landmark in the eyes of his conquering descendants, Abram reared his first rude altar to Jehovah on the soil of Canaan. It was his response to God's word: "Unto thy seed will I give this land." It expressed both confidence and gratitude. It was his way of taking the country in possession. Dykes. When God appeared to him, then and there he built an altar, with an eye to the God who appeared to him. Thus he returned God's visit, and kept up his correspondence with Heaven, as one that resolved it should not fail on his side; thus he acknowledged with thankfulness God's kindness to him in making him that gracious visit and promise; and thus he testified his confidence in, and dependence upon, the word which God had spoken. And wherever he had a tent, God had an altar, and that an altar sanctified by prayer. For he not only minded the ceremonial part of religion, the offering of sacrifice; but he made conscience of the natural duty of seeking to his God and calling on his name, that spiritual sacrifice with which God is well pleased; he preached concerning the name of the Lord, that is, he instructed his family and neighbors in the knowledge of the true God and his holy religion. Those that would approve themselves the children of faithful Abram and would inherit the blessing of Abram, must make conscience of keeping up the solemn worship of God, particularly in their families, according to the example of Abram: the way of family worship is a good old way, is no novel invention, but the ancient usage of all the saints. H. A grand sight that was in the heart of the old heathenism—that one man against the world almost—that solitary relic of Eden memories, green yet amid the wide desolations—that altar of a pure worship like the ark of the deluge, the sole resting-place for the foot of pilgrim piety! See that standard for the true God set up, more sublime than granite monument or obelisk. There it stands, more than a fortress to guard that home; more than a sanctuary to kindle a devotion; an ever-speaking witness for God, the prophetic pledge that the world's great sacrifice was yet to be offered. . . . Surely the tent and the altar should ever be conjoined. Every household should be the sanctuary of a hallowed affection, the earthly image of the family of heaven. Religion should be there, not in mere form, but in its living spirit; not as a mere outward ceremonial, but as an inspiring principle. Gillett. Abram set up his altar along the line of his march. Blessed are they whose way is known by marks of worship. The altar is the highest seal of ownership. God will not lightly forsake his temples. This setting up of the altar shows that our spiritual life ought to be attested by outward sign and profession. Abram had the promise in his heart, yet he was not lost in religious musings and prophesyings—he built his altar and set up his testimony in the midst of his people, and made them sharers of a common worship. J. P. 8. From the vale of Shechem, which had been his first halting-place, Abram moved erelong to more open quarters on the hills to the south of it. The place is described as lying between Bethel and Ai. Bethel, as a name and as a town, is of course of later date. Between these two sites there lay then, as there lies now, a "high and beautiful plain," which Robinson describes as "one of the finest tracts for pasturage in the whole land." Dykes. Bethel. The place which was afterward called Bethel by Jacob; for its first name was Luz. Beith el literally signifies the House of God. A. C. —According to Robinson, the ruins, now called Beitin, are the remains of ancient Bethel. They lie five geographical miles to the south of Shechem, two geographical miles north of Jerusalem. The agreement both of situation and of name affords decisive confirmation that Beitin is the ancient Bethel. K.—There is a gently sloping grassy valley, south-east of Bethel, where the patriarch's flocks may have grazed; and we recognize the mountain in the little rugged hill opposite, with shapeless cairns on its top, Tell-el-Hajar, "the hill of the stones." Ai, destroyed by Joshua, appears to have been situated on the hill above the village of Deir Duwan, a couple of miles further to the east. When Bethel is known and examined, it is almost impossible to mistake the site of Ai; and also that of Abram's second encampment. H. B. T. There he pitched his tent—and building an altar unto the Lord. Where Abram has a tent, there God must have an altar, as he well knows there is no safety but under the Divine protection. The house in which the worship of God is not established, cannot be considered as under the Divine protection. A. C. By the gift or promise of One to whom all lands belong, that land was his from one end of it to the other; in actual possession he could not call a foot of it his own. To a position so unusual as this he was required to accommodate his conduct. Until it pleased God by his providence to put him in peaceable possession of the soil, Abram had to reconcile himself to seeing it in other hands. Because he owned no territory, he built no fixed dwelling. Altars he erected, but no house. To the last he would not exchange the encampment for a "city of habitation," simply because to the last he remained, as he said, "a stranger and a sojourner" among the people of the land. Dykes. 9. Going on still toward the south. In the first verse of the next chapter we read that "he went up out of Egypt into the south." One of the recent valuable attainments of biblical geography is the recognition of the fact that the term here rendered south is in truth a proper name, and denotes a certain territory of irregular boundaries, stretching, southward of Palestine, from the bottom of the Dead Sea across to the Mediterranean. So when Moses sent the spies from Kadesh, he did not say (Num. 13:17), "Get you up southward," for that course would have taken them back to Egypt; but, "Get you up into the Negeb." Chambers.—The south, as being nearer the arid desert, and further removed from the drainage of the mountains, is drier and less productive than the north. The tract below Hebron, which forms the link between the hills of Judah and the desert, was known to the ancient Hebrews by a term originally derived from its dryness, Negeb. This was THE SOUTH country. P. S. The entire southern half of Palestine Proper, west of the Jordan, was from a very early period divided into four main regions. 1st. The largest and most familiarly known was the HILL COUNTRY; the elevated district or plateau stretching eastward to the WILDERNESS bordering the Dead Sea, and westward to the SHEFELAH, or lowland on the Mediterranean Sea. It includes Hebron and Jerusalem. 2d. The LOWLAND or SHEFELAH, a broad strip between the central highlands and the Mediterranean. 3d. The smallest is the WILDERNESS, including the In passing from the “south country” of Judah to the “hill country” marked indeed was the change, from easy smooth tracks over gently rolling downs to rocky slippery paths, up and down narrow valleys, between naked rugged hills full of caves, dreary and now (in winter) barren. There is a wonderful reality in many of these apparently trifling expressions of Scripture, which day by day our journey brings home to the mind—“the wilderness,” “the south country,” “the hill country,” all in Judah, yet each so distinct, so characteristic in every feature. H. B. T. 10. And there was a famine in the land : and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there ; 11 for the famine was sore in the land. And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman 12 to look upon : and it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall 13 say, This is his wife : and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister : that it may be well with me for thy sake, and that my soul may live be- 14 cause of thee. And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt, the Egyptians 15 beheld the woman that she was very fair. And the princes of Pharaoh saw her, and praised 16 her to Pharaoh : and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. And he entreated Abram well for her sake : and he had sheep, and oxen, and he-asses, and menservants, and maid- 17 servants, and she-asses, and camels. And the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great 18 plagues because of Sarai Abram’s wife. And Pharaoh called Abram, and said, What is this 19 that thou hast done unto me ? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife ? Why saidst thou, She is my sister ? so that I took her to be my wife : now therefore behold thy wife, take 20 her, and go thy way. And Pharaoh gave men charge concerning him : and they brought him on the way, and his wife, and all that he had. 10. Famine in the land.** Soon after Abram entered Canaan, the land, for the sake of which he had forsaken fertile Mesopotamia, became unable to sustain his household, or to feed the comparatively small flocks which at that time composed his fortune. In this first serious trial, the new emigrant does not appear to have either asked or received counsel from Heaven. Dykes. Went into Egypt. Egypt being watered by the Nile, which we now know to be fed by immense lakes that drain the vast mountain regions of the equator, often had plentiful harvests, when Syria, which was dependent upon the uncertain rains, was suffering from famine. This contrast between these two neighboring countries often comes out in the sacred narratives. J. P. T.—In Egypt, the fertility of the loamy soil depends on the annual rise of the Nile, which is fed by the rains of far-distant mountain ranges. Hence, when the land of Canaan was wasted by drought and consequent famine, Egypt was generally so productive as to be the granary of the neighboring countries. As Canaan was the brother of Mizraim, the intercourse between the two countries in which they dwelt was natural and frequent. Dry seasons and dearth of provisions seem to have been of frequent occurrence in the land of Canaan. M. 11. Was come near to enter Egypt.** When he passed the well-guarded frontier wall, a new and strange world would be around him. The vast pyramids were already ancient, for at least eight dynasties had passed away since the first had been built. Populous colonies of Semitic peoples had brought the north of the Delta into high cultivation, and filled it with busy commerce, while to the south of them the whole valley of the Nile had been united under one sceptre, and the country covered with towns, cities and villages, the former adorned by great temples and palaces, of which the ruins still excite wonder. Geikie. Abram's visit to Lower Egypt is the first in a long series of similar incidents in the annals of his race, of which the last was the escape thither of his divine descendant, the persecuted Infant. What a stretch of time lay between these two flights! How many centuries separate us even from the later of the two! Yet across all these millennia lies this land of mystery and superstition, like a link to bind history together. Egypt is the key to the politics of the East to-day, just as it was four thousand years ago. It was already the foremost state in the world. Peopled by the same race which in Chaldea had made such early advances in arts and polity, it already possessed a venerable history. It had sent out its colonies to the north and to the east. It was ruled by a semi-deified monarch, whose sway reposed on a compact and mighty priesthood. Its religion was a low and superstitious nature-worship, addicted to magic, and only redeemed from corruption by the clearness with which it proclaimed two great moral doctrines,—immortality, and a rigorous distribution of rewards and punishments in a future life. Dykes. When Abram went down into Egypt the empire was already very old. Its history begins with Menes, who united the independent states of the Nile valley into a single kingdom, and established his capital at Memphis. The first six dynasties of kings represent what is called the Old Empire. It was under the monarchs of the fourth dynasty that the pyramids of Gizeh were built; and at no time during its later history did the art and culture of Egypt reach again so high a level as it did under the Old Empire. With the close of the sixth dynasty came a period of disaster and decline. When Egypt again emerged into the light of history it was under the warrior princes of the twelfth dynasty. The capital had been shifted to the new city of Thebes in the south; a new god, Amun, presided over the Egyptian deities, and the ruling class itself differed in blood and features from the men of the Old Empire. Henceforth Egyptian art was characterized by a stiff conventionality wholly unlike the freedom and vigor of the art of the early dynasties; the government became more autocratic; and the obelisk took the place of the pyramid in architecture. But the Middle Empire, as it has been termed, did not last long. Semitic invaders from Canaan and Arabia overran the country, and established their seat at Zoan or Tanis. For 511 years they held the Egyptians in bondage, though the native princes, who had taken refuge in the south, gradually acquired more and more power, until at last, under the leadership of Aahmes or Amosis, the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, they succeeded in driving the hated foreigners out. These foreigners are known to history as the Hyksos or Shepherds, Hyksos being the Egyptian hik shasu, "prince of the Shasu," or "Beduins." The name which they bear upon the monuments is Menti. It must have been while the Hyksos monarchs were holding their court at Zoan that Abram entered the land. He found there men of Semitic blood, like himself, and speaking a Semitic language. A welcome was assured him, and he had no need of an interpreter. But the Hyksos kings had already begun to assume Egyptian state and to adopt Egyptian customs. In place of the Semitic shalat, "ruler," the title by which their first leaders had been known, they had borrowed the Egyptian title of Pharaoh. Pharaoh appears on the monuments as pir-na, "great house," the palace in which the king lived being used to denote the king himself, just as in our own time the "porte" or gate of the palace has become synonymous with the Turkish Sultan. Sayce. 13. Abram "was a man of like passions with us," and of like weaknesses. When God spoke to him he believed, and when he believed then he obeyed. But God had said nothing as yet to him about Sarai; and, in the absence of any special direction, he seems to have taken the matter into his own hands, after the manner of those times and countries. A. E.—But what a change is this! hitherto hath Sarah been Abram's wife, now Egypt hath made her his sister: fear hath turned him from a husband to a brother; no strength of faith can exclude some doubtings: God hath said, "I will make thee a great nation;" Abram says, "The Egyptians will kill me;" he, that lived by his faith, yet shrinketh and sinneth. How vainly shall we hope to believe without fear, and to live without infirmities! Bp. H His faith wavers, because he looks to his wife, to Egypt, and to himself, and not to God alone. He fears and trembles for the Egyptians, who, as the event shows, were quite capable of doing what he apprehends at their hands; and so he persuades Sarai to tell a lie. Sarai was in point of fact his half-sister, as appears from chap. 20 : 12. C. G. B.—The equivocation is certainly not to be justified, either on this or on the future occasion on which it was again resorted to; for though it contained a half truth, this was so employed as to render “the half truth a whole lie.” Both circumstances—his repairing to Egypt, and when there betaking to such a worldly expedient for safety—betray the imperfection of his faith, which, while strong enough to set him on this new course of separation from the world and devotedness to God, still wanted clearness of discernment and implicitness of trust sufficient to meet the unexpected difficulties that so early presented themselves in the way. The first failure stood in his seeking relief from the emergency that arose by withdrawing, without the divine sanction, to another country than that into which he had been conducted by the special providence of God. Instead of looking up for direction and support, he betook to worldly shifts and expedients, and thus became entangled in difficulties, out of which the immediate interposition of God alone could have rescued him. In this way, however, the result proved beneficial. Abram was made to feel, in the first instance, that his backsliding had reproved him; and then the merciful interposition of Heaven, rebuking even a king for his sake, taught him the lesson, that with the God of heaven upon his side, he had no need to be afraid for the outward evils that might beset him in his course. He had but to look up in faith, and get the direction or support that he needed. P. F. 15. Princes of Pharaoh. Pharaoh was, from the earliest times to which the monuments go back, supported by powerful nobles, or “princes,” who were hereditary landed proprietors of great wealth.—Saw her and praised her to Pharaoh.** A scene in a tomb at Beni Hassan clearly shows that, under the Old Empire, foreigners on their arrival in the country, especially if they came with a train of attendants, as Abraham would, were received at the frontier by the governor of the province, whose secretary took down in writing their number, and probably their description, doubtless for the purpose of forwarding a “report” to the court. Reports of this character, belonging to later times, have been found, and are among the most interesting of the ancient documents. It was regarded as especially important to apprise the monarch of all that happened upon his north-eastern frontier, where Egypt abutted upon tribes of some considerable strength, whose proceedings had to be watched with care. G. R. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ We see no primitive mode of life; no barbarous customs; but the same fowling and fishing scenes; the rearing of cattle and wild animals of the desert; the scribes using the same kind of reed for writing on papyrus the inventory of the estate to be presented to the owner; the same mode of entertaining; the same music and dancing; the same trades, as glass-blowers, cabinet-makers, and others. Thus no signs are found on the earliest monuments of a progress from infancy to the more advanced stages of art." Furthermore, there are several facts, either expressly stated or implied, whereby we are able to compare this sacred history with what we may gather from profane sources. 1. That Egypt was already under an established government, having a king and princes who acted as the king's subordinates, three thousand eight hundred years ago. This fact is confirmed by the fact that Herodotus, Diodorus, and other Greek historians all agree in giving to the Egyptian civilization an antiquity beyond that of any other people, and modern explorers justify that ancient judgment. 2. Egypt was the granary to which surrounding tribes resorted for food in times of scarcity, because its agriculture was not dependent upon the rains of the clouds as in other countries. This fact is universally attested by history from that day to the present. 3. The name of the monarch was one that to Semitic ears sounded as "Pha-ra-oh." And the modern hieroglyphic research has pointed out how this name would readily be taken from the Egyptian "Per-a-o," the "great house," which was the regular title of the Egyptian kings. 4. The catalogue of Abram's wealth in the sacred record is peculiar. He had, generally, "cattle, gold and silver," and specifically, "sheep and oxen and he-asses, menservants, maidservants, and she-asses and camels." Not only do ancient profane writers describe sheep and asses as existing in Egypt, but the monuments represent them as common. For there sheep appear in great numbers. So both he-asses and she-asses, the former also as sculptured as used for riding, and the latter as beasts of burden. Wilkinson describes one monumental picture in which appear 760 asses. But what is most striking in this catalogue is the fact that it mentions slaves—menservants and maidservants—at that early age. Yet, says Taylor, "We find from the monuments that domestic slavery was established in Egypt from the earliest ages, and the mistress of the mansion is very rigid in enforcing her authority. We see these unfortunate beings trembling and cringing before their superiors, sometimes threatened with a formidable whip wielded by the lady of the mansion herself." "Most of them," says Wilkinson, "appear to have been foreigners, either taken in war or brought to Egypt to be sold as slaves." Thus, then, this history conforms in a very remarkable manner with the testimony from profane records, and thereby proves itself to be no poetic picture, but authentic history. S. R. 1. AND Abram went up out of Egypt, he, and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, 2 into the South. And Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold. And he went on 3 his journeys from the South even to Beth-el, unto the place where his tent had been at the 4 beginning, between Beth-el and Ai; unto the place of the altar, which he had made there at 5 the first: and there Abram called on the name of the LORD. And Lot also, which went with 6 Abram, had flocks, and herds, and tents. And the land was not able to bear them, that they 7 might dwell together: for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together. 8 And there was a strife between the herdmen of Abram's cattle and the herdmen of Lot's 9 cattle: and the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the land. And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and 9 thy herdmen; for we are brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou take 10 the right hand, then I will go to the left. And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the Plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and 11 Gomorrah, like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, as thou goest unto Zoar. So Lot chose him all the Plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated them. 12 selves the one from the other. Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the 13 cities of the Plain, and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the men of Sodom were wicked 14 and sinners against the LORD exceedingly. And the LORD said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, 15 northward and southward and eastward and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to 16 thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be num- 17 bered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for unto 18 thee will I give it. And Abram moved his tent, and came and dwelt by the oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the LORD. 1. The length of Abram's residence in Egypt cannot be determined. He returned to his highland camping ground near Bethel a much more extensive sheep-master than he left it. Dykes.—And Lot with him. Lot is not mentioned in the descent into Egypt, because no part of the narrative there concerns him. On the return to Canaan he becomes a principal actor. E. H. B.—Into the South. Not southward; for Canaan was north of Egypt; but into the southern part of Canaan. This part of the land is called the South (Josh. 10:40), and the South country (Josh. 11:16). Bp. Kidder. Hebrew, The Negeb. B. 2. Rich in cattle. In Egypt, being a rich country, his exchanging his cattle might be more advantageous to him. For which reason, perhaps, his being rich in silver and gold is mentioned immediately after his return from thence. Harmer.—In silver and in gold. Egypt seems to have abounded in gold from the earliest times, earlier perhaps than in silver. The gold mines of Ethiopia have within a few years been brought to light in the Bisháree desert. S. C. B. Abram increased in riches, but never suf- fered his affections to fasten on these as his supreme good. He knew how to receive that degree of enjoyment they were designed to afford, without sensuality and without being insensible to God as the giver. R. Hall.— Abram, it is expressly said, was rich; but his riches did not interfere with his growth as a saint. The Gospel, while it cautions against the danger and the deceitfulness of riches, gives no countenance to the current absurdity that the rich man must go to hell because he is rich, and the poor man to heaven because he is poor. The apostle does not say that money, but the love of money, is a root of all evil; and the love of money may be, and often is, a per- fect idolatry in the heart of the poor who indulge in cant about the rich. The Word indeed declares, "How hardly shall a rich man enter the kingdom." And "They that will be rich fall into a snare and drown their souls in perdition." But the snare is as near many who are panting to be rich as to those who have attained riches. S. R.—Riches not only afford matter for contention and are the things most commonly striven about, but they also stir up a spirit of contention, by making people proud and covetous. Mine and Thine are the great make-bates of the world. Wants and wanderings could not separate between Abram and Lot; but riches did it. H. 5. The patriarchs were in the habit of en- camping on the same spot for years together. To some extent at least, they cultivated the soil. They certainly aimed at amassing vast flocks of the smaller cattle; and with the in- habitants of adjacent walled towns they culti- vated terms of friendship. All these things in- dicated their peaceful, industrious character. 8,9. As the older man and leader of the ex- pedition, Abram might not unfairly have se- lected for his own use the richest pasture- ground. But this would have ill become his nobler tempter. Dykes. And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife. It was most unseemly that this strife should arise before the heathen. Now Abram's noble character shines out. Tomkins. —He who has the promises can well afford to yield a point of difference for the holy sake of peace. And he it is who is the gainer by all he seems to concede. "The meek (and only they) inherit the earth." Abram appeals to their brotherly relations against any strife between themselves or their herdsmen. Jacobus.—He gave his nephew the full choice. He was the head; yea, the whole land was given to him by the promise. But in his magnanimity he said to Lot, "Let there be no strife. Is not the whole land before thee?" Tomkins.—Abram was older than Lot, and richer than Lot, and yet he spoke with the meekness of great strength and ripe wisdom. His words would make a beautiful motto to-day for the kitchen, for the parlor, for the factory, for the Church! Brave Abram! we say as we read his words. He walked by faith and not by sight. Certainly his foot slipped in Egypt, but he is strong now, and he looks every inch a king as he stoops before Lot. It is beautiful to see strength stoop to weakness, but a very hard thing for strength to do. J. P. The earliest on record this of those family quarrels about rights of property by which multitudes of human households have been so miserably dislocated. With what admirable discretion and good temper does Abram deal with it. What a bright constellation of the virtues—prudence, meekness, forbearance, unselfishness, peace-lovingness, brotherly kindness, unbounded generosity—shine forth in the magnanimous proposal, all the more remarkable because of the age of the world in which it appears! In speculative ideas, gifted men have often preceded their own age by centuries—in moral sentiments such precedence has been rare. Yet here is Abram, centuries before Christ, "walking in the moral atmosphere of the Sermon on the Mount," by one act winning at least three of the beatitudes. W. H. This beautiful sketch, simply as an exhibition of magnanimity and generosity, has well excited the admiration of the world. But it has a most practical value as illustrating certain great principles of Christian conduct, applicable to the affairs of the Church as a body, and great lessons for the instruction of the individual Christian, to which there is need of special attention at this day. The substance of the argument against any strife among the people of God is here very forcibly put. First, there should be no strifes because we are brethren. It is against that beautiful order of our nature which God has established, whereby the very instincts and impulses of the soul draw together those of the same kindred for mutual protection. And, secondly, we are in the presence of a common foe—the Canaanite and the Perizzite—ready to take advantage of our strife for the injury of both, and to the dishonor of the name of God. Here is the substance of the argument against all strifes in the Church of God. We are all brethren of the same household of faith; and we live ever in the presence of a hostile world, between whom and us the grace of God has "put enmity"—a world ever ready to take advantage of our strifes. Nor can these two thoughts ever be too prominently before the mind of the Church. All who by Divine grace are born again are children of the same Father, by a double bond, and therefore brethren of the same family. If, then, those of the same flesh and blood should be as one, surely those "born not of flesh and blood, nor of the will of man, but of God," are doubly one. And, besides this, we are all voyaging together over a very tempestuous ocean, looking for a city whose builder and maker is God. We are all meeting the same obstructions, and encompassed with the same difficulties, and need, therefore, not to be hindered by strifes with each other, but encouraged and assisted by the strength which grows out of union in the same great brotherhood. S. R. V. 10 describes the appearance of the valley plain of the Jordan, as it was before the great catastrophe in which the five cities perished. From the lofty highlands on the west, more than three thousand feet above the plain of the valley, the eye could trace the stream of the Jordan, winding its way through meadow-lands, and groves, and cultivated fields, and losing itself in a beautiful lake bordered by rich plains, that furnished subsistence to the thronged cities that dotted their surface. The great depression of the valley plain, more than thirteen hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean Sea, gave to this tract a tropical climate; and being all "a well-watered region," the more intense the heat the more active and vigorous was every form of vegetation. To the eye that beheld this scene, stretching far to the north and south, it seemed "like the garden of Jehovah, like the land of Egypt." T. J. C. Lot lifted up his eyes. They were encamped on that mountain on the east of Bethel, having Bethel on the west and Hai on the east, where Abram had built the altar and called on the name of the Lord. E. H. B.—Immediately east of the low gray hills on which the Canaanitish Luz and the Jewish Bethel afterward stood, rises,—as the highest of a succession of eminences, each now marked by some vestige of ancient edifices,—a conspicuous hill; its topmost summit resting, as it were, on the rocky slopes below, and distinguished from them by the olive-grove which clusters over its broad surface above. From this height, thus offering a natural base for the patriarchal altar, and a fitting shade for the patriarchal tent, Abraham and Lot must be considered as taking the wide survey of the country "on the right hand and on the left," such as can be enjoyed from no other point in the neighborhood. To the east there rises in the foreground the jagged range of the hills above Jericho; in the distance the dark wall of Moab; between them lies the wide valley of the Jordan, its course marked by the tract of forest in which its rushing stream is enveloped: and down to this valley a long and deep ravine, now, as always, the main line of communication by which it is approached from the central hills of Palestine—a ravine rich with vine, olive, and fig, winding its way through ancient reservoirs and sepulchres, remains of a civilization now extinct, but in the times of the patriarchs not yet begun. In the south and west the view commanded the bleak hills of Judea, varied by the heights crowned with what were afterward the cities of Benjamin, and overhanging what in a later day was to be Jerusalem, and in the far distance the southern range, on whose slope is Hebron. Northward are the hills which divide Judea from the rich plains of Samaria. And now, from this spot, he and his kinsman made the choice which determined the fate of each, according to the view which that summit commands. Lot looked down on the green valley of the Jordan, its tropical luxuriance visible even from thence, beautiful and well watered as that garden of Eden of which the fame still lingered in their own Chaldean hills, as the valley of the Nile in which they had so lately sojourned. A. P. S. In this fertile plain—or “circle”—of Jordan the four cities of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim appear to have been situated. In the subsequent account of their destruction, the same topographical term “plain” (Hebrew circle or circuit) is employed. Mr. Grove thinks that the mention of the Jordan is conclusive as to the situation of the district, for the Jordan ceases where it enters the Dead Sea, and can have no existence south of that point. Dic. B.—As it is hardly possible for any one to read the account without feeling that Abram and Lot were actually looking down on Sodom and Gomorrah, when “Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the plain of Jordan,” it follows that those cities must have been situated on some part of the plain north of the Dead Sea and visible from the heights of Bethel. Wilson.—For the northern site we have the argument from the simple statement of the inspired writer, who calls them “the cities of the plain,” or circle of Jordan; an expression which cannot possibly apply to any other than the northern end of the Dead Sea. “Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east.” Looking from these hills the plain of Jericho and its far more extensive sister plain of Shittim, on the east side of the river, are spread almost at the beholder’s feet. It is probable that some of the four cities were on the east side of the Jordan. H. B. T. The meaning will become clear if one will read all the middle portion of the verse as a parenthesis, as follows: “and Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the plain of Jordan (that it was well watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord like the land of Egypt), until thou comest to Zoar.” [Zoar (Bela), here so called by anticipation (ch. 14 : 2, 8 : 19 : 22).] Lot saw all the plain of the Jordan as far as Zoar, or until you come to Zoar. Zoar was both the limit of the plain and the limit of vision in that direction, as far as the land was concerned. How much of the Dead Sea he saw is not stated; but no human vision, unless miraculously aided, could reach to the southern end and distinguish anything; while from the point where he stood the greenness and beauty of the great Shittim plain are distinctly seen. The phrase, “all the plain of the Jordan,” cannot include the salt marsh at the southern end of the Dead Sea, since this marsh is fifty miles from the river, and belongs to a water system entirely distinct from that at the northern end of the sea. The few ruins at the south end are insignificant. The small amount of fertile land there could never have been a desirable location for towns or villages. On the other hand, there is a remarkable group of tells (mounds) at the north end of the Dead Sea, which are covered with ruins, and some of which are the sites of cities that existed in the days of Joshua. Merrill. 11. Lot chose all the plain of Jordan. We find not any instance of deference or respect to his uncle, in the whole management. Abram having offered him the choice, without compliment he accepted it, and made his election. Passion and selfishness make men rude. H.—He seeks not first the kingdom as the primary idea, and as secondary to that what else God may give. He seeks first the maximum herd of cattle, and with that as much of religion as time will permit him to exercise. Hence while the record of Abram always is that he set up his altar, that is never said of Lot. Lot lifted up his eyes—real grazier’s eyes—and could see nothing but that rich bottom along the lower Jordan, with its waving grass; and Sodom and Gomorrah in the centre—such a market. But Sodom and Gomorrah are very wicked places—no place of desire to a saint of God! True; but Lot is after their money, not their wickedness. He would not think of settling there, or being nearer than to be within reach of market. To that one idea, all must be sacrificed—character, family, everything. S. R. Better doth it beseem every son of Abraham to win with love, than to sway with power. Abraham yields over his right of choice; Lot takes it. And behold, Lot is crossed in that which he chose, Abraham is blessed in that which was left him; God never suffers any man to lose, by an humble remission of his right in a desire of peace. Bp. H.—Lot lost all he had; he lost his wife; and he had like to have lost his life, had not Abraham prevailed with God for his deliverance. This choice was made about 20 years before Sodom was destroyed. Bp. Wilson.—Lot makes the worst choice, while he thinks that he has chosen well. For his worldly-mindedness, the sin in his choice, he was first punished through the plundering of his house, and his captivity in the war of the kings, which followed soon after his choice, and then through his fearful flight from Sodom, and the losses, misfortunes, and crimes which were connected with it. Thus the want of regard to true piety, the selfishness, the carelessness as to the snares of the world, must ever be punished. And, indeed, it is just when one thinks that in his own wilful and sinful ways he has attained his highest wishes, he finds himself ensnared in the retributions of divine righteousness, which rules over him and works with solemn irony. Lange.—Lot chose wisely, as they of the world speak. Well, if this world be all—he got a rich soil—became a prince, had kings for his society and neighbors. It was nothing to Lot that “the men of the land were sinners before the Lord exceedingly”—enough that it was well watered everywhere. F. W. R. This brief history throws around the language, “he pitched his tent as far as Sodom,” a meaning of fearful and momentous interest. Here was that passage in his life which was ominous of all his future disaster; which was, in fact, its procuring cause. We shall find Lot’s experience a prototype. The grand reason why men are drawn into sin, or at least into irreligious and worldly company till they become Sodomized in hardness of heart, is in very many cases the purpose of making money. What friendships and partnerships money makes! What crimes it glosses over, what meanness it covers, what infamy it hides! And if these things are so, can we wonder that good men often forget their religion while they hurry on to make money? They pitch their tents near Sodom without knowing the character of the place—except that a heavy business is done there. They leave the Abrahams, the praying men, and mix themselves up with those that worship the dollar—the Judases, and Demases, and Balaams—whom they will soon resemble. Their families are becoming naturalized Sodomites, and they are, perhaps, coining the eternal hopes and welfare of their children into the wealth and fortune which they mean to leave them when they die. Gillett. 13. Sinners before the Lord.** Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim are mentioned (Gen. 10 : 19) as among the first settlements of the Canaanites. The fertility of the soil in this Valley of the Jordan, with the luxurious and enervating character of the climate, rapidly developed the sensual vices of this early civilized but depraved race. Their wickedness is mentioned here perhaps in anticipation of the history in ch. 19; but partly also in order to exhibit more clearly the thoughtlessness and worldliness of Lot in choosing their neighborhood for his residence, as distinguished from the unselfish spirit of Abraham. E. H. B. Lot’s eye regarded neither the dangers sleeping beneath, nor the light of God above, but only the corn and wine and verdant pastures. It is not the part of religion to teach us to despise natural beauty, or make us prefer to cultivate barren soil if we can get better. Asceticism is no feature of the Bible, from first to last. But to make outward advantage the first and main object in choosing our path in life, is certainly not the guidance of the Word of God; and either Lot was without true principle at the time, or he had for the season forgotten it. Wealth, or the chance of making it, is not the one thing needful; and that man pursues a very unwise and unchristian course who rushes straight at it, without taking other things into account. There are many signs of materialism in our age, and this among them, that the acquisition of money is one of the first things which men think of in choosing a profession for themselves or their children. Our natural capability of mind is one thing to be considered, for only as we cultivate it can we be most useful to our fellow-men, and most happy in ourselves. It is not with impunity that a man can do violence to his own nature, or crush that of his child, with no other motive than hastening to be rich. And still higher than natural taste is principle. The question, Can I, with a clear sense of duty, enter into such a line of pursuit? Am I not venturing into relationships where it will be hard, if not impossible, for me to maintain a conscience void of offence? These points do not seem at all to have troubled Lot, or they were lightly put aside in view of his material interests. We do him no injustice, for he remained clinging to Sodom, years afterward, though he must have felt the deleterious atmosphere. He returned to Sodom when he had lost all, and had recovered it again through Abram. That sharp warning was ineffectual, and he needed to be forced from the place by God's destroying angel. What weighed with him all the while was that which determined him at first,—the rich returns of the fertile soil. When, in any step of life, the readiest thought which occurs to a man is not duty, or benevolence, or mental taste and capability, but bare worldly advantage, let him look at it well in other lights. Such a motive, if indulged, is certain to end by shutting out his view of all that is high and true in life, and to lead him into dark and miry ways. Ker. 14. The Lord said unto Abram.** He was more than rewarded for his true action toward Lot. We may be sure that this was a great crisis in the life of Abram; and, in his noble and unworldly conduct, we must "glorify the grace of God." It is likely that up to this time he had viewed Lot as his heir. The first promise, "I will make thee a great nation," may have been regarded as consistent with this. But now Lot was gone; and at this very time the blank was filled by the direct promise of "seed as the dust of the earth." Tomkins. 15. All the land thou secest.** God renewed to him the promise first given at Shechem, that the land in which he was a stranger should become the possession of himself and his posterity. From that outlook, on the hill-summit east of Bethel, the view in every direction, except the west, was far-reaching; and westward it stretched across the almost entire width of the plateau of Judea. N. C. B.—God promised Canaan to Abram, and yet Abram never inherited Canaan: to the last he was a wanderer there; he had no possession of his own in its territory; if he wanted even a tomb to bury his dead, he could only obtain it by purchase. Now the surprising point is that Abram, deceived, as you might almost say, did not complain of it as a deception; he was even grateful for the non-fulfilment of the promise: he does not seem to have expected its fulfilment; he did not look for Canaan, but for "a city which had foundations;" his faith appears to have consisted in disbelieving the letter, almost as much as in believing the spirit of the promise. F. W. R.—His conduct suggests a further remark:—He had been promised the land in which he now lived as a stranger;—he had valiant troops, though few in number, who, doubtless, had he so desired, might have conquered for him a sufficient portion of it. But he did not attempt it: for he knew God could bring about His design and accomplish His promise in His own good time, without his own use of unlawful means. This is the true spirit of faith: to wait upon God, to watch for and to follow His guidance, not to attempt to go before Him. Newman. 15,16. In the renewed form, the promise embraces two more particulars—viz., perpetuity, "forever;" and the increase of his posterity to an innumerable multitude, "as the dust of the earth." Both stretch far beyond the bounds of earth and nature to the heavenly Canaan, and comprehend the spiritual posterity of Abram, his children by faith. C. G. B.—The design of God was not that Abram himself should possess it, but that his posterity should, till the manifestation of Christ in the flesh. And this is chiefly what is to be understood by the words for ever, did Olam, to the end of the present dispensation, and the commencement of the new. Olam means either ETERNITY, which implies the termination of all time or duration, such as is measured by the celestial luminaries: or a hidden, unknown period, such as includes a completion or final termination of a particular era, dispensation, etc. The first is its proper meaning; the latter its accommodated meaning. A. C.—All that God does is eternal. Even the transitory things He bestows with reference to the eternal, and if a man receives them in faith they bear everlasting fruit. The land of Canaan is the pledge and type of the new world, which the faithful, who are the children of Abram, shall receive for an everlasting possession. Gert. 16. The Angel of the Covenant appeared to Abram in open day, when he could take a distinct view of the length and the breadth of this good land. The revelation made (ch. 15:5) was evidently made in the night, for then he was called to number the stars, which could not be seen but in the night season: here he is called on to number the dust of the earth, which could not be seen but in the daylight. A. C. The world was waiting for some Abraham—i.e. for just the system of which the great and godly Abraham was the prominent figure and the historic representative. The patent points in this new system, put in briefest words, were —Abraham the head of a great family; the founder of a great nation; the representative of the family covenant and its first and illustrious exemplar; the progenitor of the Great, long-promised Messiah; and coupled with his lineal posterity, the repositories of God's truth and promises—his offspring, the people with whom God dwelt and was publicly worshipped for ages in the presence of the idolatrous nations of the earth; over whom God became their visible earthly Sovereign, their recognized King and God. Thus the Lord laid the foundation for progressive manifestations of himself and for a growing development of religious truth and of its legitimate forces from age to age till the Messiah should appear. H. C. Great lives are trained by great promises. The world has never been left without a great promise singing in its wondering and troubled heart—something to rely upon: something to appeal to when difficulty was extreme. God never calls men for the purpose of making them less than they are, except when they have been dishonoring themselves by sin. This may be taken as a law: God's calls are upward; they are calls toward fuller life, purer light, and sweeter joy. Men do not know their full capacity, except in the service of God: his presence in the soul is a life-expanding and life-glorifying presence. This is the claim that we set up on behalf of true religion—the religion of Jesus Christ—that it exalts human nature, it enriches the soul, it increases the substance and worth of manhood. To confound obedience with slavery is to overlook the argument which is founded upon the nature of God; to obey the little, the mean, the paltry is to be enslaved; to enter the cage of custom or passion is to be subject to bondage; but to accept the invitation of the sun, and to poise ourselves in his gladdening presence is liberty and joy. J. P. 17. Lot turned his face eastward, and left to Abram the hardship, the glory, and the virtues of the rugged hills, the sea-breezes, and the inexhaustible future of Western Palestine. It was Abram's henceforward; he was to "arise and walk through the length and through the breadth of it, for God had given it to him." This was the first appropriation, the first consecration of the Holy Land. A. P. S.—We passed over the high region or "mountain east of Bethel;" the place to which Abram returned from Egypt, and in which God called him to walk through the length and breadth of the land. The region commands a wide view. In travelling over these places one begins early to perceive that not only is the geography and scenery of Palestine "a fifth gospel," but it is a second Pentateuch, Joshua and Kings. The feeling deepened at every step of the journey. S. C. B. The result to Abraham is a vision of God—a glorious vision—saying, "Arise, go where you will, I am with thee; all is yours." Lot goes to the well-watered bottom land. He pitches his tent only toward Sodom. But it turns out according to that remarkable graduation of the psalmist, Blessed is the man who walks not in the ways of the ungodly, stands not in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of the scorner. So gradually Sodom appears less dreadful. Business calls him there often. He is a man of wealth; the families of Sodom court him and his family till at length a town residence is taken. Both these men are rich alike. Both have suddenly added to their wealth. Both are worshippers of the true Jehovah. The evidences of piety in the one are of course much brighter than in the other. We should be led from the history of the other to conclude the contrary. But as he is emphatically called just Lot by the apostle, we accept him as a believer. It is undoubtedly the teaching of Scripture that there are a great many varieties and degrees of Christian character, and down to the very feeblest pulses of spiritual life. The grace of God in this world has to work upon all sorts of materials. Often the noblest specimens of men are left in sin, while some of the meanest are taken. So we say in answer to cavils of the men of the world at the meanness of some Christians: When you are comparing character as evidence for or against Christianity, act fairly and compare grade of natural character with grade. If Jesus Christ had to select out only the better specimens of men for His kingdom, your process would be fair enough. But it is not when He tells you that He comes to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance; to save to the uttermost. S. R. The lesson to be gained from the history of Abram and Lot is obviously this—that nothing but a clear apprehension of things unseen, a simple trust in God's promises, and the greatness of mind thence arising, can make us act above the world—indifferent, or almost so, to its comforts, enjoyments, and friendships; or in other words, that its goods corrupt the common run even of religious men who possess them. Lot, as well as Abram, left his own country "by faith," in obedience to God's command; yet on a further trial, in which the will of God was not so clearly signified, the one was found "without spot and blameless," the other "was saved so as by fire." Abraham became the "father of all them that believe;" Lot obscured the especial hope of his calling—impaired the privileges of his election—for a time allowed himself to resemble the multitude of men, as now seen in a Christian country, who are religious to a certain point, and inconsistent in their lives, not aiming at perfection. Newman. We see in these two persons, that the conduct of parents descends, in its effects, very far into their posterity. Abraham, by his piety, transmitted his religion to his descendants; while in those of Lot we find no disposition to it. Abraham is great in this world, and he is great in heaven; for the highest happiness of the saints is represented by our Saviour in parable, as being found reclining on Abraham's bosom. True greatness can be found only in the fear of God, in the freest and fullest devotedness of heart to his service and a fear of sinning against Him. R. Hall. All good men have in their measure all graces; for he, by whom they have any, does not give one apart from the whole: he gives the root, and the root puts forth branches. But since time, and circumstances, and their own use of the gift, and their own disposition and character, have much influence on the mode of its manifestation, so it happens, that each good man has his own distinguishing grace, apart from the rest, his own particular hue and fragrance and fashion, as a flower may have. Abraham, Jacob's forefather, was the pattern of faith. He seems to have had something very noble and magnanimous about him. He could realize and make present to him things unseen. He followed God in the dark as promptly, as firmly, with as cheerful a heart, and bold a stepping, as if he were in broad daylight. There is something very great in this; and therefore, Paul calls Abraham our father, the father of Christians as well as of Jews. For we are especially bound to walk by faith, not by sight; and are blessed through faith; and justified by faith, as was faithful Abraham. Newman. The Patriarch appears in the page of Scripture as a solitary; a solitary in his creed; a solitary in the extreme and dim remoteness of the scene and object upon which his mind rests. As a believer he has cast off the popular religion and is a witness against it; as a prince he is a wanderer without alliances in a strange land; and his only compensation is that he is enabled to live in thought out of the present scene and circumstances, and to repose upon futurity. We are brought here for the first time in contact with the majesty, the strength, and the splendor of prophecy in the religion of the chosen race. There is nothing in the history of the character, the sentiment, the aspirations of nations, which is equal to or can for a moment be compared with this mighty impulse and current of faith in the Jewish community. The creed of Abraham has become the creed of the civilized world. The Patriarch's creed has been victorious over the idolatry of the human race, and grown from a deposit in the breast of one man into a universal religion. It is this force which is characteristic of Jewish prophecy; there may be true prophecy elsewhere in the world, but it is weak, it is broken and its utterance dies away on the ear. In the Jewish channel it is strong, compact and consistent; it has a fixed and confident hold upon the future, a grasp of forecast and a practical ever-gazing assurance; it provided from the first for its own transmission, created laws and institutions, and made a prophetic nation. Mosley. 18. We are told what Abraham did, when God had thus confirmed the promise to him. 1. He removed his tent. God bid him walk through the land, that is, "Do not think of fixing in it, but expect to be always unsettled, and walking through it to a better Canaan;" in compliance with God's will herein, he removes his tent, conforming himself to the condition of a pilgrim. 2. He builded there an altar, in token of his thankfulness to God for the kind visit he had made him. When God meets us with gracious promises, he expects that we should attend him with our humble praises. H. Hebron. This is the first mention of this famous city. It is situated among the mountains, 20 Roman miles S. of Jerusalem, and the same distance N. of Beersheba. It is one of the most ancient cities in the world. In Num. 13:22 it is said to have been built seven years before Zoan, in Egypt. Alf.—This was the third resting-place of Abram: 1. Shechem, 2. Bethel, 3. Hebron. Near it was the cave of Machpelah, where he and Sarah were buried. It is now called El Khalil, "the friend," i.e. the house of the friend of God. E. H. B.—Hebron was the earliest seat of civilized life in Palestine, its immediate neighborhood singularly favorable for all kinds of tillage and garden culture, especially the growth of the vine. Abraham in the first instance did not take up his abode in the town of Hebron, which was occupied by a lowland Hittite tribe. The rich valleys which sloped down to it from the north were occupied by three chiefs of the Amorites (mountaineers), Mamre, Esheol, and Aner, the first of whom gave his name not only to those oak-trees, beneath one of which Abraham's own tent was pitched, but for a time to the neighboring town itself. W. H.—In an oak grove not far from the town Abram now made his headquarters. Here he made for himself the nearest approach to a home which Providence permitted him in this world. At Mamre he experienced most of the chief honors and trials of his later life. At Hebron he found at last a resting-place. Dykes. The country around Hebron gives one an idea of what Palestine once was in agricultural wealth, and of what it again might be with a thrifty people and an honest government. The hills are terraced, step above step, and planted with the grape-vine, the fig-tree, the pomegranate, the apricot and the olive, or are sown in grain. Hebron has two elements of interest to all travellers: the first is its almost unrivalled age, its history stretching back as far as any still-existing cities can be traced with certainty —Damascus being its one rival, Sidon, perhaps, another; the second, its close association with the life of that grand figure of antiquity, Abraham, and his immediate descendants, the patriarchs of the Hebrews. It was from Hebron that Abram started northward in pursuit of the confederate chieftains from Mesopotamia who had harried the cities of the plain, taking captive his nephew Lot. It was at Hebron that the promise was given to the childless patriarch that his seed should be as the stars of heaven. It was at Hebron that Sarah died, and that Abraham acquired by purchase a burial-place—the only ground he ever owned in the land promised to his children—the cave of Machpelah. Here he buried Sarah, and here he too was laid to rest. Here Isaac was buried, and Rebekah. Hither the embalmed body of Jacob was brought from Egypt and laid beside the tomb of Leah. Dulles. 1. AND it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim, that they made war with Bera king of Sodom, and with Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar). All these joined together in the vale of Siddim (the same is the Salt Sea). Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled. And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim, and the Zuzim in Ham, and the Emim in Shaveh-kiriathaim, and the Horites in their mount Seir, unto El-paran, which is by the wilderness. And they returned, and came to En-mishpat (the same is Kadesh), and smote all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, that dwelt in Hazazon-tamar. And there went out the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar); and they set the battle in array against them in the vale of Siddim; against Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim, and Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar; four kings against the five. Now the vale of Siddim was full of slime pits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and they fell there, and they that remained fled to the mountain. And they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their victuals, and went their way. And they took Lot, Abram's brother's son, who dwelt in Sodom, and his goods, and departed. And there came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew: now he dwelt by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol, and brother of Aner; and these were confederate with Abram. And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued as far as Dan. And he divided himself against them by night, he and his servants, and smote them, and pursued them unto Hobah, which is on the left hand of Damascus. And he brought back all the goods, and also brought again his brother Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people. And the king of Sodom went out to meet him, after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer 18 and the kings that were with him, at the vale of Shaveh (the same is the King's Vale). And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was priest of God Most 19 High. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor of 20 heaven and earth: and blessed be God Most High, which hath delivered thine enemies into 21 thy hand. And he gave him a tenth of all. And the king of Sodom said unto Abram, Give 22 me the persons, and take the goods to thyself. And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have 23 lift up mine hand unto the LORD, God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread nor a shoelatchet nor aught that is thine, lest thou shouldst say, I have 24 made Abram rich: save only that which the young men have eaten, and the portion of the men which went with me; Aner, Esheol, and Mamre, let them take their portion. Joshua came upon the Canaanites as an invader, to dispossess or to exterminate. He found a population before him dense enough to occupy the whole land, numerous communities living in walled towns. Everywhere he met with hostile, defiant tribes, bold to resist each footstep of advance. Abraham came in peace, a wandering shepherd-prince, coveting no territory, aiming at no dispossession, for whom and his pursuits there was room enough without any clashing of interests between him and the inhabitants around. These were comparatively few in number, mostly dwellers in villages, tillers of the ground, cultivators of the vine, or rude artificers. There is no instance of the Canaanites resisting or resenting the residence of Abraham among them. He openly worshipped, and that exclusively, the one great God of heaven and earth. Wherever he pitched his tent he raised his altar. But his worship was the simplest and least offensive in its form and manner; nor does it appear anywhere to have been interfered with or opposed. We are not surprised, therefore, that all Abraham's relationships and intercourse with the Canaanitish chiefs were of the friendliest description, and that a speedy and close confederacy was formed between him and the three Amoritish brothers beside him at Mamre. W. H. 1-24. In this chapter a graphic though brief account is given of the invasion of Palestine by certain Eastern princes, during the life of Abraham; and, independent of all views about inspiration, the narrative bears strong internal evidence of historical accuracy. Names, places, and lines of march are given with the clearness and minuteness of contemporary history. J. L. P.—If any one were inclined, with this unique piece before him, to doubt the real existence of Abraham and Lot, or the historical greatness of the former, he could scarcely be supposed to have commenced the study of the marks by which any really historical circumstance can be recognized. Ewald.—The acceptance and incorporation of such earlier true narratives into this history, no more militates against its proper Mosaic authorship than the introduction of large extracts from Bradford or Morton, or other and later sources of contemporary information, interferes with the proper authorship of a history of the United States by Bancroft; and when this latter historian, recording with quotations a condensed statement of the establishment of Fort du Quesne, adds, "where now is Pittsburgh," he almost exactly imitates the Hebrew historian, in Gen. 14, with a mere substitution of the English idiom. S. C. B.—This account of a general raid by the powers on the Euphrates and Tigris upon the whole western region near the Mediterranean Sea is introduced here only incidentally as explanatory of the story of Lot after he had separated from his uncle and chosen the beautiful bottom land of the Jordan, "pitching his tent toward Sodom." Its spiritual lesson is deeply interesting, bringing out, as it does, the hero of the faith and the man of peace, who said, "Let there be no strife between me and thee, for we are brethren," in the new character of the brave man of war and the magnanimous conqueror. S. R. 1. Amraphel, the king of Shinar, the country whereof Babylon was the capital, is plainly, in the entire narrative, secondary and subordinate to Chedorlaomer, king of Elam. The conquered monarchs "serve" Chedorlaomer (ver. 4), not Amraphel; Chedorlaomer leads both expeditions, the other kings are "with him" (vs. 5, 17), as subordinate allies, or, more probably, as tributaries. This is an inversion of the usual position occupied by Babylonia toward Elam, its eastern neighbor, of which, until recently, there was no profane confirmation. Recently, however, traces have been found of an Elamitic conquest of Babylon, and also of an Elamitic dynasty there at an early date, which show that there were times when the more eastern of the two countries which lay side by side upon the Lower Tigris had the greater power, and exercised dominion over the more western. G. R. —Elam lies beyond Chaldea, on the east side of the Tigris, and embraces the rich flats which separate that river from the bounding mountain range of Zagros. Its capital was the very ancient and powerful city of Susa. Its present ruler, whose name reads in Genesis Chedorlaomer, but in the monuments Khudur-Lagamer, now extended his arms as far as Canaan. His object is evident. The ambition of all empires on the Euphrates, from the earliest time, was to keep open communication with their rivals in Egypt. The only practicable route betwixt the Euphrates and the Nile, either for military marches or for commerce, traversed the great Syrian Desert south-westward till it struck the northern end of the Jordan valley, then either crossed to the coast or held down that valley as far as the south of the Dead Sea. Possession of this route, or at least political supremacy over the tribes along its course, became, therefore, a supreme object with conquerors from the farther East. It was in this way that Palestine became in every age involved in that gigantic strife betwixt the states of Euphrates and Nile, which fills ancient history. Dykes. Arioch king of Elbasar was also of the company. And, curiously enough, not only has his capital city Larsa (now Senkereh on the east of the Euphrates) been identified, but Eriaku, the same with the Hebrew Arioch, is found to be the son of Kudur-Mabuk and to have dwelt in Larsa. The fourth of these royal aggressors, Tidal king of “Goiim,” is less definitely localized either in the narrative or the inscriptions, Guti or Gutium, both of which sources favor the idea that his monarchy was over less consolidated tribes to the north. S. C. B.—Goyyim or “nations” has been shown by Sir Henry Rawlinson to be a misreading for Gutium, the name given to the tract of country northward of Babylonia, which stretched from Mesopotamia to the mountains of Kurdistan, and within which the kingdom of Assyria afterward arose. G. R.—In striking correspondence to and explanation of this consecutive narrative, the inscriptions disclose great expeditions of Kudur-Mabuk and Arioch, with conquests in Syria, whereby the former attained the title “lord of Martu,” i.e., of the god of the West; and Rawlinson, Sayce and Lenormant all bring the date singularly close to the time of Abraham, Rawlinson 2100 B.C., Sayce 2000, Lenormant “approximately to the time of Abraham.” S. C. B.—By aid of these disentombed inscriptions on the plains of Chaldea we have the means of verifying this account in Moses of events among the nations of the earth some four thousand years ago, and therefore this is no mere ancient legend, but veritable history. The theory of non-historic years, on the one hand, is demonstrated to be a “fond imagination,” as the Scotch fathers call it. And, on the other hand, the ethnological chart of the 10th chapter of Genesis is in precise accordance with all the relics which we have of the histories of those early civilizations. S. R. 2-4. Each of the more important Canaanitish towns had, as the book of Joshua shows, its king. We find something like this in the earlier Greek times. The Canaanites of the rich valley Siddim, in spite of their inferior power, trusted so much to their own strength that they set themselves against the combined forces of the important countries of the east. Geil. The five towns attempted after 12 years to shake off the yoke. To chastise this revolt, Chedorlaomer undertook a second expedition. Combining his own forces with those of the three vassal rulers in the Euphrates valley, he swept across the desert, and fell upon the wild tribes which then harbored in the mountains of Bashan and Moab. The invader’s plan was to ravage the country to the east, south, and south-west of the Jordan towns, before actually investing them, so as to cut them off from support from their neighbors. His progress can be tracked from tribe to tribe. Formidable clans of aborigines of great stature then held the fastnesses to the east of Jordan: the Rephaim, in the north, which was later termed Bashan; the Zusim, between the Jabbok and the Arnon, whom afterward the Ammonites expelled; south of the Arnon, the Emim, where Moab was by and by to dwell. Beyond the southern end of the Dead Sea, the conqueror came upon a race of cave-dwellers or Horites, in those singular rock excavations of Mount Seir which the art of a later time enlarged into the cave palaces, temples, and tombs that still astonish the traveller. This was his southern limit. Turning then sharply to the westward, the Elamites ravaged the desert which stretches between Edom and Egypt. Thence they turned back to retrace their steps eastward. Dykes. 10. Bitumen-pits of asphalt or bitumen, from which the Dead Sea was afterward called Lacus Asphaltites, or Sea of Asphalt. E. H. B.—Bitumen, in Hebrew chémâr, sometimes translated “slime,” was used for cementing the bricks of Babylon. It is found in the neighborhood of that city, and also in connection with the Dead Sea. The bitumen pits in the vale of Siddim caused the defeat of the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. Deane. 12. They took Lot.** They took Abram's brother's son, who dwelt in Sodom. So near a relation of Abram should have been a companion and disciple of Abram, and should have abode by his tents; but if he choose to dwell in Sodom, he must thank himself, if he share in Sodom's calamities. When we go out of the way of our duty, we put ourselves from under God's protection, and cannot expect that the choices which are made by our lusts should issue to our comfort. Particular mention is made of their taking Lot's goods, those goods which had occasioned his contest with Abram, and his separation from him. H.—That wealth which was the cause of his former quarrels is made a prey to merciless heathens; that place which his eye covetously chose betrays his life and goods. How many Christians, while they have looked at gain, have lost themselves! Bp. H.—See how Lot's choice came back on him. He grasped recklessly at worldly advantage, and twice he lost his entire possessions,—the second time, as it would seem, beyond recovery. In the first instance, the kings of the East plundered Sodom, and carried off Lot and all he had. "They took Lot and his goods,"—an emphatic conjunction. There was much property, and it was much to him, for his heart was in it. No doubt it was a sore blow to Lot, and was meant as a warning to quit the place. But he refused to take it, and the stroke came next time direct from God, and with more crushing weight. He who would not leave Sodom of his own free will must be driven from it by the sword of the avenging angel. He went out poorer than he entered, and all his wealth perished with the men of Sodom. Ker. 13,14. There was no question in Abram's mind that he should do his utmost to deliver his kinsman. Though he could hope for success only by joining for the time with the Canaanitish sheiks, and seeming to be on the side of the king of Sodom, yet he did not hesitate to take that course and leave the issue with God. Herein he has left us an example which is not without its significance. There are movements, some political, some moral, in which we can hope to succeed only by accepting the alliance of men with whom in the highest parts of our nature we have no sympathy. So there are many enterprises of benevolence in which we can take no part unless we consent to work with persons of whose characters we cannot in all respects approve. What then? Must we refuse to sit at a benevolent board because Aner, Esheol and Mamre are there also? No! So long as we are in the world we shall have to meet the men of the world; we shall have to work with them, too, in benevolent matters. And they who hold back from the fear of contamination are signally deficient in that faith for which Abraham was remarkable. W. M. T. Abraham is treated by the native princes and chieftains of the land as "a mighty prince," an equal, if not a superior, to themselves. His house-born servants able to bear arms and to make a rapid march were not less than 318. A body of such men can be furnished only by a population four times its own number, including women and children. We can, therefore, not reckon the patriarch's camp as containing less than 1272 souls; and this number of people could not well have been accommodated in so few as 100 tents. Kit. 15,16. In Egypt, Abram had shown how distrustful and pusillanimous he could be. It was the capture of his nephew with all his household and fortune which roused the family spirit in the son of Terah; and the pressure of this great need threw him once more upon God as the arm of his strength. Though the Amorite leaders beside him had their own griefs to avenge, yet Abram was the soul of the league as well as its head. Dykes.—He appeals to the three brother chiefs, his immediate neighbors, who rally at his cry. If each of them brought with him a following anything like Abraham's, it may have been a band of nearly 1000 men who set off in pursuit. A five or six days' rapid march carries them up to Dan, at the sources of the Jordan. There are the invaders and their prey; three times, let us suppose, as numerous as their pursuers, but lying in loose array, in imagined security, ignorant of the pursuit. Abraham espies them, but does not rush rashly to the attack. He waits till nightfall, pursues the tactics that Gideon afterward pursued, divides his forces, from different quarters flings each company in upon the sleepers. The success is complete; a panic is created; they fly in all directions, leaving all their spoil behind. The victorious band chases them over the mountains to Hobah on the left hand (i.e., north) of Damascus, and returns. W. H.—The success was principally due to the faith of Abram, and to the assistance of God. At the same time we must not forget that the re-enforcements of his neighbors may probably have increased the army of Abram to a thousand men, while it is erroneous to suppose that the army of Chedorlaomer, which was only intended for a foray, would be very considerable. Besides, we have to keep in mind that the enemy thought himself perfectly secure, was suddenly overtaken during a dark night by the army of Abram, who evidently came upon them from different directions, and that confusion and panic must have ensued. K. 17. Abraham never stood higher in honor among his fellow-men than when the king of Sodom came out to meet him, and bowed before him.—18. But there came out another before whom Abraham in his turn bowed—Melchizedek, the representative of a higher than earthly honor, a greater than earthly royalty. The two men who met that day and stood in each other's presence in the "King's Dale," were each solitary in his sphere, unique in the spiritual position he occupied. The one a last surviving confessor of the faith intrusted to Noah; the other the first recipient of that new light from Heaven, which, concentrated in the Levitical institute, was to burn for centuries in Judea for the world's enlightenment. Mysterious he is, and must remain—this king and priest of Salem, emerging from his hidden nook, his pedigree untold, his office undescribed, not a single event in all his former or in all his latter history related, appearing on that single occasion, to do that single act, to be recognized as a greater than Abraham, and then to pass away, coming and going like a spirit, casting no shadow before or behind. W. H. Melchizedek. Bearing a title which Jews in after-ages would recognize as designating their own sovereign, bearing gifts which recall to Christians the Lord's Supper, this Canaanite crosses for a moment the path of Abram, and is unhesitatingly recognized as a person of higher spiritual rank than the friend of God. Disappearing as suddenly as he came in, he is lost to the sacred writings for a thousand years; and then a few emphatic words for another moment bring him into sight as a type of the coming Lord of David. Once more, after another thousand years, the Hebrew Christians are taught to see in him a proof that it was the consistent purpose of God to abolish the Levitical priesthood. Bulloch. He is mentioned in Ps. 110 : 4, and again in the New Testament (Heb. 5-7), where the comparison between the royal priesthood of Melchizedek and that of Jesus is drawn out at length. The special points of resemblance of Melchizedek to Christ are : 1. That he was not of the Levitical order, local, national, but previous to the giving of the Law, catholic, universal; 2. That he was superior to Abraham, blessed and took tithes of him; 3. That he was both king and priest; 4. That no beginning and no end are assigned either to his priesthood or his life; 5. His names too, "king of righteousness ness and king of peace," are eminently suited to a type of the Son of God (Heb. 7 : 2, 3). King of Salem. Josephus, Onkelos and all the Targums understand Jerusalem, which is called Salem in Ps. 76 : 2, and this is pretty certainly the true interpretation. Probably Salem was the oldest, Jebus the next, and Jerusalem the more modern name of the same city. E. H. B. It is interesting to see the view taken of this incident by Kalisch, a Jew: "Everything is here significant, everything typical: it is obvious that the dim background is designed to veil a grand religious and political future. Melchizedek brought forth to Abraham bread and wine, not to refresh him or his men, for Abraham had, among the booty of the enemies, seized their large stores of provisions also, but to perform a symbolical ceremony, in which bread and wine had a typical meaning. For bread represents the ordinary daily food, the necessities of physical subsistence, while the wine points to the cheering delights of life and to the spiritual cravings of religion, in the rites of which it formed an important object." Alf. He was priest. This is the first time that the word priest, Cohen, occurs in the Bible, and it is in connection with the worship of an ancient people, perhaps not related by blood to the chosen race. The etymological meaning of the word is unknown. The word itself is applied afterward both to the Levitical priesthood and to the priesthood of false religions. The patriarchs seem to have had no other priesthood than that of the head of the family; but here we find Melchizedek designated as a priest and as performing many priestly acts, solemnly blessing, taking tithes, etc. E. H. B.—The evidence that his priesthood was acknowledged to be of a higher order lies in two facts: first, in the bestowal of the divine blessing upon Abram by his lips; and next, in the offering of Abram's tithe to God through his hands. Both were strictly sacerdotal acts. He brought to the conqueror bread and wine,—not simply, as Josephus puts it, for the refreshment of his followers, but as a symbol of the divine blessing, which as God's priest he invoked upon the head of God's prophet and servant. For the first time these type-forms of all solid and liquid food—destined long after to become sacramental symbols of the nutriment of the spirit's higher life—occur as emblems of every material blessing. They represent all those products of the soil which minister to man. The blessing which was uttered over the hero, along with such symbols of benediction, recognized his military success as given by God. God is the true ruler of the rescued land, and the only giver of victory to the arms of its defenders. Dykes. The most high God. Here we meet with a new name of God, El, the Lasting, the Mighty, cognate with Elohim, and previously occurring in the compound proper names Mehujal, Mahalal, and Bethel. We have also an epithet of God, Elion the most high, now appearing for the first time. Hence we perceive that the unity, the omnipotence, and the absolute pre-eminence of God were still living in the memory and conscience of a section at least of the inhabitants of this land. M.—It is to be observed that there is not used regarding him, nor does he use, the title of Jehovah, but that of the High God, a title found also in the question addressed by the Moabitish king Balak to his prophet Balaam: but that Abram in answering the King of Sodom probably in his presence, affirms the identity of his covenant-God, Jehovah, with the High God, possessor of heaven and earth, of whom Melchizedek had spoken. Alf. Take all philosophy from Plato to Cousin, and where do we find any ideas of God more elevated than those that are associated with these grand epithets so frequent in the Old Testament, and most frequent in its oldest parts? What is there which carries us farther toward the infinite in all directions? And yet, it should be observed, with what unshrinking boldness the Bible writers connect with them the ideas of the local and the finite. This is, in fact, one chief peculiarity of the Scriptures. The Divine Being is very near, and yet very far off. The God of the universe is at the same time regarded as a patrial Deity, the “God of his people.” He who “fills heaven and earth,” is spoken of as dwelling in consecrated localities. The Governor of all worlds in time and space, the Most High, the Almighty, the Everlasting, is at the same time the God of Mamre, of Bethel, of Peniel. El Olam, El Shaddai, El Elioun, is at the same time El Elohe Israel. . . . It would have been far better for the growth of Biblical knowledge in the common mind, had more of these old Hebrew terms, as Sheol and the Divine names Elohim, El Olam, El Shaddai, El Elioun, etc., been transferred directly into our common English version. They would long ere this have become naturalized. The spirit of the word, which is ever strongly attached to its old body, would have come down with it. T. L. Melchizedek is mentioned elsewhere in the Scriptures only in the 110th Psalm and in the Epistle to the Hebrews (chaps. 5, 6, 7), where the apostle, aiming to show the pre-eminence of Christ’s priesthood over that of Aaron, avails himself of the somewhat remarkable coincidences which subsisted between what is here related of Melchizedek and what he designed to affirm of Christ. As Melchizedek combined in his own person the dignity both of king and priest, this fact enabled him to illustrate more strikingly, to the Jews to whom he wrote, the union of the same offices in Christ, who sits “a priest upon his throne.” Again, as far as appears from the sacred record, Melchizedek was a priest, not by inheritance, but by immediate divine appointment. He derived his office from no predecessor, and delivered it down to no successor, but stands before us in the sacred record single and alone, constituting himself an order of priesthood. In this respect he was eminently “made like the Son of God,” who was also a priest, not after the manner of the sons of Aaron, by descent from their predecessors, but after the similitude of Melchizedek, that is, by an immediate, divine constitution. Bush. King David himself (Ps. 110) was guided to borrow this venerable figure of the grand, dim priest-king of old, before whom even the founder of his people took the second place, in order to foreshadow that coming Seed of Abram in whom was to meet every office of dignity and of service. A Priest He was to be above all consecrated men of Israel’s race; a King nobler far in blood and ampler in sway than the royal singer who owned Him for his Lord. . . . No priestly Israelite, sprung from Abram through his great-grandson Levi, can claim as lofty or divine priesthood as the man before whom Abram himself was content to bend for the blessing. If “perfection” had been attained “through means of the Levitical priesthood,” it was fair for the Christian teacher to ask his Jewish brethren, “what further need there was that another priest should rise after the order of Melchizedek.” Dykes. Amid the abundance of genealogical details of that period we know absolutely nothing of his descent; in the roll of kings and their achievements, his name and reign, his birth and death remain unmentioned. Considering the position which he occupies toward Abram, that silence must have been intentional, and its intention typical; that is, designed to point forward to corresponding realities in Christ. Still more clearly than its silence does the information which Scripture furnishes about Melchizedek show the deep significance of his personality. His name is “King of Righteousness,” his government that of the “Prince of Peace;” he is “a priest,” neither in the sense in which Abram was, nor yet “after the order of Aaron,” his priesthood being distinct and unique; he blesses Abram, and his blessing sounds like a ratification of the bestowal of the land upon the patriarch; while Abram gives “him tithes of all.” There is in this latter tribute an acknowledgment of Melchizedek both as king and priest—as priest in giving him “tithes,” and as king in giving him these tithes of all the spoil, as if he had royal claim upon it; while Abram himself refuses to touch any of it, and his allies are only allowed to “take their portion.” What lay in germ in Melchizedek was to be gradually unfolded—the priesthood in Aaron, the royalty in David—till both were most gloriously united in Christ. Melchizedek was, however, only a shadow and a type; Christ is the reality and the antitype. It is for this reason that Scripture has shut to us the sources of historical investigation about his descent and duration of life, that by its silence it might point to the heavenly descent of Jesus. A. E. To this person, simply because he was a righteous king and priest of the Most High God, Abraham, the elect of God, the possessor of the promises, paid tithes, and received from him a blessing; and did it, too, at the very time he stood so high in honor, and kept himself so carefully aloof from another king then present—the king of Sodom. He placed himself as conspicuously below the one personage as he raised himself above the other. Melchizedek already in a measure possessed what Abraham still only hoped for—he reigned where Abraham’s seed were destined to reign, and exercised a priesthood which in future generations was to be committed to them. The union of the two in Melchizedek was in itself a great thing—greater than the separate offices of king and priest in the houses respectively of David and Aaron; but it was an expiring greatness: it was like the last blossom on the old rod of Noah, which thenceforth became as a dry tree. In Abraham, on the other hand, was the germ of a new and higher order of things—the promise, though still only the budding promise, of a better inheritance of blessing; and when the seed should come in whom the promise was more especially to stand, then the more general and comprehensive aspect of the Melchizedek order was to reappear, and find its embodiment in one who could at once place it on firmer ground, and carry it to unspeakably higher results. Here, then, was a sacred enigma for the heart of faith to ponder, and for the spirit of truth gradually to unfold: Abraham, in one respect, relatively great, and in another relatively little; personally inferior to Melchizedek, and yet the root of a seed that was to do for the world incomparably more than Melchizedek had done; himself the type of a higher than Melchizedek, and yet Melchizedek a more peculiar type than he! It was a mystery that could be disclosed only in partial glimpses beforehand, but which now has become comparatively plain by the person and work of Immanuel. What but the wonder-working finger of God could have so admirably fitted the past to be such a singular image of the future! P. F. 20. Gave a tithe.** To God, under the same character as Lord of the soil and Arbiter in battle, who alone has ordained to every tribe the bounds of its habitation, Abram devoted one tenth of the recovered spoil. The origin of this proportion—a tithe—is too remote now to be traced. Plainly it was a religious sacrifice of thanksgiving. Dykes. 21-24. Here is a war undertaken by Abram on motives the most honorable and conscientious—it was to repel aggression, and to rescue the innocent from the heaviest of sufferings and the worst of slavery; not for the purpose of plunder, nor the extension of his territories; therefore he takes no spoils, and returns peaceably to his own possessions. A. C.—He had, or might have had, a double title to the goods. They were his by the law of arms and nations; having won them in the field, and in a just war; and they might have been his by the king’s free donation, if he had been minded to accept the offer. But Abram would not take them: contenting himself with what the Lord had blessed him with, he did not desire, neither would he take “from a thread even to a shoelatch,” of anything that appertained to the king of Sodom. Bp. Sanderson. This unwillingness to incur even the shadow of an obligation may have arisen from the anxiety that not a word of reproach might be cast on him as a worshipper of the one true God; but mingling with this may there not have been here a stirring of honest pride, the spirit of independence, a touch of nature telling us that Abraham was a true brother of our humanity? The brotherly affection, the friendly alliance with the Amorites, the spirit, energy, and skill displayed, the quick and complete success, the renouncing of all personal advantages, the tender care for his confederates, must have raised Abraham to high repute among the Canaanitish tribes. W. H. 1. AFTER these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, 2 Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. And Abram said, O Lord God, what 3 wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and he that shall be possessor of my house is Dam- 4 mesek Eliezer? And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born 5 in my house is mine heir. And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, This 6 man shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be 7 thine heir. And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell 8 the stars, if thou be able to tell them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he 9 believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness. And he said unto him, I 10 am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it. 11 And he said, O Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it? And he said unto 12 him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she-goat of three years old, and a ram of 13 three years old, and a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon. And he took him all these, and 14 divided them in the midst, and laid each half over against the other: but the birds divided he 15 not. And the birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away. 16 And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great 17 darkness fell upon him. And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a 18 stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four 19 hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall 20 they come out with great substance. But thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be 21 buried in a good old age. And in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the 22 iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full. And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, 23 and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a flaming torch that passed between these 24 pieces. In that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I 25 given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenite, 26 and the Kenizzite, and the Kadmonite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Rephaim, 27 and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Girgashite, and the Jebusite. It has been often pointed out, and rightly, as a proof of the genuineness of the patriarchal history, that these fathers are not represented as performing miracles. The myth would certainly have adorned their honored heads with a wreath of wonders. A still stronger proof of the sacred truthfulness of this history is the fact that it begins with the mind-miracle of the faith of Abraham. No one in later ages within the old covenant times reached the height of faith that Abraham did. This faith, standing at the threshold of the old dispensation, like the life of Christ at the threshold of the new, could not be invented. It stretches, as Paul has shown (Gal. 3), across the whole old covenant history, which, as depending on it, stands beneath it, and points directly onward to Christ himself. Auberien. Ten years had now elapsed since Abram bade farewell to his fatherland at God's bidding, yet the hopes with which he entered Canaan seemed as far as ever from being realized. Only twice during these years had God broken silence. The voice which spoke in Haran had spoken once at Moreh on his arrival, and again near Bethel on his return from Egypt. Each successive utterance confirmed what had gone before. Each added a little definiteness to the original promise. In Haran God said: "I will show thee a land: I will make of thee a great nation." At Moreh, both the halves of this promise became better defined: "This is the land: I will give it to thy seed." Still more ample was the third repetition of it. Then Abram was told to search Canaan through, with the assurance that it should become his own, "in the length of it, and the breadth of it;" while the seed of promise was to be as numerous as the dust of the land beneath his feet. So much, then, and no more, had been given to the man on which to rest his confidence. How such prospects as these were to be realized had not yet been told. Of their ever being realized at all, no sign appeared. Abram was a childless man. Dykes. Abram, a man of peaceful tastes and habits, had been roused to an unwonted course of action; but now all the recent excitement has passed away. Human regrets and fears press him down; and solemn and earnest thoughts overwhelm him. What is his reward for all the toil and labor he has undergone? Lot, whose alienated heart he had probably hoped to win by so great a service, is still as far from him as ever. For the sake of the fat pastures and well-watered lands of Sodom, he is content still to dwell among men whom he must by this time have known from experience to be “sinners before the Lord exceedingly.” Kit. 1. A signal manifestation of himself was now made to Abram by the personal WORD OF THE LORD; who announced Himself as the same God who had brought him out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give him the inheritance of the land of Canaan. Hales.—This is the first time that the expression so frequent afterward “the word of the LORD” occurs in the Bible. It has been questioned whether the “vision” was a dream or waking vision. The same word is used of Balaam, “which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling, but having his eyes open” (Num. 24 : 4, 16). The way in which Abram was led out and saw the stars, and the subsequent reality of the sacrifice, look like a waking vision, and it is not till v. 12 that he falls into a deep sleep. E. H. B.—God revealed his will: 1. By a personal appearance of Him who was afterward incarnated for the salvation of mankind. 2. By an audible voice, sometimes accompanied with emblematical appearances. 3. By visions, which took place either in the night, in ordinary sleep, or when the persons were cast into a temporary trance, by daylight, or when about their ordinary business. 4. By the ministry of angels, appearing in human bodies, and performing certain miracles to accredit their mission. 5. By the powerful agency of the Spirit of God upon the wind, giving it a strong conception, and supernatural persuasion of the truth of the things perceived by the understanding. So unequivocal were the discoveries which God made of himself, that on the minds of those to whom they were made, not one doubt was left, relative either to the truth of the subject, or that it was God himself who made the discovery. A. C. Thy shield and reward. The true defence of the soul against fear, and her true recompense under sacrifice or loss in the path of duty, is God Himself. That He is our “shield” so long as we do His will, our “reward” for whatever His will may cost us, is the real stay of faith. To such a deep and everlasting source of support and consolation did the Almighty design to lead His desponding servant by those opening words of the new oracle: “Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.” God is better than His gifts! The best portion any soul can win is to know, and love, and possess in the indestructible communion of love, Him who is the possessor of earth and heaven! Dykes. The consideration that God himself is, and will be, a shield to his people to secure them from all destructive evils, and a shield round about them, should be sufficient to silence all their perplexing, tormenting fears. I will be thy exceeding great reward; not only thy rewarder, but thy reward. Abram had generously refused the rewards which the king of Sodom offered him, and here God comes and tells him he shall be no loser by it. The rewards of believing obedience and self-denial are exceeding great. God himself is the chosen and promised felicity of holy souls; chosen in this world, promised in a better. He is the portion of their inheritance, and their cup. H.—There are words that are welcomed as friends the very first time we hear them. They are, too, nearly always short words, words that a child can say and thus the heart needs. Look at such short words as life, love, peace, rest, faith, hope, home! Words small as drops of dew, yet holding the sun! And, wonderful in graciousness, God himself and his dear Son take up these words and claim them as their own. It is God that says, “I am thy shield;” and it is Christ that says, “I am the vine;” “I am the door;” “I am the true bread;” “I am the way, the truth, and the life;” “I am the light of the world.” 2. And Abram said, Lord God. This is the first use of these two words together, the words being Adonai JERHOVAH. The same combination occurs only twice more in the whole of the five books of Moses, and these cases are both in Deuteronomy. It is instructive to notice how great words are used in great necessities: this sacred word “shield” is used in the necessity of fear, and this holy word “Lord God” is used in the necessity of doubt and wonder. J. P. 2-6. On the four previous occasions of direct communications from God, the patriarch makes no response; no other answer comes from him than the simple trust, the prompt obedience, the ready sacrifice. It is in this fifth interview that his lips open before the Lord. To the gracious and seasonable assurance, "Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward," his reply is, "Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?" Silence follows the strange speech, a silence broken, but not by God. "And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir." The freedom is not repelled, nor the impatience rebuked. He is simply told that he was mistaken as to Eliezer and the heirship, and then led forth and bade to look up to that magnificent spectacle—a cloudless Eastern sky at midnight. "Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: so shall thy seed be." Alone with God, in the deep silence of the night, gazing on that starry host, such an impression of the boundless power and love and faithfulness of Jehovah fills Abram's spirit that all doubts dissolve; improbabilities, apparent impossibilities, disappear; he staggers no longer at the promise. It is of him at this time and in these impressive circumstances it is said, "He believed in the LORD; and He counted it to him for righteousness." It was a pure act of faith, without any of its ordinary adjuncts. The one and only thing that he was called at the time to do was to confide. And the faith he exercised was as strong as it was pure. The Hebrew word expressing it is unique in the fulness and force of its significance—"He was supported, he was built up, he reposed as a child in its mother's arms." Where, in all Old Testament history, can we find an instance of simpler, purer, fuller, and more confiding trust in God? Where could Paul have found a better type and illustration of that "faith without works" by which alone the sinner is justified before God? W. H. Abram's repeated complaint was that which gave occasion to this promise. The great affliction that sat heavy upon Abram was the want of a child; and the complaint of this he here pours out before the Lord, and shows before him his trouble (Ps. 142: 2). Though we must never complain of God, yet we have leave to complain to him, and to be large and particular in the statement of our grievances; and it is some case to a burdened spirit to open its case to a faithful and compassionate friend; such a friend God is, whose ear is always open. H.—Abram told God his fear in plain words. He said, "I have no child; all my goods are in the hands of a steward, a true enough servant, but still not a son; what is to become of all these tokens of thy love?" and while he was talking the stars came out, throng upon throng, glowing overhead, sparkling over the distant hills, glittering in the east, throbbing like hearts on the western horizon, the singing Pleiades, the mighty Areturus and his sons, and the Milky Way, there they were, angels talking in light, servants watching the gate of the King's city. It was in that hour that the Lord said to Abram, "Look up," and Abram looked; and God said, "Count them, so shall thy seed be." J. P. 6. Believed in the Lord.** The Hebrew term aman, from which comes the familiar "Amen," so be it, signifies to be firm, fixed, stable, sure; and in the conjugation here employed, followed by in or to, to establish one's self, or one's faith, firmly in or toward an object, to deem, account, or make sure to one's self, and so to leave upon, confide in, or trust to, anything as stable and steadfast. Hence as applied to the act of a believing agent in reference to divine promises, it denotes a degree of assured confidence amounting, as it were, to a creative efficacy, making to exist, substantiating, confirming the thing believed, "calling things which are not as though they were." Thus "faith is the substance (the substantiating principle) of things hoped for;" and in this view Christ is denominated the "Amen, the faithful and true witness," from his being the ground of the most fixed and stable confidence, whose fidelity or trustworthiness may be relied upon with unbounded assurance. The circumstances which gave so much efficacy and value to the faith of Abram are recited (Rom. 4: 18-22). Bush.—Thus has come to the birth in the breast of Abram faith in Jehovah, on his simple promise in the absence of all present performance, and in the face of all sensible hindrance. Thus faith springs solely from the seed of promise. M. "And Abram believed?" This is the first time the word believed occurs in the Bible. Paul says of Abram that "against hope he believed in hope," and "that he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief." Abram hid his life and his future in this promise. He took the promise as a fulfilment; the word was to him a fact. Thus he was called out of himself, out of his own trust, out of his own resources, and his life was fostered upon God,—he by-lived, lived-by, believed, God! Appearances were against the promise. But Abram "staggered not." Henceforward the stars had new meanings to him, as long before the rainbow had to Noah. They spoke to him of Jehovah's presence and promised blessing. J. P.—Abram had not merely faith in the word, but trustfulness in the person of Jehovah as his Covenant-God. And from this faith in the living God sprang all the obedience of Abram. Like the rod of Aaron, his life budded and blossomed and bore fruit “within the secret place of the Most High.” A. E. And he counted it to him for righteousness. We have here the opening germ of the great doctrine of “the LORD our righteousness,” redeeming us on the one hand from the sentence of death, and on the other to a title to eternal life. M.—The promise here made by the LORD to Abram was given to him before circumcision, while there was yet not even the germ of Levitical Law. It contained in it the promise of Christ. It elicited from Abram the great evangelical principle of faith. God promised that which was opposed to all appearance and likelihood. Abram relied on that promise. He surrendered his own wisdom to the wisdom of God, and so gave up his own will to the will of God. So he became the heir of the promises; and the internal principle of faith became to him the true principle of righteousness. It was the only righteousness possible for the feeble and the sinful; for it was a reposing on the power and the love of the Almighty and the Holy One. It was therefore reckoned to him as what may be called a passive righteousness, and at the same time it was productive in him of an active righteousness: for the soul which relies on the truth, power, and goodness of another, in the strength of that truth, power, and goodness, can itself be active in them all: taking advantage of the power and goodness relied upon, it becomes itself powerful and good and true. The Apostles naturally dwell upon this first recorded instance of faith, faith in God, implied faith in Christ, and consequent accounting of righteousness, recorded before all legal enactments, as illustrative of the great evangelical grace of faith, its power as resting on One who is all powerful, and its sanctifying energy, as containing in itself the principle of holiness and the germ of every righteous act. E. H. B. Righteousness expresses in general the conformity of man to God’s will,—his normal relation to God. Since God’s will is elective and promissory, it consists in full surrender to elective grace and the divine word of promise. Thus it is the righteousness of faith. In this sense Abram’s faith in Jehovah was imputed to him as righteousness. O.—Righteousness is here imputed to Abram. Hence mercy and grace are extended to him; mercy taking effect in the pardon of his sin, and grace in bestowing the rewards of righteousness. That in him which is counted for righteousness is faith in Jehovah promising mercy. This is the only thing in the sinner which, while it is not righteousness, has yet a claim to be counted for such, because it brings him into union with one who is just and having salvation. It is not material what the Almighty and all-gracious promises in the first instance to him that believes in him, whether it be a land, or a seed, or any other blessing. All other blessing, temporal or eternal, will flow out of that express one, in a perpetual course of development, as the believer advances in experience, in compass of intellect, and capacity of enjoyment. Hence it is that a land involves a better land, a seed a nobler seed, a temporal an eternal good. M. When arguing from the statement respecting the righteousness of faith in Abraham, Paul lays stress simply upon the natural impossibilities that stood in the way of God’s promise and on the implicit confidence Abraham had, notwithstanding, in the power and faithfulness of God, that He would perform what He had promised. “Therefore,” adds the apostle, “it was imputed to him for righteousness.” Therefore—because through faith he so completely lost sight of nature and self, and realized with undoubting confidence the sufficiency of the divine arm, and the certainty of its working. His faith was nothing else than the renunciation of all strength in himself, and a hanging in childlike trust upon God for what He was able and willing to do. Transfer such a faith to the field of the New Testament—bring it into contact with the manifestation of God in the person and work of Christ for the salvation of the world, and what would inevitably be its language but that of the apostle: “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ,”—“not my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is of God through faith.” P. F. Justification by faith alone is the doctrine of the Reformers; it is older, for it is the doctrine of the Fathers; it is older than the Fathers, for it is the doctrine of the Apostles; yea, older still, it is the doctrine of the Patriarchs and Prophets. It is the marrow of revealed truth. Bp. Horsley. 7. To give thee this land.** We have here the assurance given to Abram, of the land of Canaan for an inheritance. Observe here, Abram made no complaint in this matter, as he had done for the want of a child. Those that are sure of an interest in the promised seed will see no reason to doubt of a title to the promised land. If Christ is ours, heaven is ours. Observe, again, when he believed the former promise (v. 6), then God explained and ratified this to him. To him that has (improves what he has) more shall be given. H. Faith, even though we thereby arrogate to our own sinful selves the greatest and highest of all blessings, has no arrogance and no presumption at all in it. It is yielding a due honor to one of the divine attributes, even the attribute of truth—so that the stronger the faith, the greater is the glory we render unto God. What a precious harmony is this, that our greatest peace and God's greatest glory are at one—that in counting Him faithful who has promised, we do that which at one and the same time most advances His honor and most tranquillizes our own fears. T. C.—We live by faith, and not by sight. We do not preach that all is disappointment—the dreary creed of sentimentalism; but we preach that nothing here is disappointment, if rightly understood. The city which hath foundations is built in the soul of man. He in whom Godlike character dwells has all the universe for his own—“All things,” saith the apostle, “are yours; whether life or death, or things present, or things to come; if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.” F. W. R. 8. Lord God.** Adonai Jehovah: Adonai is the word which the Jews in reading always substitute for Jehovah. This word often occurs in the Hebrew Bible, and is rendered in our translation Lord; the same term by which the word Jehovah is expressed. But to distinguish between the two, and to show the reader when the original is Jehovah, and when Adonai, the first is always put in capitals, LORD, the latter in plain Roman characters, Lord. A. C. Whereby shall I know? Not an expression of doubt, but of desire for the confirmation or sealing of a promise which transcended human thought and conception. Keil.—Many instances are recorded where God has been graciously pleased to give signs to his people for the confirmation of their faith, when there was not any doubt upon their minds respecting either his faithfulness or power. See Judg. 6:14-21, 36-40; 2 Kings 20:8-11. Bush. 9,10. The promise was ratified by a new COVENANT, in which Abram stood to God in the relation of the Father of the Faithful, just as Noah, in the covenant made with him, stood for all his race. The forms with which this new covenant was made are minutely related; and they agree with the customs then observed in covenants between man and man. P. S.— The covenant with Noah was universal and unalterable. It referred to nothing higher than animal life on earth. It secured no moral or spiritual blessing. Quite a new thing happened when God was pleased to covenant for the second time,—not now with all men, but with one man and his posterity; not by mere promise on His own part, but by promise conditioned by religious trust and obedience on the part of man; not for the sake of guaranteeing to all men physical existence, but for the sake of securing to faithful men the spiritual blessing of eternal life. Dykes. To confirm his faith Jehovah now gave to Abram a sign and a seal, which yet were such once more only to his faith. He entered into a covenant with him. For this purpose the Lord directed Abram to bring an heifer, a she goat, and a ram, each of three years old, also a turtle-dove and a young pigeon. These sacrifices were to be divided and the pieces laid one against the other, as the custom was in making a covenant, the covenanting parties always passing between them, as it were to show that now there was no longer to be division, but that what had been divided was to be considered as one between them. But here the covenant was made not, as usually, by both parties passing between the divided sacrifice, but by Jehovah alone doing so, since the covenant was that of grace, in which one party alone—God—undertook all the obligations, while the other received all the benefits. A. E. 9. Take for me.** An heifer, a goat, a ram, and two doves, Abram was bidden to select when daylight came, and to set apart for a sacrifice on God's behalf. In these last words lay the unprecedented feature of this ceremony. Here it is not Abram or any human party, but God Himself, who by this solemn formality binds Himself to the contract. The transaction assumes the shape of a concession on the part of the high celestial Covenanter, in order that the man may “know,” as he has petitioned to know, that the word of the Eternal may be absolutely trusted. Dykes. Every animal allowed or commanded to be sacrificed under the Mosaic law, is to be found in this list. God was now giving to Abram an epitome of that law and its sacrifices, which he intended more fully to reveal to Moses; the essence of which consisted in its sacrifices, which typified the Lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world. A. C.—The animals are (strikingly enough) all those which were afterward used in the Levitical sacrifices. It was thus a foreshadow of that ritual, as that was of the gospel system. Of three years old. Under the law these animals were generally offered when they were one year old; but these were, no doubt, required to be of the age of three years, because they were then full grown, in their most perfect state Bush.—It has been said that the transaction was not a real sacrifice, as there was no sprinkling of blood nor offering on an altar; but the essence of the true Hebrew sacrifice was in the slaying of the victim, for the very word (Zebach, sacrifice) signifies slaying, and it was rather with the shedding of blood than with its sprinkling that atonement was made (Heb. 11 : 22). Cook. God himself thus condescended to become Abram's celestial ally, his shield in every peril, and his reward for every sacrifice. It is surely a sublime thought which then for the first time entered into human experience, to color it forever. To be thus lifted into alliance with the Eternal, gives to the soul a lien, a clear, lawful hold, upon Omnipotence, if only the soul will dare, in the enthusiasm or abandonment of a childlike faith, to reckon upon the fidelity of God. When the Most High, out of His own mere mercy, volunteers to bind Himself by a promise for the future, and, having done so, stoops still further to give a pledge for the execution of that promise, then what may fairly be termed a "covenant" is established. Always, in one form or another, God binds Himself to bless the man. He takes the man's side against his foes: or He permits the man to count upon His aid in emergencies: or He pledges Himself to compensate in higher blessings for whatever sacrifice He may meanwhile demand; or He promises inward benefits, as a pacified conscience and a pure heart. Dykes. 13. Four hundred years and more elapsed while Jacob and his family were in Egypt. Such are the terms of the prediction to Abraham: his seed to be a stranger and a servant in a land that was not theirs for four hundred years. So Stephen quotes the words again in Acts 7 : 6; while the four hundred and thirty years mentioned by Paul (Gal. 3 : 17) exactly agree with the statement in Exod. 12 : 40, 41, that such was the length of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt to a day, and are not, therefore, to be understood of the whole interval from Abraham to Moses. In spite, however, of the express assertion of the Book of Exodus, a different chronology is generally followed. For this the Septuagint led the way by rendering Exod. 12 : 40 as follows:—"The sojourning of the sons of Israel, which they sojourned in the land of Egypt (and in the land of Canaan), they and their fathers, was 430 years." But every scholar knows that the authors of the Septuagint had very strange ideas about the duties of translators, and altered the text without scruple whenever they thought they had a reason for it. Here their reason was that they hoped to avoid a difficulty. First it is said that Amram's wife was Jochebed, "a daughter of Levi, whom one bare to Levi in Egypt" (Num. 26 : 59). This, of course, only means that she was a Levite, and the impersonal manner in which the Hebrew says "whom one bare to Levi," is a confirmation of this. Levi plainly is the tribe of Levi, and not the patriarch. Literally understood, it makes Amram not merely marry his aunt, but an aunt of the respectable age of eighty-five at the least; while it further gives Moses no fewer than 8600 first cousins (Num. 3 : 28). Such are the results of tampering with the text of Scripture. To this we add a second similar reason. The genealogies generally give only four generations in Egypt. Thus—Levi, Kohath, Amram, Moses (Ex. 6 : 16-20). So again, Judah, Zerah, Zabdi, Carmi, whose son, Achan, in Joshua's time, stole some of the spoil of Jericho (Josh. 7 : 1). But these genealogies are merely compendiums, in which apparently, as a rule, one name is given for a century. They were legal documents, showing who was the representative of each branch of the families of the high chiefs of pure blood. Fortunately we have one full genealogy of no less a person than Joshua, and we find (1 Chron. 7 : 23-27) that this great prince of Ephraim was the twefih in descent from Joseph. One such genealogy settles the question; for we can account for the shorter forms, but not for the longer one. In fact, no one who studies the family histories given at the beginning of Chronicles can doubt that they are legal and technical formulae, representing rank and property, and not necessarily relationship. Nothing is more possible than that names are omitted in the genealogy even of David; and, in short, the chronology based upon these genealogies is as worthless as that based on Gen. 5. It is using these documents for a purpose for which they never were intended, and no amount of them would weigh against the plain assertion that the Israelites were in Egypt for a period of four hundred and thirty years, and that there were twelve generations between Joseph and Joshua. R. P. S.—The 400 years is plainly mentioned as a round sum; it was afterward more precisely and historically defined as 430 (Ex. 12 : 40, 41). From the juxtaposition of the 400 years and the fourth generation in the words to Abraham, the one must be understood as nearly equivalent to the other, and the period must consequently be regarded as that of the actual residence of the children of Israel in Egypt, from the descent of Jacob—not, as many after the Septuagint, from the time of Abraham. For the shortest genealogies exhibit four generations between that period and the exodus. Looking at the genealogical table of Levi (Ex 6:16 sq.), 120 years might not unfairly be taken as an average lifetime or generation; so that three of these complete, and a part of the fourth, would easily make 430. In Gal. 3:17 the law is spoken of as only 430 years after the covenant with Abraham; but the apostle merely refers to the known historical period, and regards the first formation of the covenant with Abraham as all one with its final ratification with Jacob. P. F. 14. And also that nation, etc.** How remarkably was this promise fulfilled, in the redemption of Israel from its bondage, in the plagues and destruction of the Egyptians, and in the immense wealth which the Israelites brought out of Egypt! Not a more circumstantial or literally fulfilled promise is to be found in the sacred writings. A. C. 15. Go to thy fathers.** This implies that the fathers, though dead, still exist. To go from one place to another implies, not annihilation, but the continuance of existence. The doctrine of the soul's perpetual existence is here intimated. Abram died in peace and happiness, one hundred and fifteen years before the descent into Egypt. M.—The death of Abraham is predicted in one of those remarkable phrases which seem to prove that the Hebrews were not unacquainted with the doctrine of immortality. Here the return of the soul to the eternal abode of the fathers is, with some distinctness, separated from the interment of the body: that both cannot be identical is evident; for while Abraham was entombed in Canaan, all his forefathers died and were buried in Mesopotamia; and the reunion of the spirits is in some passages expressed still more clearly by the term being "gathered to the fathers" after the fact of the death itself had been stated, and with a separate allusion to the act of sepulture (ch. 25:8, 9; 49:29, 33; Num. 20:24, 26; 31:2). Kalisch. 16. Iniquity of the Amorites.** The Amorites, the most powerful people in Canaan, are here put for the Canaanites in general. Their state of moral corruption is abundantly manifest in the early chapters of Genesis; and in the divine foreknowledge it was seen that they would add sin to sin, and so at length be destroyed by the divine vengeance. Still the long-suffering of God waited for them, giving time for repentance. Cook.—Here is Abram expressly told that, personally, he shall have no part in the enjoyment of the promised blessing, and that he will partake of it only in his descendants. The Amorites, who are here mentioned as being the most distinguished of the Canaanitish nations, are still an object of the Divine mercy: their measure must be first full,—the day of grace must have passed, before God punishes. Gert.—Israel cannot be possessed of Canaan, till the Amorites be dispossessed; and they are not yet ripe for ruin. The righteous God has determined that they shall not be cut off, till they have persisted in sin so long, and arrived at such a pitch of wickedness, that there may appear some equitable proportion between their sin and their ruin; and therefore till it come to that, the seed of Abram must be kept out of possession. The measure of sin fills gradually: those that continue impenitent in wicked ways are treasuring up unto themselves wrath. Some people's measure of sin fills slowly. H. 17. When it was dark, behold a flaming torch.** Abram awoke. The sun had set. Darkness of the starry night, a night without moon, fell upon the slaughtered sacrifices, and the solitary, awe-struck watcher. Then at last came, in the solemn stillness and silence that hushed all the camp, the awful act of ratification. For the first time since man left the gates of Eden, there appeared the glory of God—that luminous symbol of the divine presence with which the children of Abram were afterward to become familiar. What Moses was to witness as a burning but unconsumed bush, and the tribes as a pillar of cloud enwrapping fire, appeared now to Abram as a furnace with red flame at the heart of it, but sending up into the night a dense and lurid column of smoke. In the thick darkness this strange apparition glided along the narrow lane which divided the portions of the sacrifice; and thus, before the eyes of His human friend and ally, it pleased Jehovah in His condescension to bind Himself forever, as a man does, to the promises of His grace. Dykes. For the first time THE GLORY OF THE LORD (the Shechinah) appears in a symbol similar to that which was afterward seen by Moses in the burning bush, by the Israelites during their passage through the wilderness in the pillar of cloud and of fire, and in the tabernacle in the cloud above the mercy seat. As at a later period it was hid by the bush and by the cloud, so here it appears enveloped in a furnace (of the kind, more common in the East, shaped like a cylinder, at the upper opening of which fire, enveloped by smoke, bursts forth). It is the symbol of the gracious presence of God. We read here for the first time of a COVENANT into which God enters with Abram. All that had preceded, all the demands, promises, and leadings on the part of God, and all the obedience, faith, self renunciation, and self-reliance on the part of Abram, were only preliminary steps. But even the covenant now made is only partial, and requires completion. It is only partial, inasmuch as God only, and not Abram also, enters into and binds Himself by it. For only God and not Abram passed between the pieces of the sacrifice. By formally and solemnly entering into covenant, God gives Abram a pledge that His promise might be implicitly relied on, and at the same time a token to support his faith. For these purposes it is quite sufficient that God alone ratifies the covenant, nor does He yet require Abram solemnly to undertake the covenant obligations devolving on him. It is only afterward, when, on the ground of the engagement which God had in this covenant undertaken, the faith of Abram had become strong, and when the birth of the promised seed was nigh at hand, that giving and asking, on the part of God, go hand in hand, and that He calls upon the patriarch to ratify the covenant by solemnly undertaking its obligations. This takes place in the covenant of circumcision (chap. 17). Hence these two events condition and supplement each other. K. 18. The river of Egypt. "Sihor" and "the river of Egypt" are the same. And it appears from Jer. 2 : 18 that Sihor was the Nile. The Hebrew name, "Sihor," signifies "black," it is an apt epithet of the Nile, bringing down, with its flood, from Abyssinia, a rich, black, loamy sand, which fertilizes the lower Egypt. In the Ethiopian, Egyptian, Greek, and Hindoo languages, the Nile is distinguished by appellations, all of which signify "black." Hales.—From the river of Egypt (the Nile) . . . the river Euphrates. These two streams are here used as representative of the two great world-powers between which Israel should dwell. It is thus a prediction that the descendants of Abram should have an independent existence by the side of these two great empires, and that no nation should have any permanent sway between them and these two empires. So that their dominion may be said to reach from the Euphrates to the Nile. These two rivers are, moreover, constantly referred to in the later Scriptures, as the extreme boundaries of Israel. In its best days, the Israelitish dominion reached, to all intents, to Egypt, since all or nearly all the intervening powers were subject to David and Solomon. Gosman. It is estimated that the Bible contains the names of four thousand persons and places distributed through all the early ages, and over the surface of the whole earth as known to the ancients. Many of these persons and places have not been identified. But whenever a cylinder or tablet has been dug up, bearing one of these perished names, or the site of a buried city has been discovered, in no one instance has the testimony of Scripture been invalidated. We openly challenge and defy the unbeliever to produce, out of all the lands of the Bible, one dead man's name who is a myth, or one old ruin misplaced, aye, one out of the four thousand. In the controversy now waged over what the Bible says of the history, manners, customs and traditions of Egypt, Syria, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Palestine, Phoenicia, Greece, and Rome, the enemy will be defeated at every turn. He is already fairly driven off the field in Egypt, and wherever he attempts to make a stand over the whole vast region from Thebes to Mosul, the witnesses for the truth will spring up out of the earth and lay siege to his encampment. That entire domain, "from the river of Egypt to that great river, the river Euphrates," was given by covenant to Abraham and his seed for an everlasting possession. We, his spiritual seed, will in due time make good our title to it all; "for the inheritance is ours and the redemption is ours." E. P. Humphrey. # The Old Testament Covenant. The chief burden and central thought of the Old Testament is the plan of redemption adopted by Jehovah to be inaugurated and developed by means of a covenant with his own peculiar people. The covenant between Jehovah and his people is the pivot around which all the other thoughts and facts of the Old Testament circle, and in relation to which they find their importance and mission. Manifestly Old Testament theology has no profounder theme than the elucidation of the character and nature of this covenant, and its bearing and influence upon the whole spiritual, religious, and social life of those who lived under it, as also its connection with the covenant of the New Testament as established by Christ. The notion is not infrequently expressed, and still more frequently implied, that the basis of the Old Testament covenant is Mosaism; or, in other words, that the principle of righteousness in the old dispensation was a righteousness through the works of the law; and that the faithful, in order to be just before the Lord within this covenant, would have to earn this distinction by obedience. This view proceeds from the premises that Mosaism is identical with the Old Covenant and the Old Covenant with Mosaism. No error could do greater violence to the essence and spirit of the covenant than this identification. Mosaism is not the Old Covenant, nor is the Old Covenant the same as Mosaism. The error of identifying the two is that of making obedience to the law of Mount Sinai the basis of righteousness and justification in the pre-Christian dispensation. Paul (Rom. 4; Gal. 3: 6-14) appeals to the earlier revelation and history of God's kingdom on earth, to prove that the true righteousness before the Lord is the righteousness by faith alone. He adduces the accounts given by the Old Testament of those two men who were undeniably the best representatives of the spirit and character of the covenant between God and Israel, — namely, Abraham, the father of the faithful, and David, the man after God's own heart; and he shows that, according to these accounts, they were justified before God not on account of any obedience to the laws, but because they had faith in the promises of God. In other words, their righteousness was one of faith, and not one of works. He cites the words of Gen. 15: 6 as conclusive in Abraham's case; and he quotes David's own words in Ps. 32: 1, 2, to show that the great singer of the Old Covenant puts his trust and hope in God alone. The rest of the chapter (Rom. 4) is devoted to an elucidation, on the basis of Old Testament citations, of Abraham's case, and the apostle draws his conclusion in verse 22: "And therefore it (i.e., his faith) was imputed to him for righteousness." Abraham, then, the historical head, and, as acknowledged by revelation and the author of revelation, the most faithful exponent of the Old Testament covenant, was justified because he had faith in the promises of God. He is, argues Paul on scriptural basis, as is also David, a convincing proof, that, also under the old dispensation, acceptance before God, or, what is the same, righteousness and justification, was based not upon merit or worth, but upon faith and grace alone. Even after the law, he argues in Gal. 3, there were no changes in the covenant relation between God and his people, and all later generations of Abraham's children must be justified before God as was their father Abraham, — namely, by faith in the promises of redemption through Christ. Like all things in God's nature and God's kingdom, the covenant with Abraham was a growth. In chapter 17, which records events at least fourteen years later than those of chapter 15, the second stage of this covenant is depicted and, beside the re-announcement of the fundamental principles of the covenant, its sign, namely circumcision, is revealed to the patriarch, as also the theocratic line of descent established through Isaac, the promised son of Abraham and Sarah. In that chapter (v. 1) Abraham's covenant duty is put in these words, "Walk before me and be thou perfect," an injunction which presupposes and embraces in its compliance the confidence of faith which had been counted to Abraham as righteousness, and expresses rather the outward proof of the inward faith. Naturally this covenant relation is not developed in Abraham's case as it is in the time of the prophets, or under the new dispensation; but the cardinal principles and truths are there: it is a covenant of faith. The accounts in Genesis show how, in the cases of both Isaac and Jacob, the same covenant with the same conditions continued, with very little, if any, advance beyond the stage it had already reached, externally and internally, in the person of Abraham. As long as the covenant relation was an individual and a family relation its primitive status did not change, nor were the fundamental ideas developed by further revelations. We are not informed by the sacred records that the later patriarchs were further instructed as to the character and nature of this faith in God's providential guidance, nor that any higher theological or ethical truths in this connection were made known to them. Schodde. The history of the Old Covenant passes, from its commencement to its termination, through six stages. In the first stage it is only a family-history. During that period we are successively made acquainted with each of the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The twelve sons of the latter form the basis of the national development. In the second stage these twelve tribes grow into a people, which under Moses attains independence and receives its laws and worship. Under Joshua it conquers its country, while during the time of the Judges the covenant is to be further developed on the basis of what had already been obtained. The third stage commences with the institution of royalty. By the side of the royal office, and as a counterpoise and corrective to it, the prophetical office is instituted, which is no longer confined to iso- lated appearances, but remains a continuous institution. The separation of the one commonwealth into two monarchies divides this period into two sections. The fourth stage comprises the exile and return. Prophetism survives the catastrophe of the exile, so as to rearrange and to revive the relations of the people who returned to their country, and to open the way for a further development. The fifth stage, or the time of expectation, commences with the ces- sation of prophecy, and is intended to prepare a place for that salvation which is now to be immediately expected. Lastly, the sixth stage comprises the time of the fulfilment, when salvation is to be exhibited in Christ. The covenant-people reject the salvation so presented, the Old Covenant terminates in judgment against the covenant-people, but prophecy still holds out to them hopes and prospects for the future. K. 1. Now Sarai Abram's wife bare him no children : and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing ; go in, I pray thee, unto my handmaid ; it may be that I shall obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai. And Sarai Abram's wife took Hagar the Egyptian, her handmaid, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to Abram her husband to be his wife. And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived : and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes. And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee : I gave my handmaid into thy bosom ; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes : the LORD judge between me and thee. But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand ; do to her that which is good in thine eyes. And Sarai dealt hardly with her, and she fled from her face. And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, Sarai's handmaid, whence camest thou ? and whither goest thou ? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai. And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands. And the angel of the LORD said unto her, I will greatly multiply thy seed, that it shall not be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son ; and thou shalt call his name Ishmael, because the LORD hath heard thy affliction. And he shall be as a wild-ass among men ; his hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him ; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. And she called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou art a God that seeth : for she said, Have I even here looked after him that seeth me ? Wherefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi ; behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered. And Hagar bare Abram a son : and Abram called the name of his son, which Hagar bare, Ishmael. And Abram was fourscore and six years old, when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram. 1-3. We have here the marriage of Abram to Hagar, who was his secondary wife ; herein, though some excuse may be made for him, he cannot be justified ; for from the beginning it was not so ; and when it was so, it seems to have proceeded from an irregular desire to build up their families. Christ has reduced this matter to the first institution, and makes the marriage union to be between one man and one woman only. H.—Hagar probably came into Abraham's family during his sojourn in Egypt, and may have been one of the "maid-servants" presented by Pharaoh to the patriarch. Her name "Hagar," flight, or a fugitive, was one that accrued to her in process of time from the leading event in her history here recorded. Multitudes of similar instances occur in the sacred narrative. Her descendants were called "Hagarites" or "Hagarenes" (1 Chron. 5 : 10), rendered by the Gr. strangers. From her, by Ishmael, the Saracens and Arabs were descended, and the word "Hegira," applied to the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina, comes from the same root, or "Mohajerin," fellow-flyers, the name given by the false prophet to the companions of his flight. 2. The Lord hath restrained me from bearing. This acknowledgment is almost the only redeeming feature of Sarah's conduct. She owns God's providence in her childless condition, and yet well-nigh destroys the virtue of this confession by making the fact a plea for contriving some other means for the fulfilment of the promise! Bush.—"What a lively pattern do I see in Abraham and Sarah, of a strong faith and weak; of strong in Abraham, and weak in Sarah! She, to make God good of his word to Abraham, substitutes a Hagar; and, in an ambition of seed, persuades to polygamy. Abraham had never looked to obtain the promise by any other, if his own wife had not importuned him to take another. When our own apparent means fail, weak faith is put to the shifts, and projects strange devices of her own to attain her end." Bp. II.—The father of mankind sinned by hearkening to his wife, and now the father of the faithful follows his example. How necessary for those who stand in the nearest relations, to take heed of being snares, instead of helps, to one another! Fuller. 2. Obtain children. Heb. "be builded by her." A family is called a house, and so to beget children is to build. Gerl.—The possession of children, by which the house is built up, is looked on as a divine blessing from Gen. 1:28 onward. "From Jehovah" Eve obtains her first son; it is God who in Seth gave her another seed instead of the murdered Abel; it is always God who makes a mother fruitful or unfruitful (29:31; 30:2), and who will be entreated for the fruit of the body (25:21, etc.). Unfruitfulness is a heavy divine dispensation; childlessness is looked upon as the greatest misfortune to a house. Compare also such passages as Ps. 127:3; 128:3, where a fruitful wife and a group of happy and growing children are designated as the crown of earthly joy. Thus the natural forms of human society are sanctified from the beginning by the religious point of view under which they are placed. O. 3. The Hebrew word pilgash, here translated "wife," is frequently in other places rendered "concubine." It describes a wife of a second and inferior class. Such women were considered real wives, inasmuch as the connection was legal and customary; but the absence of certain solemnities and contracts of dowry marked the condition as inferior, though not in itself degrading. The children did not inherit the property of the father; who usually provided for them in his own lifetime, if he had sons by the principal wife or wives to claim the inheritance. We thus find Abraham providing for the sons of his concubines Hagar and Keturah. Things are still much the same in the East, where similar practices are legalized by the Mohammedan law. Pic. Bib.—In concubinage, these secondary wives were accounted lawful and true wives, and their issue was reputed legitimate; but they were inferior to the chief wife, having no authority in the family, nor any share in household government: so, if they had been servants in the family before they became concubines, they continued to be such afterward, and in the same subjection to their mistresses as before. Stackhouse. With respect to the manifestly imperfect moral standard, which in some cases is displayed in the characters and actions of good men in the Old Testament, it is manifest that had not our Lord himself vouchsafed his help, one of two things must have happened—either that we must have followed the old heresy of rejecting the Old Testament altogether, or else that our respect for the Old Testament must have impeded the growth of the more perfect law of Christ. The true solution I do not think that we could have discovered, or ventured to admit on less authority than our Lord's. But his express declaration, that some things in the law itself were permitted because nothing higher could then have been borne, and his stating in detail that in several points what was accounted good or allowable in the former dispensation was not so really, while at the same time he constantly refers to the Old Testament as divine, and confirms its language of blessing with respect to its most eminent characters, has completely cleared to us the whole question. T. Arnold. The promise of offspring had been made to Abram, and he believed the promise. It had not, however, been distinctly assured to him that Sarai should be the mother of the promised seed. The expedient devised by Sarai was according to a custom still prevalent in the east. Laws concerning marriage had not been so expressly given to the patriarchs as they afterward were. Yet the compliance of Abram with Sarai's suggestion may be considered as a proof of the imperfection of his faith; and it is justly observed, that this departure from the primeval principle of monogamy by Abraham has been an example followed by his descendants in the line of Ishmael, and has proved, morally and physically, a curse to their race. E. H. B.—God's promises are for Himself to fulfil in His own way, not for us to expedite in ours. The unhasting hope of the husband was a nobler and wiser reply to divine grace than the generous impatience of the wife. Still, Sarai's impulse, even if mistaken, was admirable for its unselfish abnegation of what is most precious to her sex. It was such a sacrifice as only a woman had it in her power to make. To seek by means of a female slave what Providence had denied to herself was regarded as neither immoral nor revolting. It was not even held to be any real departure from the law of monogamy, or any infraction of conjugal fidelity. But in most cases, as in the present instance, it could scarcely fail to turn out ill. Human nature will assert its instincts against whatever violence may be done to it by the artificial arrangements of society. Dykes. 4-6. We have here the immediate bad consequences of Abram's unhappy marriage to Hagar; a deal of mischief it made quickly; when we do not well, both sin and trouble lie at the door; and we may thank ourselves for the guilt and grief that follow us, when we go out of the way of our duty. See it in this story. H. 4. The Egyptian Hagar may well have proved a compliant and obeisant maid so long as she was not lifted above her place. But all the woman rose up in her when she believed herself about to become the mother of the desired heir. From the handmaid, she at once aspired to be the rival, of her mistress. Dykes. 5,6. As one not willing to hear what Abram had to say for the rectifying of the mistake, and the clearing of himself, she rashly appeals to God in the case, The Lord judge between me and thee; as if Abram had refused to right her. Thus does Sarai, in her passion, speak as one of the foolish women speaketh. H.—Abram's ill-judged compliance with the rash counsel of his wife has created an unpleasant state of feeling between him and her; it constrains him to connive at her cruel treatment of an unhappy woman, who is at least as much to be pitied as blamed; and renders the prospect of the promised seed a heavy affliction instead of a blessing. Sarah is betrayed by the eagerness of her spirit first into a culpable expedient; then into unkindness and undutifulness toward her lord; then into irreverence and impiety toward God; and finally, by an easy transition, into barbarity toward the hapless handmaid whom her own scheme had brought into a condition that claimed her utmost compassion and kindness. In what deep and accumulated woe, then, may one inconsiderate step involve the heedless: And if good and well-intentioned people suffer thus severely from one act of imprudence, who but must tremble to think of the fearful consequences of deliberate wickedness! A thousand volumes written against polygamy would not lead to a clearer, fuller conviction of the evils of that practice, than the story under review. Bush. Sarai's character showed itself under the provocation in a new and unpleasant light. Severe to her slave, she became unjust to her husband. A more magnanimous woman might have spared the sister whom she had herself thrust into a position of difficulty; but this Chaldean princess was not above showing unhandsome spite where her woman's pride had been touched to the quick. She made the girl's life so bitter, that at last Hagar fairly ran away from her master's encampment, and fled toward her native land of Egypt. Dykes.—The custom of the times scarcely warranted such a treatment. But Abram saw and felt it was the only way to domestic peace, and he took it. By Hagar's flight and the manner of her return, the mistress was softened—the maid for the time subdued. W. H. 7. The angel of Jehovah.** In many passages "the angel of God," "the angel of Jehovah," is a manifestation of God himself. Compare Gen. 22:11 with 12, and Ex. 3:2 with 6 and 14; where the "angel of Jehovah" is called "God" and "Jehovah," and accepts the worship due to God alone. Side by side with these expressions, we read of God's being manifested in the form of man; as to Abram at Mamre, to Jacob at Peniel, to Joshua at Gilgal. Apparently both sets of passages refer to the same kind of manifestation of the Divine Presence. Now, since "no man hath seen God" (the Father) "at any time," and "the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath revealed Him," the "Angel of the Lord" in such passages must be He, who is from the beginning the "Word," i.e. the Manifestor or Revealer of God, and these appearances must be "foreshadowings of the Incarnation." Barry.—[Read "The Theophanies," etc. at the close of this Section. Also note Sect. 49, v. 17.] 8. Hagar, Sarai's maid. This mode of address is used to show her that she was known; and to remind her, that she was the property of another. A. C.—9. Submit thyself.** Submission itself, though so hard, may be so accepted as to become useful in the mellowing and strengthening of character. The angel advised submission, and this is the first instance in which such advice is given in the Scriptures. It is a great Christian law, but it is early to find it in Genesis! "Submit yourselves one to another for the Lord's sake," is a lesson which Hagar heard "by a fountain of water in the wilderness" J. P. 10. Multiply thy seed.** We find in Gen. 25 a list of twelve princes, with their towns and castles. And in the 37th chapter we find the Ishmaelites already a great trading people. Afterward we find several multitudinous peoples mentioned among his descendants, as the Hagarenes, named from his mother Hagar; the Itureans, from his son Itur; the Nabatheans, from his son Nebaioth. And so onward in later times Strabo makes frequent mention of the Arabian phylarchs or rulers of tribes. And to this day they live and are ruled by tribes, and have continued as the Saracens and other Arabic peoples a great nation, almost as distinct as the Jews among the nations of the earth. Perhaps the Jews and the Arabs are the only peoples on earth who can trace back their pedigree for nearly 4000 years. S. R. 11. Ishmael signifies "God hears."** The first of the seven persons whose names are announced before their birth. The others were—Isaac, Solomon, Josiah, Cyrus, John, and Jesus. C. G. B.—For, says the Angel, the Lord hath heard thy affliction. Thus the name of the child must ever keep the mother in remembrance of God's merciful interposition in her behalf; and remind the child and the man that he was an object of God's gracious and providential goodness. Afflictions and distresses have a voice in the ears of God, even when prayer is restrained—but how much more powerfully do they speak when endured in meekness of spirit, with confidence in, and supplication to the Lord! A. C. 12. It is in the original a wild ass-man; meaning as wild as a wild ass: so that that should be eminently true of him which is affirmed of mankind in general, "Man is born like a wild ass's colt" (Job 11:12). The nature of the creature to which Ishmael is compared cannot be described better than in the same book (chap. 39:5, etc.), according to which Ishmael and his posterity were to be wild, fierce, savage, ranging the deserts, and not easily softened and tamed to society. And whoever hath read or known anything of this people, knoweth this to be their true and genuine character. His hand will be against every man. The one is the natural and almost necessary consequence of the other. Ishmael lived by prey and rapine in the wilderness; and his posterity have all along infested Arabia and the neighboring countries with their robberies and incursions. They live in a state of continual war with the rest of the world; and are both robbers by land and pirates by sea. Bp. Newton. Every man's hand against him. Many potentates among the Abyssinians, Persians, Egyptians, and Turks, have endeavored to subjugate the wandering or wild Arabs; but though they have had temporary triumphs, they have been ultimately unsuccessful. Sesostris, Cyrus, Pompey, and Trajan, all endeavored to conquer Arabia, but in vain. From the beginning, to the present day, they have maintained their independency; and God preserves them as a lasting monument of his providential care, and an incontestable argument of the truth of Divine Revelation. Had the Pentateuch no other argument to evince its divine origin, the account of Ishmael and the prophecy concerning his descendants, collated with their history and manner of life, during a period of nearly four thousand years, is an absolutely demonstrable argument. The country which these free descendants of Ishmael may be properly said to possess, stretches from Aleppo to the Arabian Sea; and from Egypt to the Persian gulf. A tract of land not less than 1800 miles in length by 900 in breadth. A. C. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. Shall tabernacle; for many of the Arabs dwell in tents, and are, therefore, called Senites, from a Greek word, signifying a tent. They dwell in tents in the wilderness as long ago as Isaiah's and Jeremiah's time (Is. 13:20; Jer. 3:2), and they do the same at this day. This is very extraordinary, that "his hand should be against every man, and every man's hand against him;" and yet that he should be able to "dwell in the presence of all his brethren;" but, extraordinary as it was, this also hath been accomplished both in the person of Ishmael and in his posterity. As for Ishmael himself, the sacred historian afterward relates (chap. 25:17, 18) that "the years of the life of Ishmael were an hundred and thirty and seven years, and he died in the presence of all his brethren." As for his posterity, they dwell likewise in the presence of all their brethren; Abraham's sons by Keturah; the Moabites and Ammonites, descendants of Lot; the Israelites, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; and the Edomites, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Esau. They still subsist a distinct people, and inhabit the country of their progenitors ; they have from first to last maintained their independency ; and, notwithstanding the most powerful efforts for their destruction, still dwell in the presence of all their brethren, and in the presence of all their enemies. Bp. Newton. From Havilah to Shur you behold him to-day, as roving and untamed as the wild ass, and dwelling in the presence of his brethren. "Until to-day the Ishmaelites are in undisturbed, free possession of the great peninsula lying between the Euphrates, the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea, from whence they have spread over wide districts in Northern Africa and Southern Asia" (Delitzsch). Ishmael has also become, according to this prophetic utterance, a great nation, and more than "twelve princes" have sprung from his stock. "Every addition to our knowledge of Arabia and its inhabitants," says Kalisch, "confirms more strongly the Biblical statements. While they have carried their arms beyond their native lands, and ascended more than one hundred thrones, they were never subjected to the Persian empire. The Assyrian and Babylonian kings had a transitory power over small portions of their tribes. Here the ambition of Alexander the Great and his successors received an insuperable check, and a Roman expedition in the time of Augustus totally failed. The Bedouins have remained essentially unaltered since the times of the Hebrews and the Greeks." Is it not one hundred and twenty millions that speak the Arabic tongue to-day? S. C. B.—This prophecy has photographed a national character which, for more than three thousand years, has continued unchanged. In all ages, historians have described the Bedouin Arab as a "wild man," or wild ass man ; as roving, predatory, engaged in ceaseless feuds with his neighbors, reckless of the milder restraints of civilization, and setting at defiance those international laws which regulate the intercourse of surrounding nations. The Ishmaelites or Arabians have ever held fast by the same country. Anchored in one land, they have swung over surrounding communities, only to settle, at last, in their own appointed territory, and to retain precisely the same characteristics. The "wildness," which in other tribes and nations has been first softened, then effaced, has, in their features, never been even lessened by the lapse of ages. Not dispersed by conquest, nor wasted by migration, they dwell still "in the presence of all their brethren," a strange national spectacle, utterly inexplicable by those laws which regulate other races. Comparatively fugitive and unstable as are the general characteristics of nations while the influences of centuries sweep over them as tidal waves on the shore, the Ishmaelites remain the same as when this strangely-expressed prophecy was first uttered by the angel of the Lord. The more powerful national influences, the attractions of fairer lands, and the luxury of indolent races, utterly failed to change in the least their characteristic features, during that splendid period when their empire extended from the borders of India to the Atlantic. Through all they stood forth a perpetual representation of the facts predicted in their history, and their present condition harmonizes with that of many ages ago. W. Fraser. Again and again have they been hunted down by invading armies ; but neither the Macedonian, nor the Roman, nor the Turk has been able to establish a settled rule over their inaccessible and inhospitable wastes. Again and again have their predatory hordes swept over adjacent states ; but neither have they been willing to exchange the free air of the desert for the restraints of a settled community. Broken up forever into petty tribes at endless feud with one another, the words of prophecy have actually grown into a proverb of their own : "In the desert," say the Bedouin, "every one is the enemy of every one else!" Most unchangeable of races, they dwell where they have always dwelt, "in the presence of all their brethren," stable in their instability, while empire has succeeded empire, and civilization has grown upon the ruins of preceding civilizations. With characteristic fidelity have their own unwritten traditions handed down the memory of their boasted descent from the "father of multitudes," through him whose birth was announced by the angel at the fountain. Dykes. 13. This Jehovah, Whom she knew as her master's friend, was, as she now confessed, a "God of vision." One Who could see, and could be seen. Not only had He seen her, a lonely fugitive by the desert well, far from the tents of men, but He permitted Himself to be seen of her in grace. Not only could He foresee the birth that was to be, with all its hidden issues in the long hereafter, but He could reveal to mortals what only the immortals know. Impressed by this discovery of God,—to her an unknown God till now—she conferred upon Jehovah a new name. "Thou art," said she, "the God of seeing," with the double sense underlying the words. For she said : "Here have I also seen, even after seeing Him!" To have beheld the self-revealing God, and yet live—this made to her mind the marvel of that hour. In after days the fountain is said to have received its name in recollection of the woman's words. Dykes. 14. Wherefore the well was called Beer-Inhal-roi.** That is, the well of the living that saw God. Medd.—“Well of the seeing to life;” i.e., a well, where man sees God and yet lives, and then at the same time is looked on by Him with grace, and blessed. Cf. ch. 32: 30: “P'ni el,” a place where one sees God's countenance and the soul is preserved. Ged.—“She called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, that is, thus she made confession of his name, this she said to his praise, Thou God seest me: this should be with her his name forever, and this his memorial by which she will know him and remember him while she lives, Thou God seest me. The God with whom we have to do is a seeing God, an all-seeing God. God is (as the ancients expressed it) all eye. We ought to acknowledge this with application to ourselves. He that sees all, sees me. H. The Christian does not think of God as a spy upon his actions, or resent the doctrine of His omnipresence as intrusive inquisitiveness, but he delights in the assurance that the Lord is by his side. The words, “Thou God seest me,” so often used as if they were a warning to the sinner, were first employed by Hagar as an expression of her gratitude for the appearance of God to her by the fountain on the way to Shur. They are not, therefore, expressive of alarm, but rather of delight; and every true believer can appropriate them in that sense. For the Lord is as near to those who love Him now as He was then to Hagar; and if we could only remember that, we should be delivered from despondency and encouraged to stand fast before all our spiritual adversaries. The child is not afraid to venture even in the darkest night when his father is by his side; and if we but realized that God is at our right hand, we should never be moved. For there is no help so available to us as His. With the speed of thought we may communicate with Him. With unspoken ejaculation we have but to lift our hearts to Him, and He will respond. To whom, then, are we so near as we are to Him? He is to those who love Him a constant companion, friend and protector, One with whom I can enjoy the sweetest fellowship, and from whom I may receive the richest blessings. W. M. T. God knows the thoughts which are incessantly streaming through every intellect, the lights and shadows that chase each other over every heart. Every corroding care, every restless anxiety, every glad hope, every pleasant remembrance, every half-formed purpose to do a just or kindly act, or to leave an acknowledged duty undischarged, every scheme of selfishness, every malignant impulse, all are known to him. If there were no angels for him to think of, if some dreadful pestilence suddenly swept away the whole human race except yourself, and left you and God absolutely alone in the universe, he would not know you more perfectly, or think of you more constantly than he does now. If there is something terrible in this, there is something inspiring and animating in it, too. If it makes us tremble when we think of our secret faults and sins, since he knows and remembers them all, it should give courage and energy to the attempt to live a life that God can approve and honor. We may have little to show for efforts which cost us much, but God knows what the efforts are. We may be baffled and defeated again and again, but God sees the heroic uprising of the soul after every disappointment and failure. The best we can do may attract no attention, win no praise; but if it is our best, God knows it, and he asks for nothing more. Dule. #### The Theophanies, or Manifestations of Jehovah The sixteenth chapter of Genesis introduces to us One Who, there and in many other places of the Bible, is pre-eminently entitled The Angel of the LORD. The unique grandeur of this Personage is distinctly marked in every instance in the Sacred Text. Dr. Pusey, speaking on this point, says, “Whether it were God the Son Who so manifested Himself beforehand—as was the common belief of the earliest fathers—His God-head invisible, as in the days of His flesh, or no, yet there was one known as the Angel of the LORD, distinct from and above all the rest.” He stands everywhere alone and unapproachable. There is but one so called; just as there is also but one in the Holy Scriptures who is called the Devil, the Satan, the Adversary. Further, in every place where the Angel of the LORD is introduced His divine character and dignity are also most clearly intimated. Who can this be but the Son of God, the Word of the Father? Medd. Throughout the whole of Old Testament there runs the distinction between the hidden God and the Revealer of God, Himself equal with God, who most frequently is called “the Messenger, the Angel of the Lord,” “Malachi-Jehovah,”—one with Him, and yet distinct from Him. This Messenger of the Lord is the Guide of the patriarchs; the Caller of Moses; the Leader of the people through the wilderness; the Champion of the Israelites in Canaan; and also, yet further, the Guide and Ruler of the people of the covenant; or, as He is called (Isa. 63 : 9), “the Angel of His Presence;” by Malachi, as the Messenger of the Covenant, greatly longed for by the people, whose return to His temple is promised. It nowhere occurs in the Old Testament, that an angel speaks as if he were God (since Gabriel (Dan. 10) and the angel who talks with Zechariah (1 : 2) clearly distinguish themselves from Jehovah); while this Angel of the Lord, in the passage under consideration, and often elsewhere in the Old Testament, speaks as Jehovah, and His appearing is regarded as that of the Most High God Himself. Nay, God says expressly of this Angel, “My name—i.e., My revealed Being—is in Him.” His name “Messenger,” or “Angel,” is to be taken in a general signification, and by no means as if it denoted a class of higher created beings. In the New Testament the expressions, “The Word,” “Son,” “Express Image,” “Brightness,” betoken the same, viz., the countenance turned to man, the Revealer of the invisible God. The future appearance on earth of the God-man is gradually prepared in the Old Testament in two ways: on the one hand, there is promised a mighty and glorious human Ruler over all (in later times called “Messiah,”—the Anointed of the Lord), to whom at the same time in His human nature, Divine names, attributes and works are ascribed; on the other hand, the personal distinction in the Godhead, the Revealer of the invisible God as a separate person, is more and more clearly made known. Gerl. We read in the Patriarchal history of various appearances of Angels so remarkable that we can scarcely hesitate to suppose them to be gracious visions of the Eternal Son. For instance: it is said that “the Angel of the Lord appeared unto” Moses “in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush;” yet presently this supernatural Presence is called “the Lord,” and afterward reveals His name to Moses, as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” On the other hand, Stephen speaks of Him as “the Angel which appeared to Moses in the bush.” Again he says soon after that Moses was “in the Church in the Wilderness with the Angel which spake to him in the mount Sinai;” yet in the Book of Exodus we read, “Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain;” “God spake all these words, saying,” and the like. Now, assuming, as we seem to have reason to assume, that the Son of God is herein revealed to us, as graciously ministering to the Patriarchs, Moses and others, in angelic form, the question arises, What was the nature of the appearance? We are not informed, nor may we venture to determine; still anyhow, the Angel was but the temporary outward form which the Eternal Word assumed. Newman. There is no abstract common angelic nature. Each angel is, from his first creation, perfect in his own personality, from which it follows that the Son of God could not have taken the angelic nature without superseding, indeed annihilating, the personality of some one particular angel; and the sin of the evil angels, who might seem to satisfy the condition of necessity, is irremediable. Thomas Aquinas. Nor is the office itself of an angel or announcer of the Father’s will unbecoming Him. In a word, God the Father could not have become an angel consistently with His prerogative as Father; for then He would have been sent by another, Who yet is indebted for His authority to no one. To the Son of God, however, both the name of God altogether belongs, as being most true God; and also the appellation of Angel, forasmuch as He is in such wise very God, as to be God of God, and was, therefore, capable of receiving and undertaking, consistently with the dignity of his person, the mission and dispensation committed to him by God, of whom he is. Bp. Bull. The New Testament distinguishes between the hidden God and the revealed God—the Son or Logos—connected with the former by one of the other, who from everlasting, and even at the creation itself, filled up the immeasurable distance between the Creator and the creation.—Who has been the Mediator in all God’s relations to the world.—Who at all times, and even before he became man in Christ, has been the light of the world, and to whom, specially, was committed the direction of the economy of the old covenant. It is evident that this doctrine stands in the closest connection with the Christology,—that it forms indeed its theological foundation and groundwork. . . . The question then is, Whether any insight into this doctrine is to be found as early as in the Books of the Old Testament. Sound Christian Theology has discovered the outlines of such a distinction between the hidden and the revealed God, in many passages of the Old Testament, in which mention is made of an Angel or Messenger of God. Hengstenberg (Christology of the Old Testament). Whatever line of interpretation be adopted with respect to the Theophanies, no sincere believer in the historical trustworthiness of Holy Scripture can mistake the importance of their relation to the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity. Do they not point in any case to a purpose in the Divine mind which would only be realized when man had been admitted to a nearer and more palpable contact with God than was possible under the Patriarchal or Jewish dispensations? Do they not suggest, as their natural climax and explanation, some personal self- unveiling of God before the eyes of his creatures? Would not God appear to have been training his people, by this long and mysterious series of communications, at length to recognize and to worship him when hidden under and indissolubly one with a created nature? Considering them as a series of phenomena, is there any other account of them so much in harmony with the general scope of Holy Scripture as that they were successive lessons addressed to the eye and to the ear of ancient piety, in anticipation of a coming Incarnation of God? H. P. L. It remains, then, that the grand initial oracle of Revelation is the true key to this mysterious appellation, "the Angel of the Lord"—namely, the plurality of persons in the Divine Nature, the very unity of which not only admits but requires such distinctions as this appellation implies. Their essential relations as Triune give rise to an order of agency and outgoing strictly conformable to, and in effect, expository of them, since all things are designed to manifest God to His creatures, and to glorify Him as He is. Hence, we can understand how the term Angel as well as the term Word may distinguish a person truly God, though these cannot be applicable to each person of the Godhead indiscriminately. He whose Angel this divine Person is must be supreme on the ground of personal priority to Him who is His Angel; and this order, therefore, cannot be arbitrary and invertible. This fact becomes fully manifest when the New Testament statements on this point are applied to elucidate the more vague and general statements of the Old. In them, personal relations are brought out, not only as consistent with the Unity, but as of its very essence. This shows us why the term Angel is used to denote the Mediating Deity; it belongs to Him as "the head of all principality and power." He is the Angel or Envoy, who is not only the head of a whole host of these "ministering spirits," but in a very peculiar sense the Minister of God on behalf of the world. It is His ministry that gives rise to every other, and that ordains and sets all these in motion. It is the vinculum or bond between "Him whom no man hath seen, nor can see," and the creatures made like Him, and to be restored to Him, by Him who is "become one of us." Thus, we see that Angel implies the position of a Mediator and all the prerogatives and works proper to Him, while it has this advantage over the term Word, that it is more strongly personal. It cannot be resolved into personification. It is also worth notice, that the passage in which the first mention occurs of "the angel of the Lord" is in the chapter immediately following the one opening with the first mention of the "Word of the Lord" in a sense undoubtedly personal, as if this collation of the terms Word and Angel were meant to form together an outset in the career of mediatorial personality, which from this point onward acquires increasing variety and fulness of expression; while the evidence before adduced is in proof that the functions any more than the office of the Mediator did not take date from this point, but connected the manifestations now referred to with the earliest times. It is but distinct personal development that now occurs; a fact which supposes official pre-existence just as certainly as it does a personal one, and in entire keeping with the germinant principle inherent in all the divine counsels and works, of which the history of Creation itself supplies a great example. Steward (Mediatorial Sovereignty). Thus we trace throughout the volume of the Old Testament the gracious intervention, from time to time, of the Son of God, the one Mediator, in the character of The Angel of the Lord, sent by the Father, and seen in human form by man, in waking life and in vision, in significant preparation for His permanent Incarnation. This great Presence, so clearly apprehended by the earlier Christian writers and Apologists, and, in later times, so largely admitted by the great majority of orthodox reformed, and especially English, biblical writers, lights up the whole previous Dispensation with a wonderful anticipation of the glorious future Gospel. It binds together, as nothing else does, the Old Testament in a compact unity with the New, giving a special strength and consistency to the great Revelation contained in the two. Read in the light of this bond of coherence, the great saying of Saint Augustine receives additional force and meaning, Novum Testamentum in vetere latet; Vetus Testamentum in novo paret; and, taking prophecy in its widest, truest sense, i.e. for the whole inspired utterance of the whole Bible as a historic Revelation, it is seen clearly that its spirit, its whole inner meaning and aim, is the bearing witness to Jesus, the Same in the yesterday of the Old Covenant, as in the to-day of the New. Medd. Views of ancient and modern writers. That the Angel of the Lord is the Logos of John, who is connected with the supreme God by unity of nature, but personally distinct from him, was, if we except Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great, the universal doctrine of the Early Church. The Fathers of the first Synod in Antioch (A.D. 269), in a letter sent to Paul of Samosata before his deposition, affirm that “the Angel of the Father, being himself Lord and God,” appeared to Abraham and to Jacob, and to Moses in the burning bush. Hengstenberg.—Two principal opponents of this view among the German biblical writers, Hofmann and Delitzsch, maintain the Angel of the Lord to be a created angel. Kurtz at first agreed with Hengstenberg, but afterward adopted the view of Hofmann and Delitzsch. Among later English writers the view maintained in these pages is held by Dr. Gordon, Christ as made known to the Ancient Church (Edinburgh, 1854); Canon Barry, Article Angel, in Smith’s Bible Dictionary, 1869; Macdonald, Introduction to the Pentateuch, 1861; Steward, Mediatorial Sovereignty, 1863; Dr. Walsh, Bishop of Ossory, in his very interesting work, The Angel of the Lord, or Manifestations of Christ in the Old Testament (Seeley, 1876); and the Speaker’s Commentary; also by the Danish Bishop of Seeland, Dr. H. Martensen, in his Christian Dogmatics, 1866. Medd. [Read note in Sect. 49, verse 17, for full outline of arguments on either side.] 1. AND when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said 2 unto him, I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my 3 covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. And Abram fell on his 4 face; and God talked with him, saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and 5 thou shalt be the father of a multitude of nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abraham, but thy name shall be Abraham; for the father of a multitude of nations have I made 6 thee. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings 7 shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and 8 to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land of thy sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. 9 And God said unto Abraham, And as for thee, thou shalt keep my covenant, thou, and thy 10 seed after thee throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 And ye shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of a 12 covenant betwixt me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every male throughout your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money 13 of any stranger, which is not of thy seed. He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised; and my covenant shall be in your flesh 14 for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant. 15 And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but 16 Sarah shall her name be. And I will bless her, and moreover I will give thee a son of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be of her. 17 Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born 18 unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear? And 19 Abraham said unto God, Oh that Ishmael might live before thee! And God said, Nay, but Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son; and thou shalt call his name Isaac; and I will establish 20 my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his seed after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee; behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year. And he left off talking with him, and God went up from Abraham. And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the selfsame day, as God had said unto him. And Abraham was ninety years old and nine, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. And Ishmael his son was thirteen years old, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. In the selfsame day was Abraham circumcised, and Ishmael his son. And all the men of his house, those born in the house, and those bought with money of the stranger, were circumcised with him. 1. A second time God appeared, to repeat His promises with greater explicitness than before, and to seal by a sacramental symbol His servant's adhesion to the covenant. In substance, the earlier promises to which God had bound Himself by the night ceremony thirteen years before were reiterated on this second occasion. But they were reiterated with an amplitude and completeness which had never been approached. I am God Almighty. By this time, a child of their marriage was become, according to the usual laws of life, a physical impossibility. It is no wonder that, when God designed to demand of His aged servants faith in so improbable an announcement, He should have prefaced the oracle by proclaiming as His new name EL SHADDAI—God the Almighty one. For the only key that will unlock such a difficulty as this—it is in effect the standing difficulty of our age, the presence of the supernatural among the sequences of nature—lies in these words of a greater than Abraham: “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.” “Is anything too hard for Jehovah,” if the Jehovah Who is Abraham’s God be indeed El Shaddai, the all-powerful Maker and Lord of nature, the quickener of all things, Who vivifies the dead, and calls the things that are not as though they were? Walk before me, and be thou perfect. God had chosen Abraham to be His friend. If Abraham accept such a lofty title, he must walk in friendship with God. Jehovah had pledged Himself to be the God of Abraham. If Abraham receive such a pledge, he must faithfully own and serve Jehovah as his God. A loyal, obedient, worshipful attitude toward this gracious Covenanter is implied in the very act of becoming a party to His covenant. Before the details of the divine engagement fall to be recited, the interview is prefaced by these words, which must be viewed as a summary of the whole in its outstanding lines: “I am EL SHADDAI: walk before me and be perfect, and I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly.” To “walk before the face or presence of God,” meant to order his daily life and behavior according to His will, so as to retain His friendly approval. To be “perfect” in this holy bond of amity meant to adhere to it with an undivided loyalty to the service of Jehovah Shaddai. Dykes. The words seem to imply that the realization of the Divine Presence in all things is the great secret of perfection; that is, of such perfection as man can by grace attain unto. But how shall we obtain an habitual assurance of a truth whereof our senses give us no notice whatever?—how shall we walk before God, as seeing Him who is invisible? In the same way by which all other results in the spiritual life are obtained,—by trustful, expectant, sanguine prayer, and effort. It is obvious that this very grace—mindfulness or consciousness of God’s presence—may be made the subject of special prayer, an answer to which, as in the case of every spiritual blessing which we petition for, should be looked for with confidence, on the ground of God’s promise to prayer. But then there is, besides this, the doing what in us lies to attain the end. And what in us lies is this,—to call the attention definitely to God’s presence, as occasion offers, at the necessary breaks or periods in our work, and the occasional mingling with the act of recollection two or three words of secret prayer which may suggest themselves on the moment. And it will be found in course of time, that the constant recurrence of the thoughts to God will pass into an instinctive consciousness of His presence and that the mind will acquire a tendency to gravitate toward Him at all times, which will operate easily and naturally as soon as it is relieved of the strain which worldly affairs put upon it. E. M. G. Communion with God consists chiefly in an ordering our ways as in the presence of Him that is invisible. This would make us spiritual, careful and watchful in all our passions, if we considered that God is present with us as with the angels in heaven; who though they have a presence of glory above us, yet have not a greater measure of His essential presence than we have. If God should appear visibly to us when we were alone, should we not be reverent and serious before Him? God is everywhere about us, He doth encompass us with His presence; should not God's seeing have the same influence upon us as our seeing God? He is not more essentially present if He should so manifest Himself to us than when He doth not. We could not seriously think of His presence, but there would pass some intercourse between us; we should be putting up some petition upon the sense of our indigence, or sending up our praises to Him upon the sense of His bounty. The actual thought of the presence of God is the life and spirit of all religion; we could not have sluggish spirits and a careless watch if we considered that His eye is upon us all day. Charnock. Walk before me, and be thou perfect, that is, upright and sincere; for herein the covenant of grace is well ordered, that sincerity is our gospel perfection. To be religious is to walk before God in our integrity; it is to set God always before us, and to think and speak and act in everything, as those that are always under his eye. It is to have a constant regard to his word as our rule, and to his glory as our end, in all our actions, and to be continually in his fear. It is to be inward with him, in all the duties of religious worship, for in them particularly we walk before God, and to be entire for him, in all holy conversation. Upright walking with God, is the condition of our interest in his all sufficiency. If we neglect him, or dissemble with him, we forfeit the benefit and comfort of our relation to him. A continual regard to God's all-sufficiency will have a great influence upon our upright walking with him. H. Those who profess to believe in him must not live as they list, but as he pleases. Though redeemed from the curse of the law and from the rites and ceremonies of the Jewish church, they are under the law to Christ, and must walk before him—be in all things obedient to that moral law, which is an emanation from the righteousness of God and of eternal obligation; and let it ever be remembered, that Christ is the author of eternal salvation to all that obey him. Without faith and obedience, there can be no holiness; and without holiness, none can see the Lord. Be all that God would have thee to be, and God will be to thee all that thou canst possibly require. He never gives a precept, but he offers sufficient grace to enable thee to perform it. Believe as he would have thee, and act as he shall strengthen thee; and thou wilt then believe all things savingly, and do all things well. A. C. 4-6. A most numerous and wide branching posterity was secured by the contract. Already it had been again and again promised—first in Haran, next at Bethel, and last at Mamre. The fullest expression was now given to it in these words: "Thou shalt be a father of many nations." Dykes.—Mark the increase and graduation of the divine promise. The seal to it is the new name, "Abraham,"—that is, father of a multitude (of nations). Even from Ishmael sprung a great people. The Edomites spread themselves abroad. Numerous families came from Keturah. From Jacob the twelve tribes and their descendants derived their origin, with all the numerous Abrahamids who, during eighteen centuries, have been incorporated into the Christian Church; and besides these, the spiritual Israel, to which the nations converted from heathenism to Christ also belong.—"And kings?" Saul and David, and their successors for centuries. Above all, we must not forget him who has said, "My kingdom is not of this world." C. G. B.—To be called "Father of a multitude" was not a reward attached to his confidence in the divine assurances, so much as a gracious attestation and memorial of them. It made it easier, so to say, to keep alive his confidence in the future, when the very name by which other men addressed him was itself a standing pledge of that future, given from Heaven. 7. Thus ran the wonderful words: "I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee." Here lay the heart and kernel of the whole. It is the heart of all the deepest experiences of the saints, from that day to this. It is the "blessing" which wraps up within it every other divine benefit, and makes our earthly boons to be blessings indeed. That God did bind Himself to act as God—their God—toward this man and his posterity; to bless them; to make them channels of blessing for mankind; to be all and do all for their advantage that a friendly, propitious God can do or be for His fallen human children;—here was the magnificent and quite inexhaustible treasure of this amazing treaty. Dykes. The promise to be a God to him and his seed could not have meant simply a covenant for his personal salvation; for this had been assured to him before when "he believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." Nor can it mean to be a covenant of natural blessings to his natural descendants, for in the covenant are included the household, embracing servants and all; while, on the other hand, many of his descendants, as the families of Ishmael and Esau, had no birthright in this covenant. The Apostle Paul expresses it fully by declaring that in this covenant Abraham was "the heir of the world," and the representative of all who in all ages after should exercise the faith of Abraham. If so, then the covenant to be their God and to make them a blessing indicates a purpose specially to dwell among, and manifest himself to, this peculiar body, and, through it, to manifest his grace to the nations. In short, here are all the elements of a definition of the visible Church; and this is the beginning of that peculiar society as a separate visible body on earth. Nor is this charter ever to be annulled. It is "an everlasting covenant." And though the term everlasting may, at times, be used in a limited sense, such cannot be the case here; for its blessings are to reach to all generations of him who is the representative father of the faithful. Under this charter Moses may develop the theocratic commonwealth, and David the theocratic kingdom, and these may pass away again—but still the covenant charter is not annulled. Just as, under the covenant of grace, the great fact of justification by faith may be exhibited, now in the simple sacrifices of Adam or Abel or Noah, or now in the elaborate ritual of Moses, or now in the simple ordinances of the New Testament, without thereby annulling or even impairing that covenant; so in the case of this great charter covenant of the Church. This covenant with Abraham is, therefore, the divine charter of the visible Church as heretofore and still existing. There is no other charter found in Scripture. Paul, in Rom. 3:29 and 4:11-17, and in Gal. 3:7-9, expressly declares that the New Testament Church of believers is the true successor to the covenant with Abraham. S. R. The wonderful argument in Gal. 3:16-29 proves the identity of the system of grace in the Old Testament and the New. The gospel is, in reality, older than the law. When Jehovah entered into a covenant with Abraham to bless all nations in his seed, that promise looked forward to Christ. Between the giving of the promise and its fulfilment, the law came in as a means of training and discipline. It was our schoolmaster, or, more exactly, our pedagogue,—the name given to a guardian who every day led the child to the teacher, and kept him under proper restraint in going and coming. So the law led to Christ; and this in two ways: its commands caused men to realize the failure of self-made righteousness, of attempts at character; and its sacrifices fixed in the human mind and in human speech the idea of an atonement. With the coming of Christ, the Jewish system, with all that was local or national or typical in it, passed away; but the original platform of the gospel remained. J. P. T.—To this hour there is for none of us any standing more secure or blessed. That covenant with Abraham is in essence the new covenant of our peace, which has been sealed by the blood of Abraham's seed. Dykes. 10-14. The covenant of circumcision, which was made with Abraham after the birth of Ishmael, and the change which took place in his name, brought out with a quite new force the truths which he had been gradually apprehending before. That covenant, like the covenant with Noah, was one not of bargain, but of blessing. It was an assurance, that he who entered into it was called, chosen, set apart by God. He had not taken up the position himself; his business was simply to acknowledge that it was his, and to act as if it were. But, unlike the former covenant, man was to make the sign; the sign was a perpetual indication to him that he must give up his own natural inclinations if he would be a true man according to God's call and purpose. It taught Abraham a truth about himself which the rainbow could not teach him. Yet he only acquired this wisdom through an ordinance which concerned every member of his household, and all who were to come after him, as much as it concerned him. Maurice. And thou. On the earlier occasion (13 years before, Gen. 15) it was the Divine Party in the covenant Who, as the gracious originator of it, bound Himself to its observance by a solemn ceremony,—the passage of the glory between the sacrifices. Now it was His human friend, elevated to the dignity of a covenanter with God, who was called upon to accept his share of obligation, and bind himself to its performance by a parallel ceremony—the symbolic rite of circumcision. It has to be noted with care, that not until the promises of God had all been for a long while accepted by the tacit faith of the patriarch, did he receive any command touching circumcision. To this order in the events Paul calls attention as significant (Rom. 4 : 9). Faith precedes the sacramental seal; and the man's acceptance in God's sight as His covenanted friend hangs upon his faith, and is synchronous with that, not with his circumcision. The sign which attested on man's side his adhesion to the alliance and his acceptance of the blessing, was no more than "a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had, yet being uncircumcised." It is the uniform order of the divine dealings with fallen man. Grace comes first; for God must volunteer the blessing which through sin we have forfeited. Dykes. 11. Token of a covenant.** All theocratic ordinances are in general signs and pledges of the covenant relation. But the main sign of the covenant is circumcision, which is the constant symbol of covenant obligations, and of consequent covenant rights. O.—Its first and most obvious design was to serve as a sign of the covenant into which the posterity of Abraham were, in the person of their father, to enter; or in other words, to fix upon the persons of all his natural descendants a distinguishing mark, separating them from the rest of the world and denoting their peculiar relation to the true God. There are expressions of Scripture which show that this rite imported the highest degree of sanctification and holiness. Moses repeatedly speaks of the "circumcising of the heart to love the Lord with all our heart and all our soul" (Deut. 10 : 16 ; 30 : 6). And the prophet Jeremiah's language is singularly emphatic (Jer. 4 : 4). It served also to Abraham and his seed as a memorial of their engagements. When they submitted to this ordinance, whether it were in infancy or at an adult age, they were no longer to consider themselves their own or at their own disposal, but as dedicated to the service of their God. Paul instructs us to consider it as "a seal of the righteousness of faith," inasmuch as it shadows out a circumcision of the heart, which is an inward seal that the sinner is justified by faith as Abraham was. Bush. For Abraham and Israel alone circumcision was divinely commanded, and established as a covenant-sign. And because God actually did enjoin it, it here appears a sacred institution, which was destined to endure until the Lord should establish a higher covenant-sign, and, in place of the circumcision of the flesh, should divinely appoint that of the heart, which the former prefigured, and which enlarged means of grace rendered more attainable. Its object and significance is no doubt cleansing, moral purity—purity or circumcision of heart; the outward, as in baptism, being the emblem of the inward. C. G. B. Viewed in its negative bearing, circumcision, as introduced in the family of Abraham, implied a symbolical removal from generation of what was unholy and impure; viewed positively, it conveyed a symbolic dedication and setting apart thereof for Divine purposes, in and through the covenant. For in this manner the covenant people is called into being and continued, and this people is to be a holy and a priestly nation (Ex. 19 : 5 and 6). This is the objective import of circumcision, the ground on which God insists upon it. Its subjective aspect, the ground on which Abraham administered the rite to himself and to his family, was, that thereby man falls in with the Divine covenant-idea and undertakes the covenant obligations devolving on him. Thus circumcision becomes a sign and seal of the covenant, i.e., it makes every one who has submitted to it a partaker of the privileges, and demands at his hands fulfilment of the duties connected with the covenant. And because not only the abstract and ideal totality of the people, but every single individual, shares in the covenant privileges and obligations, he must also personally have part in the covenant and take its sign upon himself. If even the generation of the covenant people is to be sanctified and devoted to covenant-purposes, it follows, as matter of course, that their whole life, which commences with this generation, is to be set apart for these objects (Rom. 11 : 16), to subserve and to advance them. The child begotten in circumcision is thereby sanctified for the covenant (1 Cor. 7 : 14), and this is realized when in turn it undergoes circumcision. Circumcision, which is to remove the growth of nature—that which is unholy and impure—from the principle and source of life, is, so to speak, to extend its power and influence through all the ramifications of life. It implies the obligation of withdrawing all the other relations of life from the dominion of nature, of circumcising the foreskin of the heart, of the lips, of the ear, and of devoting heart and mind to the duties and purposes of the covenant. K. Circumcision may be called, with Ewald, "the offering of the body." It does not operate as an individual means of grace. Circumcision is no vehicle of sanctifying forces, as it makes no demand in reference to the internal state of the recipient. The rite effects admission to the fellowship of the covenant people, securing to the individual as a member of the nation his share in the promises and saving benefits granted to the nation as a whole. On the other hand, circumcision binds him who was received it to obedience to God, whose covenant sign he bears in his body and to a blameless walk before him. Thus it is the symbol of the renewal and purification of heart. This signification of the rite is in the Old Testament specially brought out in the use of the phrase, uncircumcision of heart, to denote a want of receptivity for the things of God; while, on the other hand, the purification of the heart by which it becomes receptive for the things of God and capable of executing God's will, is called circumcision of the heart. With circumcision was combined the naming of the child, which although it is first expressly mentioned in Luke 1:59; 2:21, is clearly indicated by the connection of Gen. 17:5 with what follows and 21:3 f. By this it is signified that his name expresses his having a place in the divine covenant. How frequently the giving of a name was in Israel an act of religious confession, is seen in the meanings of numerous biblical proper names. O.—Circumcision taught that what is born of the flesh can only be flesh. It suggested that it is by the painful renunciation of fleshly desire and natural self-confidence, man must be surrendered to God's service as His fit instrument for gracious ends. It was like a symbol carved upon the very flesh of Abraham, to tell him that his entire being, even in its merely animal basis of physical desires and physical powers, was claimed for the service of that God Who had called him to be His friend. Dykes. In later times, when the children of Israel had grown into a distinct people, and everything was placed under the strict administration of law, it was always left open to people of other lands and tribes to enter into the bonds of the covenant through the rite of circumcision. This rite, therefore, must have had a significance for them, as well as for the more favored seed of Jacob. It spoke also to their hearts and consciences, and virtually declared that the covenant which it symbolized had nothing in its main design of an exclusive and contracted spirit; that its greater things lay open to all who were willing to seek them in the appointed way; and that if at first there were individual persons, and afterward a single people, who were more especially identified with the covenant, it was only to mark them out as the chosen representatives of its nature and objects, and to constitute them lights for the instruction and benefit of others. There never was a more evident misreading of the palpable facts of history than appears in the disposition so often manifested to limit the rite of circumcision to one line merely of Abraham's posterity, and to regard it as the mere outward badge of an external national distinction. It is to be held, then, as certain in regard to the sign of the covenant as in regard to the covenant itself, that its more special and marked connection with individuals was only for the sake of more effectually helping forward its general design. And not less firmly is it to be held that the outwardness in the rite was for the sake of the inward and spiritual truths it symbolized. It was appointed as the distinctive badge of the covenant, because it was peculiarly fitted for symbolically expressing the spiritual character and design of the covenant. It marked the condition of every one who received it, as having to do both with higher powers and higher objects than those of corrupt nature, as the condition of one brought into blessed fellowship with God, and therefore called to walk before Him and be perfect. When God was establishing a covenant, the great object of which was to reverse the propagation of evil, to secure a seed that should be itself blessed, and a source of blessing to the world, He affixed to the covenant this symbolical rite—to show that the end was to be reached, not as the result of nature's ordinary productiveness, but of nature purged from its uncleanness—nature raised above itself, in league with the grace of God, and bearing on it the distinctive impress of His character and working. It taught the circumcised man that he must no longer follow the unregulated will and impulse of nature, but live in accordance with the high relation he occupied, and the sacred calling he had received. Most truly, therefore, does the apostle say that Abraham received circumcision as a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had—a divine token in his own case that he had attained through faith to such fellowship with God, and righteousness in him—and a token for every child that should afterward receive it; not indeed that he actually possessed the same, but that he was called to possess it, and had a right to the privileges and hopes which might enable him to attain to the possession. Most truly also does the apostle say in another place: "He is not a Jew which is one outwardly (i.e., not a Jew in the right sense, not such an one as God would recognize and own); neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God." The very design of the covenant was to secure a seed with these inward and spiritual characteristics; and the sign of the covenant, the outward impression in the flesh, was worthless, a mere external concision—as the apostle calls it, when it came to be alone—excepting in so far as it was the expression of the corresponding reality. . . . The children of Israel had no right to the benefits of the covenant merely because they had been outwardly circumcised; nor were any promises made to them simply as the natural seed of Abraham. Both elements had to meet in their condition, the natural and the spiritual; the spiritual, however, more especially, and the natural only as connected with the spiritual, and a means for securing it. Hence Moses urged them so earnestly to circumcise their hearts, as absolutely necessary to their getting the fulfilment of what was promised. . . . It may also be noted, that by this quite natural and fundamental view of the ordinance, subordinate peculiarities admit of an easy explanation. For example, the limitation of the sign to males—which in the circumstances could not be otherwise; though the special purifications under the law for women might justly be regarded as providing for them a sort of counterpart. Then, the fixing on the eighth day as the proper one for the rite—that being the first day after the revolution of an entire week of separation from the mother, and when fully withdrawn from connection with the parent's blood, it began to live and breathe in its own impurity. P. F. 14. The uncircumcised shall be cut off.** The entrance into this covenant was not voluntary. None of Abraham's posterity could withdraw from the grace which, by means of this covenant, was bestowed on the whole people, and through them on the whole world. The punishment of "being cut off from his people," which God threatens on the neglect of circumcision, occurs very frequently afterward, under the law, as the penalty for very grievous crimes. This punishment is a threatening, on God's part, that all the evil should overtake the transgressor, from which, through God's covenant, he was defended. Gerl.—The simple meaning seems to be, that the uncircumcised should have no right to nor share in the blessings of the covenant, which were both of a temporal and spiritual kind; and if so, then eternal death was implied; for it was impossible for a person who had not received the spiritual purification to enter into eternal glory. The spirit of this law extends to all ages and dispensations—he whose heart is not purified from sin cannot enter into the kingdom of God. A. C. 5. Thy name shall be Abraham.** 15. Sarah her name shall be.** It certainly has a peculiar meaning, that when we enter on the second stage in the life of the chosen, the names of Abraham and his wife should be changed. This, as it were, is a symbol and an earnest of the new thing which the Lord is to bring forth. For "the name indicates the character." It is the motto for the new path of life opening before them. K. 17. Abraham fell upon his face and laughed.** From the reverential attitude assumed by Abraham we infer that his laughter sprang from joyful and grateful surprise. Said in his heart. The following questions of wonder are not addressed to God; they do not express doubt of the fulfilment of the promise, but surprise at the unexpected mode in which it is to be fulfilled. M.—It was a laughter of delight, not of distrust. Even the promises of a holy God, as well as his performances, are the joys of holy souls; there is the joy of faith as well as the joy of fruition. Now it was that Abraham rejoiced to see Christ's day; now he saw it and was glad (John 8 : 56), for as he saw heaven in the promise of Canaan, so he saw Christ in the promise of Isaac. He does not here speak as at all doubtful (for we are sure that he staggered not at the promise), but as very wonderful, and that which could not be effected but by the almighty power of God. H. 18. In that plaintive, clinging cry of fatherhood, "Oh that Ishmael might live before Thee!" one hears with what a painful reading of heart the man tore himself loose from the anticipations of a dozen years, to school himself into the expectation of a gift, new, strange, and unheard-of—the gift of a miraculous child. Dykes.—Even so—responds the great parental heart of God—I know the heart of a parent; therefore I said "I will be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee;" not to thee alone but to thee, and also, not less, to thy beloved offspring besides. I have heard thee, for Ishmael! H. C. 19. Temporal blessings were assured to Ishmael, in answer to Abraham's earnest prayer; but the covenant was "established with Isaac." He is emphatically called the child of the promise and Ishmael the child of the flesh by the Apostle Paul, who carries out the contrast in a very remarkable passage (Gal. 4 : 21-31). Ishmael's share in the temporal promise was confirmed by his circumcision; and the rite is still observed by the Arabs and other Semitic races. P. S. 20. Twelve princes shall be beget.** This circumstance is particular, but it was fulfilled. Moses hath given us the names of these twelve princes (chap. 25: 13-16), by which we are to understand, not that they were so many distinct sovereign princes but heads of clans or tribes. Heathen writers speak of the Arabian phylarchs, or rulers of tribes; and of that people having twelve kings over them. The people have ever since lived in tribes; and still continue to do so, as Thevenot and other modern travellers testify. . . . It was somewhat wonderful and not to be foreseen by human sagacity, that a man's whole posterity should so nearly resemble him, and retain the same inclinations, the same habits, and the same customs, throughout all ages! These are the only people, besides the Jews, who have subsisted as a distinct people from the beginning; and in some respects they very much resemble each other. 1. The Arabs, as well as the Jews, are descended from Abraham, and both boast of their descent from the father of the faithful. 2. The Arabs, as well as the Jews, are circumcised, and both profess to have derived this ceremony from Abraham. 3. The Arabs, as well as the Jews, had originally twelve patriarchs, who were their princes or governors. 4. The Arabs, as well as the Jews, marry among themselves, and in their own tribes. 5. The Arabs, as well as the Jews, are singular in several of their customs, and are standing monuments to all ages, of the exactness of the divine predictions, and of the veracity of Scripture history. We may, with more confidence, believe the particulars related of Abraham and Ishmael, when we see them verified in their posterity at this day. This is having, as it were, ocular demonstration for our faith. Bp. Newton. 21. My covenant will I establish with Isaac.** All temporal good things are promised to Ishmael and his posterity, but the establishment of the Lord's covenant is to be with Isaac. Hence it is fully evident, that this covenant referred chiefly to spiritual things—to the Messiah, and the salvation which should be brought to both Jews and Gentiles by his incarnation, death, and glorification. A. C.—My spiritual covenant; my everlasting covenant. As for the temporal covenant, or promise, Ishmael was made as much partaker of it as Isaac; and so was Esau as well as Jacob. Bp. Wilson—Paul points out a material difference between these two sons of Abraham. He says that Ishmael, the son of the bond-woman, was born only according to the flesh, in the common course of nature; but that Isaac was born by virtue of the promise, and by the particular interposition of the Divine power: and that these two sons of Abraham were designed to represent the two covenants of the Law and of the Gospel; the former a state of bondage, the latter of freedom (Gal. 4). Bp. Tomline. 22. God went up from Abraham.** Ascended evidently before him so that he had the fullest proof that it was no human being, no earthly angel or messenger, that talked with him: and the promise of a son in the course of a single year, at this set time in the next year (ver. 21), which had every human probability against it, was to be the sure token of the truth of all that had hitherto taken place; and the proof that all that was further promised should be fulfilled in its due time. A. C. 23-27. Abraham executes the divine command first upon Ishmael, whose descendants (the Arabs) still perform the rite at the age of thirteen; next upon his servants, both those born in his house, and those bought ("with his money of any stranger, not of his seed," ver. 12), and lastly upon himself (ver. 26), being now no less than ninety-nine years old. We may infer from the execution of this order how greatly Abraham was reverenced by his family, his authority over them, and the excellent discipline he maintained among them. How punctual also his obedience: "on the self-same day!" C. G. B.—Abraham fulfils the Divine command in the obedience of faith. Here was the sign of his unwavering faith in God's promise and covenant. However momentary doubt may have dimmed his spiritual sight, the direct assurance from God clears it again. He hesitates not to perform the painful operation on himself and all in his house. Nor is there the slightest delay. It is done "the self-same day." A. F.—It was a speedy obedience. Sincere obedience is not dilatory. While the command is yet sounding in our ears, and the sense of duty is fresh, it is good to apply ourselves to it immediately, lest we deceive ourselves by putting it off to a more convenient season. It was an universal obedience; he did not circumcise his family and excuse himself, but set them an example; nor did he take the comfort of the seal of the covenant to himself only, but desired that all might share with him in it. H. Ever since those days has the sign of circumcision remained to bear testimony to the covenant with Abraham. On the eighth day, as the first full period of seven has elapsed, a new period is, as it were, to begin; and each Jewish child so circumcised is a living witness to the transaction between God and Abraham more than three thousand years ago. A. E. As the sense of the passover covenant, expressive of faith in the atoning blood of the Lamb from a prophetic standpoint, in eating the flesh and sprinkling the blood, was modified to express faith in the atoning blood from a historic standpoint, by eating the bread, symbolizing the broken body, and drinking the wine, symbolizing the shed blood of the Lamb of God;—so circumcision, the seal of the covenant with Abraham organizing the Church, was changed—from the act symbolizing from a prophetic standpoint, faith's longings and hopeful trust in divine power for the cutting off the sins of the flesh—to the act of washing with water, symbolizing from a historic standpoint, faith contemplating the divine power to regenerate and purify, given in the outpouring of the Spirit. Just as the Lord's Supper is simply a New Testament modification of the passover seal of the covenant through Moses to redeem the Church by his blood, so the ordinance of baptism is but the New Testament modification of the seal of circumcision appended to the covenant with Abraham organizing the visible Church. S. R. The relation between circumcision and baptism is not properly that of type and antitype; the one is a symbolical ordinance as well as the other, and both alike have an outward form and an inward reality. It is precisely in such ordinances that the Old and the New Dispensations approach nearest to each other, and, we might almost say, stand formally upon the same level. The difference does not so much lie in the ordinances themselves, as in the comparative amount of grace and truth respectively exhibited in them—necessarily less in the earlier, and more in the later. The difference in external form was in each case conditioned by the circumstances of the time. In circumcision it bore respect to the propagation of offspring, as it was through the production of a seed of blessing that the covenant, in its preparatory form, was to attain its realization. But when the seed in that respect had reached its culminating point in Christ, and the objects of the covenant were no longer dependent on natural propagation of seed, but were to be carried forward by spiritual means and influences used in connection with the faith of Christ, the external ordinance was fitly altered, so as to express simply a change of nature and state in the individual that received it. The apostle makes use of the earlier rite to explain the symbolical import of the later, and describes the spiritual change inindicated and required by it as "a putting-off of the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ," and "having the uncircumcision of the flesh quickened together with Christ." It would have been travelling entirely in the wrong direction, to use such language for purposes of explanation in Christian times, if the ordinance of circumcision had not shadowed forth this spiritual quickening and purification even more palpably and impressively than baptism itself; and shadowed it forth, not prospectively alone for future times, but immediately and personally for the members of the Old Covenant. For the outward putting away of the filth of the flesh in circumcision could never have symbolized a corresponding inward purification for the members of the New Covenant, if it had not first done this for the members of the Old. The shadow must have a substance in the one case as well as in the other. Such being the case as to the essential agreement between the two ordinances, an important element for deciding in regard to the propriety of infant baptism may still be derived from the practice established in the rite of circumcision. The grand principle of connecting parent and child together for the attainment of spiritual objects, and marking the connection by an impressive signature, was there most distinctly and broadly sanctioned. And if the parental bond and its attendant obligations be not weakened, but rather elevated and strengthened, by the higher revelations of the Gospel, it would be strange indeed if the liberty at least, nay, the propriety and right, if not the actual obligation, to have their children brought by an initiatory ordinance under the bond of the covenant, did not belong to parents under the Gospel. The one ordinance no more than the other insures the actual transmission of the grace necessary to effect the requisite change; but it exhibits that grace—on the part of God pledges it—and takes the subject of the ordinance bound to use it for the accomplishment of the proper end. Baptism does this now, as circumcision did of old; and if it was done in the one case through the medium of the parent to the child, one does not see why it may not be done now, unless positively prohibited, in the other. . . . It is not in respect to the soul's inward and personal state, that either ordinance can properly be called initiatory (for in that respect blessing might be had initially without the one as well as the other), but in respect to the person's recognized connection with the corporate society of those who are subjects of blessing. This begins now with baptism, and it began of old with circumcision : till the individual was circumcised, he was not reckoned as belonging to that society ; and if passing the proper time for the ordinance without it, he was to be held as ipso facto cut off. Under both covenants there is an inward and an outward bond of connection with the peculiar blessing : the inward faith in God's word of promise (of old, faith in God ; now more specifically, faith in Christ) ; the outward, circumcision formerly, now baptism. Yet the two in neither case should be viewed as altogether apart, but the one should rather be held as the formal expression and seal of the other. P. F. In this covenant charter to Abraham a principle common to all the covenants pertaining to the work of redemption, the principle of family representation, stands out with peculiar prominence. While the scriptures, everywhere, especially guard us against the error of supposing that the blessings of salvation, according to the covenant of grace, have respect to natural descent, or that men born again are born "of blood, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man," or any other than "born of God ;" yet, on the other hand, special prominence is given to the fact, that in the out-working, in time, of the scheme of redemption, the children of those who are themselves parties to the covenants of God have a birthright to the privileges and the penalties of those covenants. Thus, by virtue of the penalty of the broken covenant of works with Adam, every child born of the race of Adam is born to die. By virtue of the covenant of redemption with Christ, as the second Adam, every mortal that dies must rise again from the dead. Under the covenant of grace with Adam, when there was to be a destruction of the race by water, God said unto Noah, "Come thou and all thy house into the ark, for the have I seen righteous ;" and for the righteousness of Noah, even the scoffing Ham is sheltered from the impending doom. Under the covenant with Noah, not to destroy again with a flood, every child descended from Noah to the end of time has a birthright in that guarantee promise. Under the covenant with David, his male offspring, in every succeeding generation, had a birthright claim to the throne of Israel, to which even their unfaithfulness could prove no bar ; the reason assigned for not rejecting the unworthy apostates, as Saul was rejected, is—"the oath which I swear to David." In several careful repetitions that principle is made to stand forth pre-eminently in this covenant with Abraham. His children, in successive generations, are recognized as having a birthright, not only in its general privileges, but as born members of the great visible community which this covenant, as a charter, founds and organizes ; and it is commanded that they be formally recognized as citizens by birth, by affixing, through their parents for them, their signature, and the seal to this covenant. And so intimate a part of the structure is this principle, that no matter what extent of meaning be given to the covenant, this principle must go into that meaning ; and no matter what enlarged degree of development of the covenant, this principle must go into that development. Here, then, far back at the very root of the visible Church, and fundamental in its charter, we find the rights of our children to a place with us in the Church, as Christ's spiritual commonwealth. S. R. Listen to the covenant : "He that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you." Mark how this renewal of the covenant turns upon the consecration of children. God did appoint circumcision for the child eight days old ! Christian baptism is founded upon this very covenant. Abraham was ninety-and-nine years old when he was circumcised, Ishmael his son was thirteen years old, and then came the infant men children. So in heathen countries, the man is baptized, and the woman, and the child of days. We plead Divine precedent. Whatever objections stand against baptism stand against circumcision, and, therefore, stand against God. The child does not understand the alphabet, do not teach it ; the child does not understand language, do not teach it ; the child does not understand the Lord's Prayer, do not teach it. You say the child will understand by and by ; exactly so ; that answer is good ; and by and by the child will understand that it was baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, three persons in one God. Beautiful, too, is Christian baptism when regarded as the expansion of the idea of circumcision. It well befits a tenderer law ; circumcision was severe ; baptism is gentle : circumcision was limited to men-children ; baptism is administered to all : circumcision was established in one tribe, or family, or line of descent ; baptism is the universal rite.—Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. So we go from law to grace ; from Moses to the Lamb ; from the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, to the quiet and holy Zion. J. P. When the Son of God came to earth he found a church existing. Of that church not only up-grown believers, but their little ones, were members. That Church, with all its faults of administration, was still the Church of God, and the Lord Jesus joined it, and he joined it in his infancy. True, he himself set up another Church, but that other Church was virtually an expansion and a spiritualization of the old one. There was still a chosen generation,—a holy nation, a peculiar people, a royal priesthood,—and the question just is, “Are the privileges of the Christian Church equal to those of its Hebrew predecessor? Federally, in respect of a covenant relation to God, is the child of a New Testament believer on as good a footing as the child of an Old Testament saint; and in joining Christ’s Church, with its new and better promises, may I claim as much for my children as in joining the old church of Moses?” Remember that Christ’s charge, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them,” was addressed to Hebrew apostles. It was addressed, that is, not to Gentiles nor to anti-pedobaptists, but to Jews,—men to whom the idea of infant-membership in the Church was as familiar as the membership of adults. Ten days had elapsed since the baptismal commission was issued. The Holy Ghost was given, and the great Christian mission began, and to his audience of five thousand awakened penitents, all Jews or Jewish proselytes, all familiar with the idea of infant Church-membership, all clinging with a fond intensity to the great federal promise on which that infant Church-membership was founded, in the first Christian sermon ever preached, Peter exclaimed: “Repent and be baptized, and receive the Holy Ghost; for the promise is to you, and to your children.” Publishing the salvation of the Gospel covenant, and summoning that convinced assembly to Christian Baptism, Christ’s Apostles, endowed with power from on high, maintain that the old connection between parents and children still subsists. What would be the inference of their Hebrew auditors? What else could it possibly be, but that, like the Abrahamic covenant, the covenant of Christian Baptism was broad enough to take in not only the up-grown proselyte, but his children too? We feel that the Church cannot err in receiving into its arms those whom the Saviour embraced in His own. We feel that the New Testament Church cannot err in receiving as its inmates those who were members of the Old Testament Church, and who are to be members of the Church in heaven. Hamilton. The covenant of God with Abraham under the old dispensation, and his covenant with men in these days of the Gospel, compose his great church arrangement for the salvation of the world. The Church of God, as to its origin, was intimated to man at the moment of his fall, but found its first development in the Abrahamic covenant; as to its essence, the unity of the Church in earlier and in later times is established by identity of parties, relations, agencies, and objects; as to its form, it was encumbered by a multitude of observances, ceremonial and political, in ancient times, while its modern administration is marked by simplicity and spirituality; and as to its force, while the Abrahamic covenant worked as a temporal arrangement to the close of the first dispensation, it clearly carried at the same time a spiritual bearing, co-extensive with the general features of the Christian Church in the gospel dispensation. Therefore The Church under the Abrahamic covenant, and the New Testament dispensation are substantially one and the same institution. The New Testament Church embraces six particulars, and only six that are material: 1. Its dignity; a permanent covenant. 2. Its parties; God and man. 3. Its provisions; the Son and the Spirit. 4. Its great requirement of man; faith. 5. Its great promise by God; salvation. 6. Its appointed seal; a significant rite. Each of these particulars is fully embraced in God’s covenant with the patriarch; that covenant therefore is the great gospel covenant; the constitution of the Church. 1. The Abrahamic covenant is a permanent arrangement. This appears from the language of the covenant itself; “I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant.” The multiplied and most solemn rehearsals of the covenant through all periods of the Old Testament dispensation declare it to be an everlasting covenant. It survives the Old Testament dispensation, and acts in full force under the reign of the Gospel, as an everlasting covenant. Writing to the Galatians, Paul argues the necessary perpetuity of the Abrahamic covenant, from its very nature as a solemnized compact. Such a transaction between men, says the apostle, is stable and binding; “Though it be but a man’s covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth or addeth thereto” (3:15). The Abrahamic covenant had been “ordered in all things and sure,” and preceded the Sinai covenant more than four centuries, wherefore Paul continues, "Now this I say, brethren, that the covenant which was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, could not disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect." In substance this is Paul's reasoning: All the integrities of the Godhead had solemnly pledged certain blessings to Abraham and his seed forever. This covenant is immutable in its nature. Therefore the introduction of a new economy five hundred years after, in the days of Moses, could not destroy the covenant. By parity of reasoning, the introduction of another, two thousand years after, in the days of Christ, could not make the promise of none effect. Thus, with the strongest assurance, the apostle speaks of the blessings of God's covenant with Abraham as actually descending upon Gentiles in these days of the Gospel. The Abrahamic covenant is therefore clearly a permanent arrangement for all periods of this world's history: because it is God's covenant with Abraham and his seed in their generations for an everlasting covenant; it was renewed in the persons of Isaac, Jacob, David, and all Israel as a covenant, an oath, a law, a word to a thousand generations, an everlasting covenant; was rehearsed as such by the prophets to the very close of the Old Testament dispensation; is still denominated in the New Testament an everlasting covenant, and marked by the well-known patriarchal promises; and is finally proved by the express argument of an inspired man to be essentially immutable. II. The parties to the Abrahamic covenant are clearly God and man, because Abraham, the representative of man's interest in the covenant, is styled the "father of many nations," "of all that believe," "of us all," and "heir of the world;" because the condition of the covenant being spiritual, one man is as near to the covenant as another, and all have access to it; because Abraham believed before he was circumcised, that the covenant might not be confined to the Jews, but extend to all mankind. So far as the second feature of the New Testament Church is concerned—the parties—the Abrahamic covenant is identical with the Gospel. The New Testament Church extends to all who believe. So does the Abrahamic covenant. III. Its provisions are the Son and the Spirit. That the Abrahamic covenant embraces Christ we are fully assured by the most explicit apostolic interpretation of its language. In the seventeenth of Genesis, God covenants with Abraham and his seed. In the third of Galatians, Paul says explicitly that the seed of Abraham, in the eye of this covenant, is Christ. If Christ is indeed the seed of Abraham, then these things clearly follow: The Abrahamic covenant is a standing covenant, not confined to the old economy, but extending to all generations; a universal covenant, not limited to the Jews, but opening itself to all the human family; a covenant, in its bounty providing the Son and the Spirit; in its authority, requiring faith on man's part; its reward, in promising salvation on the part of God; and in its designation, marked by a heaven-appointed seal. Paul assures us, that long before the institution of the Mosaic economy the Abrahamic covenant was confirmed by God in Christ (Gal. 3:17). If so, then, that covenant must have included the Saviour from its earliest inception. This glorious truth is sealed by the declared end of Christ's sufferings and work on Calvary. It is inspired language that "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us." But why? "That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ." If the blessing of the Abrahamic covenant looks to Christ crucified as a channel,—as means to an end,—that covenant includes Christ. Now if Christ is the seed of the covenant; if he is a horn of salvation in performance of the covenant; if he is a helper of Israel in remembrance of the covenant; if he is God's confirmation of the covenant; if he is a curse for us to secure the blessings of the covenant; then, of a truth, the Abrahamic covenant embraces Christ, and was always a nullity without him. The Abrahamic covenant provides the Spirit also. We have the express Scripture testimony on this head. We are told that Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, "that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith" (Gal. 3:14). Here, in one inspired sentence, the blessing vouchsafed to Abraham and his seed in the covenant, includes in express terms both the Son and the Spirit. Christ works to secure the blessing of the covenant, and the Spirit is promised as a part of the blessing thus secured. Then in this third feature—the provisions involved—the Abrahamic covenant is identical with the Gospel. IV. All men know that faith is the all-inclusive requirement of the Gospel. But the Abrahamic covenant, like the Gospel, works through the righteousness of faith. (1.) The promise to Abraham was through faith. We know that Abraham believed God before he was circumcised. We know, too, that Abraham's faith was counted to him for righteousness. We know by the Old Testament that the seal of the covenant was circumcision. And we know by the New Testament that the great import of circumcision was faith. For we have the testimony of an apostle, that Abraham received the sign of circumcision, "a seal of the righteousness of faith." (2.) The promise of Abraham's seed required faith. The apostle says, "the promise to Abraham and his seed was not through the law, but through the righteousness of faith" (Rom. 4 : 13). "Know ye, therefore, that they who are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. So then they who are of faith, the same are blessed with faithful Abraham" (Gal. 3 : 7, 9). Now if Abraham was justified by the righteousness of faith; if the promise to his seed is made only through the righteousness of faith; if it was recorded in the beginning that Abraham obtained his righteousness by faith, precisely that we might believe and obtain the same righteousness; if we who believe are the children of Abraham, and any other principle of acceptance, as the apostle says, would vitiate the promise; if the seal of the covenant is circumcision, and the scriptural meaning of circumcision is faith; and, finally, if the provisions of the covenant are, first, Christ a curse for us, the great object of faith, and, second, the Spirit of Christ, the great agent of faith,—what can be clearer than that in this fourth feature—the requirement of faith—the Abrahamic covenant is identical with the New Testament Church? V. The great promise by God is redemption. Spiritual and saving promises are perpetually connected with the Abrahamic covenant as interpreted both by Old and New Testament writers. All their language evidently imports the salvation of the Gospel. New Testament statements, especially, settle this point. The duty required by the covenant—faith a righteousness—clearly shows that salvation is the reward. The provisions secured—the Son and the Spirit—clearly show that nothing less than salvation can be the offer of the covenant. The price of the blessing—Christ a curse for us—settles the fact that God's promise in the Abrahamic covenant is Christian redemption. Now if the language of the covenant promises Canaan for a possession, and Jehovah for a God; if the prophetic interpretation of the covenant inincludes God's presence with them, and abode in them, and blessing upon them, clothing them with robes of righteousness and the garments of salvation; and if the New Testament teaches that the Abrahamic covenant requires faith, promises the Son and the Spirit, and needs the atonement to secure the blessing,—then, of a truth, the great promise of God in the Abrahamic covenant is salvation. Then in this fifth feature of the covenant—its reward—the Abrahamic institution is identical with the Gospel. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ 1. AND the LORD appeared unto him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the 2 heat of the day; and he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood over against 3 him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself to 4 the earth, and said, My lord, if now I have found favor in thy sight, pass not away, I pray 5 thee, from thy servant: let now a little water be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest your 6 selves under the tree: and I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your heart: after 7 that ye shall pass on: forasmuch as ye are come to your servant. And they said, So do, as 8 thou hast said. And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready 9 quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes. And Abraham ran unto the 10 herd, and fetched a calf tender and good, and gave it unto the servant; and he hastened to dress 11 it. And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; 12 and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat. And they said unto him, Where is 13 Sarah thy wife? And he said, Behold, in the tent. And he said, I will certainly return unto 14 thee when the season cometh round; and, lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son. And Sarah 15 heard in the tent door, which was behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, and well 16 stricken in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. And Sarah 17 laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old 18 also? And the LORD said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a 19 surety bear a child, which am old? Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the set time I 20 will return unto thee, when the season cometh round, and Sarah shall have a son. Then 21 Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst 22 laugh. 23 And the men rose up from thence, and looked toward Sodom; and Abraham went with 24 them to bring them on the way. And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that which I 25 do; seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations 19 of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; to the end that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know. And the men turned from thence, and went toward Sodom; but Abraham stood yet before the LORD. And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou consume the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou consume and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked, that so the righteous should be as the wicked; that be far from thee: shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sake. And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes: peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, I will not destroy it, if I find there forty and five. And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for the forty's sake. And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: peradventure there shall thirty be found there. And he said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there. And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord: peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for the twenty's sake. And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for the ten's sake. And the LORD went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Abraham: and Abraham returned unto his place. The principles of moral goodness were well-nigh extinguished in the human heart, and the practice of the moral virtues had almost disappeared from the earth. And intemperance, ferocity, lust, fraud, and violence might have brought a second deluge upon the race, had not the truth of God stood pledged against the repetition of so dire a calamity. E. C. W.—Wicked as all the nations of those lands were, the people of this one tract appear to have surpassed the rest in atrocity. "The Lord said, The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and their sin is very grievous." The insults to Heaven had, as it were, come up with a strength, and loudness, and outrage, greater than from other parts of the earth. It was time for the righteous Governor to manifest himself. And as the first circumstance, three persons came as on a friendly visit to Abraham. It is impossible not to be struck with the calmness and quietness of the proceeding. There were no terrible portents—no magnificent phenomena—no thundering menaces—nor formidable preparations—nor effulgence of Divine Majesty. The patriarch's hospitality was accepted. The first thing unusual was a matter of complacent interest,—a renewed assurance of posterity to Abraham. But to think what this friendly converse was the introduction to! J. F. 1. And the Lord appeared unto him.** When we consider what our Saviour saith, "No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him;" we must be convinced that it was not God the Father who showed Himself in these appearances; but that it was He, the Logos or Word, who appeared to the Patriarchs; and neither God the Father nor His angels. Bp. Wilson. 2. Three men.** Such they were in outward appearance, but the Apostle (Heb. 13 : 1) calls them "angels," whom Abraham entertained unawares, i.e. not knowing them to be such. To him they appeared to be three strangers on a journey, and as such he treated them. It is generally conceded that two of these were created angels. As to the third, it can scarcely be doubted that he was the same divine personage who, under the name of "Angel," or "Angel of Jehovah," so frequently appeared to the patriarchs in human form. Certain it is that this personage appears in the subsequent part of the narrative (v. 13-22), and yet there is not the least intimation of any other appearance than that of the three men whom Abraham entertained. The inference therefore is fair that the Son of God, anticipating his future manifestation in the flesh, constituted one of the company. Bush.—In v. 1 it is said, "The LORD appeared unto him;" in v. 22 it is said, "The men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom; but Abraham stood yet before the LORD;" in ch. 19:1 it is said, "There came two Angels to Sodom at even." It appears from the comparison of these passages, and indeed from the whole narrative, that of the three men who appeared to Abraham, two were angels, and one was JENOVAN Himself. E. H. B. 3-8. All the marks of obeisance and respect are such as are still common in the East. Even the deference shown by him in standing by while his guests partook of his food, without presuming to take part with them, has been more than once witnessed by ourselves in eastern lands. We have noticed instances in which, when the host was a man of rank and consequence, he has brought in, with his own hands, some principal dish, and remained standing, or in attendance, during the whole meal, directing the operations of the servants in removing and in laying on. Kit. Abraham's dwelling was a tent, probably of dark-brown camel's-hair cloth, like the tents of his dependants. Only in this was he distinguished from them, that a separate tent was pitched for the females of his family. His repast was spread for him before the tent door, beneath the shade of some friendly tree. The most usual articles of food were leben, or sour coagulated milk (which is still the chief dish of the Syrian Arab), and unleavened cakes baked upon the hot hearth. To these might be added on festive occasions, or when strangers were to be entertained, the roasted flesh of a kid or of a calf. Hospitality to the passing traveller ranked among the most sacred and imperative of all duties, as is usually the case wherever public places of rest or entertainment do not exist. Dykes. The Arab tents are either round, resting in the middle on poles, eight or ten feet high; or oblong, resting on seven to nine poles, of which three are higher than the others—the middle one the highest. The covering is a thick black material, made of goat's or camel's-hair,—this, tightly stretched, will keep out any rain or dew. The tents have two or three divisions—for the cattle, the men, and the women; the outside compartment for the more tender of the cattle; the next for the men; and the third, inner one, Kubba—in Arabic Alkobba (alcove)—is for the women. The Emirs have separate tents for the cattle and for the women. The tents are frequently pitched under large trees for the shade. Thus lived Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the land of Canaan. Gerl. The strangers were Heaven's pilgrims, and while they tarried Mamre was holy ground. And so with Bible truths. Have a heart hospitable to whatever comes from God, and no fear but glorious truths will come—truths whose arrival will blaze with light from heaven, and whose entrance into the homestead of your convictions will create a holiday: truths whose coming will make your life more happy, and your lot illustrious to yourself. The truths of God will come, and God himself will come; and if you entertain them, they will not, like Abraham's angels, seek to pass away. The Bible abounds in stately and self-commending truths. The Sovereignty of God, the Substitution and Satisfaction of Immanuel, the Righteousness of Jehovah-Jesus, the Christ-revealing and soul-renewing work of the Holy Spirit, the Intercession of the Heavenly High Priest, the spirituality of Christ's kingdom, the necessity of Holiness, present salvation, the prevalency of Prayer,—to many men these truths merely exist as dogmas, which they have stowed away in the dusty chamber of their formal creed. But happy is the man to whom they come in their angelic garb, imperial in faith's purple, and radiant in emitted splendor, "trailing clouds of glory with them as they come." And happy is the man who, blessed with such God-like visitors, detains them as perpetual residents; and bidding all his love and faith and veneration wait on them and serve them, finds his being exalted into the home of high conviction, the palace of God's own truth. In such a man the Word of Christ dwells richly. Hamilton. 8. Did eat. All this happened as narrated. Man eats that he may live. An angel eats to be like a man. Gerl.—If the angels took upon themselves a human body, they could also eat. 9-11. The narrative distinctly and decisively proves that the renewal of the promise was meant for Sarah and not for Abraham. The first sentence which the strangers utter, is to inquire: "Where is Sarah thy wife?" and immediately afterward the messenger of Jehovah adds the prediction, which it was meant Sarah should hear, and which she actually heard. Then follows the colloquy between the heavenly guest and Sarah, in which Abraham takes no part. K. 10. Sarah thy wife shall have a son. It is repeated again (v. 14). Thus the promises of the Messiah were often repeated in the Old Testament, for the strengthening of the faith of God's people. We are slow of heart to believe, and therefore have need of line upon line to the same purport. This is that word of promise which the apostle quotes (Rom. 9:9), as that by the virtue of which Isaac was born. H. 12. Abraham heard this news from the angel and laughed; Sarah heard it and laughed: they did not more agree in their desire than differ in their affection; Abraham laughed for joy; Sarah, for distrust; Abraham laughed because he believed it would be so; Sarah, because she believed it could not be so: the same act varies in the manner of doing and the intention of the doer. Yet Sarah laughed but within herself and is betrayed: how God can find us out in secret sins! How easily did she now think that he, which could know of her inward laughter, could know of her conception; and now she that laughed and believed not, believeth and feareth. Bp. II. 13. The Lord.** The chief speaker is denoted, first by the mere pronoun, which is often used when God is meant, and then by the name JEHOVAH. It appears from the sequel, that while the chief of the three (Jehovah himself) remained behind in converse with Abraham, and then "went his way" to execute judgment upon Sodom, the other two were sent forward to rescue Lot. P. S. Wherefore did Sarah laugh? The prerogative of God extendeth as well to the reason as to the will of man; so that, as we are to obey his law, though we find a reluctance in our will, so we are to believe his Word, though we find a reluctance in our reason. For if we believe only that which is agreeable to our sense, we give consent to the matter, and not to the author; which is no more than we would do toward a suspected and discredited witness; but that faith which was accounted to Abraham for righteousness was of such a point as whereat Sarah laughed, who therein was an image of natural reason. Bacon. 14,15. It seems to have been a signal mercy to her, thus to have had her secret sin detected and reproved. From this time we hear no more of her unbelief; on the contrary, the rebuke administered to her was effectual for the confirming and establishing her faith. In the account given of the most eminent saints who were distinguished for their faith, Sarah herself is mentioned; and her faith is said to have been instrumental to the accomplishment of that very promise, which in the first instance she had disbelieved. And how many have found similar reason to bless God for the fidelity of their friends, or for the inward rebuke of their own consciences! Bush.—A question had been asked that made Sarah serious: "Is anything too hard for JEHOVAH?" When Sarah heard that question she wished to disown her laughter and to fall in the hands of the LORD. J. P. At length, in the faith of both his parents, there was present the prerequisite condition for Isaac's supernatural conception. His birth was announced to take place at the recurrence of the same season next year. But before it took place, this divine visitation in mercy was to be set in contrast with a divine visitation in judgment. The calm of the patriarchal home was speedily to be invaded with tidings of horror, and the bright hopes which had dawned upon the race of Abraham crossed by a lurid glare, when He who had descended in favor upon Mamre descended in vengeance upon Sodom. Dykes. 16. Rose up.** Consider the progress of the history from this point. The three men rise up and turn their steps toward Sodom. On the way they stand still; and He who already had spoken as the Lord Jehovah, announces to Abraham His purpose to inquire into the cry which had come up to Him from Sodom. The two angels then turn toward Sodom (19:1); while the third, the Lord, remains and listens to Abraham's entreaty for the city. The two angels arrive at Lot's house, pass the night there, and declare that the Lord had sent them to destroy the city: in the morning, they lead him out. Here the third, the Lord Himself, comes to them (19:17). Lot, who did not yet know them, appeals to the whole three for a particular mercy (ver. 18), but only one out of the three answers him, and speaks now in His own name; and thereupon, as Jehovah, he rains down fire and brimstone out of heaven from the Lord (Jehovah), ver. 21-25. Gerd. 17. Shall I hide from Abraham.** All the principles of the divine Providence in its relations to the sins of men appear here: his forbearance and patience, his constant notice, the deciding test, and the strictness and righteousness of the judgment; and hence Abraham is told here, that these same principles might operate upon the minds of the people of God in all ages. Gosman. 18, 19. Three points are contained in the promises given to Abraham. 1. The land in which he himself continues all his life a stranger, and where he must even buy a place for his grave, is to be given for an eternal possession to his descendants. 2. He who remains childless till his old age shall have an innumerable posterity, which is guaranteed by the changing of his name into Abraham [father of a multitude]; and not Ishmael, the son of Hagar, who was born after the counsel of man, but Isaac, born contrary to the ways of nature, according to God's counsel, is to be the bearer and inheritor of the promise. 3. The seed of Abraham shall be made a blessing for all races and all nations of the earth. Still the electing grace of the covenant God, who calls himself E-Shaddai (the Almighty God), as a witness of his controlling power in the natural world, is met on Abraham's side by faith, which does not look at the course of nature, but holds fast to God's word of promise, and endures victoriously the severest test in his willingness to offer the son of the promise. In this faith, which is reckoned to him for righteousness, Abraham the friend of God is the prophet, to whom is granted insight into the divine counsel ("Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?") when Sodom reels onward to judgment, and who has the privilege of free access to God in prayer. Nay, he becomes the father of all believers, and his name stands at the head of the three monotheistic religions of the world (Jewish, Mohammedan, and Christian), even when looked at in a purely historical way. But this knowledge of the divine way is to be accompanied by a walking therein (Gen. 17:1). Moreover, according to verse 19, Jehovah "acknowledged," that is, chose, Abraham, "that he might command his sons after him to keep Jehovah's ways, doing justice and right, that Jehovah might bring upon Abraham all that He has said of him." O.—Blessings are secured to him only if he and his seed after him walk in the ways of Jehovah, in obedience to the covenant. He is therefore to instruct his household and his children in these ways, and to see to it that they remain faithful to the covenant. If they forsake the ways of Jehovah and choose to walk in those of the heathen, the same judgment which had been executed on the Gentiles would also overtake them. Thus the communication of Jehovah's purpose in reference to Sodom is at the same time a solemn and telling warning addressed to Abraham and to his posterity. K. Occasions will arise when parental authority must accompany parental prayers and precepts, if we would walk in the steps of faithful Abraham. In particular, everything that dishonors God, no less than that which is injurious to society, must be opposed with determined vigor. The economy of the household should be so ordered as to carry the conviction to their minds that the knowledge, the love, and the service of God is the great business of life, to which everything else is to be subservient. Bush.—Parental fidelity and authority; the early culture and training of his household; consecration, the prayer and the faith which are legitimately begotten of this covenant and naturally correlated to it;—these are obviously the fitting conditions upon which the fulfilment of this covenant on God's part must depend. But, oh, the wealth of blessings garnered up within its bosom for those who walk in the steps of Abraham with like precious faith and like godly nurture! How wonderfully does piety become self-perpetuating in the family line from generation to generation of those who take this covenant to their inmost heart and find God in it ever faithful and ever true and evermore "mighty to save," as he hath said! H. C.—God having made the covenant with him and his seed, and his household being circumcised, pursuant to that, he was to teach and rule them well. Those that expect family-blessings must make conscience of family-duty. If our children be the Lord's, they must be nursed for him; if they wear his livery, they must be trained up in his work. Abraham not only took care of his children, but of his household. The poorest servants have precious souls that must be looked after. Abraham made it his care and business to promote practical religion in his family. H.—God's plan includes Abraham's fidelity to the covenant; and as it is a household covenant, embracing his seed after him, so it binds him to be a faithful father and householder. This is the process by which God will accomplish his plan of grace, and the means are secured as well as the end. Family religion is God's method for propagating his church. He therefore makes the covenant and its seals of a household nature; and thus the church has always been extended by means of a pious posterity. Jacobus. It was the simple, massive, serene character of Abraham which kept him so steady to his ideas, and which gave him his peculiar power to keep others steady also. We seem to see one of such rectitude and majesty of will that he himself moved, and moved all around him, easily, in the line which the finger of God had marked. Of all models for the prosperous men of this century Abraham is the finest,—laying hold on life with so powerful a grasp, yet confessing that he was "a stranger and a pilgrim." Mercer. Under the Patriarchal dispensation each head of a single family was at once prince and priest of his own people; offering sacrifices in their behalf and leading their simple worship, privileged to receive personal communications from God and to expect special guidance of his providence and grace. These intimate personal relations with God proved to these early saints a means of spiritual training of marvellous power. The Patriarchal dispensation was appointed to lay deep and broad the foundations of the Church for all coming time. The Church of God rests on two corner-stones: piety in the individual man, and family religion by which the piety of the fathers is perpetuated in their children. The office of the Patriarchal Dispensation was to develop and establish forever these two foundations of the future Church, personal holiness and family religion. Of both these principles, Abraham was the most perfect example under this early dispensation. . . . So under the Christian dispensation, the father is prince and priest of his household. He must minister at the family altar, bearing upon his own soul to the mercy-seat the burden of their sins and sorrows and needs. He must command his children that they keep the way of the Lord. And with him also if faithful, as with faithful Abraham, will God enter into an unfailing covenant, which shall bring blessings untold to his children of generations yet unborn. E. L. Clark. As soon as prophecy found a receptacle in the chosen race it grew strong, it became an architect and builder, it raised institutions, it enacted ordinances. In Abraham it founded a family, in Moses it framed a law, in David it erected a kingdom. The Jewish people from the first gave prophecy a fixed home, and the nation became the depository for the sacred gift. The Jewish Church maintained and kept up the inspired expectation, protecting it, and surrounding it with institutions and schools; so that, preserved as a directing influence among them, it prepared a practical reception for the Messiah; and founded that body of thought in the nation which welcomed him who fulfilled the promise when he came, and in that welcome founded the Christian Church. Prophecy thus proved itself an instrument of real efficiency and power. In Abraham himself we see the foundation of that strong external structure,—that law, that system, and that discipline,—which was to act as the depository of the prophetic promise; we see it in the fact that he founded a family, and bound that family by precepts and regulations which enabled it to preserve and hand down the true faith. Scripture gives him a character somewhat akin to that of an ancient law-giver, representing him as laying down rules and imparting a particular mould and type to his family, providing for its future instruction and worship, and treating it not merely as a family but as an institution. It hardly appears too bold to say that this text (vs. 17-19) is a description of more than the head of a family, that it represents the founder of a religious community, whose future adherence to the true faith he was anxious to secure by proper regulations. Mosley. 18. All nations blessed. Even here, when God affords the greatest proof of His friendship for Abraham, the reason why He so distinguishes him is this—because through him shall all the people of the earth be blessed. In order to show him how blessed a thing it is to serve the true and living God, and to stand in the relation of childlike intercourse with Him (a blessing which is granted to all those who are blessed through Abraham), God makes known His purpose to him as to an intimate friend. Gerl.—Hence we find, in subsequent revelations, that Abraham is spoken of as peculiarly the “friend of God.” So in Jehoshaphat’s prayer (2 Chron. 20:17): “Thou gavest this land to the seed of Abraham thy friend forever.” So by the prophet Isaiah (12:8) Jehovah declares: “Thou Israel art my servant, the seed of Abraham my friend.” And the apostle James, speaking of the offering of Isaac, remarks: “And the Scripture was fulfilled which saith Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness; and he was called the friend of God.” S. L. Abraham speaks to God, and God to Abraham, as a man speaks to his friend; and it seems almost as if the innocent time were brought back when God walked “in the garden in the cool of the day.” It was this peculiar nearness and confidence which gave Abraham the name of “the Friend of God,”—“El Khalil,” the Friend, as the common Arab calls him to-day. Mercer.—Men have sometimes communed with gods, genii, and departed heroes, but not with God, the one God of heaven and earth, in a way so calm and trusting. The stranger has no other friend than He who had brought him into this remoteness; but Him he possesses as the Friend of friends. What tender passages are there in the intercourse of God with him; how he comforts, directs, cheers him with future hopes; gives him, now, the pledge of a covenant, now, the sign of friendship, now, a new name, now, symbols to impress his heart, and demands now this, now that, return of love to Himself. Herder. 20,21. Abraham is destined to be a great nation and a blessing to all nations; for I have known, i.e., acknowledged him (chosen him in anticipative love, as in Amos 3:2; Hos. 13:4), that he may command his whole posterity to keep the way of Jehovah, to practise justice and righteousness, that all the promises may be fulfilled in them. God then disclosed to Abraham what he was about to do to Sodom and Gomorrah, because Jehovah had chosen him to be the father of the people of God, in order that, by instructing his descendants in the fear of God, he might lead them in the paths of righteousness, so that they might become partskens of the promised salvation, and not be overtaken by judgment. The destruction of Sodom and the surrounding cities was to be a permanent memorial, to keep the fate of the ungodly constantly before the mind of Israel. To this end Jehovah explained to Abraham the cause of their destruction in the clearest manner possible, that he might not only be convinced of the justice of the divine government, but might learn, that, when the measure of iniquity was full, no intercession could avert the judgment,—a lesson and a warning to his descendants also. Keil. 20. The cry of Sodom.** The cry of sins for punishment. It is applicable to every sin as expressive of the moral demand which it makes for punishment; for every sin has a voice of crimination against the sinner, and its crying intimates the fixed, necessary, and righteous connection (Gen. 4:10), which is established between transgression and punishment. Bush. 21. Will know.** The perfect justice of God, the exact weighing of all which men have done, is in a most striking manner represented in this expression. God places the Sodomites on their trial. The trial was not needful for His information; but it is needful that every sin should be brought to light, to be either blotted out or punished. Gert.—In this passage God speaks after the manner of men; using the language of a good judge, who never passes sentence, much less executes it, till he hath examined the cause. Kidder.—Jehovah could not be uncertain whether the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah contained the truth; but it was still a question whether Sodom, by its conduct against the last deciding visitation of God, would show that its corruption placed it beyond any help or salvation. It must become evident through its last trial, whether it has reached the limit of the long-suffering patience of God. Lange.—Whether they have done altogether. Heb., whether they have made completeness,—made a finish (of their sins), filled the measure. Jacobus. 23-33. Abraham intercedes for Sodom. He puts forward the plea of justice to the righteous in behalf of the city. He ventures to repeat his intervention six times, every time diminishing the number of the righteous whom he supposes to be in it. The patience of the Lord is no less remarkable than the perseverance of Abraham. In every case he grants his petition. M. —Six times he intercedes, with such earnestness and heartfelt yearning, that in his great anguish and desire he utters almost foolish words. But it is a most precious prayer, if you judge of it by the attitude of his heart; for it was a very violent emotion and profound importunity. There was more in the holy man's heart than that heart could understand and feel. I am sure tears ran down his face, and his words passed into unspeakable sighs. Luther. He trembles as he plants each footstep in advance, yet, love-impelled, he cannot but proceed. He fears to offend, yet he fears still more to let a last chance be lost of averting the awful judgment. Earnestly, tremblingly, on and on he goes, reducing first by fives and then by tens the number, till at last he stops, overwhelmed with the impression that the Divine grace has triumphed over the human importunity, and satisfied that the Judge of all the earth will certainly do right. Wonderful specimen this of an intercession coming from a heart filled to overflow with the desire to see God's character vindicated and the happiness of his creatures, even the worst of them, secured! Can we doubt that it was this singular union of pure compassion for human suffering with a supreme regard for righteousness, a care for the Divine honor with resignation to the Divine will, that won for it the audience of that ear which heard in it from afar a faint echo of that most wonderful intercession that ever came from human lips—'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do'? W. H. How fervently does this righteous man pray, this friend of God and friend of man, when he has once taken on him to speak unto the Lord as a man speaketh unto his friend! Of his prayer, a clear knowledge of the will and being of God is the basis: in his God he beholds the Judge of the whole earth, who cannot possibly do aught but justice. Humility is the key-note to this prayer. It evinces unshaken confidence in a wisdom, a holiness, a love and power, whose ways were different, but yet infinitely higher and better, than the ways and thoughts of men. It is characterized by a perseverance which from every renewed promise borrows higher courage for a new and bolder demand; but at the same time by a thorough submission to the will of God, when the utmost limit has been reached which the long-suffering One can assign to His sentence. No marvel, truly, that this prayer, looking at the result, availled much. It did not, indeed, save Sodom and Gomorrah from destruction; there were not found therein even ten righteous men. But not the less it guided Lot and his household out of Sodom to Zoar: for the sake of Abraham the family was preserved, of which he had not even mentioned the name. And, above all, through this prayer Abraham was himself bound in closer union to Jehovah; God's good pleasure in His servant was heightened; and after centuries it still speaks to us and countless others of our most glorious privilege and our most sacred duty. Van O. 25. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?** This very question is itself a tribute to the righteousness of God. And the course which God took in answering it shows that he has ever held it of the first consequence to secure the moral approbation of his creatures. In many things he has transcended their reason; in nearly all things he has baffled and even confounded and mocked their speculations; but in all instances he has been most careful not to excite controversy against himself in the human conscience. If it could once enter the mind of man that God has done wrong, that is to say has acted unjustly, man would be in a position to vindicate the most strenuous rebellion against his government. It is true, indeed, that we may come upon many things, even in moral government, which we can neither understand nor explain; but if where we can enter into God's purpose, and the method of its execution, we are enabled to see that righteousness is the habitation of God's throne, we are entitled to give our conscience rest in cases which are to our reason inscrutable. J. P.—It is a wonderful confirmation of man's right to reason from the most certain intuitions of his own moral being to the character and ways of Him Who made man, that Jehovah neither resented nor disappointed the appeal of His servant. To each successive question He returned a calm assent: "I will not do it for the sake of so many." As far as the courage or the justice of the man made bold to go, God's higher and more merciful justice went along with him. Dykes. 32. I will not destroy it for ten's sake.** A wonderful representation of the tender mercy of the Most High; who condescended to grant a reprieve to the whole country for the sake of a few righteous, could they have been found in it. And His mercy was still greater, even beyond Abraham's desire; for He spared one of the five cities, for the sake of three or four persons: as we read (chap. 19 : 20, 21). Abraham makes no express mention of Lot in any of the foregoing petitions but it is plain from chap. 19 : 29 that he was in his thoughts, which God knew: and he is comprehended in those words at the 23d verse of this chapter, "Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?" Patrick.—Every corrupt man is not only an enemy to himself, but an enemy to his family and to his country, by contributing to swell the tide of national guilt, which will not fail to end in national calamity, whenever the measure of the iniquity of the individuals that compose the community shall come to the full. Hales. How cautiously, yet how hopefully, Abraham's prayer enlarged itself! From fifty to forty-five, to forty, to thirty, to twenty, to ten! A whole city would have been spared for the sake of ten righteous men. Here we see a great principle in the government of God. We are sparing others, or are being spared for their sakes. J. P. 33. Abraham left off asking before God left off granting; and though the particular object of his petitions was not accorded to him, yet the avowed conditions on which it would have been granted show that no limits, but such as a concern for his own honor induced God to fix, can be assigned to the exercise of his grace in answer to his people's prayers. Bush.—God granted Abraham's prayer so far as he ventured to extend it. We know not what would have been the answer, had he gone further. But we have here the highest encouragement for intercessory prayer, — to plead with God for wicked men, for communities and nations that are far gone in sin. Abraham received no denial. So far as we can see, it was he who left off, and not God. Yet we are to rest humbly and trustfully upon God's good pleasure, after all our prayer. Jacobus.—The importunity which believers use in their addresses to God, is such, that if they were dealing with a man like themselves, they could not but fear that he would be angry with them. But he with whom we have to do is God and not man; and however he may seem, is not really angry with the prayers of the upright (Ps. 80 : 4), for they are his delight (Prov. 15 : 8), and he is pleased when he is wrestled with. Abraham returned unto his place, not puffed up with the honor done him, nor by these extraordinary interviews taken off from the ordinary course of duty; he returned to his place, to observe what the event would be; and it proved that his prayer was heard, and yet Sodom not spared, because there were not ten righteous in it. We cannot expect too little from man, nor too much from God. H.—"Abraham returned to his place," and it was now the afternoon. The people of Sodom little knew what a conversation they had been the subject of. The vain and wicked little know, or think, or care, what fear the devout and righteous may be entertaining for them, or what intercessory supplications they may be making—and if they did know, many of them would but scorn such fears and prayers. There was to be in Sodom something that was to be saved in the hour of vengeance, to mark in a signal manner the contrast; to show how infallibly the righteous Governor distinguishes;—and what value he sets on the fidelity that will not conform to the surrounding wickedness. J. F. The Patriarchal Dispensation. The Greek word Patriarch (the father-ruler) gives a fuller etymological expression to the idea which was at first essential to the simpler Hebrew word, at the time when the father was, by the right of nature, the ruler of the whole community formed by his living descendants. In sacred history the term is commonly applied to the descendants of Adam, through the line of Abraham, down to the time of Moses. The whole plan of God's moral government and revelation of himself before the giving of the Mosaic Law constitutes the Patriarchal Dispensation, which Paul expressly distinguishes by the phrase "until the law," and defines as "from Adam to Moses." Its peculiar characteristics were the direct and intimate communion of God with his people, and their government by a moral system, the great principles of which were well understood, though not yet reduced to a code of laws. It was an experiment of moral government in the simple and beautiful form of family harmony. Its ideal is expressed in the words—"I have known Abraham, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of Jehovah, to do justice and judgment." The patriarchal dispensation may be divided into three stages. (1.) When our first parents had fallen from their primitive state of innocence, they were placed, by the promise of a deliverer, in a condition still to trust in the mercy of God, and to choose between a life of humble obedience to him, and self-willed opposition against him; and the observance of sacrifices of blood seems to have been an outward sign distinguishing the followers of these two courses. The distinction was seen in the personal characters of Cain and Abel, and in the family characters of the Cainites and the Sethites; but before long the latter also were corrupted by their union with the former—the sons of God intermarrying with the daughters of men—and the general result was an almost universal experiment on God's forbearance. (2.) This state of things was ended by the Deluge, after which the experiment of godly obedience and patriarchal order was renewed under the fresh conditions laid down by the covenant with Noah, insuring the divine forbearance till the end of time. But when the prospect of judgment was thus removed far off, sin assumed new courage; the Babel-builders made the daring attempt to render themselves independent of Jehovah: nations were founded on those godless principles which have ever since prevailed in the "kingdoms of this world." This was the very consummation of rebellion against the patriarchal dispensation; while the authority with which it invested the father of the family was claimed, as it has been to our own day, for the despot and usurper. Idolatry was established in all these kingdoms; and the pure worship of Jehovah was alone preserved, or perhaps we should rather say, retaught to man, in connection with the true model of patriarchal government, in the one family, which was chosen to wander about as nomads, living under tents, amid the nations with whom as yet they shared no earthly inheritance. (3.) It is in this third stage that we see the general form and spirit of the patriarchal life. Of the social life of the Antediluvian Patriarchs, and even of the Postdiluvian Patriarchs before Abraham, we know next to nothing; but when we turn to the pictures of Abraham dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promises; of the other branch of the family at Haran; of the conflicts between Sarah and Hagar on behalf of Ishmael and Isaac, and between Esau and Jacob themselves for the right of inheritance; of Isaac and Jacob blessing their children before they died; and of the varied relations between the sons of Israel and their families—in these and many other scenes we see the working of the patriarchal system with sufficient distinctness to trace its leading principles. P. S. 1. And the two angels came to Sodom at even ; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom : and Lot 2 saw them, and rose up to meet them ; and he bowed himself with his face to the earth ; and he said, Behold now, my lords, turn aside, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your way. And they said, 3 Nay ; but we will abide in the street all night. And he urged them greatly ; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house ; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened 4 bread, and they did eat. But before they lay down, the men of the city, eces the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both young and old, all the people from every quarter ; 5 and they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this 6 night ? bring them out unto us, that we may know them. And Lot went out unto them to 7 the door, and shut the door after him. And he said, I pray you, my brethren, do not so 8 wickedly. Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man ; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes : only unto these men 9 do nothing ; forasmuch as they are come under the shadow of my roof. And they said, Stand back. And they said, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge ; now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even 10 Lot, and drew near to break the door. But the men put forth their hand, and brought Lot 11 into the house to them, and shut to the door. And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great ; so that they wearied themselves to find 12 the door. And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides ? son in law, and thy sons, 13 and thy daughters, and whomsoever thou hast in the city ; bring them out of the place ; for we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the LORD ; and the 14 LORD hath sent us to destroy it. And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons in law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place ; for the LORD will destroy the 15 city. But he seemed unto his sons in law as one that mocked. And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters which are 16 here ; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city. But he lingered ; and the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters ; the LORD being merciful unto him : and they brought him forth, and set him without the city. 17 And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life ; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the Plain ; escape to the mountain, lest 18 thou be consumed. And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my lord ; behold now, thy servant 19 hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life ; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest evil overtake me, and I 20 die ; behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one : Oh, let me escape 21 thither, (is it not a little one ?) and my soul shall live. And he said unto him, See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow the city of which thou hast 22 spoken. Haste thee, escape thither ; for I cannot do anything till thou be come thither. 23 Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar. The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot 24 came unto Zoar. Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire 25 from the LORD out of heaven ; and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the 26 inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back 27 from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. And Abraham got up early in the morning 28 to the place where he had stood before the LORD ; and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the Plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smok : of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace. The two strangers who entered the gate of | Mamre. The mission of these celestial visitors Sodom on the evening before its fall had dined | had for its first object, as we have seen, the an- with Abraham that day upon the heights of | nunciation of glad tidings to Abraham's wife ; its second was to visit Sodom with judgment. So impartially do Heaven's messengers execute alike its mercy and its severity. Dykes.—The gain of this world is but transitory; faith reaps a late but lasting recompense. The Angels of God descended to fulfil in one and the same mission a double purpose;—to take from Lot his earthly portion, and to prepare for the accomplishment of the everlasting blessings promised to Abraham; to destroy Sodom, while they foretold the approaching birth of Isaac. Newman. 1. At even, Lot sat in the gate of Sodom.** We can imagine the setting sun for the last time, throwing a mild and softened radiance on the cities and across the plain; and no warning by elemental disorder. Nature keeps the secret of her great Governor. If conscience will not alarm the sinners, nothing else shall. But what was there latent in that soft tranquillity? There was there the hovering power of divine justice—the spirit of retribution, just growing to the intensity to reveal itself in resistless flame. J. F. Gate. The covered doorways, and the piazzas adjoining (such are to be seen in modern fortified towns), were in ancient times usual places of concourse, where the inhabitants met for amusement, or to transact public business, especially the administration of justice. Gerl.—At first the tent of Lot was only pitched near the gate of Sodom. By and by he abandoned tent-life altogether, and inhabited a house in the city. At last he betrothed his girls to native Sodomites, and sat in its gateway as one of its conspicuous citizens at a time when the cry of its pollutions had gone up to heaven, Dykes. 2. When our Saviour made as though He would have gone farther, He effectually questioned His disciples as to the condition of their hearts in relation to the duties of hospitality. The angels, in answering that they would abide in the street all night, made the same experiment on Lot. This species of simulation involves no falsehood; its design is not to deceive, but to catechize or instruct. The whole action is to be regarded as a sign by which a question is proposed, or the mind excited to such a degree of curiosity and attention that lessons of truth can be successfully imparted. The command to Abraham to sacrifice his son involved a series of practical interrogatories to which no other form of proposing them could have elicited such satisfactory responses. The principle holds here which obtains in reference to fictions and fables. The action is only the dress of the thought, and where the purpose in view is honorable and just, no exceptions can be taken on the score of veracity to the drapery in which it is adorned. Thornwell. 4,5. The utter shamelessness of the inhabitants of Sodom, as well as their unbridled licentiousness, is briefly but most emphatically expressed in these verses. The Canaanitish nations in general, and the cities of the plain especially, were addicted to those deadly sins so strictly forbidden to the Israelites. E. H. B.—It was the most unnatural and abominable wickedness that they were now set upon, a sin that still bears their name, and is called sodomy. They were carried headlong by those vile affections (Rom. 1:26, 27), which are worse than brutish, and the eternal reproach of the human nature, and which cannot be thought of without horror, by those that have the least spark of virtue, and any remains of natural light and conscience. They proclaimed war with virtue, and bid open defiance to it. Hence daring sinners are said to declare their sin as Sodom (Is. 3:9). H. 6-8. The good man craves and pleads the laws of hospitality; and when he sees headstrong purposes of mischief, chooses rather to be an ill father than an ill host: his intention was good, but his offer was faulty; if through his allowance the Sodomites had defiled his daughters, it had been his sin; if through violence they had defiled his guests, it had been only theirs: there can be no warrant for us to sin, lest others should sin: it is for God to prevent sins with judgments, it is not for men to prevent a greater sin with a less: God meant better to Lot, than to suffer his weak offer to be accepted. Bp. H. 6. In defence of the sacred rights of a guest, Lot even risked his own life; the one flash of manly spirit which redeems in any measure the story of that night. But in his very hospitality Lot betrayed how the air of Sodom had blunted his sense of personal purity. Dykes.—The sacred writer relates the history simply and without comment, not holding up Lot as an example for imitation, but telling his faults as well as his virtues, and leaving us to draw the inferences. He brought all his troubles on himself by the home he had chosen. He was bound to defend his guests at the risk of his own life, but not by the sacrifice of his daughters. E. H. B. 10,11. Now Lot's guests begin to show themselves angels, and first delivered Lot in Sodom, then from Sodom; first strike them with blindness, whom they will after consume with fire. How little did the Sodomites think that vengeance was so near them! While they went groping in the streets, and cursing those whom they could not find, Lot with the angels is in secure light, and sees them miserable, and foresees them burning. It is the use of God, to blind and beset those whom he means to destroy. Bp. H. 15. The prophet Ezekiel (16 : 49) enumerates these three causes of the sins of Sodom, "pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness." And how they are still the parents of vice in prosperous communities we know full well. It shows how widespread and inveterate the wickedness of the community was, that when the fiery deluge came down, not one beyond Lot's family was counted worthy to escape. Kerr. 16. "He lingered;" whether from some degree of unbelief; or from being confused and stupefied with amazement and horror. But there was calmness and decision there, though he had none. The angels laid hold on the hands of Lot and his family, "The Lord being merciful unto him," and led them out of the devoted city. All this might well be named visible providence. It was the protection of the Almighty, and the guardian care of his angels displayed in exercise,—in the visible personal agency of these powerful spirits. But, though there be now no such palpable manifestations, how often may there be in a good man's life interpositions as critical, if the agency were made visible in any one of many conjunctures. And then for his soul there is a series of agency of a still far nobler kind! A greater Spirit is employed there! J. F. 17. He said, Escape for thy life.** Hebrew, for thy soul. Chaldean, "Pity thine own soul, and save thyself." It would seem that a new speaker, even the Angel-Jehovah, who had by this time left Abraham and joined the two angels at Sodom, utters these words. The tenor of the ensuing narrative makes it clear that the personage called Jehovah was present at the overthrow of Sodom, and that it was no other than he who sustains the character of chief speaker in the discourses recorded. Bash.—One speaks with Lot. They lead him out, but He speaks to him. Here has the Lord, or the appointed Angel of the Lord, His coequal Revealer, again joined the other two. Lot recognizes Him as the first among them; since, while he directs his words to all three, he speaks yet but with One, whom he addresses by the name of God, "Lord;" and He now declares in His own name what He will do. Gerl.* Escape to the mountain. Such as these are the commands given to those who through grace are delivered out of a sinful state and condition. Return not to sin and Satan, for that is looking back to Sodom. Rest not in self and the world, for that is staying in the plain. And reach toward Christ and Heaven, for that is escaping to the mountain, short of which we must not take up. H.—In the conduct of the angel messengers of mercy and of wrath on this occasion, you see symbolized the style and manner of the Gospel warning and of the Gospel offers wherever the Gospel comes in contact with sinful men. It is ever, as here, in the tone of hasteful urgency. "Up, get you out of this place, for the Lord will destroy this city; escape for thy life; tarry not in all the plain." S. R. 20. It was Lot's weakness to think a city of his own choosing safer than the mountain of God's appointing. And he argued against himself, when he pleaded, Thou hast magnified thy mercy in saving my life, and I cannot escape to the mountain; for could not he that had plucked him out of Sodom, when he lingered, carry him safe to the mountain, though he began to tire? 21. See what favor God showed a true saint, though weak. Zoar was spared to gratify him. Though his intercession for it was not, as Abraham's for Sodom, from a principle of generous charity, but merely from self-interest, yet God granted his request, to show how much the prayer of a righteous man avails. Sodom's ruin was suspended, till he was safe. H.—Oh the large bounty of God, which reacheth not to us only, but to ours! God saves Lot for Abraham's sake, and Zoar for Lot's sake; if Sodom had not been too wicked, it had escaped: were it not for God's dear children, that are intermixed with the world, it could not stand: the wicked owe their lives unto those few good, whom they hate and persecute. 23,24. Now at once the sun rises upon Zoar, and fire falls down upon Sodom: Abraham stands upon the hill, and sees the cities burning; it is fair weather with God's children, when it is foulest with the wicked. Those, which burned with the fire of lust, are now consumed with the fire of vengeance: they sinned against nature; and now against the course of nature, fire descends from heaven, and consumes them. Bp. H.—Long time the hand of the Almighty may seem to tremble, as if adverse to strike. But He is only waiting for the day—that fixed and appointed day—to which, as the Apostle Peter says, the ungodly are reserved. Once "the sun is risen upon Zoar," at the appointed day the blow descends with terrible decision. There is no relenting then with the judge of all the earth. If he waits to be gracious till it seems as if he knew not how to smite, he smites at last as if he knew not how to pity. Not, indeed, in sudden anger, but in the calmness of deliberate judgment he awards the punishment to which the wicked are reserved. Up to the very last moment of the day of grace all things continue as they are. But the last sunrise comes at length. Such is the view of the justice of God here brought out; and this picture is but the type and illustration, says Jesus Christ—a rehearsing on a smaller stage of the general judgment which shall at last burn up the earth itself and “melt the elements with fervent heat.” S. R.—It is the Son who has executed judgment from the beginning: overthrowing the proud tower of Babel, and confounding men’s languages; punishing the whole world by the violence of waters; raining upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone, the LORD FROM THE LORD. Tertullian.—And the neighbouring cities, Admah and Zeboim as appears from Deut. 29:23. Bp. Patrick. The overwhelming destruction produced is set forth in language which enumerates the cities themselves, their inhabitants, the whole surrounding region, and all the rich verdure with which the country had been previously clothed. It is said that “God overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.” The extensiveness of the catastrophe is implied in what Abraham beheld, when, early the next morning, he looked toward Sodom from one of the eminences about Hebron. At the distance of more than thirty miles from the probable site of Sodom, he saw the smoke of the whole country of the plain going up “as the smoke of a furnace.” N. C. B.—For its awful suddenness, for its thoroughness, and for its perpetual tokens, this ancient overthrow stands forth in history as the appointed type of all divine acts of judgment; and chiefly of that last act to which we now look forward, and for which it is every man’s wisdom to prepare himself. This dreadful office it continued to fill down to the close of revelation. For the smoke of Sodom flings its shadow even across the predictions of our Lord, to heighten the impressiveness of that picture which the Judge Himself in His mercy sketched beforehand of His day of inquisition and of wrath. Dykes. 25. All the Plain. The entire plain no doubt possessed originally the same fertility which afterward made the adjacent Jericho one of the loveliest and richest spots in Syria. Fed by the Jordan and the springs which send down streams to it from the sheltering hills, a copious supply of water could easily be led by artificial conduits to any part of the district; and the almost tropical heat of that deep depression must have forced, then as now, a luxuriance and variety of vegetation which are to be found nowhere else on the same parallel of latitude. Dykes.—Think of a region blooming and smiling in all the riches of nature; on every hand something to raise the contemplative thought to the glorious Creator; something, it might be supposed, to refine and harmonize the sentiments; and a copious fertility of supply, to make every tract speak the bounty of Providence. But amidst all this, what was MAN? A hideous assemblage of beings, “sensual—devilish,” such as might almost be conceived to have been thrown up from the infernal realms, to go down again in an earthquake and tempest of fire! J. F.—There is not another country on the face of the globe where blessing or curse might so readily be realized, as a space so narrow does not, in any other part, present so numerous sources either of the one or of the other. The almost Paradisiacal valley of Siddim becomes in one day a pool of destruction, whence everything that has life flees; thus showing the solemnity of Divine judgments to all succeeding generations. K. The people of Sodom had no time for speculations; there was but just time for terror, and conscience, and despair! Our Lord says, there is a still greater guilt and a more awful destruction, even than theirs! They will see greater criminals than themselves at the last day; and from lands where the fire of heaven did not fall! The man that lives and dies rejecting HIM had better have been exposed to the rain of fire and brimstone, and gone down in the horrid gulf of the Vale of Siddim! J. F.—Love has a side of wrath and is a consuming flame by its very nature when turned against that which resists it and is alien to it. Every force in the universe and everything great and conserving in the nature and the soul of man becomes such a fire when threatened by that which is opposed to it. The greatest men have been those who have shown this most—Cromwell, Luther, Pascal, John, Paul, and, more terribly and mightily than all, in Christ himself. With what withering denunciations he condemned whatever was false and ugly in character! What a curse was that pronounced upon the offending cities of Bethsaida and Chorazin, and the worldly and conceited Pharisees! Was the heart of Christ less full of tenderness and truth because it was as a flame of fire when he confronted the unbelief and pride and worldly ambition of those who would resist and destroy his good works? And so it is that God over all, who is represented to us in Christ, and in nature and the highest soul of man, is a consuming fire. Blot that out? You may tear it out from your Bible, but you cannot tear it out from the universe! R. S. S. 26. His wife looked back, and became a pillar of salt.** From love to her former abode, and from unbelief she would not abstain from disobedience to God's commands. She remained standing. The sulphur blast overtook her, and like all the country round she was enveloped in an encrustation of salt. Gert.—Small precepts from God are of importance; obedience is as well tried, and disobedience as well punished, in little, as in much; his wife doth but turn back her head, whether in curiosity, or unbelief, or love and compassion of the place; she is turned into a monument of disobedience; what doth it avail her not to be turned into ashes in Sodom, when she is turned into a pillar of salt in the plain! He, that saved a whole city, cannot save his own wife. Bp. H.—Behold the goodness and severity of God; toward Lot that went forward, goodness; toward his wife that looked back, severity. Though she was nearly related to a righteous man, though better than her neighbors, and though a monument of distinguishing mercy in her deliverance out of Sodom, yet God did not connive at her disobedience; for great privileges will not secure us from the wrath of God, if we do not carefully and faithfully improve them. Her looking back bespoke an inclination to go back; and therefore our Saviour uses it as a warning against apostasy from our Christian profession. We have all renounced the world and the flesh, and have set our faces heavenward; we are in the plain, upon our probation; and it is at our peril, if we return into the interests we profess to have abandoned. Drawing back is to perdition, and looking back is toward it. Let us therefore fear. H. This is the strangest and saddest of all the delusions and inconsistencies of fallen humanity, this believing the word of God's messengers and yet dallying with the message! It is not so wonderful that the men of Sodom refuse to listen; it is but in harmony with their stolid unbelief. It is not so wonderful that Lot's sons-in-law refuse to listen, for they are confirmed infidels. But it is passing wonderful that Lot's wife—warned, and believing the warning, alarmed, moved to escape, yea, brought by the hand of God himself to the very verge of safety—should linger, disobey, look back and perish! And just so still, the strangest of all the inconsistencies of sinners, is that of him "who, often reproved, hardeneth his neck and shall be utterly destroyed, and that without remedy." S. R.—There is no time for loitering Sodom was intended to show that; where one faithless soul, by loitering, was lost. Let no man therefore deceive himself with any vain expectation, that though he is not such as he could wish at present, he shall be so at some future time: that if he is not prepared to meet his God now, he shall be so before he dies. This is the delusion under which so many perish. The broad way is crowded with people, who intended to grow better, but never did. When once they fix this habit of loitering, as they live, they die. Jones of N. The right of destruction may be fairly inquired into by human reason, and ought to be well studied as a fact that has been repeatedly realized in human history. Throughout the Bible, God has reserved to himself the right to take back whatever he has given, because all his gifts have been offered upon conditions about which there can be no mistake. He takes back the life of the body; he takes away the power of reason; he reclaims our physical strength; by many a severity he asserts that the earth is his own and the fulness thereof; yet we are to suppose that he cannot put an end to our existence; it has grieved him, mocked him, defied him, abandoned his sanctuary, violated his laws, slain his Son, quenched his Spirit, given the lie to his promises and heaped up the measure of its iniquity in his very face, but he cannot put an end to it! Not such is the doctrine of the Word of God. There the Lord is King; his power is infinite; he only has the right to live; he only does live, and if we live it is because we abide in him, "as a branch abideth in the vine." The sovereignty of God is as absolute at the end as at the beginning; "he can create, and he can destroy;" and we live by his will alone. Furthermore, we can see the infinite reasonableness and justice of this sovereignty; it subdues all things under the Lord's feet, and gives him an undivided throne. . . . We hold life as God's gift upon certain conditions; we can choose good or we can choose evil; God loves us, cares for us, has given his Son to save us, and is watching us every moment; he wishes all men to be saved; he promises pardon to the penitent, and foretells the death of the impenitent sinner; by these principles he will judge us, and by these will the wicked go away into everlasting punishment, and the righteous into life eternal. The human conscience must answer, This is right! Such a judgment gives us a sense of rest. With such a judgment to come, the presumption is that the Providence which leads up to it is as equitable and as sublime as itself. Witness, too, that as God is to judge us, he also himself appeals to our judgment! He asks us to consider his ways, and challenges us to tell what iniquity we have found in him. Hence in many parts of the Bible, notably in the Psalms, we have judgments pronounced by man upon the Lord, as if the Lord had placed himself at our bar and asked us to acquit or condemn his providence. He proceeds upon reasons. His principles are ascertainable, and such as can be judged. Wonderful is this, that God should allow us to judge his way! He does not silence the Psalmist, nor does he reprove the acclaiming angels; he will be judged by all who are honest in soul. And beautiful, too, is this, that notwithstanding the severity and awfulness of his judgments, the Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works! J. P. Men needed to have it made visible—writ large in indelible and decipherable characters, even on the earth's surface—that there is a moral Governor Who takes cognizance of evil, to Whose ear the cry for vengeance goes up when deeds are done that outrage humanity, and within Whose hand lies every agency which can either make or blast the fortunes of a commonwealth. Other branches of the human family were hurrying along the same path. It was mercy to erect, right in the centre of the populous lands, on the very road by which men passed from north to south and east to west, a monument of Heaven's justice. It was specially merciful to the other Canaanitish tribes to have such a spectacle laid at their own door. Dykes. The doom of Sodom was not to be regarded as an isolated judgment; but the scene of desolation, which was forever to occupy the site of the cities of the plain, would also forever exhibit to Israel the consequences of sin, and be to them a type of future judgment. It is in this light that the Scriptures both of the Old and the New Testament present to us the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. A. E.—In some twenty passages scattered over Scripture from the Pentateuch to the Apocalypse, this is referred to by name as the most conspicuous instance of divine vengeance upon sin. Sodom is employed as a type of Babylon's fall by two of the greatest prophets. It is conjoined with Tyre and Sidon in the solemn warnings of our Lord Himself. And in the Revelation it stands side by side with Egypt as a type of exceptional impiety. Dykes. The case became for all future time a standard illustration of God's most sudden, fearful and utter destruction of the wicked. (See Deut. 29:23 and Isa. 13:19 and Jer. 20:16 and 50:40 and Amos 4:11 and 2 Pet. 2:6 and Jude 7.) It classes itself naturally with the deluge of Noah's time and with the fall of Pharaoh's host in the Red Sea, and the swallowing up of Korah and his company in the wilderness—all combining to show that God never lacks the means or the power to begin his threatened retribution upon the wicked here in time whenever he deems it wise for the moral ends of warning. In view of this appalling scene, how terribly significant become the words of Jude—'Set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire!' How easily and yet how fearfully can the Almighty execute the judgments written against guilty sinners who scorn his words of warning and dare his vengeance! H. C. Even if the positive and irrefragable proofs of the truths of religion could be subverted, an unquenchable instinct of the soul remains to retain hold of the notion of a moral system, and of law and justice. This sense of the fitness of RETRIBUTION flashes upon us in some form every hour. We cannot read a page of history, we cannot listen to the news of the day, we cannot walk the streets, without forcibly admitting the idea that there must be a vindication of right. If at any time the films of false philosophy have deceived us into the opinion that vice and virtue are one and the same—this sophistry is instantly and irrecoverably scattered by our first brunt with some real affair of common life that appeals to the ordinary sentiments of humanity:—the illusion fades—truth and nature stand out and speak aloud, and we dare not refuse to hear them. But if there is to be retribution at all, if any crime or cruelty, the most atrocious which history records or which history has forgotten, is to be brought to account in an afterlife, and is to receive its due award of chastisement;—if the authority of God, as Governor of men, is to be in any manner asserted and maintained, then is it possible to believe that such retribution shall be otherwise than ABSOLUTELY IMPARTIAL? and when we say impartial, we must mean that it shall be in the strictest sense UNIVERSAL. It must bear alike, and equally, upon every responsible agent, and must come close home to the entire merit and demerit of each. There is in fact no justice that is not universal justice. Justice altogether is nullified and disgraced by even a single and the smallest instance of oblivion, or inequality, or perversion of facts. I. T. # The Dead Sea. The Dead Sea, to use its modern and more familiar name, is usually called in the Bible the “Salt Sea,” but is also styled the “Sea of the Plain,” or the Arabah; the “East Sea.” To the writers of the Talmud it was known as the “Sea of Sodom” and the “Sea of Salt,” to Josephus as the “Asphaltic” and “Sodomitic” Lake; and it is now called by the Bedouin “Bahr Lut,” the Sea of Lot. The title “Dead Sea” probably originated in the very general belief, that the waters of the lake covered the doomed Cities of the Plain, and were of such a deadly character that no bird could fly over them; and that the shores were desolate and barren. Recent investigation has completely disposed of these erroneous impressions. The Dead Sea occupies the deepest portion of the great depression of the Jordan valley; it is oblong in form, the longest dimension being almost due north and south; and its width is nearly uniform, except near the southern end, where a long low peninsula, the Lisan, stretches out for some distance from the eastern shore, and divides its waters into two unequal portions. The lake has a length of forty-six miles, and an average width of ten miles; on either side the mountain ranges run parallel to each other, and on the east they rise abruptly from the water’s edge, leaving no margin, except at those points where small deltas have been formed at the mouths of the larger ravines that discharge their waters into the lake. The northern end, bordered by the plain of Jericho, is somewhat rounded, and at the southern end the shore is for some two or three miles perfectly flat and but slightly raised above the surface of the water; beyond this it is shut in by the salt mountain of Jebel Usdum and the rising ground that separates the waters of the lake from those of the Red Sea. The extraordinary depression of the surface of the lake, 1292 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, together with the absence of any outlet for its waters, render it the most remarkable body of water in the world; and its great depth, 1308 feet at the deepest point, is equally worthy of notice. The total depression of the bed of the lake is thus 2600 feet, almost the same as the elevation of the Mount of Olives above the Mediterranean. The water of the Dead Sea is clear and bright, but, owing to the large quantities of various salts held in solution, it is intensely salt, and has a nauseous, bitter taste. The specific gravity, 1228, distilled water being 1000, and the Mediterranean 1025, is greater than that of any known water, and to this may be attributed the extreme buoyancy noticed by so many travellers. When the surrounding mountains are lighted up by the bright rays of the sun, there is, perhaps, no place in the world that can equal this region for brilliancy and richness of coloring; and the vivid tints in Mr. Holman Hunt’s picture of the “Scapegoat” are no exaggeration of those frequently witnessed on the shores of the Dead Sea. No one who has stood on the Mount of Olives and seen the mountains of Moab glowing under the rays of the setting sun, can ever forget the wondrous beauty of the scene, with the bright blue water lying in the depths below, and the burnished mountains rising beyond like the border of some enchanted fairyland. Striking atmospheric effects are occasionally produced by the enormous evaporation. Irby and Mangles noticed it “rising in broad, transparent columns of vapor, not unlike water-spouts in appearance, but very much longer.” The geology of the basin of the Dead Sea was carefully examined by M. Louis Lartet, the distinguished geologist who accompanied the expedition of the Duc de Luynes, and the conclusion he arrived at was that the lake “had never been in communication with the neighboring oceans, although its waters formerly stood at a much higher level than they now do.” The fact that a hill of cretaceous formation, 781 feet above the sea, separates the waters of the Dead Sea from those of the Gulf of Akabah, and that the cretaceous strata are covered with their own débris alone, and show no trace of any water-course running in a southerly direction, effectually disproves the theory of an ancient prolongation of the Jordan to the Red Sea; and that of an ancient marine communication with the surrounding oceans is equally disproved by “the absence of any marine organizations in the most ancient strata of the basin, the fluviatile character of the post-eocene deposits of the Arabah, the existing traces of the direction of the streams toward the Dead Sea, and the non-existence of any material elevation of the ground in the middle of the Arabah since the formation of the present valleys.” M. Lartet thinks that the position of the cretaceous and eocene beds on both sides of the Jordan valley, and the striking rectilineal character of the valley itself, seems “to favor the idea of the existence of a vast line of fracture through the middle of the country;” and that "the eastern side of the highlands of Judah must have undergone a considerable downward movement all along the line of dislocation, and thus originated the depressed trench which separates Palestine proper from the highlands on the other side of Jordan." The basin of the Dead Sea has thus been formed without any influence from, or communication with, the ocean; whence it follows that the lake which occupies the bottom of the basin has never been anything but a reservoir for the rainfall, the saltiness of which originally proceeded from the constitution of the environs of the lake, and has greatly increased under the influence of incessant evaporation. M. Lartet found the ancient deposits of the Dead Sea extending up the Jordan valley as far north as Wady Zerka, where they were at least 300 feet above the present surface of the lake, so that the water must at one time have stood at that level, filling up a large portion of the valley, and have then deposited the marls which are so rich in salt and gypsum beds. At a later date volcanic eruptions have taken place to the north-east and east of the Dead Sea, and the last phenomena which affected its basin were the hot and mineral springs and bituminous eruptions which often accompany and follow volcanic action. Maj. Wilson. [For map, etc., see New Testament, vol. 1, p. 657.] There is no evidence, but the contrary, that there has been any change in the general form and appearance of the Lake since the creation of man. It has no outlet whatever, being, in fact, the deepest depression known on the surface of the earth. It receives at its northern end the constant flow of the River Jordan, on its eastern side the Callirhoe and the Aruon, now the Zerka Main and the Mojib, besides some smaller streams. At its south end, the Fikreh, Jeib, Kuseib, Ghurundel, and other streams draining the Arabah, empty themselves into it; and on the west, the little stream of Engedi and several others add to its waters. Yet this enormous inflow is fully counterbalanced by the continual evaporation from its surface. There are also many springs on its shores and within its shallower waters, some hot, some salt, some sulphurous, and others fresh, which contribute to its bulk. Though no life, animal or vegetable, can possibly continue in the Lake, there is—wherever, as on the whole south-east shore and in various spots on the west side, fresh water flows into the Lake—a positive exuberance of life to the water's edge. This is especially the case in the "Safieh," the southern plains of Moab at the south-east, and at Engedi on the opposite shore. From the earliest times to the present these spots have been carefully cultivated. Engedi was contemporary with the Cities of the Plain. When we see the surprising fertility and delicious climate of these buried nooks, we can well understand the attractiveness of these cities and their lands to Lot. # Of the Site of the Four Cities, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, destroyed by fire and brimstone from the Lord, it is scarcely necessary to say that no trace remains. Scripture does not state that they were engulfed in the Sea, but that they were destroyed, and "the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein" (Deut. 29:23). A description which would equally apply to the desolate plain at the south end and to the barren, sulphur-spread tract between Jericho and the north end. It has been questioned at which end these, almost the oldest cities in the records of human history, stood. Tradition places them at the south. There is, however, reason for supposing them to have been at the north end. When they are first mentioned (Gen. 10:19) they are spoken of as cities of the Canaanites on their border. They are next named in Gen. 13, in the account of the separation of Abraham and Lot. Abraham and Lot stood together between Bethel and Hai, when "Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar" (Gen. 13:10). From the hills where they stood, it is impossible to gain a glimpse of the south end of the Dead Sea, while the plain of Jericho is spread almost at the beholder's feet. Again, after the destruction of the cities we are told that Abraham, then encamped at Mamre, "looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace" (Gen. 19:28). The accuracy of the expression is to be noted. Not he saw, but he looked toward the Cities of the Plain. From the hill above Mamre the plain itself cannot be seen, but the depression between the nearer hills and the distant tops of Gilead is plainly to be perceived, which is not the case with the depression of the southern end of the Dead Sea. Thus Abraham could at once have identified the locality whence the smoke arose. Once more, in the view which was granted to Moses from the top of Pisgah, he beheld “the south and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm-trees, unto Zoar.” Now from the summit of Nebo it is utterly impossible to behold the south-east of the Dead Sea, the situation of the modern Dra’a, which is said, by a tradition not earlier than the times of Josephus and Jerome to be Zoar; but if we place Zoar in the parallel of Engedi, on the east side of the Dead Sea—we see the limit of Moses’ view, in accordance with the Sacred Record. From the top of Nebo, the view of the plain of the Jordan runs on uninterruptedly till it is cut off by the headland of Ras Feshkhah, the Arabic equivalent of Pisgah, and exactly in front of it, Ziara, projecting in front of Nebo. I believe the exact site of Zoar is to be found just below Nebo, in a line between it and Ras Feshkhah, and on a knoll slightly rising above the plain of Shittim. H. B. T. As it is hardly possible for any one to read the account in Gen. 13 : 10 without feeling that Abraham and Lot were actually looking down on Sodom and Gomorrah when “Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah,” it follows that those cities must have been situated on some part of the plain north of the Dead Sea, and visible from the heights east of Bethel. In support of this view we may draw attention to the mention, in verse 10, of “the plain of Jordan,” which could not have extended below the point at which the river entered the Dead Sea, and the direct testimony, in verse 11, that Lot journeyed east, a course which would have led him far away from the southern end of the Dead Sea. Wil-on. On the rebellion of the Cities of the Plain, we are told (Gen. 14) that the Assyrians smote the Horites in Mount Seir unto El Paran, and returned and smote the country of the Amalekites and also the Amorites that dwelt in Hazezon-Tamar or Engedi. After this the King of Sodom and his confederates met the invaders in the Vale of Siddim, and, on their defeat, Abraham pursued the victors on their march home by Damascus, and overtook them in Laish, or Dan, under Mount Hermon. Had Sodom and the other cities been situated at the south end of the Sea, it was certainly not after smiting the Amalekites and the Amorites at Engedi that they would have met the invader, but long before he reached Hazezon-Tamar. But if Sodom and the confederate cities were in the plain of Jordan, there is a topographical sequence in the whole story : while Abraham and his allies hurriedly pursue the plunderers up the Ghor, or Jordan Valley, without delay, till they overtake them at the source of the Jordan. [As a final point] there is a wide plain, a dead level, extending some eight or ten miles south of the lake, called by the Arabs “El Ghor,” which is conjectured to have been the site of the Cities of the Plain. But this plain is covered by a layer of sand, gypsum, and salt, and yields no evidence of having ever been cultivated in historical times. H. B. T. The region at the southern end of the Dead Sea is a salt marsh and desert, with only a narrow belt of inhabitable land skirting its eastern border at the foot of the mountains. On the other hand, at the north end of the Dead Sea, there is a large and fertile plain which has been occupied by flourishing cities ever since the days of Moses and Joshua, at least. In speaking of the tell-system of the Jordan valley, I have shown that the ancient inhabitants built their cities upon natural or artificial mounds, and not down upon the flat land of the plain itself ; and I have shown that such tells, covered with ruins, exist at the north end of the Dead Sea, while there are none at the southern end. As we can identify some of these tells with places which existed in Josephus’s time, and still further back with cities which existed in the time of Joshua, it is not unreasonable to suppose that these same tells were occupied by cities in the time of Lot and Chedorlaomer. With regard to the account of the view of the Jordan valley which Lot had, or of that which Moses had, in both of which Zoar is mentioned, any justifiable rules of interpretation compel us to look for the site of Zoar at the north end of the Dead Sea. Only five sites are required ; namely, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim and Zoar. And on the plain of Shittim we have exactly five sites. Merrill. [For the traditional view, that the cities stood at the south end of the Lake, see Wolcott, Bib. Sac., vol. 25.] Agencies employed in Destruction. There is a very general belief that the cities were submerged, and that they now lie beneath the waters of the Dead Sea, but there is absolutely no ground for this supposition. Recent research has shown that in historic times there has been no great change in the Jordan valley, and that the waters of the Dead Sea formerly covered a much larger area than they do at present ; and though the exact nature of the catastrophe which overwhelmed the cities will perhaps never be known, we are expressly told in the Bible that their destruction was effected not by water, but by fire and brimstone rained on them from heaven (Gen. 19:24; Deut. 29:23; 2 Pet. 2:6; Jude 7). Wilson. There is no mention of any earthquake, which, if it occurred, must in the judgment of the narrator have been altogether a subordinate feature. Nor is an earthquake necessarily implied in the expression "overthrown," used in Deut. 29. Still, more or less tremor of the ground very probably occurred, and might have impressed itself on traditions of the event, especially as the district is subject to earthquakes, though it is not mentioned in theological narrative. The description is that of a bitumen or petroleum eruption, similar to those which on a small scale have been so destructive in the regions of Canada and the United States of America. They arise from the existence of reservoirs of compressed inflammable gas along with petroleum and water, existing at considerable depths below the surface. In the valley of the Euphrates, according to Layard, the Arabs can produce miniature eruptions of this kind, by breaking with stones the crust of hardened asphalt that has formed on the surface of the bitumen springs, and igniting the vapors and liquid petroleum. Now the valley of the Dead Sea is an "oil district," and from the incidental mention of its slime pits, or literally asphalt pits, in Genesis 14, was apparently more productive in mineral pitch in ancient times. It is known that petroleum exudes from the rocks both on the sides and in the bottom of the Dead Sea, and, being hardened by evaporation and oxygenation, forms the asphaltum referred to by so many travellers. The source of the bituminous matter is in the great beds of bituminous limestone of Upper Cretaceous age which appear at Neby Mousa, on the Jericho road and at many other places in the vicinity of the sea, and no doubt underlie its bed and the lower part of the Jordan plain. From these beds bituminous and gaseous matter must have been at all times exuding. Further, the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea basis are on the line of a great fault or fracture traversing these beds, and affording means of escape to their products, especially when the district is shaken by earthquakes. We have thus only to suppose that at the time in question reservoirs of condensed gas and petroleum existed under the plain of Siddim, and that these were suddenly discharged, either by their own accumulated pressure, or by an earthquake shock fracturing the overlying beds, when the phenomena described by the writer in Genesis would occur, and after the eruption the site would be covered with a saline and sulphurous deposit, while many of the sources of petroleum previously existing might be permanently dried up. In connection with this there might be subsidence of the ground over the now exhausted reservoirs, and this might give rise to the idea of the submergence of the cities. It is to be observed, however, that the parenthetic statement in Genesis 14, "which is the Salt Sea," does not certainly mean under the sea, and that it relates not to the cities themselves but to the plain where the battle recorded in the chapter was fought at a time previous to the eruption. . . . Sodom and its companion cities were no doubt so situated as to be specially subject to one particular kind of overthrow. But it may be safely said that there is no city in the world which is not equally, though perhaps by other agencies, within the reach of Divine power exercised through the energies of nature, should it be found to be destitute of "ten righteous men." So that the conclusion still holds—"except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." Dawson. 29. And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the Plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in the which Lot dwelt. 30. And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; 31 for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters. And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come 32 in unto us after the manner of all the earth: come, let us make our father drink wine, and we 33 will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night : and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father ; and he knew not 34 when she lay down, nor when she arose. And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father : let us make him drink wine this night also ; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our 35 father. And they made their father drink wine that night also : and the younger arose, and 36 lay with him ; and he knew not when she lay down, nor when she arose. Thus were both the 37 daughters of Lot with child by their father. And the firstborn bare a son, and called his 38 name Moab : the same is the father of the Moabites unto this day. And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Ben-ammi : the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day. Lot escaped the dreadful crisis of judgment with the loss of all his wealth. Abraham's tent is still surrounded with comfort and plenty. Lot barely escaped destruction "so as by fire," with the stain of the wickedness of Sodom upon the remnant of his household, to become the dishonored father of a dishonored race. Abraham, the friend of God, receives at the age of a hundred years the fulfilment of the promise that he shall be the father of a chosen people, and of the Messiah in whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. Such is the contrast between the faithful pilgrim who held fast by faith to the promise of a better country, and the unfaithful pilgrim who eagerly turned away in his progress after the things of the world, and ceased to set his affections on things above. And such is the moral of the inspired drama. Lot passes away from the scenes of the history, and his descendants are heard of thereafter only as the enemies of Jehovah and his covenant people ; while Abraham proceeds onward through new scenes of trial and of triumph to fill the entire field of the history of redemption. And it soon appeared that the account of the dread judgment upon the cities of the plain is but an incidental episode in the history of Abraham. S. R. 29,30. Lot does not long remain in Zoar. The judgment executed upon Sodom had filled his soul with such awe that he now sought refuge in the wilderness. A cave in the mountains of what afterward became the land of Moab served him for a dwelling-place. K. — It was wrong at first not to betake himself to the mountain : it was wrong, afterward, to go to it when God had given him the assurance that Zoar should be spared for his sake. Both cases argue a strange want of faith in the truth and providence of God. Had he still dwelt at Zoar the shameful transaction afterward recorded had, in all probability, not taken place. A. C. 32. When God delivers us from destruction he doth not secure us from all afflictions : Lot hath lost his wife, his allies, his substance, and now betakes himself to an uncomfortable solitariness. Yet though he fled from company he could not fly from sin : he who could not be tainted with uncleanness in Sodom is overtaken with drunkenness and incest in a cave : rather than Satan shall not want baits his own daughters will prove Sodomites : those which should comfort, betrayed him. How little are some hearts moved with judgments ! The ashes of Sodom and the pillar of salt were not yet out of their eye, when they dare think of lying with their own father. They knew that while Lot was sober he could not be unchaste. Drunkenness is the way to all bestial affections and acts : wine knows no difference either of persons or sins. Bp. II. 36. The sacred writer, in furnishing us with particular relations contained in this book, always kept in mind the promise of the Messiah, and was desirous of showing that the expectation of this great object of the Jewish hopes was predominant in all times, and influenced the opinions and manners of every generation. The recollection of this will furnish the reason of many particulars mentioned in the book, which might otherwise appear extraordinary and exceptionable. It will, perhaps, serve to explain the conduct of Lot's daughters ; the violent desire of Sarah for a son ; the solicitude of Isaac to remove the barrenness of Rebekah ; and the contention between the wives of Jacob. In conformity with this design also, Moses relates the jealousies between Ishmael and Isaac ; and between Esau and Jacob ; and many other minute and singular particulars, which an historian of his dignity would not have condescended to describe, but with a view to illustrate the general persuasion of and gradual preparation for the coming of the Messiah. Gray. 37. His name Moab. This name is generally interpreted of the father. — 38. Ben-ammi, the son of my people.** Both names justify the view that it was merely to preserve the family that the daughters of Lot made use of the above expedient. The generation which proceeded from this incestuous connection was certainly a bad one. The Moabites soon fell from the faith of God, and became idolaters, the people of Chemosh, and of Baal-peor (Num. 21: 29; 25: 1-3), and were enemies to the children of Abraham. And the Ammonites, who dwelt near to the Moabites, united with them in idolatry, and were also enemies to Israel. As both peoples made afterward a considerable figure in the Sacred History, the impartial inspired writer takes care to introduce an account of their origia. A. C.—These national stocks, thus morally tainted in their origin, were also morally perverse in their subsequent history. From a regard to their propinquity to them in blood and race, the children of Israel were obliged to spare them, and were not permitted either to conquer them or to force a passage through their country. They were never, however, incorporated with the people of God. They inhabited the mountains to the east of the Dead Sea,—the Ammonites further to the north than Moab,—and, consequently, were in an after age conterminous neighbors to the Israelites in the land of Canaan. It must not be forgotten that Ruth, who has a place in the genealogy of the Saviour, was a Moabitess. C. G. B. For his drunkenness on two successive evenings, at least, Lot was responsible, if not for the incest to which it led. And the fact gives a painful insight into his moral state, even after experience which might have sobered any man. The conduct of his children out of Sodom is of a piece with what we know of their upbringing in Sodom. It is fair, indeed, to remember, that in that age, as the case of Abraham himself shows, the law of incest was not yet firmly defined; and the exceptional circumstances of their situation must count for something. Still, the circumstance that they despaired of winning their father's consent when he was sober, is enough to show that they themselves felt their purpose to be, in spite of all excuses, an extremely doubtful one. Israel's descent from the child of sacred promise and of obedient faith is made the more bright by contrast with the dismal origin of Israel's kindred, the sons of Moab and of Ben-Ammi. Dykes. And then we hear of him no more. He is left by the sacred narrative, saved indeed from the conflagration of Sodom, but an outcast, widowed, homeless, hopeless, without children or grandchildren, save the authors and the heirs of his shame. E. H. B.—It would seem as though this case were specially recorded as a caution against that uncharitableness of spirit that sometimes we find limiting our intercession for all the children of God. As we look at such and such an one that professes Jehovah—so worldly, so narrow, so selfish, so weak-headed as to be blown about by every popular breeze; so weak-hearted that our charity can hardly inclose him within the pale of the covenant at all—then we are to remember Abraham's heroic intercession and this interposition of the Divine mercy, showing that, after all, Lot is one of Jehovah's people, therefore shall he not perish with the wicked. This biography of Lot, brief and fragmentary as it is, is well worthy of our study, not only because it is a biography which the Spirit of God has thought it worth while to record for our instruction, but because of its intense significance as a warning to worldly-minded Christians. S. R. Lot's disregard of spiritual privileges brought upon him a bitter entail of sin and shame. There can be little doubt that Lot's own religious character suffered from the long sojourn in Sodom. A man cannot voluntarily expose himself to the worst of influences, from the mere love of gain, without his religious sensibilities being deadened; and this only can account for the grievous termination to the history of Lot, which is among the most melancholy records in the Word of God. It is one of those cases which we must contemplate because it is there,—very terrible, and very necessary to be thought of; but we would wish to look at it as Abraham did at the ruin of Sodom, standing in the place where we have met God, and looking at it "a great way off." There is a general consistency in the lives of men; and such a deplorable spiritual catastrophe could not well have happened to one who strove to maintain warm religious feeling, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. To Lot's family the disregard of all religious associations was even worse. His wife caught the infection of the place, and became in love, deep and unholy, with its fashions. It may have been her influence which prevented Lot from leaving sooner, and, with all the urgency of doom behind, he could not carry her with him. The family of Lot mingled with the men of Sodom, and learned their ways. When the poor father, alarmed for his children's safety, implored his sons-in-law—"Up, get you out of this place, for the Lord will destroy this city," "he seemed as one that mocked." We can perceive, in this closing scene, how much Lot must have had to bear from those who were most nearly related to him. We know what sins followed the fall of Sodom, and what a salvation Lot still needed from the fearful pit and from the miry clay into which he was led. Of the remainder of his life we know nothing. Ker.—The edge of the moral which his example points lies in this, that to the last he continued to be a servant of Jehovah. He was not seduced by evil surroundings either into idolatry or into profligacy. The filthy deeds of his neighbors “vexed his righteous soul.” He must even have exasperated them by occasional, perhaps by habitual, remonstrances; else they could scarcely have cast it up to him at the last, that having come in as a foreigner, he had set himself up to be their judge. In spite of his faults, an apostle could still call him a “just” man; the “godly” one whom the Lord “knew how to deliver.” His very deliverance from a ruin so sweeping proved the exceptional pureness of his life. It is precisely this which makes his case so instructive. What warning can be more appalling against every unhallowed association which pious people can contract with ungodly comrades? What example could better illustrate the dangers which beset the path of those who “will be rich”? Literally, he was “saved as by fire;” “a firebrand plucked out of the burning” (Amos 4 : 11). Dykes. #### Revolting Records of the Old Testament. Old Testament history was written both to offer examples for imitation, and warnings against conduct to be avoided; thus affording lessons in the plan and method of God’s moral discipline of man, “profitable”—not only as models—but even more “for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” Some reasons for the perpetuation, in the Book of God, for all time, and in all languages, and for all races of men, of the revolting records contained in Old Testament history. 1. To show the frightful capabilities of the human soul in the direction of moral evil. The biblical record as it stands, alone of all writings, presents without gloss, concealment or exaggeration, the complete and eternal truth concerning moral character. There is a popular idea about the patriarchs and the noted men of Old Testament history, which has no ground in the Bible itself, viz., that they were very holy men, patterns of all excellence; as examples, only second to the one great example of Christ himself. This idea is incorrect and harmful. Some of them the Bible does not represent as examples of any virtue at all. This is true of nearly all the twelve patriarchs. Men have canonized them; the Bible does not. But why should the divine record preserve and perpetuate these facts? Just for this reason, viz., that men everywhere and to the end of time may learn the gangrenous power of evil, and not shrink from the surgery of the Almighty but most merciful Father, when used for its removal from the soul, or from the human race. Let us suppose that all such records had been omitted from the biblical history. Men would say of the record, “These are unnatural characters. Human character now is formed under different conditions. Those men were without many of the temptations to which we are subject.” Men sometimes sink in discouragement when they hold before them the absolutely perfect example of Jesus only. They aspire toward that exaltation of character, but it is high and far away, till they read the record of the imperfect men who, notwithstanding, were saints of God in the ancient time. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ There are doubtless other reasons, easy to be discovered, for the perpetuation in the Book of God, of records revolting to a refined sense, and the occasion of stumbling to some : and there may be reasons in the divine mind, which we, who see all things that concern moral government and discipline "as through a glass darkly," and as yet know but "in part," still fail to discover. But are not the reasons we have presented amply sufficient for a justification of the ways of God? Are they not sufficient to secure that respectful and well-timed attention to these sad records, that the records themselves, taken with their setting in the history of which they form a part, justly challenge? It is not necessary that every portion of the Bible should be treated as "devotional reading" by men in every age ; indeed we should be far from commending the wisdom of those among us who read, "in course," the entire Old Testament history, around their home firesides. There is a place for all these historical portions of the Bible, but that is not the place. But a man who is familiar with the social and moral condition of certain races of men to day, might profitably turn to portions of Old Testament history which would furnish poor moral nutriment to "babes" within the circle of refined Christian homes in our own land, but which, read and explained "with great plainness of speech" to some full-grown Africans, might be as "sincere milk" as those men are yet able to digest ; quite on the level of their intelligence, sadly suited to the low plane of their experience. Herrick. 1. AND Abraham journeyed from thence toward the land of the South, and dwelt between 2 Kadesh and Shur ; and he sojourned in Gerar. And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, She is 3 my sister : and Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah. But God came to Abimelech 4 in a dream of the night, and said to him, Behold, thou art but a dead man, because of the 5 woman which thou hast taken ; for she is a man's wife. Now Abimelech had not come near 6 her : and he said, Lord, wilt thou slay even a righteous nation? Said he not himself unto 7 me, She is my sister? and she, even she herself said, He is my brother : in the integrity of 8 my heart and the innocency of my hands have I done this. And God said unto him in the 9 dream, Yea, I know that in the integrity of thy heart thou hast done this, and I also withheld 10 thee from sinning against me : therefore suffered I thee not to touch her. Now therefore re- 11 store the man's wife ; for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live ; 12 and if thou restore her not, know thou that thou shalt surely die, thou, and all that are thine, 13 And Abimelech rose early in the morning, and called all his servants, and told all these things 14 in their ears : and the men were sore afraid. Then Abimelech called Abraham, and said unto 15 him, What hast thou done unto us? and wherein have I sinned against thee, that thou hast 16 brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? thou hast done deeds unto me that ought not 17 to be done. And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What sawest thou, that thou hast done this 18 thing? And Abraham said, Because I thought, Surely the fear of God is not in this place ; and 19 they will slay me for my wife's sake. And moreover she is indeed my sister, the daughter of 20 my father, but not the daughter of my mother ; and she became my wife : and it came to 21 pass, when God caused me to wander from my father's house, that I said unto her, This is thy 22 kindness which thou shalt shew unto me ; at every place whither we shall come, say of me, 23 He is my brother. And Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and menservants and womens- 24 vants, and gave them unto Abraham, and restored him Sarah his wife. And Abimelech said, 16. Behold, my land is before thee : dwell where it pleaseth thee. And unto Sarah he said, Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver : behold, it is for thee a covering of the eyes to all that are with thee ; and in respect of all thou art righted. And Abraham prayed unto God : and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants ; and they bare children. For the LORD had fast closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech, because of Sarah Abraham's wife. Nothing is more worthy of admiration than the fidelity of the Scripture history. There is not a saint, however eminent, but his faults are reported as faithfully as his virtues ; and from the testimony given we are constrained to acknowledge that the best of men, when they come into temptation, are weak and fallible as others if they be not succored from above. Bush.—The falsehood of Abraham, the guilt and violence of David, were very different in their effect on character in an age when truth and purity and gentleness were scarcely recognized, from what they would be now. Then Abraham and David had not so sinned against their consciences as a man would sin now in doing the same acts, because their consciences were less enlightened. F. W. R.—I am called on not to walk in all the footsteps of father Abraham, but only in the footsteps of his faith. In this chapter he evinces a want of faith when, instead of trusting to God for his safety, he trusted to a device of his own. The God who delivered him in spite of this his perversity would surely have delivered him had he committed himself in all fearlessness and truth to His holy keeping. In the history of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, more especially in that of Jacob, we observe the intromission of human deceit with the proceedings and purposes of the divine administration. Nevertheless the counsel of the Lord shall stand, unaffected alike by the opposition of enemies and the waywardness or misconduct of friends. T. C. If we suppose that the Divine commendation of certain Old Testament personages indicates the Divine approval of the particular conduct of those personages, our moral standards are hopelessly confused. If, on the other hand, we recognize the truth, that God judges men by their inner spirit toward himself even though they may be at fault in their mode of exhibiting that spirit, we are at no loss to see how a man's spirit may be approved of God, while his conduct in many things is rightly disapproved of men. Abraham shows his faith in God by leaving his land and his people at the call of God ; and he proves his fidelity toward God by never swerving from the worship of Jehovah, even while surrounded by idolaters. In view of this proof of his faith, Abraham is commended of God as one of his children at heart, notwithstanding his polygamy and his untruthfulness—in accordance with the practice of his day. Esau despises spiritual privileges in contrast with indulgence of his appetite. Jacob gives the first place to blessings in the line of God's promises. God commends Jacob in and for this choice ; but he does not thereby show his approval of Jacob's deceit and falsehood in his outreaching to secure the promised blessings. So all the way through the inspired record. S. S. T. 1. Sojourned in Gerar. No reason is assigned by the sacred historian for so sudden a removal. What is certain is, that he did soon after the overthrow of Sodom break up the settlement near Hebron which for fifteen years had been his home. He moved farther to the south-west and nearer to the desert. After halting at various points in the "Negeb" or South-land of Canaan, he finally attempted a more permanent encampment close to the headquarters of a stranger tribe. Gerar was the capital of a Philistine people allied to the Egyptians, whose five subdivisions at a later period occupied the Shephelah, or strip of level land along the southern coasts, whence they waged with Israel an incessant border warfare. To that coast-strip they lent their own name of Philistia or Palestine, which in much later times came to be inaccurately extended to the whole land. Dykes. Gerar was not far from Gaza and Beer-heba. Its site has probably been identified by Rowlands with the traces of an ancient city now called Khirbet-el-Gerar, near a deep Wady called Jurf-el-Gerar, about three hours to the south-south-east of Gaza. E. H. B.—Here he and his descendants dwelt for a long time at BEERSHEBA, at the south-western extremity of the maritime plain, upon the borders of the desert. This was Abraham's fourth resting-place in the Holy Land. It continued till the latest times to be the southern boundary of the Holy Land, so that from Dan to Beersheba became the established formula to indicate the whole country. In this district the Philistines had already begun to form settlements, and a warlike king of this race, whose hereditary name was ABIMELECH (Father-King), reigned in the valley of Gerar. P. S.—Beersheba lies some twelve hours' march to the south west of Hebron. Though at that time included within the range of pasturage claimed by the Philistine flock-masters, it ultimately fell to the dominion of Israel, and in fact constituted their frontier station on the extreme south. The district was admirably adapted for grazing. Just where Abraham's well was dug, the fertile land begins to shade off by insensible degrees into a sterile and unfriendly desert. Before it to the south stretches the most extensive plain in Palestine; while on either hand as well as northward are smooth and rolling hills, free from either rock or forest. Dykes. Beersheba is on many accounts the most interesting locality in the South country. Its position admits of no doubt—the well-known Bir-es-Seba. Long lines of foundations mark the ancient city, or rather village, for it seems to have always been what Jerome describes it in the fourth century—a very large unwalled place, with a garrison. The ruins are about half a mile in extent, but scattered. H. B. T. Approaching Palestine from the southern desert, we came upon an open undulating country; green grass was seen along the lesser water-courses, and almost green sward; while the gentle hills, covered in ordinary seasons with grass and rich pastures, were now burnt over with drought. On the northern side of the bed of a torrent, close upon the bank, are two deep wells, still called Bir-es-Seba,—the ancient Beersheba. These wells, which are circular, and stoned up with solid masonry, are some distance apart; one 12½ feet in diameter, and 44½ deep, to the surface of the water; the other 5 feet wide, and 42 deep. The water in both is pure and sweet, and in great abundance. Here, then, is the place where the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, often dwelt. Robinson. One feature marks Beersheba as still the boundary between the desert and the uplands. This is the cultivation of large portions of unfenced lands for corn by the Arabs. The 7 wells vary from five to thirteen feet in diameter. The water stood at 38 feet from the surface in the one at which we were camped. Above the rock (34 feet down) it was built with finely squared large stones, hard as marble; and the ropes of water-drawers for 4000 years have worn the edges of the hard limestone with no less than 143 flutings, the shallowest of them four inches deep. The ancient marble troughs were arranged at convenient distances round the mouth in an irregular circle. All day long, our men or the Bedouin herdsmen and their wives were drawing water in skins, and filling these troughs for the horses, camels, cattle and sheep, recalling many a scene in the lives of the patriarchs, of Rebecca and of Zipporah. We are by the very well Abraham digged. Hence he journeyed with Isaac to Mount Moriah. Hence Jacob started on his lonely travel to Padan Aram. Here he sacrificed to the Lord before setting out to join his son Joseph in Egypt. Here Samuel made his sons judges. Here Elijah parted with his faithful servant before wandering into the wilderness. Over those wide rolling hills, covered with verdure and carpeted with spring flowers, the Patriarchs used to gaze on their thousands of flocks and herds. H. B. T. 2. Abimelech.** The official title borne by their successive chieftains was Abi-melek. Like the Padi-shah of the Persians, the name signifies "My father the king,"—fit title for a pastoral sheik, who wielded over his clansmen a kindly although irresponsible authority. Dykes.—Father king, the common title of the Philistine kings, as Pharaoh was of the Egyptians. In Abimelech we see a totally different character from that of Pharaoh; the character, namely, of a heathen imbued with a moral consciousness of right and open to receive a divine revelation, of which there is no trace in the account of the king of Egypt. It is not to be wondered at that the same danger should twice have occurred to Sarah, if we remember that the customs of the heathen nations, among which he was sojourning, were such as to induce Abraham to use the artifice of calling his wife his sister. E. H. B. In what had God failed him that he should begin now to doubt of his faithfulness or power? Could the Philistines touch a hair of his head without the divine permission? Besides it ought to have occurred to him that he had once before been guilty of the same dissimulation, and had been reproved for it. Had the Philistines come suddenly upon him, and threatened to put him to death for his wife's sake we should the less have wondered that they were prevailed upon to conceal their relation to each other. But he had done the same thing many years before and had thereby ensnared Pharaoh king of Egypt, nor was he then delivered without a divine interposition, and a just rebuke from the injured monarch. Surely he ought to have profited by past experience. Bush. See the parallel account (ch. 12). Sarah was now about ninety years of age, and her beauty must have been considerably impaired since the time she was taken in a similar manner by Pharaoh, king of Egypt; but she was probably now chosen by Abimelech, on the account of forming an alliance with Abraham, who was very rich. This circumstance was sufficient to cause his friendship to be courted; and what more effectual means could Abimelech use in reference to this than the taking Sarah to be his concubine, or second wife, which in those times had no kind of disgrace attached to it? A. C. 4. Will thou slay also a righteous nation?** These words appear to contain a reference to the recent awful event of Sodom's overthrow, which must have greatly impressed the surrounding country. Bush.—A righteous nation, i.e. a nation guiltless as regards this act of their king; but it may be, that the people of Gerar were really exempt from the worst vices of Canaan, and living in a state of comparative piety and simplicity. E. H. B.—The language evidently carries with it the implication, which is abundantly warranted elsewhere in the Scripture, that from the close connection existing between them, the sins of rulers were often visited upon their people. Bush.—See what confidence a man may have toward God, when his heart condemns him not. If our consciences witness to our integrity, and that, however we may have been cheated into a snare, we have not knowingly and wittingly sinned against God, it will be our rejoicing in the day of evil. He pleads with God as Abraham had done (ch. 18:23). Will thou slay a righteous nation, a nation which in this matter was innocent? 6. God allows his plea, and admits that what he did he did in the integrity of his heart, Yea, I know it. Further, he lets him know that he was kept from proceeding in the sin, merely by the good hand of God upon him. I withheld thee from sinning against me. There is a great deal of sin devised and designed, that is never executed. As bad as things are in the world, they are not so bad as the Devil and wicked men would have them. It is God that restrains men from doing the ill they would do; it is not from him that there is sin, but it is from him that there is not more sin, either by his influence upon men's minds, checking their inclination to sin, or by his providence, taking away the opportunity to sin. H. Against me. The truth emphasized here needs to be indelibly graven upon our deepest and most controlling convictions: That every wrong or evil done against men is primarily and essentially sin against God. So David affirms in confessing to Jehovah his supreme crime against Uriah, "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned." B. 7. God had raised His servant to be a "prophet." With him God held such intimate intercourse as was not granted to other men, even in an age when Heaven lay more open to the eye of earth than it does now. This constituted him a mediator through whom the divine will and favor could reach his contemporaries. Quite recently it had emboldened him to stand as intercessor between the sinful towns and the justice of Heaven. Even Abimelech was to be indebted for the pardon of his unwitting fault to the prayers of the very man who had misled him into it. "He is a prophet," said the Voice in his dream, "and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live." Dykes. This is the first time we meet with the word prophet; and Abraham is the first that is honored with this name. It signifies one admitted to a nearer intercourse with God; so as to be allowed to consult Him, and to declare His mind and will to others; and also to prevail with Him by prayer to confer blessings upon them. Patrick.—Abraham is said to be a prophet, occupying a place of especial favor, so that his intercession would avail with God. And no less remarkable are those that follow, in which the heathen king reproves the prophet, the Friend of God, by an appeal to those first principles of moral right which bind prophets and heathens alike: "thou hast done deeds with me that ought not to be done." Abimelech shines throughout this narrative. His public announcement of the facts to his servants is the act of an injured man conscious of his own rectitude and desirous thoroughly to clear himself. Alf.—This king of the Philistines knows the true God, as Melchizedek also did; in dreams he even receives communications from him; recognizes in Abraham a "prophet," or interpreter of the divine will—one gifted with the higher vision, and permitted to hold familiar intercourse with the Lord; and obeys with alacrity the intimations of God. He displays in this transaction a highly honorable character; while Abraham, to his humiliation, is constrained to listen to his just reproaches. C. G. B. 9,10. The serious reproof which Abimelech gave to Abraham. His reasoning with Abraham was strong, and yet very mild. Nothing could be said better; he does not reproach him, but he fairly represents the injury Abraham had done him. 12. He excused it from the guilt of a downright lie, by making it out, that, in a sense, she was his sister. But they to whom he said, She is my sister, understood that she was so his sister as not to be capable of being his wife; so that it was an equivocation with an intent to deceive. H. Some tell us, the God of the Old Testament takes the lie of Abraham under His special protection, for Abraham comes out of these two situations honored and enriched. But in both cases the sacred historian evidently takes the part of the two heathen kings against Abraham; for he transmits to us at full length the energetic reproaches which both the monarchs address him: "What is this that thou hast done unto me? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife?" And Abraham answers not a word, which signifies that he recognizes his guilt. "What hast thou done unto us? Thou hast done deeds unto me that ought not to be done," said the king of the Philistines. And Abraham does not seek to justify himself; he only endeavors to palliate his fault by explaining to Abimelech that his statement was not so complete a falsehood as at first sight it seemed. The biblical hero, the father of Israel, is, therefore, rebuked on both occasions by the two heathen princes, and this in two reproofs which have been preserved by the sacred writer. That is how Abraham comes out of these adventures justified! As to the gifts presented to Abraham by the two kings, they too had their sin to atone for in this transaction. If it be not permitted to take from a man his wife, it is equally forbidden to take his sister. If for this act of violence they impose upon themselves a reparation toward Abraham, it is mere justice. The only one who comes out of this narrative glorified is God, who interferes to save His elect from the false position in which he has placed himself by his own fault, and who preserves from crime the two comparatively innocent heathen kings. Godet. 16. A thousand pieces of silver.** This is explained subsequently, when Abraham buys the field and cave of Machpelah for four hundred shekels of silver, which, it is added, "he weighed to Ephron, current money with the merchant." These transactions bring out three points; that in ancient times silver appears to have been the money metal, gold being reserved more for ornament; that for a long period still money was not coined and stamped, but weighed—the Lydians being among the first to use coin, and that perhaps a thousand years afterward; that even then the merchant, the travelling tradesman was at his business of exchange. S. C. B. 17. So Abraham prayed unto God.** Abraham by his prevarication had brought distress on Abimelech and all his household. Being now humbled by the rebuke he had received, he prayed to God for the removal of the judgments which he had been instrumental in procuring. By this means, as far as in him lay, he counteracted and reversed the mischief that he had done. It is but seldom that we can cancel in any degree the evil we have committed; but the course adopted by Abraham is open to us all. We may pray for those whom we have injured. We may beg of God to obliterate from their minds any bad impressions which either by word or deed we may have made on them. Bush.—Comparing merely the natural position of Abraham in this transaction with that of Abimelech, the Patriarch would have appeared under great disadvantage, and therefore God points out that by grace and calling he occupied another and a much higher place, from which he was not removed even when, through the weakness of his nature, he lost so much of his personal dignity. Yet while Abimelech stands so much higher than the Patriarch in point of natural dignity and moral strength, the latter has to intercede for him, that the sin, of which without knowing its full extent he had become guilty, might be forgiven, and that the plague, with which he and his household had been afflicted, might be removed. K. If the Divine purpose is to be turned aside by the fault or blemish found in individual character, the Divine government of man is at an end, and human progress is an impossibility. Take the full stretch of time required by the Almighty in working out his purposes, and then it will be seen that under all appearances there was something which made every man chosen to leadership in the holy kingdom the best man that could have been chosen for the purpose. You say that Abimelech was better than Abraham; but you know nothing about Abimelech but what is stated in this chapter. You have seen Abimelech at his best and you have seen Abraham at his worst, and then you have rushed to a conclusion! This is not the right way to read history; certainly not the right way to read the Bible. We are not to set act against act, but life against life. Take life for life, spirit for spirit, character for character, through and through, and no man who is without Christ can compare for true and lasting dignity of soul with the least in the kingdom of heaven. This principle may help us to come to larger and juster judgments of human character and human history. When I think of the meanness of Adam, the drunkenness of Noah, the selfishness of Lot, the cowardice of Abraham, the cunning of Jacob, the sensuality of David, and the inconstancy of Peter, my first wonder is that such men should have a name in the Divine history at all. But therein I show my folly and my impiety, by my setting up my morality against the righteousness of God. It is easy for me to compare the insipid respectability of some of my own acquaintance with the painful characteristics just named, and to depose the great historical characters in favor of my unimpeachable friends. But where would my friends have been in the same circumstances? This, then, is the point at which I find rest when I am disturbed by the evident and painful immorality of illustrious Bible characters, viz., human nature has never been perfect in all its qualities, energies, and services; the perfection of human nature can be wrought out only by long-continued and severe probation; in choosing instruments for the representation of his will and the execution of his purposes, God has always chosen men who were best fitted on the whole for such ministry, though in some particulars they have pitifully failed. Consider, too, knowing human nature as we do, how beneficial a thing it was to the great men themselves to be shown now and again that they were imperfect, and that they were only great and strong as they were good—as they were true to God. We are called to holiness, to honor, to purity, to nobleness: to all that is beautiful and resplendent in character. To this end Christ died; to this end the Holy Spirit works; to this end our whole being should move in one strenuous and hopeful effort. And yet in thought, or word, or deed; by fear, or unbelief, or selfishness; by suspicion, envy, jealousy, or uncharitableness, we may slip and even fall many times by the way. But if the root of the matter be in us; if, under all our faults and sins we have that true faith which is the gift of God, and that deep love which lives through our inconstancy amounting sometimes to treason, and if we press and strive toward better things, we shall find in the last result that God's grace is greater than our sin, and that we shall be saved if only "so as by fire." J. P. 1. And the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had spoken. 2 And Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God 3 had spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom 4 Sarah bare to him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days 5 old, as God had commanded him. And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac 6 was born unto him. And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh; every one that heareth 7 will laugh with me. And she said, Who would have said unto Abraham, that Sarah should give children suck? for I have borne him a son in his old age. 8 And the child grew, and was weaned: and Abraham made a great feast on the day that 9 Isaac was weaned. And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had borne unto 10 Abraham, mocking. Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her 11 son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac. And the 12 thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight on account of his son. And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah saith unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called. 13 And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed. And 14 Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread and a bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away: and she departed, and 15 wandered in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. And the water in the bottle was spent, and she 16 cast the child under one of the shrubs. And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bow-shot: for she said, Let me not look upon the death of the child. 17 And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept. And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth 18 thee, Hagar? fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up 19 the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation. And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and 20 gave the lad drink. And God was with the lad, and he grew; and he dwelt in the wilderness, 21 and became an archer. And he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt. 22. And it came to pass at that time, that Abimelech and Phicol the captain of his host spake 23 unto Abraham, saying, God is with thee in all that thou doest: now therefore swear unto me here by God that thou wilt not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son's son; but according to the kindness that I have done unto thee, thou shalt do unto me, and to the 24 land wherein thou hast sojourned. And Abraham said, I will swear. And Abraham reproved 25. Abimelech because of the well of water, which Abimelech's servants had violently taken away. 26. And Abimelech said, I know not who hath done this thing: neither didst thou tell me, 27 neither yet heard I of it, but to-day. And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto 28. Abimelech; and they two made a covenant. And Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock 29 by themselves. And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What mean these seven ewe lambs which 30 thou hast set by themselves? And he said, These seven ewe lambs shall thou take of my hand, 31 that it may be a witness unto me, that I have digged this well. Wherefore he called that 32 place Beer-sheba; because there they swore both of them. So they made a covenant at Beer- 33 sheba; and Abimelech rose up, and Phicol the captain of his host, and they returned into the 34 land of the Philistines. And Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba, and called there 35 on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God. And Abraham sojourned in the land of the Philistines many days. Isaac, the son of promise, he who was begotten through the Spirit,—i.e., by the power of the word of God and of faith—is now born. Ishmael, the son born after the flesh, in a natural way, grew up with him, but as a scoffer at God's word. In order that Abraham's natural affection might not be a hindrance to the fulfilment of His own purposes, God does not allow him "that was born after the flesh," from a bondwoman, to be "heir together with the son of the free-woman." In all this the great truth is taught us, which runs through the whole of Scripture, that the claims of the flesh are of no worth in God's sight, but that all is of His free grace alone. This history, therefore, is a type of higher spiritual relations (Gal. 4 : 22). But at the same time Ishmael is an example how God extends His guidance and blessing to those whom yet He does not receive into covenant. He vouchsafes a portion even of the spiritual blessing of Abraham to Ishmael's posterity. Gerl. 1,2. In the book of Genesis, covering more than two thousand years at the lowest computation, there is not a single miracle wrought by human agency. Even Abraham works no miracle. How different from the old mythologies. Even when God himself is represented as doing things out of the general course of nature, it is only at long intervals and very rarely, as in the translation of Enoch, the judgment of the flood, the confusion of tongues, the birth of Isaac. Remember that these events were centuries apart from each other. Even if there had been a miracle for every century, which there is not, you could scarcely say that they were "very plentiful." If you look at the history perspectively, you will learn first, that all through Bible times miracles were not the rule but the exception; and more particularly that the miracles cluster around particular epochs when there was special need for such signs of divine presence and power, as at the time of the Exodus after the long dark interval of Egyptian bondage; at the time of Israel's declension, when the prophets Elisha and Elijah were called in a special way to witness for the Lord; and above all, in the founding of the Church, after the long and silent interval from the Restoration to the Advent. Does not this way of looking at the sacred history put the Bible miracles in a very different and altogether reasonable light? Gibson. 3. Isaac. From the Hebrew word meaning to laugh. 9. Mocking.** "Mocking laughter." As Abraham had laughed for joy concerning Isaac, and Sarah had laughed incredulously, so now Ishmael laughed in derision, and probably in a persecuting spirit (see Gal. 4 : 29). 12. In Isaac shall thy seed be called.** Here is the distinct limitation of the great promises of God to the descendants of Abraham in the line of Isaac. God's promises gradually developed themselves in fulness, and yet were gradually restricted in extent: to Adam first; then to Noah; to Abraham; then to one race or seed of Abraham, viz. Isaac; to one of Isaac's children, viz. Jacob; to one of the twelve patriarchs, viz. Judah; then to his descendant David; and lastly to the great Son of David, the true promised Seed; but as all centred in Him, so too from Him they have spread out to all redeemed by Him, though more especially taking effect in those who are "the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3: 26). E. H. B.—In Isaac shall seed be called to thee. This is explained by the Apostle (Rom. 9: 7, 8), "Neither because they are the seed of Abraham are they all children, but in Isaac shall thy seed be called; that is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise, these are counted for the seed." It is, therefore, a limitation of Abraham's seed, emphatically so called, to the line of Isaac and his descendants, to the exclusion of Ishmael. The Scriptures affirm, in reference to this very history, that "as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now." The same things are grounds of offence to the carnal man in this day, as were in the days of Ishmael; and this our Lord has expressly confirmed by saying, "because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." It appears, moreover, from the Apostle's interpretation that we must be children of promise in order to belong to the church of Christ. The mere circumstance of having descended from Christian parents, or having received the seal of the Christian covenant, or making a profession of the Christian faith, will not constitute us Christians, nor give us a title to share in the heavenly inheritance. "The son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman;" which is in effect a sentence of expulsion passed not only on the unbelieving Jewish church, but on the whole collective body of natural and unconverted men, while it is an exclusive grant of heaven and happiness to the children of promise. Others may enjoy church privileges and make religious professions, but they only who in this world rested on the promises as their one ground of hope and joy, shall experience their accomplishment in the world to come. Bush. 12, 13. Cast out this bondwoman is quoted (Gal. 4: 30) as if it had been spoken by a spirit of prophecy; and it is the sentence passed on all hypocrites and carnal people, though they have a place and name in the visible church; all that are born after the flesh and not born again, that rest in the law and reject the Gospel-promise, shall certainly be cast out. It is made to point particularly at the rejection of the unbelieving Jews, who, though they were the seed of Abraham, yet because they submitted not to the Gospel-covenant, were unchurched and disfranchised; and that which, above anything, provoked God to cast them off, was, their mocking and persecuting of the Gospel-church, God's Isaac, in its infancy. . . . God shows Abraham, 1. That the casting out of Ishmael was necessary to the establishment of Isaac in the rights and privileges of the covenant. In Isaac shall thy seed be called: both Christ and the church must descend from Abraham through the loins of Isaac; this is the entail of the promise upon Isaac, and is quoted by the apostle to show that not all who came from Abraham's loins were the heirs of Abraham's covenant. 2. That the casting out of Ishmael should not be his ruin. He shall be a nation, because he is thy seed. We are not sure that it was his eternal ruin; it is presumption to say that all those who are left out of the external dispensation of God's covenant are therefore excluded from all his mercies: those may be saved who are not thus honored. H. Paul would have each of us apply, allegorically, the words, Cast out the bondwoman and her son, that is, cast out the legal mode of earning a standing in God's house, and with this legal mode cast out all the self-seeking, the servile fear of God, the self-righteousness, and the hard-heartedness it engenders. Cast out wholly from yourself the spirit of the slave, and cherish the spirit of the son and heir. Nothing but being a child of God, being born of the Spirit, can give the feeling of intimacy, confidence, unity of interest, which constitutes true religion. All we do as slaves goes for nothing; that is to say, all we do, not because we see the good of it, but because we are commanded. Dods. The expulsion of Ishmael was necessary, not only from his unfitness, and in order to keep the heir of the promise unmixed with others, but also for the sake of Abraham himself, whose faith must be trained to renounce, in obedience to the Divine call, everything,—even his natural paternal affection. And in His tender mercy God once more made the trial easier, by bestowing the special promise that Ishmael should become "a nation." Therefore, although Hagar and her son were literally cast forth, with only the barest necessities for the journey—water and bread,—this was intended chiefly in trial of Abraham's faith, and their poverty was only temporary. For, soon afterward we read in Scripture, that, before his death, Abraham had enriched his sons (by Hagar and Keturah) with “gifts;” and at his burying Ishmael appears, as an acknowledged son, by the side of Isaac, to perform the last rites of love to their father. A. E. 14. The position of the words shows beyond controversy that the writer only meant that the bread and the water were put on her shoulder, and not the child. K.—The leathern bottle, as may be seen to this day in the East, and indeed in the South of Europe, is made of the whole skin of an animal (in this case of course of a small one, such as a goat or kid), the fore leg serving as the tap, and the neck as the mouth of the bottle. A'f.—The child. The sacred writer has been charged with an anachronism here, both from his use of the word “child,” when Ishmael must have been from fifteen to seventeen years old. The word for “child” (geled), however, is used for boys of adolescent age, as in Gen. 42:22, of Joseph, when he was seventeen. 15. The growing lad would easily be exhausted with the heat and wandering; while the hardy habits of the Egyptian handmaid would enable her to endure much greater fatigue. She had hitherto led the boy by the hand, now she left him fainting and prostrate under the shelter of a tree. E. H. B. 16. Wept. What a proof of the Divine tenderness is there in the human heart itself, which is the organ and receptacle of so many sympathies! When we consider how exquisite are those conditions by which it is even made capable of so much suffering—the capabilities of a child’s heart, of a mother’s heart—what must be the nature of him who fashioned its depths and strung its chords? Dawson.—17. Jehovah is represented as himself having emotions of pity for the mother and her reckless boy as he hears her plaintive cry of nature as a mother, and as compassionately lending her aid. How beautiful the words, “God heard the voice of the lad, and the angel of God called to Hagar, What aileth thee, Hagar? Fear not, for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is.” So Jesus himself was affected by the natural sorrow of the poor widow at Nain. The cry of nature can enter into the ears of the Son of God; and it will enter into the ears of his true disciples. There is no gospel spirit in that sort of Christian sternness that hardens its heart and arrests the flow of its natural sensibility toward human misery and wretchedness, because forsooth that misery comes from the wickedness and recklessness of those who suffer it. That is a mistaken sort of sternness, in a world full of sin and therefore full of suffering, that withholds the aid of sympathy and compassion from them as very sinful men, women and children. If we desire to have the word of God reach them and move them, we must learn to say to the wretched, “What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; there may be help for thee and hope for thee yet.” S. R. Angel of God. Maleach Elohim, elsewhere Maleach Jehovah. Supposed but wrongly to be a creature angel (Augustine, Origen, Jerome, Hofmann, Baumgarten, Tholuck, Delitzsch, Kurtz), for the reasons chiefly (1) that the term angel commonly designates a class of spiritual beings (ch. 19:1; 32:1; Job 4:18; Ps. 91:11; Matt. 13:41; John 20:12, et passim); (2) that the ἀγγελος κυρίως of the New Testament (Matt. 1:20; Luke 2:9; Acts 12:7) is always a created angel; (3) that the meaning of the term לְבָבֶךָ, one sent, from לֹא, to depute (Gesenius), one through whom work is executed from לֹא, to work (Keil), implies a certain degree of subordination, which is afterward more distinctly recognized (1 Chron 21:27; Zech. 1:12); (4) that the distinction between the unrevealed and the revealed God was not then developed as in later times, and particularly since the advent of Christ—to every one of which arguments, however, it is comparatively easy to reply (cf. Keil and Lange in loco). With more force of reason believed to have been the Divine Being himself, who already as Jehovah had appeared to Abram (the Fathers, the Reformers, Hengstenberg, Keil, Lange, Hävernick, Nitzsch, Ebrard, Steir, Kalisch, Ainsworth, Bush, Wordsworth, Candlish), since—1. The Maleach Jehovah explicitly identifies himself with Jehovah (ver. 10) and Elohim (ch. 22:12). 2. Those to whom he makes his presence known recognize him as Divine (ch. 16:13; 18:23-33; 28:16-22; Exod. 3:6; Judges 6:15, 20-23; 13:22). 3. The Biblical writers constantly speak of him as Divine, calling him Jehovah without the least reserve (ch. 16:13; 18:1; 22:16; Exod. 3:2; Judges 6:12). 4. The doctrine here implied of a plurality of persons in the Godhead is in complete accordance with earlier foreshadowings (ch. 1:26; 11:7) and later revelations of the same truth. 5. The organic unity of Scripture would be broken if it could be proved that the central point in the Old Testament revelation was a creature angel, while that of the New is the incarnation of the God-Man. T. W. 18. I will make him a great nation. Very properly denominated Ishmaelites and Hagarenes by others, they affectedly called themselves Saracens; thus rejecting their descent from the concubine and challenging it from the wife of Abraham; till at last they became noticed under that appellation by Dioscorides, by Ptolemy, and the Jerusalem Targum itself. Whitaker.—20. Became an archer. A skilful hunter and warrior also, with bow and arrow. The Saracens, who were of the posterity of Ishmael, never set their hands to the plough, but got their living for the most part by their bow; supporting themselves on wild flesh and venison and such wild fowl as the wilderness afforded, with herbs and milk. Patrick.—21. In the wilderness of Paran. Probably the great desert, now called the desert El-Tih, i.e. “the wanderings,” extending from the Wady-el-Arabah on the east, to the gulf of Suez on the west, and from the Sinaitic range on the south to the borders of Palestine on the north. E. H. B. It only needs a glance beneath the surface to see that the future course of these two great branches of the Abrahamic blood was destined to be so divergent, that their currents could no longer mingle with advantage to either. So far as Ishmael was concerned, the archer and huntsman whose home was to be the desert, with his bow for his best inheritance, it was well that he should be early trained to the hardships of a nomadic chieftain. For his own comfort, he could not be too soon compelled to forego all idle dreams of one day succeeding to his father’s estate. Too soon he could not be withdrawn from the presence of a brother whose priority would only inflame his envy. It was the kindest thing for the youth to send him away from his father’s tents. Let it be remembered that he was not sent away from his father’s God. The mercies of God are not limited to the area of His covenant. This most touching incident of the angel’s reappearance to Hagar when she despaired of her boy’s life in the thirsty wastes of El-Tih, to the south of Beersheba, taught this precious truth, that God in heaven does care for those outside the circle of exceptional privilege, and reserves a blessing also for such as are not of the “seed” whom He has “blessed.” It was in Isaac that the line of sacred descent was to flow. To his race were to belong “the adoption and the glory,” the “law” and the “promises.” Of them was to come the Christ. The highest religious advantages and the hope of the human family required to be narrowed to a single stem only, out of the various nationalities which call Abraham their progenitor. Yet God heard the cry of the lad, where he lay under a desert bush, to remind the world that the selections of His grace never mean any limitation of His love, and never spring from a partial or hard-hearted favoritism. Providence, indeed, moved in the line of Sarah’s counsel, rather than of Abraham’s; but it is the spirit of Abraham, and not that of Sarah, which best interprets for us the heart of God. For Isaac’s sake, on the other hand, it was scarcely less advisable to “cast out” the bondmaid’s son. His yielding disposition was ill-fitted to withstand the influence or endure the hostility of his older and more impetuous brother. Besides, the people of the covenant needed to be from the outset a separated people, kept clear of Gentile alliances. Ishmael’s mother was a pagan slave; out of her Egyptian home he married a pagan wife. From all such close contact with heathendom it was requisite to guard the selected family through which a purer faith was to be transmitted. Perhaps we may add a further consideration. No single home can long hold with safety the child of nature and the child of grace. This early family history was meant to be full of significance for the Church of God. And it had to be made clear that in God’s spiritual family circle, or within their eternal home, no place can be found for such as are His only after the flesh, bearing on their body, indeed, the seal of His covenant, yet not born again of His Holy Spirit. Paul’s use of this ancient household is admitted by himself to be an allegorical use of it (Gal. 4:21). By his supernatural conception and birth from parents who only received power to give him being at all through their faith in the promise of God, Isaac was of all men most fit to symbolize that spiritual seed who are born of God, and who display, in virtue of their heavenly birth, a faith like Abraham’s. With such an origin his personal character corresponded. He not merely inherited his father’s blood; he shared his father’s piety. In him, therefore, was appropriately prefigured all the moral family of God, who in every age have walked in the steps of Abraham, and who are summed up in Isaac’s antitype—Jesus Christ. No less conspicuously did the wayward boy, who owed his birth to Sarah’s wilful scheme and Abraham’s weakness and Hagar’s servitude, typify, both by outward position and spiritual character, all such as stand nominally inside the household of faith, yet have not been born of the Spirit into the free trust and love of sons, but serve God only under a bondman’s constraint or with a bondman’s fear. Dykes. Covenant between Abraham and Abimelech (vs. 22–32). 23. Swear unto me by God.** From this circumstance we may see the original purpose, design, and spirit of an oath, viz. Let God prosper or curse me in all that I do, as I prove true or false to my engagements! This is still the spirit of all oaths, where God is called to witness. A. C. 22-30. In order to show that what he coveted was not simply personal friendship, but a public tribal alliance such as might outlast their individual lives and secure enduring peace betwixt their tribesmen, the prince brought with him his chief officer or second in command. This official was distinguished by a title, Phichol, which, like his master's, tells of their Semitic speech. [Its recurrence in Isaac's days (Gen. 26 : 26) seems to show that, like Pharaoh, Abimelech, and others, Phichol was purely an official title worn by successive holders of the dignity. It means "the mouth of all"—that is, the vizier or minister, who alone has immediate access to the sovereign, and through whom, therefore, the case of all suitors must pass.] The primitive ceremony of treaty-making comprised an exchange of valuable presents, as well as a mutual oath of fidelity to the terms of contract. While these preliminaries to the final ratification of the alliance were going forward, Abraham was observed to set apart seven ewe lambs from the flocks which constituted his present. On his side he had a grievance to complain of, against the recurrence of which he desired to secure himself by a separate and precise understanding. This grievance concerned the well which with immense labor his servants had dug. On the free use of that water supply depended the value of the grazing grounds around. To Abraham's occupation of the district it was simply essential; yet he had to complain that it had been "violently taken away" by the Philistine herdsmen. Abimelech protested his ignorance of the injury; and his acceptance of the separated ewe lambs was a symbolical acknowledgment of Abraham's exclusive right to the possession of the well. On this understanding the league of amity was sworn, to be renewed a generation later between their successors. The centre of the pastoral life, then as now, was the well-mouth. Around its mouth stood a series of stone troughs for the watering of his cattle. Toward it, in the cool of the evening, trooped the young women with their pitchers. The permanent encampment required to be set up in convenient proximity to it. From it, at the dry season, no flock dared wander far away. Beside it every traveller halted his camels. The poetry of life, its pastimes and its business, all clustered round the well. 31. Beersheba means the "well of seven," or "of the oath," two significations which in Hebrew are very closely related. To swear, in primitive Hebrew usage, meant literally to bind one's self, as Abraham did on this occasion, by seven things, seven being from the very origin of history the divine or perfect number. When this interesting site was rediscovered by Dr. Robinson in the year 1838, the name was found adhering to it nearly unchanged in form—Bir-es-seba. Two grand wells of ancient masonry, the larger of which measures twelve feet and a half across, remain to tell of the shepherd chiefs whose flocks browsed on the surrounding hills in the gray morning of time. To this day are still set round about them stone troughs for the watering of cattle. Worn deep into their stone margins are the marks of ropes. Few monuments so venerable as these remain to transport the traveller back to patriarchal scenes. Even should the existing masonry which protects them prove to be of more recent date, there is no reason to doubt that the wells themselves are the very same as were dug by Abraham and his son. On the slope above lie scattered the remains of a town which subsequently grew up. Dykes. 33. Beersheba may have been as destitute of trees then as to-day; for there Abram planted a grove or a tree,—an act which as clearly distinguishes him from the Arab Sheik, as did the wells which he and Abimelech dug at Beersheba. S. C. B. 34. The years which immediately followed these transactions were probably among the happiest in Abraham's life. Secure in the friendship of his neighbors, with his rights to water and pasture guaranteed by treaty, the shepherd chieftain dwelt at peace beside his flocks. The region around Beersheba is one of quiet beauty, and may have recalled to his remembrance the plains of his former Mesopotamian home more vividly than either Ai or Mamre. His wealth was ample. Above all, his home had now been blessed with the crown of his earthly hopes. The visible prospect which opened before the old man's eyes was at least one of a long and happy posterity. Into distant ages, pregnant with the blessings of Jehovah's covenant, he could now look forward; and the prospect appears to have suggested to his mind a new name for God. Beneath his young tamarisk-tree by the well of the oath, Abraham proclaimed Jehovah to be El-'Olam, the Everlasting One, the God of an endless hidden future. Dykes. The church was organized in Abraham, its ordinances confined to his family, and he was the appointed head of an organization in which all the families of the earth were to be blessed. The work and the responsibility of the Church under the Patriarchs and during their era was to cherish and nurture the little germ of a mighty tree. There was no king, and the Patriarch must be the ruler; no priest, and he must be priest to instruct and offer sacrifices and prayer; no church edifice, and he must erect an altar under the open heavens, wherever he was; no city of habitation, and he must wander in tents,—the heir of the world, and yet have no “inheritance, no, not so much as to set his foot on.” He must live and die in the tent. How careful must he be to keep the germ alive,—to prevent the heathen from treading it under foot! There was no Bible in the world, and he must go directly to God himself to know his will. He had no staff on which to lean but that of faith, and no hope of the increase of the church but in a distant future. The wealth of the patriarchs was in their cattle; their mansions were tents made of skins; their food, the plainest. They wandered for water, and were often driven to distress by famine. They had no responsibility but to keep the organization alive. That was all that they could do. It was the planting time, and the time for the little germ to take root. Todd. 1. 1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abraham, and said unto him, 2. 2 Abraham; and he said, Here am I. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt 3. 3 offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. And Abraham rose early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which 4. 4 God had told him. On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. 5. 5 And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go 6. 6 yonder; and we will worship, and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took in his hand the fire and the knife; 7. 7 and they went both of them together. And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold, the fire and the wood; 8. 8 but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, God will provide himself 9. 9 the lamb for a burnt offering, my son: so they went both of them together. And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built the altar there, and laid the 10. 10 wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. And 11. 11 Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. 12. 12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from 13. 13 me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a 14. 14 burnt offering in the stead of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah- 15. 15 jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be provided. And the angel 16. 16 of the LORD called unto Abraham a second time out of heaven, and said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine 17. 17 only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall pos- 18 sess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; 19 because thou hast obeyed my voice. So Abraham returned unto his young men, and they rose up and went together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beer-sheba. The plan of the sacred narrative passes over every detail that does not bear upon the history of the covenant itself, and carries us on to a period when Isaac had reached the age of intelligence. A tradition preserved by Josephus makes Isaac twenty-five years old at the time of the crowning trial of Abraham's faith; and we certainly gather from the Scripture narrative that he was an intelligent and willing party to the sacrifice of his life at the command of God. P. S.—The whole history of Abram may be arranged into four stages, each commencing with a personal revelation of Jehovah. The first, when the patriarch was called to his work and mission; the second, when he received the promise of an heir, and the covenant was made with him; the third, when that covenant was established in the change of his name from Abram to Abraham, and in circumcision as the sign and seal of the covenant; the fourth, when his faith was tried, proved, and perfected in the offering up of Isaac. These are the high points in Abram's history, which the patriarch successively climbed, and to which all the other events of his life may be regarded as the ascent. A. E. "Highest blessings," says Ewald, "bring highest trials." After many years of unbroken rest and satisfied desire, there burst on Abraham, like a bolt out of the clear sky, the supreme crisis of his discipline. Yet for such a crisis the whole of his career had been one long preparation. Men do not grow to be heroes in self-denial without practice. The abandonment of his original home in Ur had initiated for this man a series of sacrifices. On that there followed first the forsaking of his kindred in Haran; then separation from Lot at Ai, and homeless wanderings in Canaan. Next came the hopes he built on Ishmael, his first-born, only to see them crossed with disappointment. Already he had virtually sacrificed one son of his heart—the lad who went forth into the wilderness like a scapegoat, to return no more. What has he left now but another son, younger and still dearer, in whom are gathered up and incarnated, as it were, the most sacred memories of the past, and his most radiant hopes for the future? This treasure only he has received from God which he has never been asked to give up for God. Can faith—can self-surrender be entire, till it has accomplished its perfect work? Dykes.—Looking at the whole chapter as we should at any merely human composition, we must admit that for profound pathos, for tragic force of description, it has never been surpassed. Each time that we hear it, says Augustine truly, it thrills us afresh. Compare it even with that exquisitely touching passage in the Agamemnon of Æschylus, which describes in words of such wonderful beauty the anguish of the father constrained to sacrifice his child, and it will not suffer by the comparison. Peroene. Our Lord stated to the Jews: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad." There is in Christ's statement reference to some definite occurrence in Abraham's history. This was unquestionably the transaction of Moriah. In the interposition which stayed his hand when about to slay his son Isaac and in the substitute found, the patriarch saw his own prophecy receive its fulfilment in a way which gave pre-intimation of the appearance of Jehovah himself. Nor should it be overlooked, that in the promise renewed to Abraham on this occasion the spiritual element was more distinctly brought out than at any time since his call, and in the very words then employed. D. M. The moment man went wrong and went down under the temptation of his self-will and the sorcery of his senses, the love of God in Christ began to move for his restoration. The ages of sacred history were but the steady steps in the mighty march of that Christly Providence. The books of the Bible are the record of the process, growing clearer and brighter as it works out to its perfect consummation. The Lord, becoming man, born of a woman, dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory; even we, men, with these eyes that passion had clouded, we "beheld His glory full of grace and truth." Holy living, miracles of mercy, wonderful teaching, words such as man never spake, heavenly disinterestedness, not having where to lay his head, Satan visibly conquered—all these accomplished no redemption. The race was too far gone, the sin was too deep-struck for that. All they did was to gather to the Son of Man a little band of interested, believing, timid disciples, ready to flee from him as soon as the cross came in sight. At last, when the world's "hour" is full come, the two great further acts are done. First, the Sacrifice, then, the victory. Both have been foretold in that living figure, or that acted prophecy, far back in the very morning of man's history. Abraham binds his only son on the altar. Here is the typical sacrifice. The son's life is given back, and he is loosed from the altar. Here is the typical resurrection. So the Epistle to the Hebrews opens that mystical transaction: "Abraham offered up Isaac, his only-begotten son, accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from whence also he received him in a figure." First, the cross; then, the breaking of the sepulchre. "For if we have been planted in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection." First, a full, perfect, sufficient propitiation, by such suffering as only a divine humanity, having God entered into it, could suffer; then, the raising up and enfranchisement of the rescued soul in the resurrection. First, pardon, then life eternal; but both by the same inward-working power, received through faith; not merely by outward and past events in history, but by these transferred through this appropriating energy of faith into the heart—the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus making us free from the law of sin and death. F. D. H. 1. The words "after these things," refer us to all that had been passing before. Abraham, after long wanderings and many trials, is presented to us in the last chapter as eminently comforted and in a condition of peaceful prosperity. The promised, longed-for son has been given to him; his other son Ishmael, though no longer in his household, is growing up and prospering, Abraham is in treaty and at peace with his neighbors the Philistines, he sojourns for many days at Beersheba and its neighborhood, with abundance of cattle, in a place well watered and fertile. Thus it appears to have been with him till now, when his son, his only son Isaac, whom he loved, is growing up to early manhood, his chief comfort and stay and hope in this world. But times of prosperity are often times when trial is needed for us, and so we find it here. E. H. B. Prove. The A. V. reads God did tempt Abraham. Hebrew, nissah, tried, proved. This literal rendering of the term, given in the old Geneva version, "God did prove Abraham," goes at once to correct the erroneous impression that might possibly be received from our English word "tempt," which usually has the sense of exciting to sin. But in this sense we are expressly assured (James 1: 13) that "God is not tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man;" he neither deceives any man's judgment nor perverts his will, nor seduces his affections, nor does anything else that can subject him to the blame of men's sins. Temptation in this bad sense always proceeds from the malice of Satan working on the corruptions of our own hearts. God may, however, consistently with all his perfections, by his providence, bring his creatures into circumstances of special probation, not for the purpose of giving him information, but in order to manifest to themselves and to others the prevailing dispositions of their hearts. In this sense of trying, putting to the proof, bringing to the test, the original term in many other instances is used in reference to the Most High, and always in such a way as to leave his attributes unimpeached. Deut. 13: 3, "For the Lord your God (nissah) proveth you, to know (i.e. to make known) whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul." Bush.—The Arabic version renders it very correctly, "God did prove Abraham." Words having the sense of "try" may generally be used either in a good or a bad sense. This particular word has generally a good sense, except where men are said to try or tempt God, e.g. (Ex. 17: 2; Nu. 14: 22; De. 6: 16). The whole history of Abraham is a history of his moral and spiritual education by the teaching of God himself. He was to be the head of the chosen seed, the father of the faithful, himself the type of justifying faith. Here then, after long schooling and training, in which already there had been many trials, one great test of his now matured and strengthened faith is ordained by God. E. H. B.—The same word occurs in 1 Kings 10: 1, where it is said the Queen of Sheba came to "prove" Solomon. So also in Deut. 4: 34; where the word is represented by "assayed," and likewise "temptation." The same word occurs in several other passages also, in which God is represented, either in fact or in explicit terms, as tempting, i.e., trying or proving His servants. Lorraine. If we believe at all in God's oversight of our life—in other words, in His guiding and "leading" hand—we must feel that there are times and, as it were, places of "exploration" to which we do come under His direction; circumstances of trial, opportunities, in other words, of choosing between good and evil, which we cannot avoid, which confront us without our seeking. Vaughan.—According to the simplest notion of temptation, as merely equivalent to trial, God does so tempt man as to put before him special circumstances which may try or prove him, and so bring out that good or evil within him which, though known to God, is perhaps unknown to the man himself, and still more to his fellow-men. In this way God was said to tempt Abraham, where the true nature of the temptation is well expressed in one of the old Greek versions, that of Symmachus, who paraphrases it "God glorified Abraham," i.e., gave him a special opportunity of showing his entire trust in God, and thus of obtaining the glorious title of the "father of the faithful" to all times. In this sense then, first, God is said to tempt men when He specially tries them, in order either to bring out the good which is in them, or else give them and others by their example, a warning of the evil which lurks unsuspected within their hearts, this being wholly for man's good. Karslake.—What God often does, what He did in the case of Abraham, of Job, and especially of our Lord himself, is to expose a man in a very critical and precarious position, to bring him in the course of his life into circumstances where sin is very easy, holiness very difficult. We read that it was "of the Spirit" that "Jesus was led up into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil;" a very instructive intimation, giving us in one view all the parties concerned. The human nature, with its liability to temptation, its capability to suffer and to enjoy; the Divine nature, ordering the circumstances which may permit the temptation to take place; and the diabolical nature, the tempter. Dods. This was not the first time that God tried Abraham. He had tried him all his life. But here it is said, in marked phrase, that God did try Abraham because it is the crucial instance of his life, the hardest trial, perhaps, of all history. Temptation, trial, is the very workshop of God. On that anvil all his saints have been hammered; in that fire they have all been purified. But here the hammer smites most heavily, here the flame of the fire has been most searching. . . . This command was fitted to purify Abraham's faith. God had been training him from the first to live only by his promise. At length, when Isaac was born, he welcomed him as the child of promise. But years pass on. The child had grown up before him and twined himself about his heart, till at last he has almost forgotten the promise in the child of promise. "Isaac," it has been strikingly said, "the precious late-won gift, is still for Abraham too exclusively a merely natural blessing, a child like other children though born of the true mother, Abraham's son only because he has been born to him and brought up in his house. Pangs, the pangs of a soul wrestling in faith, he has not felt for him since his birth, and yet that is the only spiritual, and therefore the only really abiding, blessing which we are able to make our own through the fightings and wrestlings of the believing heart. Therefore, now that in Isaac the supreme blessing has been won, there must also take place the supreme trial of Abraham's faith and obedience." (Ecaid.) Perowne. 2. And He said.** The command proceeded immediately from God Himself; but how, and in what manner, it was conveyed to Abraham, we are nowhere told. But Abraham had sufficient proof (whatever that proof was) that the several revelations, respecting both God's former promises and the present severe command, did really proceed from God. Bp. Conybeare.—Each designation mounts upward in climax after the other: thy son, thine only one,—whom thou lovest, Isaac, the personal designation coming last, and clenching as it were the identification of the very heir of the promise himself. There was in the command no softening, but rather all aggravation, of the trial. Alf.—In more ways than one Isaac might be called his "only son." He was the only son by his wife Sarah: he was the only son of promise, and to whom the promises were given and assured: by the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael he was the only son left to his father's house. The words, emphatic as they are, "Thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest," are all calculated to impress and enhance the sacrifice which Abraham is called on to make. E. H. B. The words in which God's command was couched were those of accumulated keenness. God said, Take now thy son, long expected and waited for, thine heir, full of promise and so dear to thee! To subdue the father in the heart, that a Roman has done, and calmly signed his son's death-warrant; but to subdue it not with Roman hardness, but with deep trust in God and faith in his providence, saying, It is not hate, but love, that requires this,—this was the nobleness, this the fierce difficulty, of Abraham's sacrifice. Robertson.—It is characteristic of the severe and noble reserve of Scripture, that it lays no stress upon this side of the trial. Save for certain endearing expressions piled up by the divine voice when it required the sacrifice, there is nothing in the narrative to hint how much obedience must have cost the father. What is brought into relief is rather the test which was applied to Abraham's confidence in the promises of God's covenant. To slay Isaac, the unripe, the childless—was it not to slay the future of the covenant and the blessing for mankind? Dykes. Abraham had not only to contend with natural affection, but with reason; not only with reason. but with faith! He was, in offering up Isaac, to destroy all his hopes. And all this was to be done by himself; with his own hand he was at one stroke to cut off all his comforts. The execution of such a sentence was as harsh and bitter to flesh and blood, as to be his own executioner. Manton.—It was, therefore, a trial in the strongest sense, a trial of Abraham's faith, whether it was capable of such implicit confidence in God, such profound regard to His will, and such self-denial in His service, as at the divine bidding to give up the best and dearest—what in the circumstances must even have been dearer to him than his own life. Not that God really intended the surrender of Isaac to death, but only the proof of such a surrender in the heart of His servant; and such a proof could only have been found in an unconditional command to sacrifice, and an unresisting compliance with the command up to the final step in the process. This, however, was not all. In the command to perform such a sacrifice, there was a tempting as well as a trying of Abraham; since the thing required at his hands seemed to be an enacting of the most revolving rite of heathenism; and at the same time to war with the oracle already given concerning Isaac, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called." According to this word, God's purpose to bless was destined to have its accomplishment especially and peculiarly through Isaac; so that to slay such a son appeared like slaying the very word of God, and extinguishing the hope of the world. And yet, in heart and purpose at least, it must be done. It was no freak of arbitrary power to command the sacrifice. It had for its object the outward and palpable exhibition of the great truth, that God's method of working in the covenant of grace must have its counterpart in man's. The one must be the reflex of the other. God, in blessing Abraham, triumphs over nature; and Abraham triumphs after the same manner in proportion as he is blessed. He receives a special gift from the grace of God, and he freely surrenders it again to Him who gave it. He is pre-eminently honored by God's word of promise, and he is ready in turn to hazard all for its honor. And Isaac, the child of promise—the type in his outward history of all who should be proper subjects or channels of blessing—also must concur in the act: on the altar he must sanctify himself to God, as a sign to all who would possess the higher life of grace, how it implies and carries along with it a devout surrender of the natural life to the service and glory of Him who has redeemed it. P. F. Moriah. The view almost universally acaccepted is that the Mount Moriah of the Chronicles is identical with the mountain in the land of Moriah in this chapter, and that the spot on which Jehovah appeared to David, and on which the Temple was built, is the very spot of the sacrifice of Isaac. Knobel observes (1) that this greatest of all religious acts points to a more important sanctuary than Shechem; (2) that the name "mountain of Jehovah" denotes everywhere else either Jerusalem or Sinai, the latter being here of course out of the question; and (3) that the journey from Beersheba by way of Hebron and Jerusalem to Shechem, according to Robinson's "Itinerary," occupies about thirty-five hours, which would make the distance too great for Abraham and Isaac to traverse in three days on foot. Perowne.—No sufficient reason has been alleged against this identification except that in v. 4 it is said that "Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off," whereas Mount Zion is said not to be conspicuous from a great distance. Thence Bleek, De Wette, Tuch, Stanley, and Grove, have referred to Moreh (Gen. 12: 6), and attempted to identify the site of the sacrifice with "the natural altar on the summit of Mount Gerizim," which the Samaritans assert to be the scene of the sacrifice. Really, however, the words in v. 4 mean nothing more than this, that Abraham saw the spot to which he had been directed at some little distance off. E. H. B. Travelling at the ordinary rate of the country, Jerusalem would just be reached on the third day (as required by this narrative) from Beersheba; to reach Nablous (Moreh) in the same time is impossible, at the pace of fellahin with their asses. H. B. T.—As the name itself (land of Moriah), so the distance mentioned leads us to suppose that it was in the neighborhood of Jerusalem. From Bir es-Seba Robinson took twenty hours and twenty-five minutes to Jerusalem, travelling by the straight way and with camels—a distance, therefore, which Abraham could easily have made in three days. Robinson took fourteen hours and thirty minutes to travel with mules by the straight road from Jerusalem to Sychem (Nabulus), so that the entire distance from Beersheba amounted to thirty-five hours, which Abraham could not have made in three days. But even the name points to the neighborhood of Jerusalem. The designation Moriah, applied in verse 2 to the whole district, was at a later period confined to that particular mountain where this remarkable event had taken place. There afterward the temple was built. K. Offer him for a burnt-offering. The sacrifice of a child by its parent in honor of the Deity was by no means foreign either to the religious conceptions amid which Abraham was living, or to the worship which probably prevailed around him. Few readers have sufficiently realized how ancient or widespread among primitive religions was a custom which has come to be associated only with the lowest type of barbarism. Even the milder faiths of early Greece sprang out of, or were grafted on, the same original idolatry of the generative and productive forces in nature which found favor among older races in Babylon, Phoenicia, and Canaan. Wherever the influence of that dark religion stretched, it bore of necessity two ghastly fruits—cruelty and lust; the orgies of the grove and the sacrifice of human blood. As Abraham had always lived among neighbors whose religion was saturated with those feelings and beliefs out of which the practice of sacrificing children originated, and whose actual worship demanded at its highest moments such an expression, it is quite conceivable how the command to slay his son failed to strike him as, on the face of it, irreconcilable with true religion. And no such prohibition of human sacrifice as was subsequently given to Moses had been given to Abraham. Further, the stage of religious teaching at which mankind then stood, and the religious atmosphere in which men moved, makes it intelligible how Abraham could accept such a voice from Heaven in the simplicity of a faith which did not stumble, where the saints of any later time would certainly have stumbled. Dykes. 3. We must not detract from the trial by importing into the circumstances our knowledge of the issue. Abraham had absolutely no assurance and no knowledge beyond that of his present duty. All he had to lay hold upon was the previous promise, and the character and faithfulness of the covenant God, who now bade him offer this sacrifice. Sharp as the contest must have been, it was brief. It lasted just one night; and next morning, without having taken “counsel with flesh and blood,” Abraham, with his son Isaac and two servants, were on their way to “the land of Moriah.” A. E.—As Abraham is the pattern of believing, so he is of obeying. He received the promises, as a figure of our faith; he offered up his son, as a figure of our obedience. He obeyed readily and willingly. “Abraham rose early in the morning.” He obeyed, also, resolutely. He conceals it from his wife, from his servants, nay, from Isaac himself, that so he might not be diverted from his purpose. Manton. Few passages in literature carry a deeper pathos than the words which tell how, in the fresh dawn, the aged lord of that camp crept away on foot out of the midst of his retainers’ tents. Not to a single soul did the old man dare to confide his purpose. The entreaties of a mother less resolute than himself might have overborne his firmness. The quieter anguish of a young and gentle heart, shrinking from too early death, might have proved more than he could endure. Two slow days of walking along rugged paths, and two still slower nights spent in sleepless thought, must have brought such tortures of delay as principle alone, and not impulse, could sustain. Dykes.—Never any gold was tried in so hot a fire. Who but Abraham would not have expostulated with God? But God knew that he spake to an Abraham, and Abraham knew that he had to do with a God: faith taught him not to argue, but obey. In a holy wilfulness he either forgets nature, or despises her; he is sure that what God commands, is good; that what he promises, is infallible; and therefore is careless of the means, and trusts to the end. In matters of God, whosoever consults with flesh and blood shall never offer up his Isaac to God: there needs no counsellor when we know God is the commander: here is neither grudging, nor deliberating, nor delaying: his faith would not suffer him so much as to be sorry for that he must do. Sarah herself may not know of God’s charge and her husband’s purpose, lest her affection should have overcome her faith. Bp. II. 4. On the third day.** From Beersheba to the Salem of Melchizedek, near which this hill is supposed to have been, is about forty-five miles. If they proceeded fifteen miles on the first broken day, twenty on the second, and ten on the third, they would come within sight of the place early on the third day. M. 5. I and the lad will go—and come again.** How could Abraham consistently with truth say this, when he knew he was going to make his son a burnt-offering? The Apostle answers for him: By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac—accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, from whence also he received him in a figure. He knew that his birth was a kind of life from the dead—that the promise of God was most positive. In Isaac shall thy seed be called,—that this promise could not fail—that it was his duty to obey the command of his Maker; and that it was as easy for God to restore him to life after he had been a burnt-offering, as it was for him to give him life in the beginning. Therefore he went fully purposed to offer his son, and yet confidently expecting to have him restored to life again. We will go yonder, and worship, perform a solemn act of devotion which God requires, and come again to you. A. C. Abraham's faith had stood all former tests. It had been strong enough to break the ties that bound him to country, home, and kindred. It had pardently endured the many and long delays in the fulfilling of the promises. It had risen above all the obstacles, physical and moral, that stood in the way of their accomplishment. It had accepted Isaac, and given up Ishmael. Would it stand the last demand, to give up to God the best loved thing on earth; to do what appeared not only alien to God's own character, but contrary to his own word and promise? For herein lay the peculiarity and severity of the trial as a test of faith. The command and the promise were in conflict. If he obeyed the command he frustrated the promise; if he kept by the promise he must break the command. But one way of reconciling them could be even fancied, and, dim though it was, the quick eye of faith discerned it. "He accounted that God was able to raise up Isaac from the dead." W. H. Observe that the apostle magnifies the greatness of the trial on the one hand, and of the heroic faith of Abraham on the other. He speaks of him as actually having offered up Isaac; for he had gone through all the agony of heart just as completely as though he had slain his son. Moreover, he brings into view the fact that it was a case not only to try the heart, but to astound and bewilder the reason. For "he that had received the promises," promises that seemed all bound up in the life of Isaac, and in his life all the promises depended; and yet, in spite both of the revolt of his heart and the dictates of reason to the contrary, he was ready at the command of God to offer him up. Thus the apostle, instead of any attempt to mitigate and explain away the old record, aims to bring out the views of it which to reason magnify the difficulties. The strength and beauty of his faith is in this, that somehow God will provide for all these difficulties, though he sees not how. Somehow God will work out all the contradictions. It is faith strengthened by experience. God has given Isaac after all my doubts and sinful efforts to aid God in working out his plans. God has given him in the first place as if by miracle; and why may I not by miracle receive him from the dead? Of course again he will in some way bring out the plans of his grace. This is obviously the aspect in which this story of Abraham's offering Isaac presented itself to the mind of the inspired apostle. And for this reason he twice cites Abraham—first as illustrating the faith that is unto salvation—as in leaving all to follow Jehovah. Then the second as an illustration of the heroism of a faith that has strengthened by experience of the faithfulness of Jehovah. S. R. 7,8. Listen to the brief dialogue:—"My father, behold the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for the burnt-offering?" "My son, God will provide Himself the lamb for the burnt-offering." The heart's deepest grief was never more eloquently portrayed. No sobs, no tears, no words telling of the struggle within. The anguish lies too deep for utterance. The sculptor, when he would express a grief that he could not express, bowed and veiled the face of the mourner; and the veiling of the agony here is, in fact, its most pathetic expression. Perowne.—The repetition of "his father, my father, my son"; the artlessness of Isaac's question,—the high resignation of Abraham's answer, and then the result, repeated from before, and (notwithstanding,—still) they went both of them together, the father in his noble resolve, the son in his trusting simplicity, these mark the sacred narrative as standing in the very first place for truth and for power. This whole incident is to the Christian mind full of type and suggestion of the most sacred kind. Alf. 9. Bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar. The love of God the Father cannot be better expressed than by this instance. Abraham readily gives his only, his beloved son, to be sacrificed: so God gave His only Son. Bp. Wilson.—O holy emulation of faith! O blessed agreement of the sacrificer and oblation! Abraham is as ready to take, as Isaac to give; he binds those dear hands, which are more straits bound with the cords of duty and resolution: he lays his sacrifice upon the wood, which now beforehand burnt inwardly with the heavenly fire of zeal and devotion. Bp. H.—"Abraham offered Isaac," says the Apostle James. He purposed it; and if God had not interfered to prevent it, he would actually have done it. God counts that to be done which is about to be done; and takes notice of what is in the heart, though it be not brought into practice and actual accomplishment. Hence we learn that purposes of obedience, if, like Abraham's, serious and resolved, are accepted for obedience. Manton. Abraham's ambiguous reply that "God would provide," though it spoke an unconscious prophecy, betrays no anticipation of any escape from the awful task which oppressed him. What it does reveal is, how hard he found it to be to break the dreadful secret. By what means at last he contrived to break it, or how Isaac received the heavy tidings; with what surprising sweetness and courage he also bowed to the supreme will, and with a child's love laid his life upon the altar of a parent's duty—all this is left for each one of us to picture for himself. Dykes.—What passed then between father and son, as Abraham told him of the Divine command, and inculcated the great duty of submission, remains untold. But there was no attempt at escape—no remonstrance, no resistance. He gave himself willingly to be bound and to be laid upon the altar. That moment, when his father grasped the knife and the flash of its cold glittering blade fell upon his eye, could he ever forget; or could there ever pass from his memory the sudden sound of the arresting voice, the sight of the lamb caught in the thicket, followed up by the oath and blessing pronounced upon Abraham and his seed? If ever any one in early life had the benefit and blessedness of self-sacrifice and entire submission to the will of God imprinted sensibly upon the heart, it was Isaac in that hour. His heroic act, second only to that of his father, showed how fully he had imbibed his father's spirit—the one near the close of his career, the other at its beginning—revealing how ready they both were to give all up to God. No higher evidence of the simplicity and strength of Isaac's faith in God could have been given. W. H.—For when he resisted not his father, and allowed himself to be bound and laid on the altar, he entered into the spirit of Abraham, he took upon himself his faith, and thus showed himself truly the heir to the promises. Nor can we forget how this surrender of the firstborn was the first of that dedication of all the firstborn unto God, which afterward the law demanded, and which meant that in the firstborn we should consecrate all and everything unto the Lord. A. E. His sacrifice on Moriah was the requisite condition of his succession to Abraham's place; it was the only suitable celebration of his majority. Abraham himself had been able to enter into covenant with God only by sacrifice; and sacrifice not of a dead and external kind, but vivified by an actual surrender of himself to God, and by a true perception of God's holiness and requirements. A true resignation of self, in whatever outward form this resignation may appear, is required that we may become one with God in His holy purposes and in His eternal blessedness. There could be no doubt that Abraham had found a true heir, when Isaac laid himself on the altar and steadied his heart to receive the knife. Dearer to God, and of immeasurably greater value than any service, was this surrender of himself into the hand of his Father and his God. In this was promise of all service and all loving fellowship. Dads. 9,10. The erection of a rude stone altar; the arrangement upon it of the fagots; the binding of Isaac; the solemn act which laid his helpless figure for an offering to Heaven upon the rude sticks; nay, even that final gesture of the officiating priest which raised his sacrificial knife to strike,—everything is pictured to the eye, in order that the heart of the reader may well understand and ponder how unreserved was the surrender which this father had made of this son to die, how complete was the triumph of his faith! In that triumph Abraham's religious experience attained its summit. What other men have done through fear of the Almighty, he did for love. God is to this man a friend to be trusted, even though He slay; to be loved better than an only son; to be obeyed where reason refuses its light to justify the command, and nature with all her voices can only exclaim against it. It is the perfection of a man's friendship with God to be thus loyal. It puts the all-perfect Lord, Whose name is Love, in His just place. It pays Him such honor as is His due. Dykes. The self-sacrifice in the act is obvious from the history. The Patriarch had through life felt himself the minister and instrument of a great Divine design with respect to mankind. He had lived with a gigantic prospect before him, with an immense expanding blessing which was one day to include all nations and be the restoration of the world. This vast plan, his part in which had been the work of his life and had filled his mind with immeasurable hopes, as it had been sown in his son, would perish with his son. Then all was over and his life had come to nothing. More, the child himself upon whom such a promise hung, such boundless hope and vast calculation, who was loved all the more with a father's love because he was the harbinger of the prophet's greatness and the symbol of life's purpose answered, he was to be surrendered too. But in the mind of the Patriarch rose boundless hope also upon an Almighty Being. It is hope cherished while all is dark around us that exhibits the principle in its greatness and in its true energy; hope resting upon that ultimate Power at the very root of things which can reverse every catastrophe and rectify all mistakes. To hold on to this root is hope withdrawn into its last fastness; without aid from any sight, grasping with an iron force the rock itself, the foundation of Sovereign Will upon which the universe stands, and saying to itself, "The whole may shake, if this foundation remaineth sure." This was the infinite hope of Abraham. Doubtless while he lifted up the knife to slay his son, the sun was turned to darkness to him, the stars left their places, and heaven and earth vanished from his sight; to the eye of sense all was gone that life had built up, and the promise had come actually to an end forevermore. But to the friend of God all was still as certain as ever, all absolutely sure and fixed; the end, the promise, nay even the son of promise, even he in the fire of the burnt-offering was not gone, because that was near and close at hand which could restore; the great Power which could reverse everything. A voice within said, All this can be undone and pass away like a dream of the night; and the heir was safe in the strong hope of him who "accounted that God was able to raise him up even from the dead." Mosley. Thus the sublimest heights of holiness were reached, simply because faith had struck its roots so deeply within, and had so closely united the soul of the patriarch to the will and perfections of Jehovah. This high surrender of the human to the divine, and holy self-consecration to the will and service of God, was beyond all doubt, like the other things recorded in Abraham's life, of the nature of a revelation. It was not intended to terminate in the patriarch and his son, but in them, as the sacred roots of the covenant people, to show in outward and corporeal representation what in spirit ought to be perpetually repeating itself in their individual and collective history. It proclaimed to them through all their generations, that the covenant required of its members lives of unshrinking and devoted application to the service of God—yielding to no weak misgivings or corrupt solicitations of the flesh—staggering at no difficulties presented by the world; and also that it rendered such a course possible by the ground and scope it afforded for the exercise of faith in the sustaining grace and might of Jehovah. P. F. 11. The Angel of the Lord called unto him.** A moment more, and the victim would have been smitten; but in that moment the awful mandate is countermanded. A voice too familiar to Abraham not to be at once recognized as that of God himself addresses him out of heaven. Though termed an Angel, yet it is evident from the manner in which he here speaks of himself, and from what is said (v. 12, 16), that he was not a created being, but was no other than the divine personage so often introduced into the sacred narrative under the title of the Angel Jehovah, the Angel of the Covenant. Bush. Lay not thine hand upon the lad. The voice of God was never so welcome, never so sweet, never so seasonable as now; it was the trial, that God intended, not the fact; Isaac is sacrificed, and is yet alive: and now both of them are more happy in that they would have done, than they could have been distressed if they had done it. God's charges are ofttimes harsh in the beginnings and proceeding, but in the conclusion always comfortable: true spiritual comforts are commonly late and sudden: God defers on purpose that our trials may be perfect, our deliverance welcome, our recompense glorious; Isaac had never been so precious to his father, if he had not been recovered from death; if he had not been as miraculously restored as given: Abraham had never been so blessed in his seed, if he had not neglected Isaac for God. The only way to find comfort in any earthly thing, is to surrender it, in a faithful carelessness, into the hands of God. Bp. H.—God did try Abraham; there is the key to the command. The object was to test obedience to the uttermost. He demanded this the very hardest conceivable proof of obedience because He would teach his servant, and, through him, teach the world at large, the moral majesty, the all-conquering might of faith. But God did not intend that Isaac should be put to death. At the decisive moment by a voice from heaven He interferes to prevent the sacrifice, He forbids the deed of murder. Perowne.—The obedience of Abraham was pleasing in the sight of God, and therefore the command was given. The actual death of Isaac would not have been pleasing to Him, and therefore the act was stopped. Human sacrifice finds no real sanction here. Jellett. For once a command was issued, which, while it perfectly tested in the first instance the willingness and thoroughness of Abraham's loyalty without doing outrage to his previous knowledge of God, served also in the end to teach, in a far more memorable and impressive fashion than any verbal lesson could have done, that the true God is one Who has no pleasure in such unnatural offerings. The issue of the transaction ought to have been the banishment of cruelty forever from the worship of Jehovah. These words: "Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him," contained a virtual condemnation, not merely of human sacrifice, but also of every analogous barbarity in the mode of worship. Dykes.—The sacrifice, the resignation of the will, in the father and the son, was accepted; the literal sacrifice of the act was repelled. On the one hand, the great principle was proclaimed, that mercy is better than sacrifice,—that the sacrifice of self is the highest and holiest offering that God can receive. On the other hand, the inhuman superstitions, toward which the ancient ceremonial of sacrifice was perpetually tending, were condemned. A. P. S.—By the substitution of Abraham's ram "in the stead of his son," a fresh sanction was put upon the primeval practice of animal sacrifice, in order to express the redemption of a forfeited life, or the dedication of a grateful heart. Dykes. Now I know that thou fearest God. God tried Abraham, not that He might learn what He knew already, but that He might show to others, with how great justice He loved the patriarch. Theodoret.—It is common for men to say that they know that which they have found out by special trial, which they have learned as the result of experiment; and the Most High is here pleased to adopt the same language. Thus Ps. 139 : 23, it is said, "Search me, O God, and know my heart;" though the psalmist had just before said (v. 2), "Thou understandest my thoughts afar off." For himself he needed not the patriarch's obedience to discover to him the state of his mind; but for our sakes he made the exhibition of Abraham's obedience a ground for acknowledging the existence of the inward principle from which it sprang. It is by a holy and obedient deference to the divine authority that faith and fear are made manifest. As a sinner, Abraham was justified by faith only; but as a professing believer, he was justified by the works which his faith produced. This view will reconcile the apparent discrepancy of Paul and James in regard to Abraham's justification. They both allege his case as an example of what they are teaching, but the one respects him as ungodly, the other as godly. In the first instance he is justified by faith exclusive of works; in the last by faith, as producing works, and thereby proving him the friend of God. Bush. God delights to call forth his champions to meet with great temptations, to make them bear crosses of more than ordinary weight; as commanders in war put men of most valor and skill upon the hardest services. God sets some strong trial upon a strong Christian, made strong by his own grace; and by his victory makes it appear to the world that though there is a great deal of the counterfeit coin of profession in religion yet some there are that have the power, the reality of it, and that it is not an invention, but there is truth in it, that the invincible grace, the very Spirit of God, dwells in the hearts of true believers. Leighton. 13. Took the ram and offered him for a burnt-offering.** The offering of Isaac was neither piacular nor propitiatory; Abraham had committed no guilt, and apprehended no danger; the immolation of his only son seemed forever to deprive him of that blessing which was nearest to his heart, the parentage of a numerous and powerful tribe. It was a simple act of unhesitating obedience to the divine command; the last proof of perfect reliance on the certain accomplishment of the divine promises. Milman.—The human sacrifices of the ancient world were in atonement for public crimes, and were offered up in great national emergencies. They were at any rate propitiatory, and supposed bloodshed, or sacrilege, or some heinous crime, as the occasion of them. But here is no crime mentioned for which propitiation is wanted. The trial upon which the life of the Patriarch turns is clear and conspicuous; it demands a sacrifice which is not propitiatory, but which is simply a trial of faith. Yet it was designed that it should at the same time be a type and figure of the great Propitiation. In the sacrifice of Abraham and in the sacrifice on the Cross the difference of scope and design in regard to atonement leaves still a common external ground of surrender; and the outward action or representation contained in the former, of a father offering up his only son upon the altar of wood, fulfils all the outward requirements of a type. Mozley.—Of all the Prophetic Types, this one, in the commanded sacrifice of Isaac, appears to be among the most significant. It stands at the head of the dispensation of Revealed Religion, as reduced into covenant with the people of God in the person of their Founder and Progenitor. Being thus displayed in the history of the Father of the Faithful, it seems to be wrought into the foundations of Faith. In the surrender to sacrifice of a beloved son the Patriarchal Church begins with an adumbration of the Christian reality. Davison. The fathers recognize the double type in this whole history. The father with full deliberate purpose offering up his dearly beloved, only-begotten son, the son willingly obedient unto death, the wood for the sacrifice carried by the victim up the hill, the sacrifice fulfilled in purpose though not in act, and then the father receiving his son in a figure from the dead after three days of death in the father's purpose and belief; all this is as much an actual prophecy of the sacrifice and resurrection of the Son of God as was possible without a true slaying of Isaac, for which was substituted the slaying of the ram. That which Isaac's sacrifice wanted to make it perfect as a type was actual death and the notion of substitution. These therefore were supplied by the death of the ram, and his substitution for a human life. Not only was Isaac thus made the most memorable type of the Redeemer of the world (Isaac, who otherwise seems less noticeable than either Abraham or Jacob), but also that Abraham had the singular honor of representing the highest, holiest God and Father, who "spared not His own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all." E. H. B. We leap, as by a natural instinct, from the sacrifice in the land of Moriah to the sacrifice of Calvary. There are many differences; there is a danger of exaggerating the resemblance, or of confounding in either case what is subordinate with what is essential. But the general feeling of Christendom has in this respect not gone far astray. Each event, if we look at it well and understand it rightly, will serve to explain the other. Human sacrifice, as we have seen, which was in outward form nearest to the offering of Isaac, was in fact and in spirit most entirely condemned and repudiated by it. The union of parental love with the total denial of self, is held up in both cases as the highest model of human, and therefore as the shadow of divine love; "sacrifice" is rejected, but "to do thy will, O God," is accepted. In the moral significance of this history the Jew and the Christian are agreed. Even to this present day the Jew, though he has rejected the true propitiation, sees in the binding of Isaac on the altar a meritorious deed, which still pleads on behalf of Israel with God. And while the Christian Church prays to God for pardon and blessing for the merits and death of Jesus Christ, the Jewish synagogue beseeches Him to have compassion upon it for the sake of the binding of Isaac. Viewed in this light as a part of the divine teaching of the world, we find in this history the wisdom of God. We find an answer to that first and deepest of questions which the human heart can ask, "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord?" We do not find it indeed in doctrine, or even in words at all. But we do find it in fact. We find it just in that mode of revelation which was best suited to the wants and capacities of those to whom it was addressed. Precisely as we ourselves first teach children by pictures, whose meaning, however, they cannot themselves fully understand, so God taught the childhood of the world. Not till the great act had itself been accomplished on Calvary could all its interpretation be given. First came the picture; then, so to speak, the comment on the picture in the mouth of prophets and holy men of old; then the great fact itself was exhibited; and then from the hallowed lips of the Apostles of the Lord came the eloquent interpretation of the fact. It is one truth throughout. Christ Jesus came to do the Father's will, and to give his life a ransom for many; by his obedience we are made righteous. He hath redeemed us by his blood—what are words like these but the filling in, so to speak, of the fainter lines of that ancient picture? Peroense. At this point the wonderful story begins to burn inwardly with the fire of prophecy. It grows prophetic of the transcendent sacrifice on the cross because at its very core it was an inspiration of the same self-subduing love which inspired and glorified the offering of Golgotha. With perfect justice, therefore, has the Christian Church delighted since the beginning of her history to place the sacrifice of Isaac over against the mysterious and adorable sacrifice of her Lord, as its most splendid Old Testament prefiguration. What a man was found to do for God his Friend, no less, but more, God did to reconcile the world again unto himself. The will was not taken, as in Isaac's case, for the deed. No ram displaced the Son of God. Rather that substitution on Moriah of a symbolical animal in the room of human life, while it taught that no man could redeem himself or propitiate Heaven in heathen fashion by "giving the fruit of his body for the sin of his soul," did also contain an obscure hint that after all human life must bleed for human guilt. The representative blood of sheep or oxen could not be forever accepted instead of that better sacrifice for which it was substituted. Only by a willing and personal surrender of human life could man's covenant of peace with Heaven be finally sealed. That truth underlay the arrested sacrifice on Mount Moriah. When Jehovah set aside the offered Isaac, and with him set aside as unacceptable or inadequate the best and costliest expiation man could bring, did he not in some dim way pledge himself to lay upon the altar of his covenant a better and more prevailing Victim,—a Son of Man who should be also the Son of God? Is it possible that a vague anticipation of this future Victim, this better Isaac, one day to take Isaac's place as God's provided Lamb, may have visited the seer at that exalted moment when on the mount Jehovah stood revealed as the “Provider”? Then, when the shadows of death had by Heaven’s interposition been turned into a joy like the joy of resurrection, might Abraham see afar off the day of God’s Messiah and be glad! Dykes. 14. When Isaac had asked, “where is the Lamb?” Abraham answered, Elohim jireh, “God will see,” or “provide a lamb for himself.” Now he perceives that he had uttered an unconscious prophecy, and that the God (Elohim) in whom he trusted had shown Himself indeed Jehovah, the Eternal Truth and the covenanted Saviour of his servants, and so he names the place Jehovah-jireh. E. H. B. This was the obedience of faith! The wonderful illustration stands out before all the ages with God’s seal of approbation broadly stamped upon it. When the trial had fully reached its culminating point and no room remained for doubt that Abraham would obey God at every cost, fearless of consequences, or rather committing all consequences to his God, then God’s angel interposed! A ram was provided for the sacrifice and the son of promise went back to a more happy home with a more happy father, doubly blessed in the renewed approbation of his covenant-keeping God. No wonder that God proceeded then to make that covenant stronger and broader and richer than ever before! No wonder Abraham stamped into the very name of this ever-memorable locality one of the grand moral lessons of the scene—“Jehovah Jireh”—In the mount of the Lord, himself will provide! When you come to the mount of last and utmost emergency, the Lord will have salvation ready! His angel will appear; the ram of sacrifice will be there; and Isaac may go in peace! H. C.—Let it be recorded for generations to come. 1. That the Lord will see; he will always have his eye upon his people in their straits and distresses, that he may come in with seasonable succor in the critical juncture. 2. That he will be seen in the greatest perplexities of his people; he will not only manifest but magnify his wisdom, power, and goodness in their deliverance; where God sees and provides, he should be seen and praised. H. If we follow the Lord’s bidding, he will see to it that we shall not be ashamed or confounded. If we come into great need by following his command, he will see to it that the loss shall be recompensed. If our difficulties multiply and increase so that our way seems completely blocked up, Jehovah will see to it that the road shall be cleared. The Lord will see us through in the way of holiness if we are only willing to be thorough in it, and dare to follow wheresoever he leads the way. We need not wonder that Abraham should utter this truth, and attach it to the spot which was to be forever famous: for his whole heart was saturated with it, and had been sustained by it. His trials had taught him more of God,—had given him a new name for his God; and this he would not have forgotten, but he would keep it before the minds of the generations following by naming the place Jehovah-jireh. True faith not only speaks the language of prophecy, but, when she sees her prophecy fulfilled, faith is always delighted to raise memorials to the God of truth. The stones which were set up of old were not to the memory of dead men, but they were memorials of the deeds of the living God: they abundantly uttered the memory of God’s great goodness. Abraham on this occasion did not choose a name which recorded what he had done, but a name which spoke of what Jehovah had done. Fall back on this eternal verity, that if God has provided his own Well-beloved Son to meet the most awful of all necessities, then he will provide for us in everything else. In the mount it shall be seen, in the place of the trial, in the heat of the furnace, in the last extremity Jehovah will be seen, for he will see to it, and it shall become a proverb with you,—“In the mount Jehovah shall be seen.” That is to say, when you cannot see, the Lord will see you and see to your need; for his eyes are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry. You will not need to explain to God your difficulties and the intricacies of your position, he will see it all. And then his provision shall be seen. Spurgeon. 15,16. It was when the quality of Abraham’s faith had been verified by so unparalleled a strain that he was enriched by an appropriate reward. For reward is ever the divine answer to such virtue in man as can abide the tests of God. Once again, and for the last time, with accents of even higher solemnity than on any previous occasion, there came to Abraham, after this trial was past, the voice, now grown familiar, of his august Friend. It came to reiterate, in terms of unusual fulness, all the promises of His great covenant. It did something more. “Often before had God promised,” says Augustine, “but never sworn.” Now, for the first time, the divine Covenanter stooped to sustain human infirmity by the human expedient of “an oath for confirmation.” “Willing more abundantly to show to this heir of promise the immutability of His counsel, God confirmed it by an oath." True to the ruling principle of condescension, this self-manifestation of the Deity assumed a form characteristically human. Men are accustomed to attest their word by an appeal to Him who is the greatest; he, because He could swear by no greater, swore by Himself. The pledge that His word is true is His own existence. It was in recognition of the evidence which had just been afforded of His servant's stanch loyalty to the covenant, that the Eternal was pleased in this unexampled manner to reduplicate securities for His own faithfulness. Previous to this oath, Abraham had the word of God, and no more, on which to build his confidence. He trusted the All-truthful and Almighty to keep faith with His friend in His own way. For that very reason did a generous promise: vouchsafe to the man something more than a naked word. "To him that hath shall be given." "Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only one, from Me, therefore by Myself have I sworn that in blessing I will bless thee." Thenceforth, as the New Testament explains, the believer possessed, not one, but "two immutable things" on which to rest. Through Abraham's obedience have we all obtained this "strong consolation." Dykes. In his intercourse with the patriarchs God never swore by himself but in this one case. The uniqueness and importance of the oath appears from its being quoted afterward upon important occasions by Abraham himself, by Joseph, by Moses, by Zacharias, by Stephen, and by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and frequently referred to by God himself. Its utterance was the last that fell from the lips of God upon the ear of Abraham. He lived for fifty years and more thereafter in peaceful, undisturbed repose. W. H. God is pleased to make mention of Abraham's obedience as the consideration of the covenant; and he speaks of it with an encomium, Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son; he lays a strong emphasis upon that, and (v. 18) praises it as an act of obedience; in it thou hast obeyed my voice, and to obey is better than sacrifice. H. 17. In this and several other passages, the gate is emblematic of authority and dominion; as in Europe the delivery of the keys of a town is a formal act of submission to a conquering or superior power. We speak of the Turkish power as "the Porte," "the Sublime Porte," "the Ottoman Porte," from the principal gate or "porte" of the Turkish Sultan's palace at Constantinople. The mention of the gate involves the idea of the palace, and of the power which resides there. Pict. Bible. 17. 18. The same promise (chap. 12:3; 18:18), now repeated for the third time. Having been on the two first occasions spontaneously vouchsafed as a free gift, it is here the reward for Abraham's victorious faith and obedience. This being also the last of the revelations of God to Abraham of which Scripture makes mention, was designed as a strong consolation to him during the remainder of his earthly pilgrimage. Isaac, whom he had at first received from the grace of God in the natural way, he had now in a higher and spiritual way obtained afresh as a special child of grace and of promise, in recompense of his obedience. By works had his faith been made perfect (James 2:22). Abraham began with faith, and the longer his life flowed on in the exercise of it the more solid were the evidences which he was enabled to give of his faith, until that greatest act of it which he achieved upon Mount Moriah. Every new trial of faith successfully endured raises it to a higher degree of strength; and the fruits that it bears serve again for its nourishment. This affords the true reconciliation of the apparently contradictory statements of Paul and James, when the one says (Rom. 4:22), Abraham was justified by faith, and the other (James 2:21), Abraham was justified by works. C. G. B. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ 5. At the next eventful appearance (Gen. 17) Abraham had been waiting in faith for the son of promise a quarter of a century, and was perhaps tempted to think the fulfilment fast becoming impossible. Pertinently therefore the first words of the Lord were—"I am the Almighty God! Walk before me and be thou perfect;" fear nothing; my covenant stands fast. I will multiply thee exceedingly! Abraham fell on his face and God talked with him, reiterating his promise of posterity, giving unwonted prominence to the family feature of his covenant—"a God to thee and to thy seed after thee"—and instituting the rite of circumcision. 6. The sixth and last recorded appearance followed the triumph of Abraham's faith in the sacrifice of his only son. In this the Lord reaffirmed the great elements of his promise—posterity as the stars of heaven; triumphant over their enemies; a blessing to all the nations of the earth. Thus at successive and somewhat remote intervals and mostly on special occasions the Lord manifested himself to his servant to confirm his faith, to enlarge the range of promise and to signify his pleasure in the obedient trustful life of his friend. One other special feature in the great covenant with Abraham should be noticed. In many respects this covenant made Abraham and his posterity a peculiar people, discriminating broadly between them and every other nation, and accumulating the blessings of God upon them in no stinted measure. But the Lord put into this covenant one counteracting element of great power: He ordained them to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. Into this great system which made them his peculiar people, openly and clearly he put the germinal idea of a salvation to be provided for the wide world. This covenant people were to be the almoners of all these blessings to the otherwise benighted and perishing nations. At the very least here was opened a thoroughly rich field for prayer, the broadest scope for real sympathy with the benevolence of the Great Father of all the nations and a powerful antidote against the narrow exclusiveness which might otherwise have shrunk and shrivelled their piety and narrowed their aspirations to themselves and their land. How often in the heart of the good men of later times—the men like Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah,—must the kindling thought have been sprung by this great germinal promise—When shall these things be? H. C. 1. And the life of Sarah was an hundred and seven and twenty years: these were the years of 2 the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kiriath-arba (the same is Hebron), in the land of 3 Canaan: and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her. And Abraham rose 4 up from before his dead, and spake unto the children of Heth, saying, I am a stranger and a sojourner with you; give me a possession of a buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead 5 out of my sight. And the children of Heth answered Abraham, saying unto him, Hear us, 6 my lord: thou art a mighty prince among us: in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead; 7 none of us shall withhold from thee his sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy dead. And Abraham rose up, and bowed himself to the people of the land, even to the children of Heth. 8 And he communed with them, saying, If it be your mind that I should bury my dead out of 9 my sight, hear me, and intreat for me to Ephron the son of Zohar, that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he hath, which is in the end of his field; for the full price let him 10 give it to me in the midst of you for a possession of a buryingplace. Now Ephron was sitting in the midst of the children of Heth: and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the children of Heth, even of all that went in at the gate of his city, saying Nay, my lord, hear me: the field give I thee, and the cave that is therein, I give it thee; in the presence of the sons of my people give I it thee: bury thy dead. And Abraham bowed himself down before the people of the land. And he spake unto Ephron in the audience of the people of the land, saying, But if thou wilt, I pray thee, hear me: I will give the price of the field; take it of me, and I will bury my dead there. And Ephron answered Abraham, saying unto him, My lord, hearken unto me: a piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver, what is that betwixt me and thee? bury therefore thy dead. And Abraham hearkened unto Ephron; and Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver, which he had named in the audience of the children of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant. So the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the border thereof round about, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city. And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre (the same is Hebron), in the land of Canaan. And the field, and the cave that is therein, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession of a buryingplace by the children of Heth. The following table exhibits the leading incidents in the life of Abraham, and his age at the time when that is either specified in the record or can be fixed:— Age. Incident. Record. 70 (?) Call from God at Ur... 75. Call repeated at Haran ... 12:1-4. Migration to Canaan... 12:4, 5. Halt at Sichem—Third Divine manifestation at Bethel... 12:6, 7. Journey to Egypt. ... 12:10-20. Return to Bethel—Separation from Lot... 13:1-13. Fourth Divine manifestation. 13:14-17. 80 (?) Settlement at Mamre (Hebron)... 13:18. Rout of the invaders ... 14:1-16. Interview with Melchizedek. 14:17-24. Fifth Divine manifestation—Covenant of faith... 15: 85. Flight of Hagar... 16:1-14. 86. Birth of Ishmael ... 16:15, 16. 99. Sixth Divine manifestation—Covenant of circumcision.. 17: Seventh Divine manifestation—The three angels ... 18:1-14. Sodom and Gomorrah—Abraham's intercession... 18:16-33. Destruction of the Cities of the Plain... 19: Sojourn at Gerar... 20: 100. Birth of Isaac... 21:1-5. Casting out of Ishmael—Eighth Divine manifestation... 21:8-21. The compact with Abimelech—Beersheba... 21:22-34. Age. Incident. Record. 125 (?) The great temptation—Mount Moriah ... 22:1-14. Ninth Divine manifestation—The oath and the blessing ... 22:15-18. 137. Death and burial of Sarah... 23:1, 2. The cave of Machpelah ... 23:3-20. 140. Mission for Rebekah—Marriage of Isaac... 24: Marriage with Keturah—its issue... 25:1-4. 175. Death and burial of Abraham... 25:7-9. W. II. 23. This chapter is interesting as containing the first record of mourning for the dead, of burial, of property in land, of purchase of land, of silver as a medium of purchase, and of a standard of weight. Mourning for the dead was, no doubt, natural on the first death. Burial was a matter of necessity, in order, as Abraham says, to remove the body out of sight. Property in land was introduced where tribes became settled, formed towns, and began to practise tillage. Barter was the early mode of accommodating each party with the articles he needed or valued. This led gradually to the use of the precious metals as a "current" medium of exchange—first by weight, and then by coins of a fixed weight and known stamp. M. The next event recorded in Abraham's life is the death of Sarah, at the age of 127, at Hebron; so that Abraham must have returned from Beersheba to his old home. P. S.—We are informed in Num. 13:22, that Hebron was built seven years before Zoan, or Tanis, the ancient capital of Lower Egypt. At the conquest of Palestine Hebron was taken by Caleb, whose possession it became, being in the allotment of the tribe of Judah. It was afterward assigned to the Levites, and became a city of refuge. David kept his court there in the first seven years of his reign, before Jerusalem was taken. During the Babylonish captivity, the Edomites appropriated Hebron when they invaded the south of Judah, and it became the capital of a district which continued to be called Idumwa long after the territory of the Edomites had been incorporated with Judea. It is situated about 27 miles south of Jerusalem, eastward of a chain of hills which intersects the country from north to south. It stands on the slope of an eminence, at the summit of which are some misshapen ruins of an ancient castle. Bash.—Although the valleys opening on the northwest of the town might not altogether inappropriately be termed plains, the whole region is greatly elevated, and Hebron itself, two thousand eight hundred feet above the Mediterranean, or four thousand one hundred above the Dead Sea, is the highest town in Palestine. Those who approach it from the southern deserts encounter more or less of fatiguing ascent for fifty miles, while those who come from Jerusalem find that they are making their way slowly upward over innumerable ridges and valleys to a height of six hundred feet above the sacred city. Once in Scripture its elevated position is referred to—in the expression, “Kirjath Arba, which is Hebron, in the mountain of Judah” (Josh. 20 : 7). Sometimes the patriarch sojourned in the country to the south and southwest of Hebron, bordering the Philistines’ land, especially in the neighborhood of Beersheba, 25 miles distant; yet Hebron ever had for him a superior attraction. Here he was living when his wife Sarah died, and here he purchased the only ground he seems ever to have owned—the burial field of Machpelah—where, in time, his sons Isaac and Ishmael met to lay his body beside that of his wife, and where, in turn, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah, found their last earthly resting-place. N. C. B. [See p. 312.] 1. And Sarah was an hundred and seven and twenty years old.** Sarah is the only woman in the sacred writings, whose age, death, and burial, are distinctly noted. And she has been deemed worthy of higher honor; for Paul (Gal. 4 : 22, 23) makes her a type of the church of Christ; and her faith in the accomplishment of God’s promise that she should have a son, when all natural probabilities were against it, is particularly celebrated in the Epistle to the Hebrews (chap. 11 : 11). Sarah was about ninety-one years old when Isaac was born, and she lived thirty-six years after and saw him grown up to man’s estate. With SARAH the promise of the incarnation of Christ commenced, though a comparatively obscure prophecy of it had been delivered to Eve, and with MARY it terminated, having had its exact completion. Thus God put more honor upon those two women than upon all the daughters of Eve besides. A. C. There were many excellencies in the character of this remarkable woman. As a wife, she was loving, faithful, and deferential, a type of conjugal reverence (1 Pet. 3 : 6)—characteristics mentioned frequently with special approval in the Word of God; as a mother, most tender and thoughtful in respect to all things pertaining to the real interest of her only child. Though not an “ideal type of excellence,” her excellencies outshone her defects, and she stands before us as “truly feminine” in both the one and the other. Hughes. Sarah dies when Isaac is thirty seven. We know something about what she was as a wife to Abraham, but little of what she was as a mother to Isaac, and about as little of what he was as a son to her. In the passage which records her death and burial he is never mentioned. His figure is lost in the shadow of that stately form of Abraham, bowed down with sorrow, doing the last honors to the dead. That Isaac fully shared his father’s grief—that the tie between mother and son was tender and strong—is clear from the fact that it took three years and Rebekah besides to comfort him after his mother’s death. W. H. 2. Abraham mourned for Sarah. Consecration to God’s purposes does not eradicate our deep human love; rather it heightens, refines, sanctifies it! Every father is more a father in proportion as he loves and serves the great Father in heaven. We should be on our guard against any system of religion or philosophy that seeks to cool the fervor of natural and lawful love. It may be very majestic not to shed tears; but it is most inhuman, most ungodly. Christianity educates our humanity, not deadens it; and when we are in tears it helps us to see through them nearly into heaven. J. P. The friendship of the Eternal One was a poor boon, comparatively, unless it survived this life. The blessing promised in that solemn covenant was surely too vast to be exhausted here. Nay, the man who had sacrificed home and friends for God might deem himself “of all men most miserable,” if no “abiding city” was to reward his hopes hereafter. His consciousness that the Everlasting Undying One was become his Shield and exceeding great Reward, could not fail to wrap within it a trust in immortality, undeveloped, it may be, and dim, yet real and not to be shaken. Of such a man it was more literally true than even of others that he "died in faith." The promises he had "embraced" were promises he had "not received." He saw them only afar off. Through death he had to go to meet them. Perhaps at no hour of his life were such questionings of a life beyond, or a keen sense of the transitoriness of his sojourn here, more likely to be forced upon the mind of Abraham than when he sat a broken-hearted widower beside his dead. Dykes. 4. The tenderness of grief, the sacredness of death, the dignity of faith, the courtesy of sympathy, the nicety of honor, the liberality of love, the consecration of faith and hope,—these all are pictured here with a simplicity like Homer's, but which surpasses any poetry in speaking directly to the heart. It is the universal elegy of human grief, "Give me a possession, a secure and sacred spot, where I may bury my dead." J. P. T.—The patriarch's resolution to acquire by purchase, and not otherwise, an hereditary place of sepulture, with the importance evidently attached to its acquisition, can only be understood in the light of his peculiar relations to the land of Canaan. Heir as he was by divine promise of the whole land, recognized by its citizens as a "prince of God," this man had lived in it for over sixty years without owning one yard of soil. He had acquired no fixed property. Home he had none but a shifting tent. But must this apply to him dead as well as living? Sarah's decease raised this question, and the devout instinct of her husband felt its way to the true answer. An exile through life, he will claim the land as his own in death; his own, not to enjoy it for himself, but to hold it in pledge for his seed, to whom it has been guaranteed of God. Men's graves are the heritage of their posterity. Dykes. 3-18. Abraham wished to make his possession of this cave of Machpelah secure to his posterity. The only way in which he can do this is by a public act and deed in the presence of many witnesses. It was the custom of the times, as it is the custom of Easterns still, to employ mediators in every transaction of this kind. W. H.—Then ensues the conference in the gate,—the Oriental place of assembly, where the negotiators and the witnesses of the transaction, as at the present day, are gathered from the many comers and goers through "the gate of the city." The Hittite inhabitants offer him the most sacred of their sepulchres for the cherished remains. The Patriarch maintains his determination to remain aloof from the Canaanite population, at the same time that he preserves every form of courtesy and friendliness, in accordance with the magnificent toleration and inborn gentleness which pervade his character. A. P. S.—Ephron offers the field as a free gift—too generous an offer, whose acceptance might in the end be more costly, and would be less secure. Firm to his purpose, yet never failing in his courtesy, Abraham first bows again to the assembled citizens, and then turning to Ephron, insists on purchasing. In true Oriental fashion the son of Zohar says: "The land is worth four hundred shekels; what is that betwixt me and thee?"—above, perhaps, the real value, but Abraham has gained his point. The price is specified. He has come prepared; the silver is weighed out on the spot, "current money with the merchant." The purchase is completed and ratified by a description of the property, such as you might find in any deed of conveyance still. "And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, and the cave that was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure." In manner so picturesque was the first commercial transaction that we have any record of, carried out; and so was purchased the oldest family burying ground that any land can show; its history in patriarchal times, its story down to our own days, rendering it the most interesting tomb in all the earth. W. H. 10. Of all that went in at the gate of his city. That is, of all the citizens or inhabitants. Kidder.—The gates of cities in these days, and many ages after, were the places of judicature and common resort. Here the governors and elders of the city met to hear complaints, administer justice, make conveyances of titles and estates, and, in short, to transact all the affairs of the place. Hence that passage in the Psalmist, "They shall not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate;" that is, when they are accused by them before the court of magistrates. It is probable that the room or hall where these magistrates sat was over the gate, because Boaz is said to "go up to the gate;" and the reason of having it built there seems to have been for the convenience of the inhabitants; who, being all husbandmen, and forced to pass and repass every morning and evening as they went and came from their labor, might be more easily called as they went by, whenever they were wanted to appear in any business. So that from the whole it appears, that Abraham could not have made his purchase from Ephron, without his having recourse to the city gates. Stackhouse.—All affairs of moment among the Algerines are laid before the Dey, or the principal officers, who sit constantly in the gate of the palace for that purpose. Thus we read of the “elders in the gate” (De. 22 : 15) and of “him that reproveth and rebuketh in the gate” (Is. 29 : 21). The Ottoman Court likewise seems to be called the Porte, from the distribution of justice and the dispatch of public business carried on in the gates of it. Dr. Shaw. 15,16. The business-like method of Abraham in his traffic conforms to the careful reckonings so abundant in Egypt, and to the existence of a hundred Chaldean tablets filled with business contracts, before and after the time of Abraham. S. C. B.—Abraham pays the money: he pays it readily, without hesitation; pays it in full, without diminution; and pays it by weight, current money with the merchant, without deceit. See how anciently money was used for the help of commerce; and see how honestly money should be paid where it is due. Though all the land of Canaan was Abraham’s by promise, yet the time of his possessing being not come, what he had now occasion for, he bought and paid for. H. 17-20. The one spot of earth which Abraham could call his own, the pledge which he left of the perpetuity of his interest in “the land wherein he was a stranger,” was the sepulchre which he bought with four hundred shekels of silver from Ephron the Hittite. It was a rock with a double cave (“Machpelah”), standing amid a grove of olives or flexes, on the slope of the table-land where the first encampment had been made. Round this venerable cave the reverence of successive ages and religions has now raised a series of edifices which, while they preserve its identity, conceal it entirely from view. But there it still remains. Within the Mussulman mosque, within the Christian church, within the massive stone enclosure built by the Kings of Judah, is, beyond any reasonable question, the last resting-place of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekah; “and there Jacob buried Leah;” and thither, with all the pomp of funeral state, his own embalmed body was brought from the palaces of Egypt. Of all the great Patriarchal family, Rachel alone is absent. A. P. S. No ancient site in Palestine is more satisfactorily identified than this by historic landmarks and credible uninterrupted traditions. Jews, Christians, and Moslems, alike venerate the place; but with extremest jealousy the Moslem possessors guard the entrance, even of the outer enclosure, against the foot of any except the true believer. By means of skilful diplomacy, entrance was a few years since obtained for the Prince of Wales, on his tour through Palestine, with a few attendants; yet these were not permitted to descend to the cave below the mosque—the real burial-place—but were obliged to content themselves with a sight of the cenotaphs of the patriarchs, which are placed on the main floor of the mosque. N. C. B.—The wall which encloses the Haram (or sacred precinct in which the sepulchres themselves are reported, and probably with truth, still to lie) is a monument certainly equal, and probably superior in age to anything remaining in Palestine. It is a quadrangular building of about 200 feet in length by 115 feet in width, its dark gray walls rising fifty or sixty in height, without window or opening of any description, except two small entrances at the S. E. and S. W. corners. It is surrounded by a colonnade of forty-eight square pilasters. It stands nearly on the crest of the hill which forms the eastern side of the valley on the slopes and bottom of which the town is strewn. Dic. B. Abraham designed to perpetuate among his posterity the expectation of the promised land. It was the most likely means of keeping alive in every succeeding generation the hope of ultimately possessing the whole land. Accordingly we find it did produce this very effect; for as Abraham and Sarah were buried in that cave, so were Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah, notwithstanding Jacob died in Egypt. And Joseph also, though buried in Egypt, gave commandment that when the Israelites should depart out of the land of Egypt to possess the land of Canaan, they should carry up his bones with them, and bury them in the sepulchre of his progenitors. Bush. It is this consideration which ever after made that venerable cave at Machpelah precious and even sacred in the eyes of later generations of Jews. By means of it, Israel virtually retained a lawful hold upon the land of promise throughout those six centuries which were still to roll away before Joshua led the tribes into possession. The pompous funeral procession which bore the embalmed remains of Jacob back from Egypt, that they might be laid beside his father and his grandfather, testified to the depth of this feeling on the part of his exiled children. Like the instructions which Joseph left concerning his bones, it showed that the sons of Abraham clung to a grave in Canaan as a pledge that the land itself was to be one day their own. Machpelah has thus become a signal figure of the claim which the spiritual Church of God asserts upon the earth we dwell in. One day the globe itself, purified from evil, is destined to become the enduring inheritance and home of all the saints. For the present, however, Christ's people hold it only as Israel in its exile held Canaan, by their graves. One empty grave near Jerusalem, with countless more, which in their turn are likewise to be emptied,—these are the sole possessions in virtue of which just men departed can still call the earth their own. These are the pledges of its future possession. Their hope rests, like Abraham's, on God's word alone. Its fulfilment lies as far off, perchance, as his. It is not less invisible, save to far-sighted faith. Dykes. 1. 1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abraham, and said unto him, 2. 2 Abraham; and he said, Here am I. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt 3. 3 offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. And Abraham rose early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which 4. 4 God had told him. On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. 5. 5 And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go 6. 6 yonder; and we will worship, and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took in his hand the fire and the knife; 7. 7 and they went both of them together. And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold, the fire and the wood; 8. 8 but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, God will provide himself 9. 9 the lamb for a burnt offering, my son: so they went both of them together. And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built the altar there, and laid the 10. 10 wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. And 11. 11 Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. 12. 12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from 13. 13 me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a 14. 14 burnt offering in the stead of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah- 15. 15 jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be provided. And the angel 16. 16 of the LORD called unto Abraham a second time out of heaven, and said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine 17. 17 only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall pos- 18 sess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; 19 because thou hast obeyed my voice. So Abraham returned unto his young men, and they rose up and went together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beer-sheba. The plan of the sacred narrative passes over every detail that does not bear upon the history of the covenant itself, and carries us on to a period when Isaac had reached the age of intelligence. A tradition preserved by Josephus makes Isaac twenty-five years old at the time of the crowning trial of Abraham's faith; and we certainly gather from the Scripture narrative that he was an intelligent and willing party to the sacrifice of his life at the command of God. P. S.—The whole history of Abram may be arranged into four stages, each commencing with a personal revelation of Jehovah. The first, when the patriarch was called to his work and mission; the second, when he received the promise of an heir, and the covenant was made with him; the third, when that covenant was established in the change of his name from Abram to Abraham, and in circumcision as the sign and seal of the covenant; the fourth, when his faith was tried, proved, and perfected in the offering up of Isaac. These are the high points in Abram's history, which the patriarch successively climbed, and to which all the other events of his life may be regarded as the ascent. A. E. "Highest blessings," says Ewald, "bring highest trials." After many years of unbroken rest and satisfied desire, there burst on Abraham, like a bolt out of the clear sky, the supreme crisis of his discipline. Yet for such a crisis the whole of his career had been one long preparation. Men do not grow to be heroes in self-denial without practice. The abandonment of his original home in Ur had initiated for this man a series of sacrifices. On that there followed first the forsaking of his kindred in Haran; then separation from Lot at Ai, and homeless wanderings in Canaan. Next came the hopes he built on Ishmael, his first-born, only to see them crossed with disappointment. Already he had virtually sacrificed one son of his heart—the lad who went forth into the wilderness like a scapegoat, to return no more. What has he left now but another son, younger and still dearer, in whom are gathered up and incarnated, as it were, the most sacred memories of the past, and his most radiant hopes for the future? This treasure only he has received from God which he has never been asked to give up for God. Can faith—can self-surrender be entire, till it has accomplished its perfect work? Dykes.—Looking at the whole chapter as we should at any merely human composition, we must admit that for profound pathos, for tragic force of description, it has never been surpassed. Each time that we hear it, says Augustine truly, it thrills us afresh. Compare it even with that exquisitely touching passage in the Agamemnon of Æschylus, which describes in words of such wonderful beauty the anguish of the father constrained to sacrifice his child, and it will not suffer by the comparison. Peroene. Our Lord stated to the Jews: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad." There is in Christ's statement reference to some definite occurrence in Abraham's history. This was unquestionably the transaction of Moriah. In the interposition which stayed his hand when about to slay his son Isaac and in the substitute found, the patriarch saw his own prophecy receive its fulfilment in a way which gave pre-intimation of the appearance of Jehovah himself. Nor should it be overlooked, that in the promise renewed to Abraham on this occasion the spiritual element was more distinctly brought out than at any time since his call, and in the very words then employed. D. M. The moment man went wrong and went down under the temptation of his self-will and the sorcery of his senses, the love of God in Christ began to move for his restoration. The ages of sacred history were but the steady steps in the mighty march of that Christly Providence. The books of the Bible are the record of the process, growing clearer and brighter as it works out to its perfect consummation. The Lord, becoming man, born of a woman, dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory; even we, men, with these eyes that passion had clouded, we "beheld His glory full of grace and truth." Holy living, miracles of mercy, wonderful teaching, words such as man never spake, heavenly disinterestedness, not having where to lay his head, Satan visibly conquered—all these accomplished no redemption. The race was too far gone, the sin was too deep-struck for that. All they did was to gather to the Son of Man a little band of interested, believing, timid disciples, ready to flee from him as soon as the cross came in sight. At last, when the world's "hour" is full come, the two great further acts are done. First, the Sacrifice, then, the victory. Both have been foretold in that living figure, or that acted prophecy, far back in the very morning of man's history. Abraham binds his only son on the altar. Here is the typical sacrifice. The son's life is given back, and he is loosed from the altar. Here is the typical resurrection. So the Epistle to the Hebrews opens that mystical transaction: "Abraham offered up Isaac, his only-begotten son, accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from whence also he received him in a figure." First, the cross; then, the breaking of the sepulchre. "For if we have been planted in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection." First, a full, perfect, sufficient propitiation, by such suffering as only a divine humanity, having God entered into it, could suffer; then, the raising up and enfranchisement of the rescued soul in the resurrection. First, pardon, then life eternal; but both by the same inward-working power, received through faith; not merely by outward and past events in history, but by these transferred through this appropriating energy of faith into the heart—the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus making us free from the law of sin and death. F. D. H. 1. The words "after these things," refer us to all that had been passing before. Abraham, after long wanderings and many trials, is presented to us in the last chapter as eminently comforted and in a condition of peaceful prosperity. The promised, longed-for son has been given to him; his other son Ishmael, though no longer in his household, is growing up and prospering, Abraham is in treaty and at peace with his neighbors the Philistines, he sojourns for many days at Beersheba and its neighborhood, with abundance of cattle, in a place well watered and fertile. Thus it appears to have been with him till now, when his son, his only son Isaac, whom he loved, is growing up to early manhood, his chief comfort and stay and hope in this world. But times of prosperity are often times when trial is needed for us, and so we find it here. E. H. B. Prove. The A. V. reads God did tempt Abraham. Hebrew, nissah, tried, proved. This literal rendering of the term, given in the old Geneva version, "God did prove Abraham," goes at once to correct the erroneous impression that might possibly be received from our English word "tempt," which usually has the sense of exciting to sin. But in this sense we are expressly assured (James 1: 13) that "God is not tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man;" he neither deceives any man's judgment nor perverts his will, nor seduces his affections, nor does anything else that can subject him to the blame of men's sins. Temptation in this bad sense always proceeds from the malice of Satan working on the corruptions of our own hearts. God may, however, consistently with all his perfections, by his providence, bring his creatures into circumstances of special probation, not for the purpose of giving him information, but in order to manifest to themselves and to others the prevailing dispositions of their hearts. In this sense of trying, putting to the proof, bringing to the test, the original term in many other instances is used in reference to the Most High, and always in such a way as to leave his attributes unimpeached. Deut. 13: 3, "For the Lord your God (nissah) proveth you, to know (i.e. to make known) whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul." Bush.—The Arabic version renders it very correctly, "God did prove Abraham." Words having the sense of "try" may generally be used either in a good or a bad sense. This particular word has generally a good sense, except where men are said to try or tempt God, e.g. (Ex. 17: 2; Nu. 14: 22; De. 6: 16). The whole history of Abraham is a history of his moral and spiritual education by the teaching of God himself. He was to be the head of the chosen seed, the father of the faithful, himself the type of justifying faith. Here then, after long schooling and training, in which already there had been many trials, one great test of his now matured and strengthened faith is ordained by God. E. H. B.—The same word occurs in 1 Kings 10: 1, where it is said the Queen of Sheba came to "prove" Solomon. So also in Deut. 4: 34; where the word is represented by "assayed," and likewise "temptation." The same word occurs in several other passages also, in which God is represented, either in fact or in explicit terms, as tempting, i.e., trying or proving His servants. Lorraine. If we believe at all in God's oversight of our life—in other words, in His guiding and "leading" hand—we must feel that there are times and, as it were, places of "exploration" to which we do come under His direction; circumstances of trial, opportunities, in other words, of choosing between good and evil, which we cannot avoid, which confront us without our seeking. Vaughan.—According to the simplest notion of temptation, as merely equivalent to trial, God does so tempt man as to put before him special circumstances which may try or prove him, and so bring out that good or evil within him which, though known to God, is perhaps unknown to the man himself, and still more to his fellow-men. In this way God was said to tempt Abraham, where the true nature of the temptation is well expressed in one of the old Greek versions, that of Symmachus, who paraphrases it "God glorified Abraham," i.e., gave him a special opportunity of showing his entire trust in God, and thus of obtaining the glorious title of the "father of the faithful" to all times. In this sense then, first, God is said to tempt men when He specially tries them, in order either to bring out the good which is in them, or else give them and others by their example, a warning of the evil which lurks unsuspected within their hearts, this being wholly for man's good. Karslake.—What God often does, what He did in the case of Abraham, of Job, and especially of our Lord himself, is to expose a man in a very critical and precarious position, to bring him in the course of his life into circumstances where sin is very easy, holiness very difficult. We read that it was "of the Spirit" that "Jesus was led up into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil;" a very instructive intimation, giving us in one view all the parties concerned. The human nature, with its liability to temptation, its capability to suffer and to enjoy; the Divine nature, ordering the circumstances which may permit the temptation to take place; and the diabolical nature, the tempter. Dods. This was not the first time that God tried Abraham. He had tried him all his life. But here it is said, in marked phrase, that God did try Abraham because it is the crucial instance of his life, the hardest trial, perhaps, of all history. Temptation, trial, is the very workshop of God. On that anvil all his saints have been hammered; in that fire they have all been purified. But here the hammer smites most heavily, here the flame of the fire has been most searching. . . . This command was fitted to purify Abraham's faith. God had been training him from the first to live only by his promise. At length, when Isaac was born, he welcomed him as the child of promise. But years pass on. The child had grown up before him and twined himself about his heart, till at last he has almost forgotten the promise in the child of promise. "Isaac," it has been strikingly said, "the precious late-won gift, is still for Abraham too exclusively a merely natural blessing, a child like other children though born of the true mother, Abraham's son only because he has been born to him and brought up in his house. Pangs, the pangs of a soul wrestling in faith, he has not felt for him since his birth, and yet that is the only spiritual, and therefore the only really abiding, blessing which we are able to make our own through the fightings and wrestlings of the believing heart. Therefore, now that in Isaac the supreme blessing has been won, there must also take place the supreme trial of Abraham's faith and obedience." (Ecaid.) Perowne. 2. And He said.** The command proceeded immediately from God Himself; but how, and in what manner, it was conveyed to Abraham, we are nowhere told. But Abraham had sufficient proof (whatever that proof was) that the several revelations, respecting both God's former promises and the present severe command, did really proceed from God. Bp. Conybeare.—Each designation mounts upward in climax after the other: thy son, thine only one,—whom thou lovest, Isaac, the personal designation coming last, and clenching as it were the identification of the very heir of the promise himself. There was in the command no softening, but rather all aggravation, of the trial. Alf.—In more ways than one Isaac might be called his "only son." He was the only son by his wife Sarah: he was the only son of promise, and to whom the promises were given and assured: by the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael he was the only son left to his father's house. The words, emphatic as they are, "Thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest," are all calculated to impress and enhance the sacrifice which Abraham is called on to make. E. H. B. The words in which God's command was couched were those of accumulated keenness. God said, Take now thy son, long expected and waited for, thine heir, full of promise and so dear to thee! To subdue the father in the heart, that a Roman has done, and calmly signed his son's death-warrant; but to subdue it not with Roman hardness, but with deep trust in God and faith in his providence, saying, It is not hate, but love, that requires this,—this was the nobleness, this the fierce difficulty, of Abraham's sacrifice. Robertson.—It is characteristic of the severe and noble reserve of Scripture, that it lays no stress upon this side of the trial. Save for certain endearing expressions piled up by the divine voice when it required the sacrifice, there is nothing in the narrative to hint how much obedience must have cost the father. What is brought into relief is rather the test which was applied to Abraham's confidence in the promises of God's covenant. To slay Isaac, the unripe, the childless—was it not to slay the future of the covenant and the blessing for mankind? Dykes. Abraham had not only to contend with natural affection, but with reason; not only with reason. but with faith! He was, in offering up Isaac, to destroy all his hopes. And all this was to be done by himself; with his own hand he was at one stroke to cut off all his comforts. The execution of such a sentence was as harsh and bitter to flesh and blood, as to be his own executioner. Manton.—It was, therefore, a trial in the strongest sense, a trial of Abraham's faith, whether it was capable of such implicit confidence in God, such profound regard to His will, and such self-denial in His service, as at the divine bidding to give up the best and dearest—what in the circumstances must even have been dearer to him than his own life. Not that God really intended the surrender of Isaac to death, but only the proof of such a surrender in the heart of His servant; and such a proof could only have been found in an unconditional command to sacrifice, and an unresisting compliance with the command up to the final step in the process. This, however, was not all. In the command to perform such a sacrifice, there was a tempting as well as a trying of Abraham; since the thing required at his hands seemed to be an enacting of the most revolving rite of heathenism; and at the same time to war with the oracle already given concerning Isaac, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called." According to this word, God's purpose to bless was destined to have its accomplishment especially and peculiarly through Isaac; so that to slay such a son appeared like slaying the very word of God, and extinguishing the hope of the world. And yet, in heart and purpose at least, it must be done. It was no freak of arbitrary power to command the sacrifice. It had for its object the outward and palpable exhibition of the great truth, that God's method of working in the covenant of grace must have its counterpart in man's. The one must be the reflex of the other. God, in blessing Abraham, triumphs over nature; and Abraham triumphs after the same manner in proportion as he is blessed. He receives a special gift from the grace of God, and he freely surrenders it again to Him who gave it. He is pre-eminently honored by God's word of promise, and he is ready in turn to hazard all for its honor. And Isaac, the child of promise—the type in his outward history of all who should be proper subjects or channels of blessing—also must concur in the act: on the altar he must sanctify himself to God, as a sign to all who would possess the higher life of grace, how it implies and carries along with it a devout surrender of the natural life to the service and glory of Him who has redeemed it. P. F. Moriah. The view almost universally acaccepted is that the Mount Moriah of the Chronicles is identical with the mountain in the land of Moriah in this chapter, and that the spot on which Jehovah appeared to David, and on which the Temple was built, is the very spot of the sacrifice of Isaac. Knobel observes (1) that this greatest of all religious acts points to a more important sanctuary than Shechem; (2) that the name "mountain of Jehovah" denotes everywhere else either Jerusalem or Sinai, the latter being here of course out of the question; and (3) that the journey from Beersheba by way of Hebron and Jerusalem to Shechem, according to Robinson's "Itinerary," occupies about thirty-five hours, which would make the distance too great for Abraham and Isaac to traverse in three days on foot. Perowne.—No sufficient reason has been alleged against this identification except that in v. 4 it is said that "Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off," whereas Mount Zion is said not to be conspicuous from a great distance. Thence Bleek, De Wette, Tuch, Stanley, and Grove, have referred to Moreh (Gen. 12: 6), and attempted to identify the site of the sacrifice with "the natural altar on the summit of Mount Gerizim," which the Samaritans assert to be the scene of the sacrifice. Really, however, the words in v. 4 mean nothing more than this, that Abraham saw the spot to which he had been directed at some little distance off. E. H. B. Travelling at the ordinary rate of the country, Jerusalem would just be reached on the third day (as required by this narrative) from Beersheba; to reach Nablous (Moreh) in the same time is impossible, at the pace of fellahin with their asses. H. B. T.—As the name itself (land of Moriah), so the distance mentioned leads us to suppose that it was in the neighborhood of Jerusalem. From Bir es-Seba Robinson took twenty hours and twenty-five minutes to Jerusalem, travelling by the straight way and with camels—a distance, therefore, which Abraham could easily have made in three days. Robinson took fourteen hours and thirty minutes to travel with mules by the straight road from Jerusalem to Sychem (Nabulus), so that the entire distance from Beersheba amounted to thirty-five hours, which Abraham could not have made in three days. But even the name points to the neighborhood of Jerusalem. The designation Moriah, applied in verse 2 to the whole district, was at a later period confined to that particular mountain where this remarkable event had taken place. There afterward the temple was built. K. Offer him for a burnt-offering. The sacrifice of a child by its parent in honor of the Deity was by no means foreign either to the religious conceptions amid which Abraham was living, or to the worship which probably prevailed around him. Few readers have sufficiently realized how ancient or widespread among primitive religions was a custom which has come to be associated only with the lowest type of barbarism. Even the milder faiths of early Greece sprang out of, or were grafted on, the same original idolatry of the generative and productive forces in nature which found favor among older races in Babylon, Phoenicia, and Canaan. Wherever the influence of that dark religion stretched, it bore of necessity two ghastly fruits—cruelty and lust; the orgies of the grove and the sacrifice of human blood. As Abraham had always lived among neighbors whose religion was saturated with those feelings and beliefs out of which the practice of sacrificing children originated, and whose actual worship demanded at its highest moments such an expression, it is quite conceivable how the command to slay his son failed to strike him as, on the face of it, irreconcilable with true religion. And no such prohibition of human sacrifice as was subsequently given to Moses had been given to Abraham. Further, the stage of religious teaching at which mankind then stood, and the religious atmosphere in which men moved, makes it intelligible how Abraham could accept such a voice from Heaven in the simplicity of a faith which did not stumble, where the saints of any later time would certainly have stumbled. Dykes. 3. We must not detract from the trial by importing into the circumstances our knowledge of the issue. Abraham had absolutely no assurance and no knowledge beyond that of his present duty. All he had to lay hold upon was the previous promise, and the character and faithfulness of the covenant God, who now bade him offer this sacrifice. Sharp as the contest must have been, it was brief. It lasted just one night; and next morning, without having taken “counsel with flesh and blood,” Abraham, with his son Isaac and two servants, were on their way to “the land of Moriah.” A. E.—As Abraham is the pattern of believing, so he is of obeying. He received the promises, as a figure of our faith; he offered up his son, as a figure of our obedience. He obeyed readily and willingly. “Abraham rose early in the morning.” He obeyed, also, resolutely. He conceals it from his wife, from his servants, nay, from Isaac himself, that so he might not be diverted from his purpose. Manton. Few passages in literature carry a deeper pathos than the words which tell how, in the fresh dawn, the aged lord of that camp crept away on foot out of the midst of his retainers’ tents. Not to a single soul did the old man dare to confide his purpose. The entreaties of a mother less resolute than himself might have overborne his firmness. The quieter anguish of a young and gentle heart, shrinking from too early death, might have proved more than he could endure. Two slow days of walking along rugged paths, and two still slower nights spent in sleepless thought, must have brought such tortures of delay as principle alone, and not impulse, could sustain. Dykes.—Never any gold was tried in so hot a fire. Who but Abraham would not have expostulated with God? But God knew that he spake to an Abraham, and Abraham knew that he had to do with a God: faith taught him not to argue, but obey. In a holy wilfulness he either forgets nature, or despises her; he is sure that what God commands, is good; that what he promises, is infallible; and therefore is careless of the means, and trusts to the end. In matters of God, whosoever consults with flesh and blood shall never offer up his Isaac to God: there needs no counsellor when we know God is the commander: here is neither grudging, nor deliberating, nor delaying: his faith would not suffer him so much as to be sorry for that he must do. Sarah herself may not know of God’s charge and her husband’s purpose, lest her affection should have overcome her faith. Bp. II. 4. On the third day.** From Beersheba to the Salem of Melchizedek, near which this hill is supposed to have been, is about forty-five miles. If they proceeded fifteen miles on the first broken day, twenty on the second, and ten on the third, they would come within sight of the place early on the third day. M. 5. I and the lad will go—and come again.** How could Abraham consistently with truth say this, when he knew he was going to make his son a burnt-offering? The Apostle answers for him: By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac—accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, from whence also he received him in a figure. He knew that his birth was a kind of life from the dead—that the promise of God was most positive. In Isaac shall thy seed be called,—that this promise could not fail—that it was his duty to obey the command of his Maker; and that it was as easy for God to restore him to life after he had been a burnt-offering, as it was for him to give him life in the beginning. Therefore he went fully purposed to offer his son, and yet confidently expecting to have him restored to life again. We will go yonder, and worship, perform a solemn act of devotion which God requires, and come again to you. A. C. Abraham's faith had stood all former tests. It had been strong enough to break the ties that bound him to country, home, and kindred. It had pardently endured the many and long delays in the fulfilling of the promises. It had risen above all the obstacles, physical and moral, that stood in the way of their accomplishment. It had accepted Isaac, and given up Ishmael. Would it stand the last demand, to give up to God the best loved thing on earth; to do what appeared not only alien to God's own character, but contrary to his own word and promise? For herein lay the peculiarity and severity of the trial as a test of faith. The command and the promise were in conflict. If he obeyed the command he frustrated the promise; if he kept by the promise he must break the command. But one way of reconciling them could be even fancied, and, dim though it was, the quick eye of faith discerned it. "He accounted that God was able to raise up Isaac from the dead." W. H. Observe that the apostle magnifies the greatness of the trial on the one hand, and of the heroic faith of Abraham on the other. He speaks of him as actually having offered up Isaac; for he had gone through all the agony of heart just as completely as though he had slain his son. Moreover, he brings into view the fact that it was a case not only to try the heart, but to astound and bewilder the reason. For "he that had received the promises," promises that seemed all bound up in the life of Isaac, and in his life all the promises depended; and yet, in spite both of the revolt of his heart and the dictates of reason to the contrary, he was ready at the command of God to offer him up. Thus the apostle, instead of any attempt to mitigate and explain away the old record, aims to bring out the views of it which to reason magnify the difficulties. The strength and beauty of his faith is in this, that somehow God will provide for all these difficulties, though he sees not how. Somehow God will work out all the contradictions. It is faith strengthened by experience. God has given Isaac after all my doubts and sinful efforts to aid God in working out his plans. God has given him in the first place as if by miracle; and why may I not by miracle receive him from the dead? Of course again he will in some way bring out the plans of his grace. This is obviously the aspect in which this story of Abraham's offering Isaac presented itself to the mind of the inspired apostle. And for this reason he twice cites Abraham—first as illustrating the faith that is unto salvation—as in leaving all to follow Jehovah. Then the second as an illustration of the heroism of a faith that has strengthened by experience of the faithfulness of Jehovah. S. R. 7,8. Listen to the brief dialogue:—"My father, behold the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for the burnt-offering?" "My son, God will provide Himself the lamb for the burnt-offering." The heart's deepest grief was never more eloquently portrayed. No sobs, no tears, no words telling of the struggle within. The anguish lies too deep for utterance. The sculptor, when he would express a grief that he could not express, bowed and veiled the face of the mourner; and the veiling of the agony here is, in fact, its most pathetic expression. Perowne.—The repetition of "his father, my father, my son"; the artlessness of Isaac's question,—the high resignation of Abraham's answer, and then the result, repeated from before, and (notwithstanding,—still) they went both of them together, the father in his noble resolve, the son in his trusting simplicity, these mark the sacred narrative as standing in the very first place for truth and for power. This whole incident is to the Christian mind full of type and suggestion of the most sacred kind. Alf. 9. Bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar. The love of God the Father cannot be better expressed than by this instance. Abraham readily gives his only, his beloved son, to be sacrificed: so God gave His only Son. Bp. Wilson.—O holy emulation of faith! O blessed agreement of the sacrificer and oblation! Abraham is as ready to take, as Isaac to give; he binds those dear hands, which are more straits bound with the cords of duty and resolution: he lays his sacrifice upon the wood, which now beforehand burnt inwardly with the heavenly fire of zeal and devotion. Bp. H.—"Abraham offered Isaac," says the Apostle James. He purposed it; and if God had not interfered to prevent it, he would actually have done it. God counts that to be done which is about to be done; and takes notice of what is in the heart, though it be not brought into practice and actual accomplishment. Hence we learn that purposes of obedience, if, like Abraham's, serious and resolved, are accepted for obedience. Manton. Abraham's ambiguous reply that "God would provide," though it spoke an unconscious prophecy, betrays no anticipation of any escape from the awful task which oppressed him. What it does reveal is, how hard he found it to be to break the dreadful secret. By what means at last he contrived to break it, or how Isaac received the heavy tidings; with what surprising sweetness and courage he also bowed to the supreme will, and with a child's love laid his life upon the altar of a parent's duty—all this is left for each one of us to picture for himself. Dykes.—What passed then between father and son, as Abraham told him of the Divine command, and inculcated the great duty of submission, remains untold. But there was no attempt at escape—no remonstrance, no resistance. He gave himself willingly to be bound and to be laid upon the altar. That moment, when his father grasped the knife and the flash of its cold glittering blade fell upon his eye, could he ever forget; or could there ever pass from his memory the sudden sound of the arresting voice, the sight of the lamb caught in the thicket, followed up by the oath and blessing pronounced upon Abraham and his seed? If ever any one in early life had the benefit and blessedness of self-sacrifice and entire submission to the will of God imprinted sensibly upon the heart, it was Isaac in that hour. His heroic act, second only to that of his father, showed how fully he had imbibed his father's spirit—the one near the close of his career, the other at its beginning—revealing how ready they both were to give all up to God. No higher evidence of the simplicity and strength of Isaac's faith in God could have been given. W. H.—For when he resisted not his father, and allowed himself to be bound and laid on the altar, he entered into the spirit of Abraham, he took upon himself his faith, and thus showed himself truly the heir to the promises. Nor can we forget how this surrender of the firstborn was the first of that dedication of all the firstborn unto God, which afterward the law demanded, and which meant that in the firstborn we should consecrate all and everything unto the Lord. A. E. His sacrifice on Moriah was the requisite condition of his succession to Abraham's place; it was the only suitable celebration of his majority. Abraham himself had been able to enter into covenant with God only by sacrifice; and sacrifice not of a dead and external kind, but vivified by an actual surrender of himself to God, and by a true perception of God's holiness and requirements. A true resignation of self, in whatever outward form this resignation may appear, is required that we may become one with God in His holy purposes and in His eternal blessedness. There could be no doubt that Abraham had found a true heir, when Isaac laid himself on the altar and steadied his heart to receive the knife. Dearer to God, and of immeasurably greater value than any service, was this surrender of himself into the hand of his Father and his God. In this was promise of all service and all loving fellowship. Dads. 9,10. The erection of a rude stone altar; the arrangement upon it of the fagots; the binding of Isaac; the solemn act which laid his helpless figure for an offering to Heaven upon the rude sticks; nay, even that final gesture of the officiating priest which raised his sacrificial knife to strike,—everything is pictured to the eye, in order that the heart of the reader may well understand and ponder how unreserved was the surrender which this father had made of this son to die, how complete was the triumph of his faith! In that triumph Abraham's religious experience attained its summit. What other men have done through fear of the Almighty, he did for love. God is to this man a friend to be trusted, even though He slay; to be loved better than an only son; to be obeyed where reason refuses its light to justify the command, and nature with all her voices can only exclaim against it. It is the perfection of a man's friendship with God to be thus loyal. It puts the all-perfect Lord, Whose name is Love, in His just place. It pays Him such honor as is His due. Dykes. The self-sacrifice in the act is obvious from the history. The Patriarch had through life felt himself the minister and instrument of a great Divine design with respect to mankind. He had lived with a gigantic prospect before him, with an immense expanding blessing which was one day to include all nations and be the restoration of the world. This vast plan, his part in which had been the work of his life and had filled his mind with immeasurable hopes, as it had been sown in his son, would perish with his son. Then all was over and his life had come to nothing. More, the child himself upon whom such a promise hung, such boundless hope and vast calculation, who was loved all the more with a father's love because he was the harbinger of the prophet's greatness and the symbol of life's purpose answered, he was to be surrendered too. But in the mind of the Patriarch rose boundless hope also upon an Almighty Being. It is hope cherished while all is dark around us that exhibits the principle in its greatness and in its true energy; hope resting upon that ultimate Power at the very root of things which can reverse every catastrophe and rectify all mistakes. To hold on to this root is hope withdrawn into its last fastness; without aid from any sight, grasping with an iron force the rock itself, the foundation of Sovereign Will upon which the universe stands, and saying to itself, "The whole may shake, if this foundation remaineth sure." This was the infinite hope of Abraham. Doubtless while he lifted up the knife to slay his son, the sun was turned to darkness to him, the stars left their places, and heaven and earth vanished from his sight; to the eye of sense all was gone that life had built up, and the promise had come actually to an end forevermore. But to the friend of God all was still as certain as ever, all absolutely sure and fixed; the end, the promise, nay even the son of promise, even he in the fire of the burnt-offering was not gone, because that was near and close at hand which could restore; the great Power which could reverse everything. A voice within said, All this can be undone and pass away like a dream of the night; and the heir was safe in the strong hope of him who "accounted that God was able to raise him up even from the dead." Mosley. Thus the sublimest heights of holiness were reached, simply because faith had struck its roots so deeply within, and had so closely united the soul of the patriarch to the will and perfections of Jehovah. This high surrender of the human to the divine, and holy self-consecration to the will and service of God, was beyond all doubt, like the other things recorded in Abraham's life, of the nature of a revelation. It was not intended to terminate in the patriarch and his son, but in them, as the sacred roots of the covenant people, to show in outward and corporeal representation what in spirit ought to be perpetually repeating itself in their individual and collective history. It proclaimed to them through all their generations, that the covenant required of its members lives of unshrinking and devoted application to the service of God—yielding to no weak misgivings or corrupt solicitations of the flesh—staggering at no difficulties presented by the world; and also that it rendered such a course possible by the ground and scope it afforded for the exercise of faith in the sustaining grace and might of Jehovah. P. F. 11. The Angel of the Lord called unto him.** A moment more, and the victim would have been smitten; but in that moment the awful mandate is countermanded. A voice too familiar to Abraham not to be at once recognized as that of God himself addresses him out of heaven. Though termed an Angel, yet it is evident from the manner in which he here speaks of himself, and from what is said (v. 12, 16), that he was not a created being, but was no other than the divine personage so often introduced into the sacred narrative under the title of the Angel Jehovah, the Angel of the Covenant. Bush. Lay not thine hand upon the lad. The voice of God was never so welcome, never so sweet, never so seasonable as now; it was the trial, that God intended, not the fact; Isaac is sacrificed, and is yet alive: and now both of them are more happy in that they would have done, than they could have been distressed if they had done it. God's charges are ofttimes harsh in the beginnings and proceeding, but in the conclusion always comfortable: true spiritual comforts are commonly late and sudden: God defers on purpose that our trials may be perfect, our deliverance welcome, our recompense glorious; Isaac had never been so precious to his father, if he had not been recovered from death; if he had not been as miraculously restored as given: Abraham had never been so blessed in his seed, if he had not neglected Isaac for God. The only way to find comfort in any earthly thing, is to surrender it, in a faithful carelessness, into the hands of God. Bp. H.—God did try Abraham; there is the key to the command. The object was to test obedience to the uttermost. He demanded this the very hardest conceivable proof of obedience because He would teach his servant, and, through him, teach the world at large, the moral majesty, the all-conquering might of faith. But God did not intend that Isaac should be put to death. At the decisive moment by a voice from heaven He interferes to prevent the sacrifice, He forbids the deed of murder. Perowne.—The obedience of Abraham was pleasing in the sight of God, and therefore the command was given. The actual death of Isaac would not have been pleasing to Him, and therefore the act was stopped. Human sacrifice finds no real sanction here. Jellett. For once a command was issued, which, while it perfectly tested in the first instance the willingness and thoroughness of Abraham's loyalty without doing outrage to his previous knowledge of God, served also in the end to teach, in a far more memorable and impressive fashion than any verbal lesson could have done, that the true God is one Who has no pleasure in such unnatural offerings. The issue of the transaction ought to have been the banishment of cruelty forever from the worship of Jehovah. These words: "Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him," contained a virtual condemnation, not merely of human sacrifice, but also of every analogous barbarity in the mode of worship. Dykes.—The sacrifice, the resignation of the will, in the father and the son, was accepted; the literal sacrifice of the act was repelled. On the one hand, the great principle was proclaimed, that mercy is better than sacrifice,—that the sacrifice of self is the highest and holiest offering that God can receive. On the other hand, the inhuman superstitions, toward which the ancient ceremonial of sacrifice was perpetually tending, were condemned. A. P. S.—By the substitution of Abraham's ram "in the stead of his son," a fresh sanction was put upon the primeval practice of animal sacrifice, in order to express the redemption of a forfeited life, or the dedication of a grateful heart. Dykes. Now I know that thou fearest God. God tried Abraham, not that He might learn what He knew already, but that He might show to others, with how great justice He loved the patriarch. Theodoret.—It is common for men to say that they know that which they have found out by special trial, which they have learned as the result of experiment; and the Most High is here pleased to adopt the same language. Thus Ps. 139 : 23, it is said, "Search me, O God, and know my heart;" though the psalmist had just before said (v. 2), "Thou understandest my thoughts afar off." For himself he needed not the patriarch's obedience to discover to him the state of his mind; but for our sakes he made the exhibition of Abraham's obedience a ground for acknowledging the existence of the inward principle from which it sprang. It is by a holy and obedient deference to the divine authority that faith and fear are made manifest. As a sinner, Abraham was justified by faith only; but as a professing believer, he was justified by the works which his faith produced. This view will reconcile the apparent discrepancy of Paul and James in regard to Abraham's justification. They both allege his case as an example of what they are teaching, but the one respects him as ungodly, the other as godly. In the first instance he is justified by faith exclusive of works; in the last by faith, as producing works, and thereby proving him the friend of God. Bush. God delights to call forth his champions to meet with great temptations, to make them bear crosses of more than ordinary weight; as commanders in war put men of most valor and skill upon the hardest services. God sets some strong trial upon a strong Christian, made strong by his own grace; and by his victory makes it appear to the world that though there is a great deal of the counterfeit coin of profession in religion yet some there are that have the power, the reality of it, and that it is not an invention, but there is truth in it, that the invincible grace, the very Spirit of God, dwells in the hearts of true believers. Leighton. 13. Took the ram and offered him for a burnt-offering.** The offering of Isaac was neither piacular nor propitiatory; Abraham had committed no guilt, and apprehended no danger; the immolation of his only son seemed forever to deprive him of that blessing which was nearest to his heart, the parentage of a numerous and powerful tribe. It was a simple act of unhesitating obedience to the divine command; the last proof of perfect reliance on the certain accomplishment of the divine promises. Milman.—The human sacrifices of the ancient world were in atonement for public crimes, and were offered up in great national emergencies. They were at any rate propitiatory, and supposed bloodshed, or sacrilege, or some heinous crime, as the occasion of them. But here is no crime mentioned for which propitiation is wanted. The trial upon which the life of the Patriarch turns is clear and conspicuous; it demands a sacrifice which is not propitiatory, but which is simply a trial of faith. Yet it was designed that it should at the same time be a type and figure of the great Propitiation. In the sacrifice of Abraham and in the sacrifice on the Cross the difference of scope and design in regard to atonement leaves still a common external ground of surrender; and the outward action or representation contained in the former, of a father offering up his only son upon the altar of wood, fulfils all the outward requirements of a type. Mozley.—Of all the Prophetic Types, this one, in the commanded sacrifice of Isaac, appears to be among the most significant. It stands at the head of the dispensation of Revealed Religion, as reduced into covenant with the people of God in the person of their Founder and Progenitor. Being thus displayed in the history of the Father of the Faithful, it seems to be wrought into the foundations of Faith. In the surrender to sacrifice of a beloved son the Patriarchal Church begins with an adumbration of the Christian reality. Davison. The fathers recognize the double type in this whole history. The father with full deliberate purpose offering up his dearly beloved, only-begotten son, the son willingly obedient unto death, the wood for the sacrifice carried by the victim up the hill, the sacrifice fulfilled in purpose though not in act, and then the father receiving his son in a figure from the dead after three days of death in the father's purpose and belief; all this is as much an actual prophecy of the sacrifice and resurrection of the Son of God as was possible without a true slaying of Isaac, for which was substituted the slaying of the ram. That which Isaac's sacrifice wanted to make it perfect as a type was actual death and the notion of substitution. These therefore were supplied by the death of the ram, and his substitution for a human life. Not only was Isaac thus made the most memorable type of the Redeemer of the world (Isaac, who otherwise seems less noticeable than either Abraham or Jacob), but also that Abraham had the singular honor of representing the highest, holiest God and Father, who "spared not His own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all." E. H. B. We leap, as by a natural instinct, from the sacrifice in the land of Moriah to the sacrifice of Calvary. There are many differences; there is a danger of exaggerating the resemblance, or of confounding in either case what is subordinate with what is essential. But the general feeling of Christendom has in this respect not gone far astray. Each event, if we look at it well and understand it rightly, will serve to explain the other. Human sacrifice, as we have seen, which was in outward form nearest to the offering of Isaac, was in fact and in spirit most entirely condemned and repudiated by it. The union of parental love with the total denial of self, is held up in both cases as the highest model of human, and therefore as the shadow of divine love; "sacrifice" is rejected, but "to do thy will, O God," is accepted. In the moral significance of this history the Jew and the Christian are agreed. Even to this present day the Jew, though he has rejected the true propitiation, sees in the binding of Isaac on the altar a meritorious deed, which still pleads on behalf of Israel with God. And while the Christian Church prays to God for pardon and blessing for the merits and death of Jesus Christ, the Jewish synagogue beseeches Him to have compassion upon it for the sake of the binding of Isaac. Viewed in this light as a part of the divine teaching of the world, we find in this history the wisdom of God. We find an answer to that first and deepest of questions which the human heart can ask, "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord?" We do not find it indeed in doctrine, or even in words at all. But we do find it in fact. We find it just in that mode of revelation which was best suited to the wants and capacities of those to whom it was addressed. Precisely as we ourselves first teach children by pictures, whose meaning, however, they cannot themselves fully understand, so God taught the childhood of the world. Not till the great act had itself been accomplished on Calvary could all its interpretation be given. First came the picture; then, so to speak, the comment on the picture in the mouth of prophets and holy men of old; then the great fact itself was exhibited; and then from the hallowed lips of the Apostles of the Lord came the eloquent interpretation of the fact. It is one truth throughout. Christ Jesus came to do the Father's will, and to give his life a ransom for many; by his obedience we are made righteous. He hath redeemed us by his blood—what are words like these but the filling in, so to speak, of the fainter lines of that ancient picture? Peroense. At this point the wonderful story begins to burn inwardly with the fire of prophecy. It grows prophetic of the transcendent sacrifice on the cross because at its very core it was an inspiration of the same self-subduing love which inspired and glorified the offering of Golgotha. With perfect justice, therefore, has the Christian Church delighted since the beginning of her history to place the sacrifice of Isaac over against the mysterious and adorable sacrifice of her Lord, as its most splendid Old Testament prefiguration. What a man was found to do for God his Friend, no less, but more, God did to reconcile the world again unto himself. The will was not taken, as in Isaac's case, for the deed. No ram displaced the Son of God. Rather that substitution on Moriah of a symbolical animal in the room of human life, while it taught that no man could redeem himself or propitiate Heaven in heathen fashion by "giving the fruit of his body for the sin of his soul," did also contain an obscure hint that after all human life must bleed for human guilt. The representative blood of sheep or oxen could not be forever accepted instead of that better sacrifice for which it was substituted. Only by a willing and personal surrender of human life could man's covenant of peace with Heaven be finally sealed. That truth underlay the arrested sacrifice on Mount Moriah. When Jehovah set aside the offered Isaac, and with him set aside as unacceptable or inadequate the best and costliest expiation man could bring, did he not in some dim way pledge himself to lay upon the altar of his covenant a better and more prevailing Victim,—a Son of Man who should be also the Son of God? Is it possible that a vague anticipation of this future Victim, this better Isaac, one day to take Isaac's place as God's provided Lamb, may have visited the seer at that exalted moment when on the mount Jehovah stood revealed as the “Provider”? Then, when the shadows of death had by Heaven’s interposition been turned into a joy like the joy of resurrection, might Abraham see afar off the day of God’s Messiah and be glad! Dykes. 14. When Isaac had asked, “where is the Lamb?” Abraham answered, Elohim jireh, “God will see,” or “provide a lamb for himself.” Now he perceives that he had uttered an unconscious prophecy, and that the God (Elohim) in whom he trusted had shown Himself indeed Jehovah, the Eternal Truth and the covenanted Saviour of his servants, and so he names the place Jehovah-jireh. E. H. B. This was the obedience of faith! The wonderful illustration stands out before all the ages with God’s seal of approbation broadly stamped upon it. When the trial had fully reached its culminating point and no room remained for doubt that Abraham would obey God at every cost, fearless of consequences, or rather committing all consequences to his God, then God’s angel interposed! A ram was provided for the sacrifice and the son of promise went back to a more happy home with a more happy father, doubly blessed in the renewed approbation of his covenant-keeping God. No wonder that God proceeded then to make that covenant stronger and broader and richer than ever before! No wonder Abraham stamped into the very name of this ever-memorable locality one of the grand moral lessons of the scene—“Jehovah Jireh”—In the mount of the Lord, himself will provide! When you come to the mount of last and utmost emergency, the Lord will have salvation ready! His angel will appear; the ram of sacrifice will be there; and Isaac may go in peace! H. C.—Let it be recorded for generations to come. 1. That the Lord will see; he will always have his eye upon his people in their straits and distresses, that he may come in with seasonable succor in the critical juncture. 2. That he will be seen in the greatest perplexities of his people; he will not only manifest but magnify his wisdom, power, and goodness in their deliverance; where God sees and provides, he should be seen and praised. H. If we follow the Lord’s bidding, he will see to it that we shall not be ashamed or confounded. If we come into great need by following his command, he will see to it that the loss shall be recompensed. If our difficulties multiply and increase so that our way seems completely blocked up, Jehovah will see to it that the road shall be cleared. The Lord will see us through in the way of holiness if we are only willing to be thorough in it, and dare to follow wheresoever he leads the way. We need not wonder that Abraham should utter this truth, and attach it to the spot which was to be forever famous: for his whole heart was saturated with it, and had been sustained by it. His trials had taught him more of God,—had given him a new name for his God; and this he would not have forgotten, but he would keep it before the minds of the generations following by naming the place Jehovah-jireh. True faith not only speaks the language of prophecy, but, when she sees her prophecy fulfilled, faith is always delighted to raise memorials to the God of truth. The stones which were set up of old were not to the memory of dead men, but they were memorials of the deeds of the living God: they abundantly uttered the memory of God’s great goodness. Abraham on this occasion did not choose a name which recorded what he had done, but a name which spoke of what Jehovah had done. Fall back on this eternal verity, that if God has provided his own Well-beloved Son to meet the most awful of all necessities, then he will provide for us in everything else. In the mount it shall be seen, in the place of the trial, in the heat of the furnace, in the last extremity Jehovah will be seen, for he will see to it, and it shall become a proverb with you,—“In the mount Jehovah shall be seen.” That is to say, when you cannot see, the Lord will see you and see to your need; for his eyes are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry. You will not need to explain to God your difficulties and the intricacies of your position, he will see it all. And then his provision shall be seen. Spurgeon. 15,16. It was when the quality of Abraham’s faith had been verified by so unparalleled a strain that he was enriched by an appropriate reward. For reward is ever the divine answer to such virtue in man as can abide the tests of God. Once again, and for the last time, with accents of even higher solemnity than on any previous occasion, there came to Abraham, after this trial was past, the voice, now grown familiar, of his august Friend. It came to reiterate, in terms of unusual fulness, all the promises of His great covenant. It did something more. “Often before had God promised,” says Augustine, “but never sworn.” Now, for the first time, the divine Covenanter stooped to sustain human infirmity by the human expedient of “an oath for confirmation.” “Willing more abundantly to show to this heir of promise the immutability of His counsel, God confirmed it by an oath." True to the ruling principle of condescension, this self-manifestation of the Deity assumed a form characteristically human. Men are accustomed to attest their word by an appeal to Him who is the greatest; he, because He could swear by no greater, swore by Himself. The pledge that His word is true is His own existence. It was in recognition of the evidence which had just been afforded of His servant's stanch loyalty to the covenant, that the Eternal was pleased in this unexampled manner to reduplicate securities for His own faithfulness. Previous to this oath, Abraham had the word of God, and no more, on which to build his confidence. He trusted the All-truthful and Almighty to keep faith with His friend in His own way. For that very reason did a generous promise: vouchsafe to the man something more than a naked word. "To him that hath shall be given." "Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only one, from Me, therefore by Myself have I sworn that in blessing I will bless thee." Thenceforth, as the New Testament explains, the believer possessed, not one, but "two immutable things" on which to rest. Through Abraham's obedience have we all obtained this "strong consolation." Dykes. In his intercourse with the patriarchs God never swore by himself but in this one case. The uniqueness and importance of the oath appears from its being quoted afterward upon important occasions by Abraham himself, by Joseph, by Moses, by Zacharias, by Stephen, and by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and frequently referred to by God himself. Its utterance was the last that fell from the lips of God upon the ear of Abraham. He lived for fifty years and more thereafter in peaceful, undisturbed repose. W. H. God is pleased to make mention of Abraham's obedience as the consideration of the covenant; and he speaks of it with an encomium, Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son; he lays a strong emphasis upon that, and (v. 18) praises it as an act of obedience; in it thou hast obeyed my voice, and to obey is better than sacrifice. H. 17. In this and several other passages, the gate is emblematic of authority and dominion; as in Europe the delivery of the keys of a town is a formal act of submission to a conquering or superior power. We speak of the Turkish power as "the Porte," "the Sublime Porte," "the Ottoman Porte," from the principal gate or "porte" of the Turkish Sultan's palace at Constantinople. The mention of the gate involves the idea of the palace, and of the power which resides there. Pict. Bible. 17. 18. The same promise (chap. 12:3; 18:18), now repeated for the third time. Having been on the two first occasions spontaneously vouchsafed as a free gift, it is here the reward for Abraham's victorious faith and obedience. This being also the last of the revelations of God to Abraham of which Scripture makes mention, was designed as a strong consolation to him during the remainder of his earthly pilgrimage. Isaac, whom he had at first received from the grace of God in the natural way, he had now in a higher and spiritual way obtained afresh as a special child of grace and of promise, in recompense of his obedience. By works had his faith been made perfect (James 2:22). Abraham began with faith, and the longer his life flowed on in the exercise of it the more solid were the evidences which he was enabled to give of his faith, until that greatest act of it which he achieved upon Mount Moriah. Every new trial of faith successfully endured raises it to a higher degree of strength; and the fruits that it bears serve again for its nourishment. This affords the true reconciliation of the apparently contradictory statements of Paul and James, when the one says (Rom. 4:22), Abraham was justified by faith, and the other (James 2:21), Abraham was justified by works. C. G. B. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ In the suitableness of Rebekah to a man of Isaac's nature, you see the suitableness of all such gifts of God as are really waited for at His hand. God may keep you longer waiting than the world does, but He gives you never the wrong thing. Isaac had no idea of Rebekah's character; he could only yield himself to God's knowledge of what he needed; and so there came to him, from a country he had never seen, a helpmeet singularly adapted to his own character. One cannot read of her lively, bustling, almost forward, but obliging and generous conduct at the well, nor of her prompt, impulsive departure to an unknown land, without seeing, as no doubt Eliezer very quickly saw, that this was exactly the woman for Isaac. In this eager, ardent, active, enterprising spirit, his own retiring and contemplative, if not sombre disposition found its appropriate relief and stimulus. Dods. His father's goodness he retained, though not his greatness. Slow and infirm in action, shunning strife with his whole heart, he appeared to best advantage when called to suffer wrong. It is significant of the same disposition, that his spiritual life should have reposed on religious awe. The God of Abraham was also known as "the Fear of Isaac." At the same time there was in him, as often in such men, a clinging to stronger natures, especially of the other sex; with much tenderness, therefore, and inwardness in the domestic affections, as well as a vein of quiet sentiment, such as one hardly expects to find in the earlier or ruder ages of society. For this reason, probably, Isaac strikes us as a more modern men than any other of the Hebrew fathers. His physique can scarcely have been robust, although he lingered to a greater age than either his father or his son. Fifty years before his death, he is represented as already a blind, bedridden invalid, in daily apprehension of his end. And though he lived to see his sons old men, and his grandson Joseph sold into Egypt, yet during the whole of that last half century of his life, he disappears entirely from the family annals. Dykes. God would have us recognize in our lives what He shows us in this chapter, that He has made provision for our wants, and that if we wait upon Him He will bring us into the enjoyment of all we really need. So that if we are to make any advance in appropriating to ourselves God's salvation, it can only be by submitting ourselves implicitly to His providence, and taking care that in the commonest and most secular actions of our lives we are having respect to His will with us, and that in those actions in which our own feelings and desires seem sufficient to guide us, we are having regard to His controlling wisdom and goodness. We are to find room for God everywhere in our lives, not feeling embarrassed by the thought of His claims even in our least constrained hours, but subordinating to His highest and holiest ends everything that our life contains, and acknowledging as His gift what may seem to be our own most proper conquest or earning. Dods. KETURAH'S SONS. BIRTH OF ESAU AND JACOB. BIRTHRIGHT DESPISED. DEATH OF ABRAHAM. ISHMAEL'S DEATH. CHARACTER OF ABRAHAM. 1. AND Abraham took another wife, and her name was Keturah. And she bare him Zimran, 2 and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah. And Jokshan begat Sheba, 3 and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were Asshurim, and Letushim, and Leummim. And the 4 sons of Midian; Ephah, and Epher, and Hanoch, and Abida, and Eldaah. All these were 5 the children of Keturah. And Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac. But unto the sons 6 of the concubines, which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts; and he sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, eastward, unto the east country. 19. And these are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son: Abraham begat Isaac: and Isaac 20 was forty years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Paddan- 21 aram, the sister of Laban the Syrian, to be his wife. And Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, because she was barren; and the LORD was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife con- 22 ceived. And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, wherefore 23 do I live? And she went to inquire of the LORD. And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb,—And two peoples shall be separated even from thy bowels:—And the one 24 people shall be stronger than the other people;—And the elder shall serve the younger.—And 25 when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb. And the 26 first came forth red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau. And after that came forth his brother, and his hand had hold on Esau's heel; and his name was 27 called Jacob; and Isaac was threescore years old when she bare them. And the boys grew; and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in 28 tents. Now Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison; and Rebekah loved Jacob. 29 And Jacob sold pottage; and Esau came in from the field, and he was faint; and Esau said to 30 Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint; therefore was his 31 name called Edom. And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. And Esau said, Behold, 32 I am at the point to die; and what profit shall the birthright do to me? And Jacob said, 33 Swear to me this day; and he swore unto him; and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. And 34 Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way; so Esau despised his birthright. 7 And these are the days of the years of Abraham's life which he lived, an hundred threescore 8 and fifteen years. And Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, 9 and full of years; and was gathered to his people. And Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is 10 before Mamre; the field which Abraham purchased of the children of Heth; there was Abra- 11 ham buried, and Sarah his wife. And it came to pass after the death of Abraham, that God blessed Isaac his son; and Isaac dwelt by Beer-lahai-roi. 12 Now these are the generations of Ishmael, Abraham's son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's 13 handmaid, bare unto Abraham; and these are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their 14 names, according to their generations: the firstborn of Ishmael, Nebaioth; and Kedar, and 15 Adbeel, and Mibsam, and Mishma, and Dumah, and Massa; Hadad, and Tema, Jetur, Na- 16 phish, and Kedemah; these are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names, by their vil- 17 lages, and by their encampments; twelve princes according to their nations. And these are the years of the life of Ishmael, an hundred and thirty and seven years; and he gave up the 18 ghost and died; and was gathered unto his people. And they dwelt from Havilah unto Shur that is before Egypt, as thou goest toward Assyria; he abode in the presence of all his brethren. # KETURAH AND HER SONS (vs. 1-6). 1-6. We read that Abraham "took another wife," Keturah, and that she bore him six sons, but we are not sure of the time when this occurred. At any rate, the history of these sons is in nowise mixed up with that of the promised seed. A. E.—According to the laws of Hebrew composition, this event may have taken place before that recorded in the close of the previous chapter. Of this law we have several examples in this very chapter. And there is nothing contrary to the customs of that period in adding wife to wife. We cannot say that Abraham was hindered from taking Keturah in the lifetime of Sarah by any moral feeling which would not also have hindered him from taking Hagar. It has been also noticed that Keturah is called a concubine (1 Chron. 1:32), which is thought to imply that the proper wife was still living. M. This whole passage is probably placed out of its chronological order so as not to break in upon the main narrative before. And the very statement that Abraham settled the sons of his secondary wives by deed of gift during his life indicates that this marriage had occurred long before. It may seem strange that Abraham, the father of the faithful, should thus be found setting aside the original law of marriage—the union of twain—and only between twain—as one flesh, established at creation, re-established by the example of Noah and his sons, and afterward so expressly declared to be the law of God by our Saviour and his apostles. We must bear in mind, however, that we are unable now to fully comprehend the reasons for these exceptionable cases in the patriarchal age. S. R. The origin or nationality of Keturah is unknown. Unlike his former marriages, this connection lay entirely outside the history of revelation, and for that reason is dismissed with the briefest possible notice. In all likelihood she was slave-born, in which case she would become a wife of the second rank, like Hagar. A marriage of this class constituted a perfectly legal and valid union. It formed a permanent conjugal relationship, to the duties of which both parties were bound to be faithful, and which could only be dissolved by divorce or death. The principal points in which it differed from marriage of the first degree were two: it conferred upon the wife a lower social status, and the issue of it, though legitimate, possessed no legal claim upon the inheritance. The only mode, therefore, in which provision could be made for the children of secondary marriages, was for the parent to endow them during his own lifetime with a portion of his property. This is accordingly what Abraham did with his second family. Since he survived Sarah his wife no fewer than forty years, there was time enough for the six boys of Keturah to grow up to manhood, and receive before his death flocks and herds sufficient to set them up on their own account. In order to avoid all risk of future unpleasantness, and to leave the original settlement in Isaac's unencumbered occupation, Abraham prudently sent these young sons into unoccupied territory to the eastward of his own pasture-lands. There they became the founders of Arab tribes, which in subsequent ages extended from the Elanitic gulf of the Red Sea through Arabia Felix into the plateau which stretches on the further side of Moab. Thus, through the numerous offshoots of the Keturah line, as well as through Hagar's son, there was abundantly fulfilled that portion of the covenant promise which predicted for the patriarch a multitudinous and enduring posterity: "Thy name shall be Abraham: for a father of many nations have I made thee." Dykes. The marriage of Abraham to Keturah probably took place in the lifetime of Sarah; and of this union were born six sons—Zimram, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah—all of whom probably became heads of separate tribes. Of these tribes, excepting the Midianites, we hardly know anything. The whole of them seem to have been portioned by Abraham, and sent forth in the lifetime of their father to seek their fortunes in "the east country"—a phrase variously understood as signifying the Arabian desert east of Palestine, or the whole territory of Arabia. But in regard to the Midianites our information is comparatively complete. The Midianites occupied a prominent position in the history of Moses, who, when he fled from Egypt, took up his residence in their territories and married the daughter of one of their chiefs; in the history of the conquest of the trans Jordanic provinces (Num. 22:4; 25:17; 31:2); and in the history of the Judges, but especially of Gideon (Jud. 6, 7, 8), by whom their power, as one of the most active and bitter of the early enemies of Israel, was finally broken. Israel, it may be noted, suffered not more from their open acts of hostility than from their too successful attempts (Numb. 25:18) to lead them astray from the injunctions of the law of Moses, in which direction it is supposed their influence was the more powerful and effectual in consequence of the blood relationship between the two peoples, through their common descent from Abraham. Lee.—Allusion is probably made to these descendants of Abraham under the title of "children of the East" (Judg. 6:3); and also Job 1:3, where Job himself, who may have descended from this stock, is called "the greatest of the people of the East." Bush. BIRTH AND BOTHOOD OF ESAU AND JACOB (vs. 19-28). 19,20. Abraham seems to have spent the latter years of his life in peaceful retirement, having settled along the southern borders of Palestine. There, by the well Lahairoi, we also find Isaac. This quiet, solitary district, far from the busy haunts of the Canaanites, is adapted to his retiring disposition. As formerly Abraham, so is Isaac now called upon to hope and to wait. For twenty years his wife is barren, and during this lengthened period he has sufficient occasion to exercise his faith in the promise. K. 19. The well-known formula, "These are the generations," introduces a new portion of the history, which now resumes the main line of the patriarchal descent. The repetition of the fact of Isaac's birth is in the manner of these resumptions. Of a like kind is the recapitulation in ver. 20 of Isaac's marriage. It would seem as if these portions were intended to be used separately, and each to carry completeness in itself. Kalisch remarks, "These reiterations, natural in themselves, far from causing difficulty, are in harmony not only with the style of the Bible, but of ancient historiography in general, and are in this instance not without a positive gain, for they add the valuable chronological fact, that Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebekah, a statement of decided importance for the exact understanding of several circumstances connected with Isaac's history." Alf. The ninth document here begins with the usual phrase, and continues to the end of the thirty-fifth chapter. It contains the history of the generations of Isaac; that is, of his son Jacob. Isaac himself makes little figure in the sacred history. Born when his mother was ninety, and his father a hundred years of age, he is of a sedate, contemplative, and yielding disposition. Consenting to be laid on the altar as a sacrifice to God, he had the stamp of submission early and deeply impressed on his soul. His life corresponds with these antecedents. Hence, in the spiritual aspect of his character he was the man of patience, of acquiescence, of susceptibility, of obedience. His qualities were those of the son, as Abraham's were those of the father. He carried out, but did not initiate; he followed, but did not lead; he continued, but did not commence. Accordingly, the docile and patient side of the saintly character is presented to our view. M. Though he had been now united to Rebekah for twenty years, yet the child of promise continues to be denied. In this manner God had before tried his father Abraham; and if he be heir to his blessings, he must expect to inherit a portion of his trials. Yet we do not find that in this emergency he had recourse like Abraham in similar circumstances, to any crooked policy, to any doubtful expedient. He looks for relief to that source only where he was accustomed to seek and to find the cure or the solace of all his ills. "He entreated the Lord for his wife;" or rather as the Hebrew expresses it, before his wife: i.e. in her presence; united with her in joint supplication. Bush.—For twenty years the union of Isaac and Rebekah had remained unblessed with children, to indicate that here also the heir to the promises must be a gift from God granted to expectant faith. At last Jehovah listened to Isaac's "entreaty," "for his wife," or rather, literally, "over against his wife," for, as Luther strikingly remarks: "When I pray for any one, I place him right in view of my heart, and neither see nor think of anything else, but look at him alone with my soul;" and this is true of all intercessory prayer. A. E. The prayer with which Isaac "intreated" the Lord for his wife was a prayer of deeper intensity than he could have uttered had he merely remembered the story that had been told him of his own birth. God must be recognized again and again and throughout as the Giver of life to the promised line. We are all apt to suppose that when once we have got a thing in train and working we can get on without God. How often do we pray for the bestowal of a blessing, and forget to pray for its continuance? How often do we count it enough that God has conferred some gift, and, not inviting Him to continue His agency, but trusting to ourselves, we mar His gift in the use? On His own means you must reinvite His blessing, for without the continuance of His aid you will make nothing of the most beautiful and appropriate helps He has given you. Dods. 23. It has been much discussed where or to whom Rebekah could go to inquire of Jehovah. In our ignorance of so much which regards patriarchal religion, it is out of the question to speak dogmatically. But with a prophet like Abraham still at the head of her family, there seems little need to imagine other channels of intercourse with the Deity. Dykes. 23. Two nations are in thy womb. We have ample proof that these prophecies were not meant so much of single persons, as of whole nations descended from them; for what was predicted concerning Esau and Jacob was not verified in themselves, but in their posterity. The Edomites were the offspring of Esau, as the Israelites were of Jacob. And who but the author and giver of life could foresee that two children in the womb would multiply into two nations? Jacob had twelve sons, and their descendants were all united and incorporated into one nation; and what an overruling providence was it that two nations should arise from the two sons only of Isaac? And that they should be two such different nations. The Edomites and Israelites have been from the beginning two such different people in their manners, customs and religion, as to be at perpetual variance among themselves. The children struggled together in the womb, which was an omen of their future disagreement: and when they grew up to manhood, they manifested very different inclinations. Esau was a cunning hunter, and delighted in the sports of the field: Jacob was a plain man dwelling in tents—minding his sheep and his cattle (ver. 27). The religion of the Jews is well known; but whatever the Edomites were at first, in process of time they became idolaters. When Amaziah king of Judah overthrew them, he brought their gods and set them up to be his gods. The king of Edom having refused a passage to the Israelites through his territories on their return from Egypt, the history of the Edomites afterward is little more than the history of their wars with the Jews. The one people shall be stronger than the other people. For some time the family of Esau was the more powerful of the two; there having been dukes and kings in Edom, before there was any king in Israel (Gen. 36 : 31), but David and his captains made an entire conquest of the Edomites, slew several thousands of them (1 Kings 11 : 16 ; 1 Chron. 18 : 12), and compelled the rest to become tributaries, and planted garrisons among them to secure their obedience (2 Sam. 8 : 14). In this state of servitude, they continued about one hundred and fifty years, without a king of their own : being governed by deputies or viceroys appointed by the kings of Judah, but in the days of Jehoram they revoked, recovered their liberties and set up a king of their own (1 Kings 22 : 47). Afterward Amaziah king of Judah gave them a total overthrow in the valley of salt (2 Kings 14 : 7). And Azariah took Elah a commodious harbor on the Red Sea from them (2 Kings 14 : 22). Judas Maccabeus also attacked and defeated them with the loss of more than twenty thousand at two different times, and took their chief city Hebron (1 Macc. 5 : 2 ; 2 Macc. 10). At last, Hyrcaeus his nephew took other cities from them, and reduced them to the necessity of leaving their country or embracing the Jewish religion : on which they submitted to be circumcised and became proselytes to the Jewish religion, and were ever after incorporated into the Jewish church and nation. Bp. Newton. # ESAU SELLS HIS BIRTHRIGHT (vs. 29-34). 29. 30. At Beersheba Jacob was cooking for himself a very savory mess of red lentils. Just as it is ready, Esau returns from a long day's unsuccessful hunting, faint with fatigue, famishing with hunger. We are told of the Arab by those who know him well that his hunger is madness. This madness is now upon Esau. As he looks at the pottage and scents its exciting fragrance, he exclaims, "Feed me, I pray thee, with that red—that red!" He knows not what to call it. His wily brother, perceiving how passionately impatient he is, at once seizes the opportunity, and guarding the food so coveted, says to him, "Sell me this day thy birthright." He knew that this birthright belonged to his brother as the firstborn. Besides a double portion of the household estate, and headship over the family and tribe, in the case of Abraham and his descendants this birthright carried with it the entail of the higher spiritual blessings of the covenant. W. H. 30. Edom.** Which signifies red. Whence the city which he built and the country which his posterity inhabited were called by the same name ; and by the Greeks, Idamaea : bordering toward the south on Judea, Arabia, and Egypt. Bp. Patrick. 31. Sell me this day thy birthright.** The birthright, or right of primogeniture, had many privileges annexed to it. The firstborn was consecrated to the Lord (Exod. 22 : 29) ; had a double portion of the estate allotted him (Deut. 21 : 17) ; had a dignity and authority over his brethren (Gen. 49 : 5) ; succeeded in the government of the family or kingdom (2 Chron. 21 : 3) ; and, as some with good reason imagine, succeeded to the priesthood or chief government in matters ecclesiastical. He had a right to challenge the particular blessing of his dying parent ; he had the covenant which God made with Abraham, that from his loins Christ should come, consigned to him : and what is more, these prerogatives were not confined to his person only but descended to his latest posterity, in case they comported themselves so as to deserve them. Stackhouse. 32. Esau came from the hunting-field worn and hungry ; the only means of procuring the tempting mess of his brother's pottage was the sacrifice of his father's blessing, which in those ages carried with it a substantial advantage ; but that birthright could be enjoyed only after years—the pottage was present, near and certain ; therefore he sacrificed a future and higher blessing for a present and lower pleasure. For this reason Esau is the Bible type of worldliness : he is called in Scripture a profane, that is, not a distinctly vicious, but a secular or worldly person—an overgrown child ; impetuous, inconsistent, not without gleams of generosity and kindness, but ever accustomed to immediate gratification. In this worldliness, moreover, is to be remarked the gamester's desperate play. There is a gambling spirit in human nature. Esau distinctly expresses this : "Behold I am at the point to die, and what shall my birthright profit me?" He might never live to enjoy his birthright ; but the pottage was before him, present, certain, there. F. W. R.—Just this trait, the exaggeration of the value of a low and present impulse and the belittling of the high and distant, marks the most fatal defect of human nature. Every sinful, mean, and base act ever committed comes of just this, that the present appetite or wish seems a great matter. We are ready to die without it, while God and holiness, honor, the future, which are the birthright of every man as son of God, seem an uninteresting or distant good. Mercer.—The man who has fallen under the power of appetite must have his appetite satisfied. No consideration of consequences can be listened to or thought of; the man is helpless in the hands of his appetite—it rules and drives him on, and he is utterly without self-control; nothing but physical compulsion can restrain him. Dods. 33. Swear to me this day. Moses, who records this conduct of Jacob, does not commend him for it. God, indeed, before he was born designed and promised this privilege to him: but then he should have waited till the Divine Wisdom had found out the means of executing his promise in his own way, as David did till God gave him possession of Saul's kingdom: and not have anticipated God, and snatched it by an irregular act of his own. In the whole affair Jacob acted with a subtilty not at all becoming an honest man. He knew that delays were dangerous and that his brother's consideration might possibly spoil his bargain; and therefore he required haste both in the sale and in his oath; and thereby incurred another sin by hurrying his brother into an oath by precipitation, which neither he should have taken nor Jacob have advised him to take, without mature advice and deliberation. Esau, for this mess of pottage, yielding to the temptation of the moment, renounced, both for himself and his descendants, all the privileges of primogeniture, and the covenant which God made with Abraham, that from him the Messiah should descend. Stackhouse.—There was never any meat, except the forbidden fruit, so dear bought as this broth of Jacob; in both the receiver and the eater is accursed: every true son of Israel will be content to purchase spiritual favors with earthly; and that man hath in him too much of the blood of Esau, who will not rather die than forego his birthright. Bp. II. The character of Jacob is easily understood. It has frequently been remarked of him that he is thoroughly a Jew, that in him you find the good and bad features of the Jewish character very prominent and conspicuous. He has that mingling of craft and endurance which has enabled his descendants to use for their own ends those who have wronged and persecuted them. Yet, while one recoils from this craftiness and management, one cannot but admire the quiet force of character, the indomitable tenacity, and, above all, the capacity for warm affection and lasting attachments, that he showed throughout. Dods. Jacob's value of the birthright marked him as fit for it. This did not justify his fraud and injustice in reaching the good; but, in some degree at least, the light which led astray was light from heaven. And it was an age when there were but low ideas of justice in the earth, and when the chosen family, though somewhat enlightened, yet shared in the general morals of the time. That you must always keep in view, and not transfer to that rude period the Christian feelings and ideas of to-day. Mercer. This unbrotherly, ungenerous, ignoble attempt to filch the birthright out of Esau's hands, is the one solitary incident recorded in the first seventy-seven years of Jacob's life. He got no benefit by it. It did not alter his position for the better in the least. It was not upon Esau's having voluntarily bartered away the birthright that his deprival of it by Isaac rested; nor did Jacob himself ever venture to make that barter the basis of his claim. The fifty years or more that intervened between this and the next recorded incident in Jacob's history, do not seem to have much changed his character. W. H. We may supply in the background, from the intimation of his mother's favoritism, that the promises attaching to the birthright, unheeded by the free-rover Esau, were thoroughly understood and valued by Rebekah and her son. That such a consideration has two sides to it, one looking toward good, the other toward evil, is an inconsistency found in history because it is found in man. Alf. There is in Esau's conduct and after-experience so much to stir serious thought, that one always feels as if much more ought to be made of it. It reflects so many features of our own conduct, and so clearly shows us what we are from day to day liable to, that we would wish to take it with us through life as a perpetual admonition. Who does not know of those moments of weakness, when we are fagged with work, and with our physical energy our moral tone has become relaxed? Who does not know how, in hours of reaction from keen and exciting engagements, sensual appetite asserts itself, and with what petulance we inwardly cry, We shall die if we do not get this or that paltry gratification? We are, for the most part, inconstant as Esau, full of good resolves to-day, and to-morrow throwing them to the winds—to-day proud of the arduousness of our calling, and girding ourselves to self-control and self-denial, to-morrow sinking back to softness and self-indulgence. Not once, as Esau, but again and again we barter peace of conscience and fellowship with God and the hope of holiness, for what is, in simple fact, no more than a bowl of pottage. Even after recognizing our weakness and the lowness of our tastes, and after repenting with self-loathing and misery, some slight pleasure is enough to upset our steadfast mind, and make us as plastic as clay in the hand of circumstances. It is with positive dismay one considers the weakness and blindness of our hours of appetite and passion; how one goes then like an ox to the slaughter, all unconscious of the pitfalls that betray and destroy men, and how at any moment we ourselves may truly sell our birthright. Dosis. #### DEATH AND BURIAL OF ABRAHAM (vs. 7-12). Dates and ages are carefully noted by the true student, who derives from them much interesting information. See how this applies here. Abraham survived Sarah thirty-eight years. Isaac was thirty-seven years old when his mother died; and as he was forty years old when he married Rebekah, we learn that the camp of Abraham remained for three years without a mistress. Again, Isaac was sixty years of age before his sons Esau and Jacob were born. Thus, for more than twenty years, the heir of the promises remained childless; and Abraham, but for his faith, must have been sorely tried by this second long protraction of the hope he most cherished. This is among the trials of his faith not recorded, and only discoverable by the comparison of dates. Again, by looking at his age when he died, and comparing it with the age of Isaac when his sons entered the world, we see that Abraham not only waited twenty years before his grandsons were born, but actually lived to see them fifteen years old; so that Jacob and Esau might have had much intercourse with their venerable grandfather. Whether the elder of the two profited much by this advantage does not appear; but it is probable that Jacob owed much of his strong faith in the Lord's providence to the example and instructions of the patriarch. Kit. #### 7. These are the days of the years. There is a fitness in this mode of expression, which is not sufficiently regarded. Good men do not live by centuries, though many such have lived several hundred years; nor do they count their lives even by years, but by days, living as if they were the creatures only of a BAY, having no more time that they can with any propriety call their own; and living that day in reference to eternity. A. C. 8. Abraham gave up the ghost and died. The English word "ghost" is supposed to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon "gast," an inmate, inhabitant, guest, and also spirit; but in popular use it is now restricted to the latter meaning. But the primitive idea seems to be that of dismissing the soul or spirit as the guest of the body. It is almost always rendered in our translation by "expire," but the present version, "giving up the ghost," i.e. yielding up the spirit, is liable to no serious objection. — In a good old age. Hebrew, in a good hoary age; the idea of grey-headed age being prominent in the original term. This was according to promise. Upward of four-score years before this, the Lord addressed Abraham in vision (Gen. 15:15), saying, "Thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age." In everything, even in death, the promises were fulfilled to Abraham. Thus died this venerable patriarch, the father of the faithful, after having sojourned as a stranger and a pilgrim in the land of promise one hundred years. From a comparison of dates, it appears that he survived Shem twenty-five years; his father Terah, one hundred years; and his wife Sarah, thirty-eight years; that he lived after Isaac's marriage, thirty-five years. It was a life checkered with uncommon trials, and marked with blessings no less extraordinary; a life distinguished by the most signal virtues, yet not exempted from frailties and infirmities. His chiefest happiness consisted not in his being favored with a remarkable degree of worldly prosperity, and an unusual term of years to enjoy it, but in the high distinction of being called "the friend of God," and made the depositary of a promise in which the whole world was to be blessed. Bush. Abraham's case shows that God may have fulfilled a promise when he has apparently broken it; and that God's promises are not to be measured by the narrowness and poverty of the letter. God promised Abraham and his seed a place or land called Canaan, and yet Abraham and his seed never held the land; Abraham "sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise;" he had "none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on; yet God promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child" (Acts 7:5). Now, this brings us, so to speak, into close quarters with God's providence, and Abraham's character becomes a medium through which we learn divine lessons. Abraham suffered for us. It is beautiful beyond expression to see how the true idea dawned upon the mind of the man of faith, that is to say, how he got from the letter to the spirit, and saw God's meaning at last. When he came out of the land of the Chaldeans he had a very small notion of his future; but as he went on and on, from Charran, building his altar and pitching his tent, his eyes pierced beyond the little land of Canaan, and "he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." J. P. It is pleasant to remember that Esau and Jacob were brought up on the knees of their venerable grandfather. From his own lips might the second heir of promise learn as a boy the marvellous story, with all the glorious hopes which were to descend to him along with the birthright. The twins were growing lads of fifteen, old enough to indicate already what strong contrasts marked their disposition, when at last the weary hero of faith was called to his rest. Grandly sets the sun of such a life. An old age spent in domestic privacy with the young hopes of his line about his feet; old age dwelling still with growing thankfulness upon the splendid revelations which had glorified its manhood and telling with unabated ardor the ever memorable tale,—surely this was a fitting and a beautiful close to the toils and trials of the noblest lifetime men had yet seen. With his character grown ripe, and his work done, with his name filling the lands, his family spreading on every side, and the sacred line of the covenant budding into another generation, nothing seemed wanting to fill up his cup, who to the end of time was destined to wear the name that is of all earth's names the purest: The Friend of God. Well may the page which records his end say, with touching and simple words, that he died in his hoary age, full and satisfied with life! Dykes. Was gathered to his people. This cannot mean that he was buried where his fathers had been buried, for he had been a hundred years a pilgrim in the land of Israel, far from the home of his ancestors, and he was buried in the cave of Machpelah. The place therefore seems to indicate the belief of the patriarchal ages in a place of departed spirits, to which the souls of the dead were gathered. Thus Jacob expected to "go down into the grave (to Sheol) unto his son," though he did not believe his son to have been buried, but to have been devoured by wild beasts. E. H. B. —To be gathered is not to cease to exist, but to continue existing in another sphere. His peoples, the departed families, from whom he is descended, are still in being in another not less real world. This, and the like expression in the passage quoted, give the first fact in the history of the soul after death, as the burial is the first step in that of the body. M. Were we to leave out of view the spiritual and eternal blessings conferred upon Abraham, how humble would be the conclusion of so grand a career. Vision upon vision, covenant upon covenant, promise upon promise, conducting only to a little cave in Hebron! But from the divine declaration uttered three hundred and thirty years after this event, "I am the God of Abraham," it appears that his relation to God was as entire at that time, as at any former period in his whole life. "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living;" and the faithful of all past ages live with God, and their dust is precious in his eyes, in whatever cavern of the earth or recess of the ocean it may be deposited. Bush. The doctrine of Immortality runs through the Bible. It is latent in the history of the creation and of the fall of man. It is involved in the statement that man was created originally in the image of God. The penalty which was the consequence of the fall—"Thou shalt surely die"—implies that the being to whom it was addressed had been before, in body as in soul, immortal. When it is said of Enoch that "God took him," this cannot mean that Enoch ceased to exist, any more than the same expression can have such a meaning when it is afterward used with reference to Elijah. The desire for nothing less than a heavenly country is the true key note to the lives of the patriarchs. Immortality is the charm of the first great promise to Abraham; immortality is the idea which underlies Jacob's description of this life as a pilgrimage. The patriarchs speak and act as men who sit loosely to all that makes this life dear; and as each is gathered to his people, it might seem that the dogma of immortality is traced upon their sepulchres. H. P. L. 9. When Abraham died Ishmael was a man of nearly ninety and had long been a great desert chief. He reappears for a moment, and only once, at the patriarch's burial, at which Isaac and he met once more. It must have been a striking scene when the two brothers, so long separated, united to pay the last honors to one dear to both, and showed in their doing so their high sense of his worth. Isaac, with his hundreds of household slaves; Ishmael, with his troops of wild retainers and half-savage allies, gathered before the cave of Machpelah, in the midst of the men of Heth, to pay the last duties to the Father of the Faithful, would make a notable subject for an artist. Geikie.—These are beautiful words as showing one side of Abraham's character; "And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah." Those names are not united in any other transaction. Abraham never ceased to care for Ishmael, the son of the bondwoman, the wanderer; and Ishmael showed how he valued his father's care by thus uniting with Isaac in the last act of filial love. J. P. 10. There was Abraham buried. At Hebron our thoughts are of him who at the call of God came forth from his own country and home, not knowing whither he went; of him who received in implicit confidence the assurance of a countless progeny, when as yet he had no child; of him who hesitated not to lay on the altar of sacrifice the son of his old age, the very child of promise; of him, the friend of God, who solemnly covenanted with God in behalf of his posterity, trusting the beneficent promise that in his seed all the families of the earth should be blessed; of him who, looking down the long vista of the future, rejoiced supremely in seeing the day of Christ; of him who was contented to possess but a burying-place in the land which had been promised him and to live an exile upon earth, in prospect of "a better country even a heavenly." No wonder that the Hebrew hope of heaven was that of resting in Abraham's bosom. And who that takes in the full story of Abraham's life of loyal devotion to Jehovah, his Supreme Friend and Portion, but joyfully accepts the assurance of the Saviour in behalf of the spiritual descendants of Abraham, and prays that it may be made to include himself: "And many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." N. C. B. 12. These are the generations of Ishmael. The object of the inspired writer seems to be, to show how the promises of God were fulfilled to both the branches of Abraham's family Isaac God blessed according to the promise. He had also promised to multiply Ishmael; and an account of his generations is introduced, to show how exactly the promise had also been fulfilled to him. 14. These three names have passed into a proverb among the Hebrews, because of their signification. Mishmâ signifies HEARING; dumah, SILENCE; and mus-a, PATIENCE. Hence, "Hear much, say little, and bear much." A. C. 17. This account of Ishmael's death, as well as that of Abraham's above, is inserted by anticipation, in order that the subsequent history of Isaac might not be interrupted. In point of fact, though the circumstance of his death is stated before the birth of Jacob and Esau, yet it did not happen till some years afterward. Abraham lived till they were fifteen years old, and Ishmael till they were sixty-three His death occurred 48 years after the death of Abraham, and when Isaac was 123. Bush. 18. They dwelt from Havilah unto Shar. The descendants of Ishmael possessed all that country which extends from east to west, from Havilah on the Euphrates, near its junction with the Tigris, to the desert of Shar, eastward of Egypt; and which extends along the Isthmus of Suez which separates the Red Sea from the Mediterranean. A. C.—His descendants adopted that wandering or nomadic life which shepherds and hunters require to follow in a region where but little food is produced either for man or beast. They appear to have been joined by the sons of Keturah, one of whom was Midian, the ancestor of the Midianites. While most of them followed the wild, roaming life, still familiar to the Arabs of the desert, others engaged in mercantile pursuits; and it is a proof that the Ishmaelites and Midianites had virtually become one people, that those merchants to whom Joseph was afterward sold are called, in different verses, by each of these names. W. G. B. Abraham's obedience to the call of God and faith in his promises stand supereminent. Without disputing with his Maker or doubting in his heart, he credited everything that God had spoken: hence he always walked in a plain way. The authority of God was always sufficient for Abraham; he did not seek to find reasons for any line of conduct which he knew God had prescribed: it was his duty to obey; the success and the event he left with God. His obedience was as prompt as it was complete. As soon as he hears the voice of God, he girds himself to his work! To what a state of moral excellence the grace of God can exalt a character, when there is simple implicit faith and prompt obedience! Abraham walked before God, and Abraham was perfect. As a son, as a husband, as a father, as a neighbor, as a sovereign, and above all as a man of God, he stands unrivalled; so that under the most exalted and perfect of all dispensations, the gospel of Jesus Christ, he is proposed and recommended as the model and pattern of faith, obedience, and perseverance. A. C.—In these days, in the bosom of Christian civilization, obedience to God and confidence in God are the first precepts, the first virtues of Christianity. They were also the virtues of Abraham, and the precepts inculcated by Abraham's history in the Bible. And the God of Abraham, the God of the Bible, is the same who is the object of adoration to the Christian of the present day. Thousands of years have changed nothing as to the biblical notion of God in the human soul, nor as to the essential laws regulating the relation of man with God. Guizot. Abraham is the Emir of a pastoral tribe, migrating from place to place, his stations marked with geographical accuracy, and with a picturesque simplicity of local description; here he pitches his tent by some old and celebrated tree, there on the brink of a well-known fountain. He is in no respect superior to his age or country, excepting in the sublime purity of his religion. He is neither demi-god nor mighty conqueror, nor even sage, nor inventor of useful arts. His distinction is the worship of One Great God, and the intercourse which he is permitted to hold with this mysterious Being. This is the great patrimonial glory which he bequeathed to his descendants; their title to be considered the chosen people of the Almighty, was their inalienable hereditary possession. This is the key to their whole history, the basis of their political institutions, the vital principle of their national character. Milman. The character of Abraham is one of the finest and noblest in all history, sacred or profane. He seems to have had a remarkably full acquaintance with the perfections of God; to have often surveyed them with love and admiration; and to have been profoundly impressed by them in his own conduct and feelings. Reverence, confidence, love and submission toward the Most High, appear through all his life, in colossal proportions. Along with this there was evidently in his character great shrewdness and common-sense; he had large knowledge of the world, and much skill in the orderly management of its business; great self-possession, good temper, meekness, and patience; warm domestic affections, and an expansive, genial heart, that looked much to the welfare of others, and was ever ready, for their sakes, to sacrifice his own. There never was a more striking combination of great power and great gentleness than in Abraham. His generosity and nobility of disposition gave an elevation to his character which has never been surpassed in any mere man. Of his personal appearance we know nothing; but we can readily fancy it marked by an imposing massiveness and symmetry, corresponding to the remarkable structure of his mind. There could not have been a man more fitted to fulfil the duties and sustain the honors that devolved on the Father of a nation and the Patriarch of a Church. W. G. B. In how many varied and striking attitudes, each worthy of the artist's pencil, does Abraham present himself in the course of his eventful life—leading out the migration from Haran—crossing the Euphrates—pitching his tent at Sichem—kneeling before the altar at Bethel—standing silent before Pharaoh—heading the midnight assault—prostrate before God, moaning out his prayer for Ishmael—waiting on his three mysterious guests, at the tent-door, under the oak of Mamre—putting at early morn the bottle of water on Hagar's shoulder—bowing to the Hittites in the gate—bending with knife in hand over Isaac! Looking at him among all the greatest characters of Old Testament history, does he not appear, walking among his shadowy peers, the very stateliest in form, the most finished in proportion, the most benignant in aspect, the most graceful in movement, of them all? About his piety there is something singularly attractive—so simple, so domestic—the age, the country, the tent-life throwing over it the light as of an early Eastern morning, the freshness as of a breeze from the wilderness. Holding his own peculiar faith with a grasp of unrelaxing firmness, there is not a tinge in him of narrowness, moroseness, or fanaticism; all is broad, open, and humane. By prospects of a name so great, a seed so numerous, an influence so wide upon this earth, pride might have been inflated, desires confined, and hopes concentrated on earthly blessings. But the greatest triumph of his faith (greater even than the one on Mount Moriah) was this—that he sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country—confessed and felt continually that he was a stranger and pilgrim on the earth—lived and died desiring another country, even an heavenly. Thus it is that he hath obtained so good a report; and that so wide over the earth, and down through all its generations, he has been, and shall be called, "The father of the faithful," "The friend of God." W. H. What fed the faith wherein his great strength lay? Challenging comparison with any, and excelling all, in that grace, we may justly apply to him the glowing terms and bold figures of the prophet—"He was a cedar in Lebanon, with high stature and fair branches, and shadowing shroud—the cedars of God could not hide him—the fir-trees were not like his boughs, and the chestnut-trees were not like his branches, nor was any tree in the garden of God like unto him for beauty—his root," he adds, explaining how this cedar towered above the loftiest trees, giant monarch of the forest, "his root was by the great waters." And what that root found in streams which, fed by the snows and seaming the sides of Lebanon, hottest summers never dried and coldest winters never froze, the unequalled faith of Abraham found in close and constant communion with God. Like Enoch he walked with God. Each important transaction of life was entered on in a pious spirit, and hallowed by religious exercises. His tent was a moving temple. His household was a pilgrim church. Wherever he rested, whether by the venerable oak of Mamre, or on the olive slopes of Hebron, or on the lofty, forest-crowned ridge of Bethel, an altar rose; and his prayers went up with its smoke to heaven. Such daily, intimate, and loving communion did this grand saint maintain with heaven, that God calls him "his friend;" and honoring his faith with a higher than any earthly title, the Church has crowned him "Father of the Faithful." He lived on terms of fellowship with God such as had not been seen since the days of Eden. Voices addressed him from the skies; angels paid visits to his tent; and visions of celestial glory hallowed his lowly couch and mingled with his nightly dreams. He was a man of prayer, and therefore he was a man of power. Setting us an example that we should follow his steps,—thus, to revert to language borrowed from the stateliest of Lebanon's cedar, thus was he "fair in his greatness and in the length of his branches, for his root was by the great waters." Yet the patriarch had his failings—as who has not?—and they are written to warn "him who thinketh he standeth, to take heed lest he fall." Guthrie. No man ever won for himself an equally honorable place among men by qualities so imitable and within the reach of all. Wherever his foot trod or his fame spread, the homage of numberless generations has elevated the Hebrew exile of Ur almost into a divinity. And this unexampled honor has been won in a way equally without example, through the elevation of his religious character. Not as a leader of emigration; not as a prosperous emir; not as a captain of fighting men; not even as an ancestor of nations; neither as a witness to new truths; nor as the confessor of an ancient faith. All these capacities he sustained, yet it was through none of these that he achieved his far-spread and lasting reputation. It was simply the purity and nobility of his personal piety which made him what he is. The simple, unworldly elevation on which through a long life he walked with God; the entire self-abnegation with which he surrendered everything at the divine call; the childlike confidence with which he received the words of his celestial Friend; above all, the absolute trust he was enabled to repose in the character and promise of Jehovah, under temptations to distrust the most fierce and frequent,—these things it was which made Abraham great. What lay, therefore, at the base of this man's strength and majesty of character was the virtue of devout faith. He struck the roots of his being deeper than other men into the unseen and the abiding. He realized the person of God as one Who is real, near, accessible, friendly, and trustworthy. In a word, "he believed God." It was this which made him strong. If he was a hero, it was simply because he trusted. This calm reliance on one Who is lifted far above the vicissitudes and the fears of time, lent to the whole character of Abraham a circumspection, a sense of safety and of power, a large and poised repose, which are most impressive. Next to his trust in God, his most eminent characteristic was perhaps his kindly and generous sympathy with men. That he was hospitable came as a matter of course. But how unselfish was he, to Lot, for example, or to the king of Sodom! How nobly his open-handedness contrasts with the craft and meanness so often found in his kindred and descendants! Save in the single matter of his wife's safety, he ever discovered a straightforwardness in speech and deed such as Orientals have rarely attained. From discord he shrank with almost as much sensitiveness as his son Isaac; yet, when occasion required, how gallant he could show himself! how prompt to move, how strong to strike! At the same time, every excellence of character which his history enables us to trace will be found to have its real root and secret of power in the religious trust which held him to his God. It was the force and clearness with which he grasped the promises of Jehovah's covenant and found in God Himself and in God's friendship the strength, the reward, and the inheritance of his life, which made him of earthly goods so prodigal, so tolerant of present trial, and to other men so princely and so generous. Dykes. Abraham is our father, too, if we believe, for he is "the father of the faithful." If we blame him for aught of shortcoming or misdeed, we blame ourselves, for we are more to be reproached than he. Abraham lived in the twilight, we live in the full noon; Abraham stood alone, we are members of the general assembly and Church of the firstborn, with throngs of friends around us, and blessed memories and inspirations. Let us cultivate the pilgrim spirit. Let us "declare plainly that we seek a country." Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come. Bind the sandals, grasp the staff, tarry briefly everywhere, and though faint, be evermore pursuing, content with nothing less than heaven. J. P. "So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham." Much as has been added or altered since his early day, the road to peace with God and heavenly blessings is the same he trod. Fulfilled at last in the Seed of promise, which is Christ, and sealed anew with His costly blood, the covenant of friendship stands to this hour where it stood when first Jehovah contracted with His servant under the oak-grove of Mamre. The virtues which made Abraham great are virtues we all may follow. Surrender of everything to obey the voice of duty; trust, simple but solid, in the mere word of the Almighty's grace; loyal adhesion against all appearances, both to what God promises and to what He commands; with a steadfast, quiet strength to wait and hope for His salvation: what but these are the conditions under which any of us in gospel times, as in patriarchal, can reach the high title which Abraham wore, or the still higher title to which Jesus has advanced His disciples? He was God's friend. Henceforth the Son of God has called us not friends only, but brethren; his Father's children; sons of God, and joint heirs with Christ. Dykes. 1. And there was a famine in the land, beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went unto Abimelech king of the Philistines unto Gerar. And the LORD appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of; sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore unto Abraham thy father; and I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these lands; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. And Isaac dwelt in Gerar; and the men of the place asked him of his wife; and he said, She is my sister; for he feared to say, My wife; lest, said he, the men of the place should kill me for Rebekah; because she was fair to look upon. And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out at a window, and saw, and, behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife. And Abimelech called Isaac, and said, Behold, of a surety she is thy wife; and how saidst thou, She is my sister? And Isaac said unto him, Because I said, Lest I die for her. And Abimelech said, What is this thou hast done unto us? one of the people might lightly have lien with thy wife, and thou shouldst have brought guiltiness upon us. And Abimelech charged all the people, saying, He that toucheth this man or his wife shall surely be put to death. And Isaac sowed in that land, and found in the same year an hundredfold; and the LORD blessed him. And the man waxed great, and grew more and more until he became very great; and he had possessions of flocks, and possessions of herds, and a great household; and the Philistines envied him. Now all the wells which his father's servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and filled them with earth. And Abimelech said unto Isaac, Go from us; for thou art much mightier than we. And Isaac departed thence, and encamped in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham; and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them. And Isaac's servants digged in the valley, and found there a well 20 of springing water. And the herdmen of Gerar strove with Isaac's herdmen, saying, The water is ours : and he called the name of the well Esek ; because they contended with him. 21 And they digged another well, and they strove for that also : and he called the name of it 22 Sitnah. And he removed from thence, and digged another well ; and for that they strove not : and he called the name of it Rehoboth ; and he said, For now the LORD hath made room 23 for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land. And he went up from thence to Beer-sheba. 24 And the LORD appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father : fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant 25 Abraham's sake. And he builded an altar there, and called upon the name of the LORD, and 26 pitched his tent there : and there Isaac's servants digged a well. Then Abimelech went to 27 him from Gerar, and Ahuzzath his friend, and Phicol the captain of his host. And Isaac said unto them, Wherefore are ye come unto me, seeing ye hate me, and have sent me away from 28 you ? And they said, We saw plainly that the LORD was with thee : and we said, Let there now be an oath betwixt us, even betwixt us and thee, and let us make a covenant with thee ; 29 that thou wilt do us no hurt, as we have not touched thee, and as we have done unto thee nothing but good, and have sent thee away in peace : thou art now the blessed of the LORD. 30 And he made them a feast, and they did eat and drink. And they rose up betimes in the 31 morning, and sware one to another : and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him 32 in peace. And it came to pass the same day, that Isaac's servants came, and told him con- 33 cerning the well which they had digged, and said unto him, We have found water. And he it called Shibah : therefore the name of the city is Beer-sheba unto this day. 34 And when Esau was forty years old he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, 35 and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite : and they were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah. The story of Isaac is brief ; his life uneventful, perhaps we might say monotonous. The chapter shows that the Lord appeared to him on two distinct occasions ; at Gerar (2-5), renewing the covenant previously made with Abraham, with a very full restatement of all its salient points ; also at Beersheba (23-25) where we are told "he builded an altar and called on the name of the Lord," in the steps of his godly father. H. C.—Isaac was 75 at the time of his father's death, and 137 at the time of Jacob's flight to Haran. All that we know about him during the sixty-two intervening years is told us in this single chapter. Within its short compass is related everything in his recorded history which has an independent and distinctive character of its own, and is not wholly secondary and subordinate to some event in Abraham's life on the one hand, or to Jacob's on the other. In the absence of all note of time, it is impossible to say when in the course of the sixty-two years the events narrated in this chapter occurred. W. H. It is the main purpose of this chapter to sketch the character of Isaac, and to exhibit the peculiar guidance of this patriarch as occasioned by his moral and spiritual wants. Elasticity of endurance, which does not resist evil nor contend against it, but by patience and yielding overcomes it, constitutes the fundamental type of the character of Isaac, and in this lies his real claim to greatness. It does not take from this greatness that in Isaac it is not free from weakness and instability. 1-12. A famine more grievous than that in the time of Abraham had visited the land of Promise. Following the example of his father, Isaac journeyed southward to Gerar, intending thence to pass into Egypt, which was considered the granary of the ancient world. But Jehovah appears unto him (for the first time). He prohibits him from leaving the land of his pilgrimage, and formally and solemnly transfers to him the blessing and promise given to Abraham, in all its threefold bearings (the outward increase of his descendants, the possession of the land, and the salvation of all nations through him). Isaac therefore remains in Gerar. The continuance of the famine induces Isaac to attempt combining tillage with his former occupation of rearing cattle. He is blessed with an hundred-fold harvest, and he learns that even in a year of scarcity and famine, he need not have recourse to Egypt. K. 1. The present famine is distinguished from that which occurred in the time of Abraham (12 : 10). The interval between them is at least a hundred years. The author of this, the ninth document, is acquainted with the seventh document ; and the famine to which he refers is among the earliest events recorded in it. There is no reason to doubt, then, that he has the whole history of Abraham before his mind. Unto Abimelech unto Gerar. The Abimelech with whom Abraham had intercourse about eighty years before may have been the father of the present sovereign. Both Abimelech and Phichol seem to have been official names. M. 2. Abraham might go safely to Egypt—Isaac might not: in firmness and decision of character there was a wide difference between the two men. A. C. 3. I will be with thee. Chaldean, "My Word shall be an help unto thee." To satisfy Isaac that he should never want a guide or a provider, the Lord renews to him the promises that had been made to his father Abraham. Bush.—The oath which I swore unto Abraham thy father.** The Bible, from beginning to end, is the development of this grand idea of blessing from God to sinful man through redemption. It lies here in the beginning of history, in the promise to Abraham and Isaac, the key to the entire Bible and to all God's action in man's redemption; the key-note of that divine harmony of many parts which sweeps through all human history. This alone lifts the Old Testament above all heathen literature, and stamps it as divine. S. Harris. 6-11. Isaac had now laid aside all thoughts of going into Egypt, and in obedience to the heavenly vision sets up his staff in Gerar, the country in which he was born, yet there he enters into the same temptation that his father had been once and again surprised and overcome by, namely, to deny his wife and to give out that she was his sister. It is an unaccountable thing that both these great and good men should be guilty of so strange a piece of dissimulation, by which they so much exposed both their own and their wives' reputation. We see that very good men have sometimes been guilty of very great faults and follies. Let those therefore that stand, take heed lest they fall, and those that are fallen not despair of being helped up again. We see that there is an aptness in us to imitate even the weaknesses and infirmities of those we have a value for; we have need therefore to keep our foot, lest while we aim to tread in the steps of good men, we sometimes tread in their by-steps. H.—The fall of them that have gone before us, are so many rocks on which others have split; and the recording of them is like placing buoys over them, for the security of future mariners. Fuller.—But the incident teaches another and quite as important a lesson, viz. that in swerving at all from the strict path of duty, we may be furnishing a precedent to others of whom we little dream. No man knows, in doing wrong, what use will be made of his example. Bush. The most celebrated saints of God are not secure from sinning: and from their faults there is no arguing to the prejudice of the Book, in which, as we find them recorded as matter of history, so we find them condemned as matter of morality. God has informed us of what passed, but not authorized it; and set the example before us, not for a pattern, but for a warning. Augustine.—Forgetting all the differences of time and place, we persist in giving these ancient Bible characters a modern conscience, with all Christian lights and virtues, and reading in their minds that which belongs to ours. This is unjust to these spiritual forefathers of the race, whose elevation we can never appreciate but by knowing their limitations and ignorance. Mercer. 12. He "sowed in that land, and received in the same year a hundredfold." In those eastern lands "the rates of increase vary from thirty to a hundred. A hundredfold was rare, and only in spots of extraordinary fertility." The town of Gerar, in the vicinity of which this first attempt at agriculture was made, lay on the southern edge of the great plain which stretched up northward till it joined that of Sharon. Of this plain, Mr. Grove tells us that "its fertility is marvellous; for the prodigious crops which it raises are produced, and probably have been produced almost year by year for the last forty centuries, with no manure beyond that naturally supplied by the washing down of the hill-torrents, without irrigation, without succession of crops, and with only the rudest methods of husbandry." The largeness of the return in the case of the first year's crop at Gerar may have been exceptional, but it was in harmony with the enlargement, in other directions, of Isaac's possessions, a memorable instance of the meek inheriting the earth. W. H. 13. The man waxed great. There is a strange and observable occurrence of the same term in the original: And the man was GREAT, and he went, going on, and was GREAT, until that he was exceeding GREAT. How simple is this language, and yet how forcible! A. C.—14. Flocks and herds and a great household.** He who blessed him in the increase of his fields, blessed him also in the increase of his flocks; and as he had extensive possessions, so he must have many hands to manage such concerns; therefore it is added, he had great store of servants. 15. All the wells the Philistines had stopped.** In such countries a good well was a great acquisition; and hence in predatory wars it was usual for either party to fill the wells with earth or sand. The filling up the wells in this case was a most unprincipled transaction; as they had pledged themselves to Abraham by a solemn oath, not to injure each other in this or any other respect. A. C.—A more effectual mode of expressing envy or enmity could not well have been devised, as it was in effect to destroy the flocks and herds which could not subsist without water. Bush.—The well is the spring of life. It is the place of resort for the shepherds and herdsmen—here we may witness acts of courtesy or of stratagem—acts of religion—acts of civil compact—acts commemorative of things past—here the journey ends—hither the fugitive and the outcast repair—here the weary pilgrim rests himself—the lack of it is the curse of a kingdom. It enters as an element into the language of Holy Writ, and the simile, the illustration, the metaphor, are still telling forth the great Eastern apothegm, that of “all things WATER is the first.” Of such value was the well—so fruitful a source of contention in those parched and thirsty lands was the possession of a well! Blunt. 21. Isaac took the right course: he said, “Pass on and find another well.” His men “digged another well,” and the men of Gerar “strove for that also: and he called the name of it Sitnah”—Hatred. Let us beware of hatred; it takes the angel out of you; distorts the countenance, takes out of the voice its frank trustfulness and sympathetic music. Hatred does not expend itself upon the victim: it expends itself in the ruin of the soul of the man who hates. He who hates cannot pray; he who hates can offer no sacrifice upon God’s altar that shall be accepted. 22. The leader being of sweet temper, the men went forward—“removed from thence and digged another well; and for that the Philistines strove not.” So Isaac said, “We will call this well Rehoboth”—Room, a place to stand upon. There is a place for every one of us, could we but find it; some have a long, long search in quest of the right place. The well you have found is God’s gift: your beautiful home, your happy family, your prosperous business. You did not perhaps come to that estate of contentment and enjoyment all at once. Remember your own difficulties, and have pity upon the fruitless exertions of other men. After that another well was dug, and Isaac said, “We will call it Sheba”—an oath, a covenant: a settled and unchangeable blessing. So the course of life runs—strife, hatred, room, striking of the hands in holy covenant. Happy is the consummation; it is possible to us all under the providence of God. It is a surprising thing that we should have all this friction to pass through, if we look at some aspects of our character; but if we look at other aspects, it is surprising that we have so little discipline to encounter and to endure. J. P. Few things are more pleasing than the picture of Isaac, the gentle patriarch, yielding everything and finding everything; as if his history was an antique pictorial illustration of the very words, “Give, and it shall be given to you.” He yields his life on the altar on Moriah, and he finds it. In the strife he always gives up. By patience he is successful. And so “the man waxed great, and grew until he became very great.” Yet we must not forget that there are things over which we should stand and strive. The all-yielding Isaac was rewarded more than the war-like Abraham, and Isaac led a far happier life than Jacob; yet the character even of Jacob was higher; and as to Abraham, he rises far above both. Mercer.—Men count that in a world of violence and wrong the meek will inevitably make themselves a prey; that an Isaac, who gives up the well again and again rather than contend for it, will at length have nothing left him which he may call his own. But it is not so. Wonderful under God is the strength and power of meekness; with it is ever the victory at the last: in the words of the eastern proverb, “The one staff of Moses breaks in shivers the ten thousand spears of Pharaoh.” These “meek” shall in the end inherit all things, even this “earth,” from which it seemed at the outset as if they would be thrust out altogether. Trench. 23. To Beersheba. Wearied with such disturbances in the Philistine country, he is all the more ready to go to Beersheba, the border town of the promised land, and the paternal homestead where the covenant blessings had been promised. Here God appeared to Abraham (chap. 20:1), and now he again appears here to Isaac (ver. 24), and yet afterward to Jacob (chap. 46:1-4). This place, therefore, was the place of high covenant interest. Jacobus. The first traveller in modern times who visited Beersheba was Dr. Robinson. Having, without knowing it, followed the very track which Isaac took from the valley of Gerar northward toward Hebron, “we reached,” he says, “Wady-es-Sebá, a wide water-course. Upon its northern side, close upon the bank, are two deep wells, still called Bir-es-Sebá, the ancient Beersheba. The larger one is 12½ feet in diameter, and 44½ feet deep to the surface water, 16 feet of which at the bottom is excavated in the solid rock. The other well lies 55 rods W.S.W., and is 5 feet in diameter and 42 feet deep. The water in both is pure and sweet, and in great abundance. Both wells are surrounded with drinking-troughs of stone for camels and flocks, such as were doubtless used of old for the flocks which then fed upon the adjacent hills. The curb-stones were deeply worn by the friction of the ropes in drawing up water by hand." Since this account was written, Beersheba has had many visitors, two of the latest being Dr. Tristram and Mr. Palmer. "About two o'clock," says the former (Feb., 1864), "we reached Beersheba, where the tents were already pitched round one of Abraham's wells. In front an behind is a vast uneven plateau, almost green, pastured over by thousands of goats, horned cattle, and camels, while several Arab encampments were in sight, drawn to this favored spot by the grateful wells and the comparatively abundant herbage." W. H. 24. I am the God of Abraham.** These promises are the same for substance as were made to him on his going to Gerar (v. 2-4). But this prefatory declaration would at once renew the memory of all the promises before made, and direct the mind of Isaac to that abiding covenant entered into with Abraham, and to be transmitted to his posterity. Bush.—If Isaac himself had not also possessed his father's faith, he would not, merely for his father's sake, have received this divine promise of blessing. But by the mention of his father God appeals to his filial affection, and reminds him of his great example. The appellation is also admonitory of the close connection between parents and children, to the latter of whom, even after the former are departed, God remains unchangeably faithful. In fine, according to the exposition of Jesus himself (Luke 20: 37, 38), it contains a loving intimation of the continuance of Abraham's existence before the Lord, C. G. B. For my servant Abraham's sake. Upon the only two occasions (v. 5) on which the Lord was pleased to hold personal intercourse with Isaac the renewal of the promises to the son was linked in a peculiar manner with the obedience of the father. All through this section of his life we trace the strong disposition to copy his father's conduct. Placed thus in like circumstances, he says of Rebekah, as Abraham had said of Sarah, "She is my sister." As the weaker man he is spared the trial to which Abraham was exposed. His wife is not taken from him. The protection comes before the peril. The discovery of the relationship is made. The peremptory edict of Abimelech is issued, and Isaac is permitted to dwell in the land in peace. W. H. 25. He builded an altar there.** As an expression of his grateful sense of the divine goodness on the present occasion, and as a part of his habitual practice, he set up the stated worship of God on the spot which had been consecrated by similar observances in the days of his father. Bush.—We are no better than brute beasts if, contenting ourselves with a natural use of the creatures, we rise not up to the Author; if, instead of being temples of his praise, we become graves of his benefits. Isaac first built an altar, and then digged a well. Trapp. 28, 29. "When a man's ways please the Lord, even his enemies shall be at peace with him," and there is something sacred in the character of a good man, to which the wicked often pay an involuntary tribute of respect and admiration. Discarding the envy which he may have cherished, he comes to do homage to a man highly favored of the Lord. Bush. 30,31. Isaac entertained them hospitably, entered into a treaty of peace with them, and dismissed them courteously. Thus, in Isaac, we have a type of faith operating in an unostentatious, undemonstrative, and thoroughly quiet and self-sacrificing way; and yet producing an impression, as we have seen, both salutary and powerful. Hughes. It is certainly striking that the events of Abraham's life, and even the resolutions which he took in consequence of them, repeatedly recur in the history of Isaac. In the one and in the other case there was famine in the land of Promise. In the one case the patriarch actually passed into Egypt, in the other he intended to do so; in both cases recourse is had to the same falsehood by which a wife is passed as a sister; in one and in the other case a covenant is made with Abimelech; in one and in the other case, we read in part of the same stations, of the same wells, of the same origin of the name Beersheba; while lastly the manifestation of God and the promises appear in both cases to have taken place in the same manner and with the same tendency, and in consequence of them each of the two patriarchs erects an altar and serves Jehovah. Still, however similar the aspect of his life to that of Abraham, how different was his inward and outward position, owing to the difference of character between the two patriarchs! Abraham takes refuge in Egypt, and Isaac is about to imitate him. But Abraham learns only by the complications and dangers in which he is involved that this device was contrary to the will of God. On the other hand, Isaac, whose greater weakness of character would not have been equal to the dangers which there threatened him, is by Divine intervention preserved from following the same device. Abraham loses his wife. The protection of God does not preserve him from this trial, although it delivers him from dangers which might thence have resulted. The weaker Isaac is spared this trial, and the protection of God manifests itself in this, that the falsehood of his pretence appears before it is too late. The similarity of their nomadic occupations and the continuance of former circumstances, account for the fact that in both cases we read of the same stations and wells, and of another alliance with Abimelech. But what a contrast between the personality of Abraham, who commands respect, and the patient yielding of Isaac. People do not interfere with the rights and privileges of Abraham, but Isaac must give place before continual hostilities and interferences. K. Esau's Hittite Wives. 34,35. The Hittites (sons of Heth, ch. 10 : 15), occupying the region around Hebron where Abraham often dwelt, were Canaanites of the race of Ham, and Abraham would not allow a wife to be taken for Isaac from among them (ch. 24 : 3). It is another significant indication of the reckless character of Esau, that he not only took two wives, but chose them both from this irreligious race. T. J. C.—They belonged to a family far gone in transgression and apostasy from God. The two wives chosen from such a stock were a source of great grief to the parents of Esau. The choice manifested his tolerance at least of the carnal, and his indifference to the spiritual. M.—Doubtless his father had given him the same charge which Abraham had done concerning his own marriage. And then it was a very undutiful, nay, an impious action, to marry with those people who were under the curse of God. The Scripture might well call him profane; for he seems not to have regarded either the curse or the blessing of the Almighty. Bp. Patrick.—The circumstance that Esau married two Canaanitish wives shows how much he had become estranged from the religious hopes and views of the chosen family. This should have opened Isaac's eyes to the perversity of his preference for Esau. K. Esau forfeited his hereditary rights. To marry a Canaanitish woman was to lose his primogeniture. Where now your tears for Esau, the fainting hunter, who was taken at a disadvantage by his supplanting brother? Esau supplanted himself. To marry thus was to drop out of the entail, to forfeit position, and to commit hereditary suicide. It was then that Esau sold his birthright. Find out the roots and beginnings of things, and you will always discover that a man is his own supplanter: his own enemy. You will find far back—ten years ago, twenty, a quarter of a century—that a man did something which has been following him all the time. When the crises come that the public can look at, they pity him within the four corners of the visible crisis itself: they do not know how judgment has been tracking the man, watching him with pitiless, critical eye, waiting for its turn to come. J. P. Between this marriage of Esau, and the history in the next chapter, there intervenes a space of thirty-seven years, as may be gathered by a collation of the statements of time given. Gerl. 1. AND it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his elder son, and said unto him, My son: and he said unto him, Here 2 am I. And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death. Now therefore 3 take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me 4 venison; and make me savoury meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; that 5 my soul may bless thee before I die. And Rebekah heard when Isaac spake to Esau his son. 6 And Esau went to the field to hunt for venison, and to bring it. And Rebekah spake unto 7. Jacob her son, saying, Behold, I heard thy father speak unto Esau thy brother, saying, Bring me venison, and make me savoury meat, that I may eat, and bless thee before the LORD before my death. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice according to that which I command thee. 9 Go now to the flock, and fetch me from thence two good kids of the goats; and I will make them savoury meat for thy father, such as he loveth: and thou shalt bring it to thy father, that he may eat, so that he may bless thee before his death. And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man. My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing. And his mother said unto him, Upon me be thy curse, my son: only obey my voice, and go fetch me them. And he went, and fetched, and brought them to his mother: and his mother made savoury meat, such as his father loved. And Rebekah took the goodly raiment of Esau her elder son, which were with her in the house, and put them upon Jacob her younger son: and she put the skins of the kids of the goats upon his hands, and upon the smooth of his neck: and she gave the savoury meat and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob. And he came unto his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I; who art thou, my son? And Jacob said unto his father, I am Esau thy firstborn; I have done according as thou badest me: arise, I pray thee, sit and eat of my venison, that thy soul may bless me. And Isaac said unto his son, How is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my son? And he said, Because the LORD thy God sent me good speed. And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not. And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father; and he felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy, as his brother Esau's hands: so he blessed him. And he said, Art thou my very son Esau? And he said, I am. And he said, Bring it near to me, and I will eat of my son's venison, that my soul may bless thee. And he brought it near to him, and he did eat: and he brought him wine, and he drank. And his father Isaac said unto him, Come near now, and kiss me, my son. And he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son—Is as the smell of a field which the LORD hath blessed:—And God give thee of the dew of heaven,—And of the fatness of the earth,—And plenty of corn and wine:—Let peoples serve thee,—And nations bow down to thee:—Be lord over thy brethren,—And let thy mother's sons bow down to thee:—Cursed be every one that curseth thee,—And blessed be every one that blesseth thee. 30 And it came to pass, as soon as Isaac had made an end of blessing Jacob, and Jacob was yet scarce gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting. And he also made savoury meat, and brought it unto his father; and he said unto his father, Let my father arise, and eat of his son's venison, that thy soul may bless me. 32 And Isaac his father said unto him, Who art thou? And he said, I am thy son, thy firstborn, Esau. And Isaac trembled very exceedingly, and said, Who then is he that hath taken venison, and brought it me, and I have eaten of all before thou causest, and have blessed him? yea, and he shall be blessed. When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with an exceeding great and bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father. 35 And he said, Thy brother came with guile, and hath taken away thy blessing. And he said, Is not he rightly named Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he hath taken away my blessing. And he said, Hast thou not reserved a blessing for me? And Isaac answered and said unto Esau, Behold, I have made him thy lord, and all his brethren have I given to him for servants; and with corn and wine have I sustained him; and what then shall I do for thee, my son? And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? bless me, even me also, O my father. And Esau lifted up his voice, and wept. And Isaac his father answered and said unto him, Behold of the fatness of the earth shall be thy dwelling,—And of the dew of heaven from above:—And by thy sword shalt thou live, and thou shalt serve thy brother;—And it shall come to pass when thou shalt break loose,—That thou shalt shake his yoke from off thy neck. The story is one of the most picturesque and pathetic in the Bible. It fills the eye, and fixes itself in the memory of childhood. Old age bends over with unabated interest. But it is as humiliating as it is attractive, exhibiting an expenditure of contrivance, activity, self-possesssion, untruthfulness, profanity, all employed by wife and son, in practising a mean fraud upon such a husband and father, believed by both to be upon the bed of death. W. H. That man must have a strange heart, who can read this chapter unmoved. It is however a very dark page of God's holy word. Sin and the punishment of sin fill the whole of it. Isaac sinned in aiming at a wrong object—he wanted to set aside the will of God. His object was defeated—Esau lost the blessing. Not only was his object defeated, but in aiming at it, he brought much sin on his family and much anguish on himself. Rebekah sinned, first by distrust of God, and then by fraud and deceit. Here lay her error and her sin, in thinking that with such vile things as these she could further the purposes of a holy God. If there was ever a case in which crooked means seemed allowable or excusable, it was this. But God will not bear with these things. We may say that we may prevent much evil or do much good by a slight transgression, and God in his omnipotence may overrule that transgression, as he overrules all things, to further his own holy purposes, but sin lies at our door; that act of ours is displeasing and hateful to him, as much so as though nothing but evil came from it. The punishment of Rebekah may appear slight, and yet to a fond mother like her, it must have been deeply painful. The curse was indeed on her, and it came in a form she little anticipated—she lost the son for whom she had plotted and sinned. As for Jacob, one sin makes way for another; one sin impels him to commit another. Falsehood comes after falsehood in quick succession, till at last, with a fearful hardihood, he employs the name of God himself to aid his deceit. For Jacob's punishment we must read the history of his life to see the extent of it. It followed him almost to his dying hour. And Esau sinned, "He despised his birthright"—that was his sin; he lost his birthright and its blessing—that was his punishment; and it was a just punishment; he only lost that on which he set no value. We too have a birthright, one so precious that houses and lands, all the silver and gold the earth contains, are as dross in comparison with it. There are blessings held out to every one of us, blessings put at this moment within our reach, which ought to make the heart of every one here burn as he hears of them—the pardon of sin, reconciliation with heaven, adoption into God's family, everlasting life and blessedness in his presence; not Canaan, not a land flowing with milk and honey on earth, but a kingdom in heaven, a world bright with the glory of an incarnate God and overflowing with his joy. And how are we treating this birthright? How are we acting with reference to these blessings? Bradley. Ch. 27: The life of Isaac falls into three periods. During the first seventy-five years he is contemporary with his father. For sixty-one years more his son Jacob remains under the paternal roof. The remaining forty-four years are passed in the retirement of old age. The chapter before us narrates the last solemn acts of the middle period of his life. M. 1-4. As he lived to be 180, it must have been so many as forty-three years before his death that it is said of him that he was "old, and his eyes were dim that he could not see." The infirmities of age have come upon him prematurely. He is blind, infirm, bedridden. He remembers that his half brother Ishmael had died fourteen years before, at the very age to which he had now attained. He imagines that his own dissolution is near. He resolves formally and solemnly to invest his eldest and best-liked son Esau with all the rights which primogeniture bestowed. W. H.—It was probably at a moment of dangerous sickness when he bethought himself of imparting the blessing—and this conjecture is supported by the following minute coincidences. That Isaac was then desirous to have "savory meat such as he loved," as though he loathed his ordinary food: that Jacob bade him "arise and sit that he might eat of his venison," as though he was at the time stretched upon his bed; that he "trembled very exceedingly," when Esau came in and he was apprised of his mistake, as though he was very weak; that the words of Esau, when he said in his heart "the days of mourning for my father are at hand," are as though he was thought sick unto death; and that those of Rebekah, when she said unto Jacob "should I be deprived of you both in one day," are as though she supposed the time of her widowhood to be near. I will add that the prolongation of Isaac's life unexpectedly (as it should seem) may have had its influence in the continued protection of Jacob from Esau's anger, the latter, even in the first burst of his passion, retaining that reverence for his father which determined him to put off the execution of his evil purposes against Jacob, till he should be no more. Blunt. 4-29. What hath careless Esau lost, if, having sold his birthright, he may obtain the blessing? Or what hath Jacob gained, if his brother's venison may countervail his pottage? Yet thus hath old Isaac decreed; who was not now more blind in his eyes than in his affections: God had forewarned him that the elder should serve the younger, yet Isaac goes about to bless Esau. That God, who had ordained the lordship to the younger, will also contrive for him the blessing: what he will have effected shall not want means: the mother shall rather defeat the son and beguile the father, than the father shall beguile the chosen son of his blessing. God inclines the love of the mother to the younger, against the custom of nature, because the father loves the elder, against the promise: the affections of the parents are divided, that the promise might be fulfilled; Rebekah's craft shall answer Isaac's partiality. God doth oft-times effect his just will by our weaknesses; yet neither thereby justifying our infirmities, nor blemishing his own actions. Here was nothing but counterfeiting; a feigned person, a feigned name, feigned venison, a feigned answer, and yet behold, a true blessing; but to the man, not the means: those were so unsound, that Jacob himself doth more fear their curse than hope for their success. Bp. II. The moral aspect of the transaction is plain to those who are willing to see that the Bible represents the patriarchs as "men compassed with infirmity," favored by the grace of God, but not at all endowed with sinless perfection. It is just this, in fact, that makes their lives a moral lesson for us. Examples have occurred in the lives of Abraham and Isaac; but the whole career of Jacob is the history of a growing moral discipline. God is not honored by glossing over the patriarch's great faults of character, which were corrected by the discipline of severe suffering. We need not withhold indignant censure from Rebekah's cupidity on behalf of her favorite son—so like her family—and the mean deceit to which she tempts him. Nor is Isaac free from the blame of that foolish fondness, which, as is usual with moral weakness, gives occasion to crime in others. What, then, is the difference between them and Esau? Simply this—that they, in their hearts, honored the God whom he despised, though their piety was corrupted by their selfish passions. Jacob valued the blessing which he purchased wrongfully, and sought more wrongfully to secure. But Esau, whose conduct was equally unprincipled in desiring to receive the blessing which was no longer his, was rightly "rejected, when he would have inherited the blessing." His selfish sorrow and resentment could not recall the choice he had made, or stand in the place of genuine repentance. "He found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears," and he is held forth as a great example of unavailing regret for spiritual blessings wantonly thrown away. The true state of Esau's spirit is shown by his resolve to kill his brother as soon as his father should die. P. S. The honesty of the Bible, in narrating without extenuation the failings and sins of God's own people, is a token both of the historic truth and the divine wisdom of the record. The fact that God turns the wrong-doings of men to the furtherance of his own plans is never used to justify, or even to palliate, the sin. It was known to Isaac that Jacob was announced to be the heir of the promise; but his partiality for Esau led him to attempt to forestall Divine Providence by giving his blessing in secret. Esau had rashly sold his birthright for a mess of pottage; but he should have regarded his oath to his brother and have accepted the consequences. Jacob had taken a mean advantage of his necessity, and showed a disposition to overreach him. Though he shrank, at first, from the deception which his mother proposed,—lest his father should discover the cheat, and give him his curse instead of his blessing,—yet the temptation proved too strong; and, consenting to the first step, he was led from one fraud to another, until he even invoked the name of God to a lie: so easy is it to slide from sin to sin! But Rebekah was the chief offender. She plotted the deception of Jacob, the imposition upon her aged and blind husband, the wrong to her firstborn. She attempted to make sure a divine promise by a pious fraud; but she brought strife and bitterness into the household, and sorrow upon herself and her favorite son. Selfishness always brings sorrow, even when it puts on the guise of love. J. P. T. Esau had no right, either divine or human, to claim the patriarchal blessing. The outward right which his birth might have given him had from the first been taken away by Him who rules the course of nature, and Esau himself had by a formal sale ceded it. Hence the blame of circumventing their father for the inheritance attached to Esau as much as to Jacob. But the issue places him in the right position which God had destined for him. It was not Rebekah's way, in quiet faith, to wait for help from without and from above, so long as she could help or counsel herself. If God does not interpose, she is ready to assist with her wisdom. This perverseness and unbelief arose from the circumstance that the glory of God was not her only aim, and the fulfilment of His will not her sole object. The moral state of Jacob was similar to that of Rebekah. But the Nemesis of history apportions to each of the four parties concerned their punishment. Isaac and Esau immediately feel the consequences of their conduct; Rebekah and Jacob soon afterward. Just because her plan had been successful, Rebekah must send away her favorite during the dark of the night, destitute and helpless, nor will she ever behold his face again. The deceit of Jacob is repaid him in the same coin, and much sorrow, anxiety, labor, and want, are the consequences of his godless cunning. K.—He seems not to have been struck by the enormity of the deed as an offence against God. How great the contrast between his reasoning on this occasion, and that of his son Joseph when assaulted by a powerful temptation. “I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing,” said the one; “How shall I do this great wickedness, and sin against God,” said the other. But as he now sowed, so he afterward reaped. Bash. 5-10. When Rebekah sees Isaac actually preparing to pass Jacob by and bless Esau, her fears are so excited that she cannot any longer quietly leave the matter in God’s hand, but must lend her own more skilful management. It may have crossed her mind that she was justified in forwarding what she knew to be God’s purpose. She saw no other way of saving God’s purpose and Jacob’s rights than by her interference. The emergency might have unnerved many a woman, but Rebekah is equal to the occasion. She makes the threatened exclusion of Jacob the very means for at last finally settling the inheritance upon him. She braves the indignation of Isaac and the rage of Esau, and fearless herself, and confident of success, she soon quiets the timorous and cautious objections of Jacob. She knows that for straightforward lying and acting a part she was sure of good support in Jacob. Luther says, “Had it been me, I’d have dropped the dish.” But Jacob had no such tremors—could submit his hands and face to the touch of Isaac, and repeat his lie as often as needful. Dods. 19-24. All the senses are set to examine; none sticketh at the judgment but the ear; to deceive that, Jacob must second his dissimulation with three lies at one breath: “I am Esau; as thou badest me; my venison;” one sin entertained fetcheth in another; and if it be forced to lodge alone, either departeth or dieth: I love Jacob’s blessing, but I hate his lie. I would not do that wilfully, which Jacob did weakly, upon condition of a blessing: he that pardoned his infirmity would curse my obstinacy. Bp. H. I wonder how Jacob could so readily turn his tongue to say (v. 19), I am Esau, thy firstborn. How could he say, I have done as thou badest me, when he had received no command from his father, but was doing as his mother bade him? How could he say, Eat of my venison, when he knew it came not from the field, but from the fold? But especially I wonder how he could have the assurance to father it upon God, and to use his name in the cheat (v. 20), The Lord thy God brought it to me. H.—The baseness of Jacob is here coped by his blasphemy. It is no mean sign of the sublimity of Scripture that no word of disapproval is inserted in cases like this. The condemnation is left to the “discernment of good and evil” which we have “even of ourselves;” and when passed, it is in the history’s sequel, amply justified. The blasphemy is enhanced by the most solemn name of God being used, and his covenant relation to Isaac introduced: JEHOVAH thy God. Alf. 23. So he blessed him. Jacob got his father’s blessing by a lie; but see what followed. His brother purposed to murder him; he was in a manner banished from his father’s house; his uncle dealt deceitfully with him, as he had done with his father, and treated him with great rigor: and his mother, who put him upon this fraud, never saw him after. Bp. Wilson.—It is a strange and, in some respects, perplexing spectacle that is here presented to us—the organ of the Divine blessing represented by a blind old man, laid on a “couch of skins,” stimulated by meat and wine, and trying to cheat God by bestowing the family blessing on the son of his own choice to the exclusion of the divinely-appointed heir. Out of such beginnings had God to educate a people worthy of Himself, and through such hazards had He to guide the spiritual blessing He designed to convey to us all. Dods. 28,29. This promise (as was the case with most of them) is at first annexed to things seen and present; hence it rises to the unseen future. The summit and the centre of the blessing is contained in the words, “Be lord over thy brethren;” since thereby was signified that he alone was bearer of the blessing,—the others only shared the advantage through him. Gerl. In the following chapter (ver. 14) the promise is made to Jacob, “In thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed;” and to this are to be referred in their full force those expressions, “Let people serve thee, etc.” It appears that Jacob believed the Divine promises more than Esau. The posterity of Jacob, likewise, preserved the true religion, and the worship of one God, while the Edomites were sunk in idolatry. And of the seed of Jacob was born at last the Saviour of the world. This was the peculiar privilege and advantage of Jacob, to be the happy instrument of conveying these spiritual blessings to all nations. Stackhouse — However alike their temporal advantages in all spiritual gifts and graces, the younger brother was to have the superiority, was to be the instrument of conveying the blessing to all nations — In thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed; and to this are to be referred in their full force those expressions — Let people serve thee; and nations bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee. The same promise was made to Abraham in the name of God — I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee (ch. 12:3), and it is here repeated to Jacob. Bp. N. 33. He had given a blessing to one person under the impression that he was a different person; must not the blessing go to him for whom it was designed? But Isaac unhesitatingly yielded. This clear recognition of God's hand in the matter, and quick submission to Him, reveals a habit of reflection, and a spiritual thoughtfulness, which are the good qualities in Isaac's otherwise unsatisfactory character. Before he finished his answer to Esau, he felt he was a poor feeble creature in the hand of a true and just God, who had used even his infirmity and sin to forward righteous and gracious ends. It was his sudden recognition of the frightful way in which he had been tampering with God's will, and of the grace with which God had prevented him from accomplishing a wrong destination of the inheritance, that made Isaac tremble very exceedingly. Esau only saw the supplanter, and vowed to be revenged. Isaac saw God in the matter, and trembled. Dods. — When the invisible hand presses again upon the inner springs of thought and feeling, and he utters the short but singularly comprehensive prophecy as to the future of the seed of Esau, the inward eye is fully opened; no earthly shadow dims or blurs the vision. He weeps with Esau, does all he can to comfort him; but he bows to God, whose hand he recognizes as making even the duplicity of man to praise. He shakes off the infirmity of faith under which he has been laboring, and says even of the treacherous Jacob, in whom he had been taught in so singular a way to recognize the heir of the covenant blessing, "I have blessed him, yea, and he shall be blessed." W. H. 34. Cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry.** The language is very emphatic, and describes a poignancy of grief amounting to positive anguish. The time had now come that he bitterly bewailed his folly in despising and throwing away his birthright for so trifling a consideration. Dush. — Why did he not rather weep to his brother for the pottage than to Isaac for a blessing? If he had not then sold, he had not needed now to buy. It is just with God to deny us those favors which we were careless in keeping, and which we undervalued in enjoying. How happy a thing is it to know the seasons of grace, and not to neglect them! How desperate to have known and neglected them! These tears are both late and false. Bp. H. "Esau found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully, with tears." Do not mistake that, as if it meant that Esau, wishing to repent, could not. Clearly, the repentance he sought for was his father's, not his own; repentance in the sense of change of purpose; and all his tears could not alter that purpose, or change the word once passed. He had sowed to the flesh, and expected to reap both the joys of the flesh and the peace of the spirit. This may not be. We reap as we have sown. Robertson. — Esau's trouble was a principle of profaneness in the soul, which was simply developed in the transaction between him and Jacob in his youth — which was developed again in his marriage of the two heathen wives — which was developed again in his murderous vow concerning his brother — which was simply developed more strongly in his utterly godless hypocrisy in marrying a daughter of Ishmael under the ignorant notion of mere worldly expediency, that thereby he was conforming to the ideas of the religion of his father and mother. And the meaning of the apostle in citing the case of Esau is to show how all outward privileges amount to nothing if there is inward profaneness of heart; that profane apostates have only a limited season wherein the recovery of the gospel blessing is possible; that sin may be the occasion of great sorrow, though there be no true sorrow for sin; that the profane despising of spiritual privileges will, at some time or other, testify in experience to God's severity against all reprobates. S. R. Esau's great and bitter cry, which at first sight we are disposed to pity, is the cry of one who has rejected God, and God in turn has rejected him. It is the cry of one who has trifled with God's mercies, and then sought to regain them when it was all too late. It is the cry of one who has not heeded the warning, "See that ye receive not the grace of God in vain." Newman. 39. 40. The Blessing of Esau. As to Isaac, one point only is named of him by the writer to the Hebrews in his catalogue of illustrious examples of faith: "By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come" (11:20). These benedictions must be regarded as far more than a venerable father's good wishes,—indeed, as nothing less than prophetic benedictions, words uttered under the divine impulses of the Holy Ghost. Their broad outlook embraced the great outlines of the future history of the two nations that were before him in the person of his two sons. H. C. The prophecy thus delivered by Isaac was fulfilled in every particular. At first Esau, the elder, seemed to prosper more than his brother Jacob. There were dukes in Edom before there reigned any king over the children of Israel (Gen. 36:31); and while Israel was in bondage in Egypt, Edom was an independent people. E. H. B.—It was Saul who first conquered, and David who subjugated them. They revolted under Joram, and Amaziah defeated them and stormed their citadel Sela. After frequent changes in their political relations to Israel, they spread themselves abroad at the time of the Maccabees over the southern part of Canaan, as far as Hebron. John Hyrcanus completed their subjugation, and forced upon them the rite of circumcision, so that about a century before Christ they formed one people with the Jews. Antipater was an Idumæan, and Herod the Great was his son. At the destruction of Jerusalem, about seventy years after Christ, they accelerated its fall. Since that period they have disappeared from history. C. G. B. 39. The dwelling of the Edomites, the descendants of Esau, was Mt. Seir, on the south side of the Dead Sea, a district stretching to the Élanitic Gulf of the Red Sea—a rocky district, which is barren toward the north; but contains even now some fertile mountain country—once flourishing communities. Its chief town was Selah ("a rock" (2 Kings 14:7); afterward called "Petra," a great town, which gave the name to Arabia Petræa), which has astonished modern travelers by its magnificent ruins. It was destroyed by the Roman Emperor Trajan. In its neighborhood are, even to this day, "the ridges of the mountains covered with corn-fields and fruit-gardens." Gerl. The elder branch, it is here foretold, should delight more in war and violence, but yet should be subdued by the younger. By thy sword shall thou live, and shall serve thy brother. Esau and his children got possession of Mount Seir by force, expelling from thence the Hordes, the former inhabitants (De. 2:22). They were almost continually at war with the Jews: upon every occasion, they were ready to join with their enemies; and when Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, they encouraged him utterly to destroy the city, saying—Raze it, raze it even to the foundations thereof (Psal. 137:7). And even long after they were subdued by the Jews, they retained the same martial spirit; for Josephus in his time gives them the character of "a turbulent and disorderly nation, always erect to commotions, and rejoicing in changes: at the least adulation of those who beseech them, beginning war, and hastening to battles as to a feast." And a little before the last siege of Jerusalem, they came, at the entreaty of the Zealots, to assist them against the priests and people; and there, together with the Zealots, committed unheard-of cruelties, and barbarously murdered Annas, the high-priest, from whose death Josephus dates the destruction of the city. They were swallowed up and lost, partly among the Nabathean Arabs and partly among the Jews; and the very name was disused about the end of the first century of the Christian Era. Thus were they rewarded for insulting and oppressing their brethren the Jews; and hereby other prophecies were fulfilled, viz. Jerem. 49:7; Ezek. 25:12; Joel 3:19; Amos 1:11, and particularly Obadiah: for at this day we see the Jews subsisting as a distinct people, while Edom is no more, agreeably to the words of Obadiah (ver. 10). For thy violence against thy brother Jacob, in the return of his posterity from Egypt, shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off forever. And again (ver. 18). There shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau, for the Lord hath spoken it. In what a most extensive and circumstantial manner has God fulfilled all these predictions! And what a proof is this of the divine inspiration of the Pentateuch, and the omniscience of God! Bp. Newton. # Other Suggestive Points of the Narrative. Esau shows how selfish and untruthful the sensual man really is, and how worthless is the generosity which is merely of impulse and not bottomed on principle. While he so bitterly blamed Jacob for supplanting him, it might surely have occurred to him that it was really he who was supplanting Jacob. He had no right, divine or human, to the inheritance. God had never said that his possession should go to the oldest, and had in this case said the express opposite. Besides, inconstant as Esau was, he could scarcely have forgotten the bargain that so pleased him at the time, and by which he had sold to his younger brother all title to his father's blessings. Jacob was to blame for seeking to win his own by craft, but Esau was more to blame for endeavoring furtively to recover what he knew to be no longer his. His bitter cry was the cry of a disappointed and enraged child, what Hosea calls the "howl" of those who seem to seek the Lord, but are really merely crying out, like animals, for corn and wine. Many that care very little for God's love will seek His favors; and every wicked wretch who has in his prosperity spurned God's offers, will, when he sees how he has cheated himself, turn to God's gifts, though not to God, with a cry. Esau would now very gladly have given a mess of pottage for the blessing that secured to its receiver "the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine." Like many another sinner, he wanted both to eat his cake and have it. He wanted to spend his youth sowing to the flesh, and have the harvest which those only can have who have sown to the spirit. He wished both of two irreconcilable things—both the red pottage and the birthright. He is a type of those who think very lightly of spiritual blessings while their appetites are strong, but afterward bitterly complain that their whole life is filled with the results of sowing to the flesh and not to the spirit. Dods. Adam and Eve sold their birthright for the fruit of a tree—that was their bargain. Esau sold his for a mess of lentils—that was his. And men nowadays often sell theirs, not indeed for anything so simple as fruits or herbs but for some evil gain, which at the time they think worth purchasing at any price; perhaps for the enjoyment of some particular sin, or more commonly for the indulgence of general carelessness and spiritual sloth, because they do not like a strict life, and have no heart for God's service. And thus they are profane persons, for they despise the great gift of God. And then, when all is done and over, and their souls sold to Satan, they never seem to understand that they have parted with their birthright. They think that they stand just where they did; they take for granted that when they choose to become more decent, or more religious, they have all their privileges just as before. Like Esau, instead of repenting for the loss of the birthright, they come, as a matter of course, for the blessing. Newman. Esau warns us that it is very possible, by careless yielding to appetite and passing whim, to entangle ourselves irrecoverably for this life, if not to weaken and maim ourselves for eternity. At the time, your act may seem a very small and secular one, a mere bargain in the ordinary course, a little transaction such as one would enter into carelessly after the day's work is over, in the quiet of a summer evening or in the midst of the family circle; or it may seem so necessary that you never think of its moral qualities, as little as you question whether you are justified in breathing; but you are warned that if there be in that act a crushing out of spiritual hopes to make way for the free enjoyment of the pleasures of sense—if there be a deliberate preference of the good things of this life to the love of God—if, knowingly, you make light of spiritual blessings, and count them unreal when weighed against obvious worldly advantages—then the consequences of that act will in this life bring to you great discomfort and uneasiness, great loss and vexation, an agony of remorse, and a life-long repentance. You are warned of this, and most touchingly, by the moving entreaties, the bitter cries and tears of Esau. But even when our life is spoiled irreparably, a hope remains for our character and ourselves—not certainly if our misfortunes embitter us, not if resentment is the chief result of our suffering; but if, subduing resentment, and taking blame to ourselves instead of trying to fix it on others, we take revenge upon the real source of our undoing, and extirpate from our own character the root of bitterness. Painful and difficult is such schooling. It calls for simplicity, and humility, and truthfulness—qualities not of frequent occurrence. It calls for abiding patience; for he who begins thus to sow to the spirit late in life, must be content with inward fruits, with peace of conscience, increase of righteousness and humility, and must learn to live without much of what all men naturally desire. Dods. It is natural to pity Esau; but one has no right to do more. One has no right to fancy for a moment that God was arbitrary or hard upon him. Esau is not the sort of man to be the father of a great nation, or of anything else great. Greedy, passionate, reckless people like him, without due feeling of religion or of the unseen world, are not the men to govern the world or help it forward, or to be of use to mankind, or train up their families in justice and wisdom and piety. King-ley.—When you look at the entire lives of Jacob and Esau, you find, that while Esau was far better in the beginning, Jacob was far better in the end. There was very good material in Esau's composition, but what did he make of it? He sidd his birthright. He turned away from God. Instead of going up, he went down. There was very poor material in Jacob's composition, but he accepted God as his God; and his path, though by no means straight, was nevertheless in the main an upward path. So Jacob grew better and better, and rose higher and higher, until we find him at last a veritable saint, a noble old man, before he dies. Abraham was a hero; Isaac was a saint; but Jacob was a sinner. The biography of Jacob comes closer home to many of us than the history of the others. There are few Abrahams; not a large number of Isaacs; but a great many Jacobs, to whom it is most comforting to know, that however poor stuff we are made of by nature, God can make of us, if only we will yield ourselves to him, "vessels unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work." And are there not times in the history of us all when it is a peculiar support to our faith to be able to call on God as "the God of Jacob"? Gibson. A great modern writer, Goethe, who can be accused neither of pietism nor of clericalism, wrote on the patriarchs some magnificent pages, in which occurs the following extract: "In that noble family there appears for the first time, in Jacob, a member who does not shrink from using stratagem and artifice in order to obtain those advantages which nature and circumstances deny him. It has often been observed that the Holy Scriptures in nowise set the patriarchs before us as models of virtue. They are men of most diverse characters, subject to manifold failings and infirmities." "But," adds this prince of modern authors, "there is one fundamental quality which is ever found in those men after God's own heart; that quality is the unshaken belief that God takes special care of them and theirs." That unwavering faith in the faithful and merciful God is the seal by which Jacob is stamped as well as Abraham. It is, therefore, easy to understand why God has chosen him in spite of his many delinquencies. In that heart, beneath the dross, was the noble metal which God requires, that spiritual sense we call faith—the sense which was lacking in the profane Esau. Godet.—On the whole, here was a mixed character as to its excellence, but a high character as to its ability. Jacob was, even in his weakest points, far better fitted to lay the foundations of a family and kingdom than the impulsive and purposeless Esau. As a matter of fact, among the patriarchs though Abraham is most revered Jacob has been the truly influential man with the Jewish masses. He has moulded the mass of the Jewish people into his own image. Mercer. The fundamental thought connected with the divine guidance of Jacob's life is, that in spite of all human hindrances, the divine counsel reaches its goal, and that even human sins must serve for its realization, although they are punished none the less. O.—In the whole of this history it is to be observed that God executes his purposes according to his own counsel and will, and renders the weaknesses and sins of the children of men subservient to their accomplishment. The sins themselves he punishes, as he did in Rebekah, Isaac, Esau, and especially Jacob. Amid the confusions and antagonisms of man's weakness and waywardness, his purposes move on. C. G. B. This is one of the most remarkable complications of life, showing in the clearest manner that a higher hand guides the threads of history, so that neither sin nor error can ultimately entangle them. Each one weaves the threads which are committed to him according to his own views and desires, but at last when the texture is complete we behold in it the pattern which the master had long before devised, and toward which each laborer had only contributed one or another feature. K.—Each member of the family plans his own wicked device, and God by the evil of one defeats the evil of another, and saves His own purpose to bless the race from being frittered away and lost. And it is told us in order that, amid all this mess of human craft and selfishness, the righteousness and stability of God's word of promise may be more vividly seen. Dels. The Bible is a book rather of examples than of precepts. There is comparatively little teaching of moral lessons in the abstract. What is this but an indication on the part of God that He wills us to meditate upon His Word, and to derive from it for ourselves the lessons implicitly wrapped up in it, without their being always explicitly stated? The narrative itself seldom or ever develops those lessons; no comments are made, as a general rule, upon the conduct of the characters which are brought before us; we are left to gather the moral for ourselves, either from the results of the conduct, or from principles laid down in another part of the Sacred Volume. Thus, God's abhorrence of Jacob's deceit and falsehood is not stated expressly in the narrative, but left to be gathered from the after fortunes of the Patriarch, whose latter years only were gilded with some gleam of comfort,—who may be said to have paid a life-long penalty of his sin. All these lessons it asks some mental effort to elicit. It is, however, an effort which repays itself. It is far more interesting—it gives far more of life and freshness to a maxim of duty—to derive it for ourselves from an example, than to have it presented to us in a dry and abstract form. E. M. G. 27 : 41 And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him : and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand ; then will I slay 42 my brother Jacob. And the words of Esau her elder son were told to Rebekah ; and she sent and called Jacob her younger son, and said unto him, Behold, thy brother Esau, as 43 touching thee, doth comfort himself, purposing to kill thee. Now therefore, my son, obey 44 my voice ; and arise, flee thou to Laban my brother to Haran ; and tarry with him a few 45 days, until thy brother's fury turn away ; until thy brother's anger turn away from thee, and he forget that which thou hast done to him : then I will send, and fetch thee from thence : why should I be bereaved of you both in one day ? 46 And Rebekah said to Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth ; if Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these, of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do me ?28 : 1 And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, Thou 2 shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel thy mother's father ; and take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of 3 Laban thy mother's brother. And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and 4 multiply thee, that thou mayest be a company of peoples ; and give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee, and to thy seed with thee ; that thou mayest inherit the land of thy 5 sojournings, which God gave unto Abraham. And Isaac sent away Jacob ; and he went to Paddan-aram unto Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob's and 6 Esau's mother. Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan-aram, to take him a wife from thence ; and that as he blessed him he gave him a 7 charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan ; and that Jacob 8 obeyed his father and his mother, and was gone to Paddan-aram : and Esau saw that the 9 daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father ; and Esau went unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abraham's son, the sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife. 41. As Esau was well aware of Isaac's partiality toward himself, he must have been convinced that it was not owing to him, nor to Jacob's fraud, but to the Lord's doing, that the actual result had been brought about. Hence it appears that his hatred was of the same nature with that of Cain toward Abel, and of Saul toward David, being directed against him principally on account of his having been a special object of the divine favor. Under these circumstances to attempt to take Jacob's life was virtually an attempt to frustrate the decree of God by a stroke of his sword ! Bush.—He thought not of the hand of God in the whole matter, and just as little of condemning himself, acknowledging his guilt, and repenting. Thus nothing remained to him—as nothing does remain to any natural heart, unbroken by grace—but hatred and enmity. And Rebekah and Jacob came now to experience, as just retribution, the consequences of the mistakes and errors with which they sought to anticipate the counsel of the Most High. C. G. B. 44. By the words 'a few days' Rebekah persuades her son to tear himself from home. The punishment of the fraud is beginning. She never saw him again. Alf.—Rebekah in her scheming neglected to take account of Laban, a man true brother to herself in cunning. She had calculated on Esau's resentment, and knew it would last only a few days, and this brief period she was prepared to utilize by sending Jacob out of Esau's reach to her own kith and kin, from among whom he might get a suitable wife. But she did not reckon on Laban's making her son serve fourteen years for his wife, nor upon Jacob's falling so deeply in love with Rachel as to make him apparently forget his mother. Dods. 46. She is afraid, or pretends to be afraid, that her son Jacob may marry among the Hittites, as Esau had done; and therefore makes this to Isaac the ostensible reason why Jacob should immediately go to Paddan-aram, that he might get a wife there. Isaac readily falls in with Rebekah's proposal, and immediately calls Jacob, gives him suitable directions and his blessing, and sends him away. In this view of the subject we see at once the reason of the abrupt speech contained in this verse. A. C. 28 : 1-5. Blessed him and said, Arise, go. Too keenly does Isaac feel the grief which Esau's Canaanitish wives had caused him, not at once and cordially to have seconded such a proposal; the more so as he has now perceived that in many respects he had been unjust to Jacob, and has learned to regard him as the person in whom the promised race is to be continued. As formerly unconsciously and in prophetic emotion, so now consciously and of set purpose he transfers the blessing of Abraham to the son whom he had neglected, and sends him away with the injunction not to take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. K. 4. A little reflection will show that, after all his errors in the matter, Isaac did "by faith" bless his sons. Manifestly, Isaac had been very early in life initiated into the sublime mysteries of that faith which his father professed. The transaction on Mt. Moriah shows his full acquiescence in the terms of the covenant made with Abraham. All the circumstances of his marriage—his patient delay on account of the scruples of his father—his acquiescence in the perilous venture in sending among strangers for a wife—his prayer of faith for the fulfilment of the promise after it was delayed twenty years—show very clearly that he was a man of faith and had a vivid apprehension of his high calling, and that therefore, even though the feebleness and seeming childchildishness of his old age led him into error as to the mode of executing the duty which faith taught him was incumbent upon him, still the power of his faith shows itself in his purpose to transmit the sacred deposit which he had received from Abraham. S. R. As the blessing now pronounced on Jacob was obtained without any deception on his part, it is likely that it produced a salutary effect upon his mind, might have led him to confession of his sin, and prepared his heart for those discoveries of God's goodness with which he was favored at Bethel. A. C. Now Jacob fled into Syria (Hos. 12 : 12). He was blessed with plenty of corn and wine, and yet he goes away poor; was blessed with government, and yet goes out to service, a hard service. The blessing shall be confirmed to him, and yet he shall smart for the indirect course he takes to obtain it. While there is such an allay as there is of sin in our duties, we must expect an allay of trouble in our comforts. H.—Isaac's life was not more retired and quiet than Jacob's was busy and troublesome. In the one I see the image of contemplation; of action, in the other. None of the patriarchs saw so evil days as he; from whom justly hath the church of God therefore taken her name. Neither were the faithful ever since called Abrahamites, but Israelites. Bp. H. 6-9. Esau's third marriage.** This proceeding of Esau shows the same characteristic misapprehension of the position, and of his father's mind, as we have seen in him before. It fulfils that mind to the letter, but violates it in the spirit. There is, again, no inconsistency with what has gone before, as some have thought. Esau need not have known that his mother had heard of his threat against his brother: he sees his brother's dismissal to Haran, and its ostensible reason. He knows that his wives were displeasing to his father; and he endeavors in his clumsy way to repair the mischief. Alf. True to his character, Esau manifests, on one hand, a kindness of disposition in consulting the wishes of his parents; on the other hand, even more, a certain wilfulness which is determined to get back outwardly the inheritance which he has forfeited and despised, together with the blind infatuation of unbelief, which prompts him to marry among the daughters of Ishmael, who in character were congenial to himself. He is the image of a man who is determined to correct his false steps by his own strength; and, accordingly, attempts it in a wrong temper. Gerl.—We are expressly told that Esau went unto Ishmael. There was a kindredness of condition, probably of taste and habits, between the father and son-in-law. Both were rejected offshoots from the direct line which led downward to the birth of Christ; and we can well imagine a community of feeling between them toward the preferred and favored branch of the house from which they sprung. T. C. Esau does not see any difference between Ishmael's family and the chosen family; they are both sprung from Abraham, both are naturally the same, and the fact that God expressly gave His inheritance past Ishmael is nothing to Esau—an act of God has no meaning to him. He merely sees that he has not pleased his parents as well as he might by his marriage, and his easy disposition prompts him to remedy this. This is a fine specimen of the hazy views men have of what will bring them to a level with God's chosen. Through their crass insensibility to the high righteousness of God, there still does penetrate a perception that if they are to please Him there are certain means to be used for doing so. There are, they see, certain occupations and ways pursued by Christians, and if by themselves adopting these they can please God, they are quite willing to humor Him in this. Much commoner than hypocrisy is the dim-sighted, blundering stupidity of the really profane worldly man, who thinks he can take rank with men whose natures God has changed, by the mere imitation of some of their ways; who thinks, that as he cannot without great labor, and without too seriously endangering his hold on the world, do precisely what God requires, God may be expected to be satisfied with a something like it. Dods. Thus by his own choice as well as in the development of history, Esau is removed from connection with the history of the covenant. His communion with the chosen family had always been only external. He had always been, and he remained a stranger to its higher interests, to its calling and destiny. He went his own ways, and that even while he remained in his father's house, and was yet invested with the outward and natural claims to be the head of his family. His total exclusion from the chosen family is only the completing of his former tendency. But, like Lot and Ishmael, he thereby becomes really a heathen. From the first, and even before we have studied the life of Jacob, we can fully understand the choice of Jacob and the rejection of Esau. K.—Any one capable of deeper views will certainly not dream that Esau would have been better adapted than Jacob to become the medium of Divine revelations. Esau is the representative of natural kindness and honesty, but these qualities are joined to rudeness and to a want of susceptibility for what is higher. He is void of all anticipation and longing. He is satisfied with what is visible; in short he is a "profane person." Such persons, even if grace reaches their hearts, which was not the case with Esau, are not adapted for heading a religious development. The natural disposition of Jacob is much more complex than that of Esau. There are many folds and corners in his heart, which himself and others find it difficult thoroughly to examine, while a man like Esau may be pretty well known in the course of an hour. Jacob is mild and pliable, sensitive and susceptible for every contact with a higher world; always disposed and ready to see the heavens opened and the angels ascending and descending. But at the same time, as in all characters in whom the imaginative prevails, he is also apt to deceive himself, he is under strong temptation to dishonesty, prone to cunning, and without sufficient openness. God took this man into his own training, to remove the many shadows always found when there is much light. Under this training alone is it possible really to learn, and in that school Jacob became Israel, while Esau, who was incapable of any such training, remained to the end only Esau. Hengstenberg. Taking the two, Esau and Jacob, from first to last, how entirely is the judgment of Scripture and the judgment of posterity confirmed by the result of the whole. The mere impulsive hunter vanishes away, light as air: "he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright." The substance, the strength of the Chosen family, the true inheritance of the promise of Abraham, was interwoven with the very essence of the character of "the plain man, dwelling in tents," steady, persevering, moving onward with deliberate settled purpose, through years of suffering and of prosperity, of exile and return, of bereavement and recovery. The birthright is always before him. Rachel is won from Laban by hard service, "and the seven years seemed unto him but a few days for the love he had to her." Isaac, and Rebekah, and Rebekah's nurse, are remembered with a faithful, filial remembrance; Joseph and Benjamin are long and passionately loved with a more than parental affection,—bringing down his gray hairs for their sakes "in sorrow to the grave." This is no character to be condemned or scoffed at; If it was encompassed with much infirmity, yet its very complexity demands our reverent attention; in it are bound up, as his double name expresses, not one man, but two; by toil and struggle, Jacob, the Supplanter, is gradually transformed into Israel, the Prince of God; the harsher and baser features are softened and purified away. A. P. S. After this event, Isaac lived other forty-three years. But he no more appears on the stage of covenant history, as Jacob takes up the thread of further development, the promise having now devolved on him. The text only records that he was gathered to his fathers when 180 years old and full of days, and that he was buried in the cave of Machpelah by Esau and Jacob, whom he was privileged to see once more standing as reconciled brothers by his deathbed. When Jacob left, his father dwelt at Beer-sheba. The desire to be nearer to his paternal place of sepulchre may probably have been the ground of his later settlement in Mamre, where he died. Rebekah, who at parting had so confidently promised Jacob to let him know whenever Esau's anger was appeased, had probably died soon after her favorite had left. At least the promised message was never delivered, nor is her name mentioned on Jacob's return. K. It has been common to describe Abraham as the man of faith, Isaac as the model of patient bearing, and Jacob as the man of active working; and in the two latter cases to connect the spiritual fruits, which were the outcome of their faith, with their natural characters also. All this is quite correct; but it is necessary to take a broader view of the whole matter. Let it be borne in mind, that God had both made and established His covenant with Abraham. The history of Isaac and Jacob, on the other hand, rather represents the hindrances to the covenant. These are just the same as we daily meet in our own walk of faith. They arise from opposite causes, according as in our weakness we either lag behind, or in our haste go before God. Isaac lagged behind, Jacob tried to go before God; and their history exhibits the dangers and difficulties arising from each of these causes, just as, on the other hand, God's dealings with them show how mercifully, how wisely, and yet how holily He knew how to remove these hindrances out of the way, and to uproot these sins from their hearts and lives. A. E. Neither of the Patriarchs has been set up, or can be set up, as a genuine pattern of Christian morals. But the broad light in which the Fathers of Israel are to be viewed is this, that they were exclusive worshippers of the One True Everlasting God, in a world of idolaters—that they were living depositaries of the great doctrine of the Unity of the Godhead, when the nations around were resorting to every green tree—that they "were faithful found among the faithless." And so incalculably important was the preservation of this great Article of the Creed of man, at a time when it rested in the keeping of so few, that the language of the Almighty in the Law seems ever to have a respect unto it: fury, anger, indignation, jealousy, hatred, being expressions rarely, if ever, attributed to him, except in reference to idolatry—and, on the other hand, enemies of God, adversaries of God, haters of God, being there—chiefly and above all, idolaters. But in this sense God was emphatically the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: none of them, not even the last, having ever forfeited their claim to this high and glorious title. Blunt. 10. And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a 11 certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took one of the 12 stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he 13 dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and 13 behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the LORD, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the 14 land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. 15 And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee withersoever thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to 16 thee of. And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD is in this place; 17 and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none 18 other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put under his head, and set it up for a pillar, and 19 poured oil upon the top of it. And he called the name of that place Beth-el: but the name 20 of the city was Luz at the first. And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, 21 so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the LORD be my God, and this 22 stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee. The blessing of his sons was the last passage in the active life of Isaac, after which he retires from the scene. Jacob now becomes the leading figure in the sacred history. His spiritual character has not yet come out to view. But even now we can discern the general distinction in the lives of the three patriarchs. Abraham's is a life of authority and decision; Isaac's, of submission and acquiescence; and Jacob's, of trial and struggle. M. 1-22. That this is really an account of the conversion of Jacob we infer not only from the circumstances of the case but from the beautiful saying of the prophet Hosea: "He found him in Bethel and then he spake with us." In this view of the vision at Bethel, we may see the very great importance of just such an interposition of God at that period of the church's history. The earthly head of the church, Isaac, is now aged, blind and feeble. The true heir to the succession is a fugitive and a wanderer, and it is needful to put beyond all uncertainty the question of his appointment of God to the leadership, even though like David afterward he must still struggle on and wait long till the purpose of God respecting him is fully accomplished. Here again is illustrated the principle of these supernatural interpositions as never occurring except when the occasion is of a dignity worthy the interposition of God. This is the point by which the supernatural interpositions of the Scriptures are readily distinguished from all the legendary interpositions of supernatural power as recorded in the mythologies of paganism, and scarcely less superstitious mythologies of a corrupt Christianity. S. R. 10,11. With a staff he goes over Jordan alone, doubtful and comfortless, not like the son of Isaac: in the way the earth is his bed, and the stone his pillow; yet even there he sees a vision of angels. Jacob's heart was never so full of joy as when his head lay hardest. God is most present with us in our greatest dejection, and loves to give comfort to those that are forsaken of their hopes. Bp. II. 12. All that was revealed to Jacob was that there was a ladder—a way to heaven, however steep and narrow. To us it has been shown who the way is. Lifting up our eyes we see the Lord standing looking upon us in love and hear him speaking to us. Davidson.—What Jacob felt in his dream was, that this world is no such obstruction between spirits, no such hindrance to the wishes of our hearts, as we creatures of sense foolishly feel. He dreamed that that was true which Christ taught plainly was truth: that the Son of man standing on earth was yet in heaven; that streams of power, intelligence, sympathy, streams of radiant pity, of ministering love and wisdom, run down upon us, and, lifting our hearts with them, run up again to God. In the most beautiful form poet ever imagined, Jacob saw that he the exile was always at home; that the child-man, through all distance, through all obstructions, is heart to heart with God. What a deep truth is here! Mercer. Christ has come, and in Him the heavens have bended down to touch, and touching to bless, this low earth, and man and God are at one once more. He is the ladder or sole medium of communication, inasmuch as by Him all Divine blessings, grace, helps and favors come down, angel-like, into our weak and needy hearts. Every strength, every mercy, every spiritual power, consolation in every sorrow, fitness for duty, illumination in darkness, all that any of us can need; it all comes to us down that one shining way, the mediation and the work of the Divine-Human Christ, the Lord. He is the ladder, the sole medium of communication between heaven and earth, inasmuch as by him my poor desires and prayers and intercessions, my wishes, my conflicts, my confessions rise to God. "No man cometh to the Father but by me." He is the ladder, the means of all communication between heaven and earth, inasmuch as at the last, if ever we enter there at all, we shall enter through him and through him alone. "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." A. M. Out of his eternal and infinite goodness and love purposing to become a Creator, and to communicate to his creatures, the Deity ordained in his eternal counsel, that one person of the Godhead should be united to one nature, and to one particular of his creatures: that so, in the person of the Mediator, the true ladder might be fixed, whereby God might descend to his creatures, and his creatures might ascend to God. Broom. To this ancient patriarch in Bethel is revealed the wondrous fact that the infinite ocean of space between earth and heaven, which no genius of man could bridge over into any sort of a pathway, has really been bridged over. For what Jacob saw in his dream Jesus Christ has done. A stairway—"a king's highway of holiness"—springing from the great continent of heaven spans the impassable gulf, and is securely fastened to earth. So that on it are passing spiritual messengers innumerable in execution of the plans of God for every intelligent creature. Yea, and up that highway redeemed souls are ever passing, till "thousands of thousands and ten times thousands" of earth's inhabitants are gathered there. Yes, Jesus, the Mediator, is the Way. S. R.—The Ladder whose top reached to Heaven while its base rested on the earth, is the Son of Man who was also the Son of God, "the only Mediator between God and man, being both God and man." Was ever figure more appropriate or more instructive? The fundamental lesson which it teaches is this—that the Incarnation of the Son of God is the foundation of all our hopes; that independently of this great fact, that "the Word was made flesh," it is an idle mockery to speak of any hope for man. For in the communion of the human soul with its Creator is to be found man's true happiness,—his chief good, apart from which no real satisfaction is to be had. But this communion was broken off entirely by the Fall; sin made a natural separation between the sinner and a holy God. How shall it be restored? How shall we again climb up to the house from which we have become outcasts—the bosom of "our Father which is in heaven"? The access to Him which you could not by any resources in yourself obtain, He has provided for you in Christ. "Behold a ladder set up on the earth." Christ appeared a man among men upon the earth, and was known after the flesh by the men of His time. In His body, in His spirit, in His circumstances, in His lot, in His trials, in His temptations, He was perfectly human, albeit perfectly sinless. He owned human relationships and human ties, and was subject to all the innocent infirmities of our nature. But those who associated with Him daily, who watched His ways, and treasured up His words, soon became aware of something more than human in Him, which manifested itself as by lightning flashes, while they studied His career. The Ladder might be set up on earth, but its top reached they knew not whither,—"reached," as they soon discovered, "to Heaven." After His earthly pilgrimage had closed, Thomas cried to Him, under the force of irrepressible convictions, "My Lord and my God;" and the first martyr, Stephen, saw with his bodily eye the Ladder's head resting in Heaven, and cried, in brave acknowledgment of the great verity, "Behold, I see the Heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." Goulburn. In an age of the future so far away that his thought can grasp no clear conception of it,—when the sinful and sorrowing race of men shall have learnt, by long trying and by many tears, how little it can do of itself, when the bad choice of the first pair has borne bad fruit enough, and when the time appointed of the Father is fully come,—then a descendant of this Jacob shall be born, of such a new and universal power of life to save men, that in Him all the nations of the earth shall be everlastingly blessed. This was the magnificent truth sent down through that Eastern midnight sky into the shepherd's mind. This Son of Man has come. At the very beginning of His course, standing on the threshold of His kingdom, when He as yet discovers His real divinity to only a few open-minded and clean-hearted men like Nathanael,—an Israelite in whom there is no guile,—He is careful to say, "Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." That deeper sense, which the deeper readers like Origen and Augustine, and Luther and Theluck, have never failed to recognize, is this. Our Lord's coming into the world flings forever apart the folded gates of the invisible. It throws the two worlds open into each other. It is the very reality which the ladder Jacob saw long before in Syria, with the condescending and climbing angels on it, typifies and prefigures. From the moment of Christ's baptism, the outset of His sacrificial and saving ministry, all the bars and partition-walls, and to the eye of faith even the veils of the holy place, are taken out of the way. A train of spiritual glories is from that hour set in motion, which will go on breaking and brightening over the earth, in gifts of the Spirit, in the awaking of love and trust in human hearts, in righteous conduct, and in the gathering of nations about His cross, which will have their consummation and crown only when He comes again with His saints. This is your Christian privilege, you who believe and follow the Lord. Because He lives, ye live also. No matter if, like the patriarch, you have to take the stones of that place where you are,—hard and cold,—and lay them for your pillow,—behold, the pathway of light opens up none the less. The angels travel it both ways: they come down bringing God's help, as well as go up with the burden of your prayers. F. D. H. 13. The LORD stood above it, and said.** He had just committed a great offence; his flight from home, his personal loneliness, his fears about the future, all the consequences of this transgression, the burden of care that his condition brought with it, were all incalculably enhanced by that heavier burden that an awakened conscience presses down upon his heart. Never before had the Lord appeared to him, never before had that voice divine sounded in his ear. Jehovah now meets him by the way, as he comes fresh from his transgression, and meets him how? Is it as he met the prophet in his flight, saying, "What does thou here, Elijah?" Is it as he met Moses, after his offence, indicating his sore displeasure? No, not a word of challenge, not a hint as to the past, not an expression of displeasure. It is thus that the God of his fathers deals with his adopted child, become now humbled and penitent, depressed, doubtful even of Divine forgiveness, still more of Divine protection and favor. W. H. Heaven and earth have been separated by sin. But this ladder has re-established the intercourse. It is therefore a beautiful emblem of that which mediates and reconciles. It here serves to bring Jacob into communication with God, and teaches him the emphatic lesson that he is accepted through a mediator. Jehovah stood above it, and Jacob, the object of his mercy, beneath. He reveals himself to the sleeper as Jehovah, the God of Abraham thy father, and of Isaac. It is remarkable that Abraham is styled his father, that is, his actual grandfather, and covenant father. He renews the promise of the land, of the seed, and of the blessing in that seed for the whole race of man. Westward, eastward, northward, and southward are they to break forth. This expression points to the world-wide universality of the kingdom of the seed of Abraham, when it shall become the fifth monarchy, that shall subdue all that went before, and endure forever. This transcends the destiny of the natural seed of Abraham. M.—A new sense of communication between earth and heaven came upon him, assuming a strange reality when he saw the Lord standing above, and heard him say, "I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father and the God of Isaac." Before this Jacob had heard of that wonderful covenant of God so often ratified with his venerable grandfather and his father. The transfer of blessing from Isaac to himself as the lineal heir of both birthright and blessing was a thing of quite recent experience. How fully he had comprehended its glorious significance before does not appear; but now that he is cast out alone upon the wide, unknown world—now that he so much needs the Great God for his friend—it comes over him with solemn, precious interest. The words spoken were full of comfort. They reminded him of the great family promise to Abraham, renewed to his father Isaac: "A God to thee and to thy seed after thee," and he felt that the promise put its finger upon his own aching, solitary heart. He had a fresh assurance that his life would not come to nought and be a failure. H. C. 12-15. The dream of Jacob is the medium of divine revelation and promise. But the inward state of Jacob at the time formed its natural basis. This dream appears much more significant when we recall to mind the feelings with which he would lay him down to rest. Thoughts accusing and excusing one another would overwhelm him and refuse to be controlled, amid the unwonted solitude and in the loneliness of his position, as night gathered around him, and all circumstances conspired to make him look into the depth of his soul. The present weighs on him as a curse which he had drawn on himself; nor is the dark future before him as yet lit up by a single ray of divine promise. He has, indeed, obtained the blessing of his father, but the divine sanction has not been given to it. Consciousness of guilt, remorse of conscience, doubts, cares, and anxieties of various kinds, only tended to deepen his sense of loneliness. If he is not to despair, he requires to be comforted and strengthened from on high. And this is now done. The dream and its vision are the reply of God to the cares and anxieties with which he has lain down to rest. The vision embodies in a symbol that which the divine promises (verses 13 to 15), of which it is the basis, declare in words. It forms a bridge between heaven and earth. Below, is the poor, helpless, and forsaken man—a representative of human nature with its inability and helplessness. But the angels of God ever descend to bring him help, and again ever ascend to fetch new deliverance. Above, Jehovah Himself stands upon it. By the promise, “I will bless thee, and in thee (and in thy seed) shall all the families of the earth be blessed,” he connects the goal with the commencement of that development, so that this forsaken and helpless man is to become the source of blessing and the medium of salvation to the whole world. It is thus that the ladder connects heaven with earth, and Jacob at the foot of it with Jehovah above it. The ladder which connects heaven with earth represents the promise, which equally joins heaven and earth, which brings down and imparts the powers of heaven to man, as the medium of the promise, yea, and in virtue of which, Jehovah Himself comes down in order that by His covenant and co-operation with him who is the medium of the promise, the goal might be attained and all the families of the earth blessed in him. All this, so far as Jacob was concerned, lay only in germ and undeveloped in the promise. But looking back on its fulfilment we know that this goal was to be attained by the descent of the fulness of the personal God into helpless and disabled human nature, through the incarnation of God in Christ. K. The Lord expounds, as it were, this vision to him, and makes a particular application to him of the truth it shadows forth. He speaks as though that ladder were placed between heaven and earth for his sake only; as though it were for him only that he kept watch above it. “Behold,” he says, “I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest. I will not leave thee.” And thus the Lord reveals to us what we call his particular providence over his servants. Wherever we are, he declares that he sees us; he tells us he is with us; he assures us he cares for us; he pledges himself to keep us. Bradley.—Why should we not, as the spiritual seed of Jacob, catch a gleam of refreshing light from this assurance as we pass along? If God will be with us, if he will keep us in all places and circumstances, if he will never leave us nor forsake us, and if he will bring us at last to our promised and hoped-for land of rest, then may we go on our way with confidence and joy. Whoever we may leave, or whatever we may lose, still we part not from our best friend, nor are we deprived of our most valuable portion. We cannot be lonely, if God be with us. We cannot want, if he provide for us. We cannot err, if he guide us. We cannot perish, if he preserve us. And all this he will do for those that put their trust in him. Bush.—And what Jacob heard, that he also saw in symbolic vision. The promise was the real God-built stair, which reached from the lonely place on which the poor wanderer lay quite up to heaven, right into the very presence of Jehovah; and on which, all silent and unknown by the world, lay the shining track of angel-ministry. And so still to each one who is truly of Israel is the promise of that mysterious “ladder” which connects earth with heaven. Below lies poor, helpless, forsaken man; above, stands Jehovah Himself, and upon the ladder of promise which joins earth to heaven, the angels of God, in their silent, never-ceasing ministry, descend bringing help, and ascend, as to fetch new deliverance. Nay, this “ladder” is Christ, for by this “ladder” God Himself has come down to us in the person of His dear Son, Who is the promise become reality, as it is written: “Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” A. E. 16. And Jacob awaked, and said, Surely Jehovah is in this place, and I knew it not.** He had been reared in the faith that God was to be worshipped in definite localities. At the place where he did not expect anything he saw heaven; he saw some form or revelation of God. See how the greater truth dawns upon his opening mind, “Surely the Lord is in this place,” and that is the very end of our spiritual education; to find God everywhere; never to see the days whitening the eastern sky without seeing the coming of the King’s brightness; to feel that every place is praying ground; to renounce the idea of partial and official consecration, and stand in a universe every particle of which is blessed and consecrated by the presence of the infinite Creator. We have not yet attained this summit of education. We still draw a line between the Sabbath day and the day that went before it; we have still a church and a market-place; still we distribute the sum total of things into Church and State. When God has wrought in us all the mystery of his grace, and reared us to the last fruition of wisdom possible below the skies, we shall know that there is no marketplace, no State, no business, but one great Church; every speech holy and pure as prayer, every transaction a revelation of justice. J. P. 17. And Jacob was afraid.** The Holy Spirit tells us only of Jacob's fear. And why? To impress this truth on our minds, that the man who sees God, never trifles with him; that the soul he visits and gladdens with his mercy, he always fills with an awe of his majesty. Turn in this book to any manifestation of him you can find here—with hardly an exception, the man to whom it is made, trembles before him. But it is a fear that has no torment in it. Nothing painful gives birth to it. It springs from the nearness to us of the God who loves us; from the view we have of the power that blesses us; from the sight vouchsafed us of the holiness that bears with us; from the vastness we see, the length and breadth and depth and height, in the grace that saves us. Our fear comes not from the terrors of the Lord, but from the excellency of the Lord shining forth in the goodness of the Lord. It springs from the magnificence of that goodness. There is forgiveness with him, he tells us, that he may be feared; and we feel it must be so. Bradley. This is none other than the gate of Heaven. Then he was enabled to look on into a far distant future; to feel that he should be interested in that which happened long after he left the earth; that he should live because his God was not the God of the dead, but of the living; that the blessings to his distant seed would be blessings to him. Here was the real difference between him and Esau. He had no feeling of a present, of a living God; therefore he was content with a mere present possession, with plenty of corn and wine and fatness of the earth. In time, no doubt, he and his posterity would feel their need of Beings to worship, of beings to protect them. They would form their gods out of the visible things in which they lived. Earth would become the archetype of Heaven, and therefore all their belief in Heaven would be something to make them more afraid of the earth, less able to till it and subdue it, less able to redeem it from the weeds and the beasts that possessed it. This is the last and highest result of the tribe of hunters, of those who seemed as if they held the earth in fee and had an undisputed right to the property of it. The wanderer in the desert, the plain man,—whose ignorance and cowardice and meanness were purged away by God's discipline, who lived in a land which was not his own, and died an exile,—left a family out of which there grew a nation, which was itself to give birth to a universal church; which was to possess and conquer and civilize a world. Maurice. It is the Son of Man who really bridges the interval between heaven and earth, God and man. In His person these two are united. You cannot tell whether Christ is more divine or human, more God or man—solidly based on earth, as this massive staircase, by His real humanity, by His thirty three years' engagement in all human functions and all experiences of this life. He is yet familiar with eternity, His name is "He that came down from heaven," and if your eye follow step by step to the heights of His person, it rests at last on what you recognize as Divine. His love it is that is wide enough to embrace God on the one hand, and the lowest sinner on the other. Truly He is the way, the stair, leading from the lowest depth of earth to the highest height of heaven. In Him you find a love that embraces you as you are, in whatever condition, however cast down and defeated, however embittered and polluted—a love that stoops tenderly to you and hopefully, and gives you once more a hold upon holiness and life, and in that very love unfolds to you the highest glory of heaven and of God. When this comes home to a man in the hour of his need, it becomes the most arousing revelation. He springs from the troubled slumber we call life, and all earth wears a new glory and awe to him. He exclaims with Jacob, "How dreadful is this place. Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not." The world that had been so bleak and empty to him, is filled with a majestic vital presence. Jacob is no longer a mere fugitive from the results of his own sin, a shepherd in search of employment, a man setting out in the world to try his fortune; he is the partner with God in the fulfilment of a Divine purpose. And such is the change that passes on every man who believes in the Incarnation, who feels himself to be connected with God by Jesus Christ; he recognizes the Divine intention to uplift his life, and to fill it with new hopes and purposes. He feels that humanity is consecrated by the entrance of the Son of God into it: he feels that all human life is holy ground since the Lord Himself has passed through it. Having once had this vision of God and man united in Christ, life cannot any more be to him the poor, dreary, commonplace, wretched round of secular duties and short-lived joys and terribly punished sins, it was before : but it truly becomes the very gate of heaven ; from each part of it he knows there is a staircase rising to the presence of God, and that out of the region of pure holiness and justice there flow to him heavenly aids, tender guidance, and encouragement. Dods. 18. Jacob dedicates the stone on which his head had rested, and converts it into a pillar or monument by pouring oil on the top of it. The outward import of this action is to distinguish the stone, with a view to the time when in virtue of the vow it was to become a house of God (v. 22). But in accordance with the views prevalent throughout the whole Old Testament, this action must also, and pre-eminently, have had an inward and symbolical meaning. The symbolical use of oil as an emblem of the Spirit of God, who enlightens, revives, and heals, is derived from the use of oil in common life among Orientals. In the East it is employed for giving flexibility, freshness, and health, for alleviating pain and healing diseases, for giving a flavor to food, and also for light. Hence to pour oil over anything symbolized its dedication to God and to Divine purposes. K. 20-22. The amended translation of Jacob's vow reads thus : " If Elohim will be with me, and will protect me on this journey that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and if I come again in peace to my father's house, and Jehovah will be my Elohim, then this stone which I have set up as a pillar shall be Beth-Elohim ; and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely pay thee tithes." We have all said so, and some of us have never fulfilled the vow. We rose up from the bed of sickness, and said, " Hence on, every pulse is God's, every breath a prayer." We have been delivered from danger, from poverty, from despair, and we have written our vow, and have forgotten every word of the covenant. J. P. To what extent Christians of the present day may expect the guidance of God in the affairs of life is a practical question of the highest interest to every earnest-minded man ; and the answer to it involves the sublimest fact in religion. Of old, Jacob tested God on the plains of Bethel, in this very respect, asking " God to be with him, and keep him in the way he went, give him bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that he might come again to his father's house in peace," and God heard the prayer in all these particulars, and thus took to himself the name of " the God of Bethel " In like manner, that ancient name, " God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob," is the memorial of his special watch and care over his children. The life of the Patriarchal religion was this, that God does by his providence shield and guide his people, that he condescends to point out the way they should take. Burlington. The conditions of Jacob's vow, which are simply responsive to God's promise (v. 15), seem to denote the secret wish and desire of his soul, and not any express stipulation with God. Man certainly cannot insist on terms with his Maker ; but he may desire and humbly hope for a supply of his wants. More than this the Patriarch did not expect ; and less than this God never intended to give. 22. Tenth.** The number ten, as being the last of the cardinal numbers, expresses the idea of perfection, of a whole. Among almost all ancient people the tenth of their goods was set apart, and very frequently as a holy offering. This was an acknowledgment that the whole was God's property ; and by this acknowledgment the possession and enjoyment of the rest are sanctified. Geel.—Thus Jacob opens his heart, his home, and his treasure to God. The spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind, has begun to reign in Jacob. As the Father is prominently manifested in regenerate Abraham, and the Son in Isaac, so also the Spirit in Jacob. M. There is clear evidence that Jacob was now a child of God. He takes God to be his God in covenant, with whom he will live. He goes out in reliance upon the divine promise, and yields himself to the divine control. Gosman.—The sense of the nearness of God filled him with awe, incited him to adoration, pledged him to gratitude. Marking the spot with a memorial-stone, and consecrating it with a vow, he went on his way rejoicing. That place is ever nearest heaven where God's presence is felt ; and God's presence is felt wherever the soul looks up to him in humble, grateful, admiring love. J. P. T. 29 : 1 THEN Jacob went on his journey, and came to the land of the children of the east. And 2 he looked, and behold a well in the field, and, lo, three flocks of sheep lying there by it; for out of that well they watered the flocks : and the stone upon the well's mouth was great. 3 And thither were all the flocks gathered : and they rolled the stone from the well's mouth, 4 and watered the sheep, and put the stone again upon the well's mouth in its place. And Jacob said unto them, My brethren, whence be ye? And they said, Of Haran are we. 5 And he said unto them, Know ye Laban the son of Nahor? And they said, We know him, 6 And he said unto them, Is it well with him? And they said, It is well : and, behold, 7 Rachel his daughter cometh with the sheep. And he said, Lo, it is yet high day, neither is it time that the cattle should be gathered together : water ye the sheep, and go and feed 8 them. And they said, We cannot, until all the flocks be gathered together, and they roll 9 the stone from the well's mouth ; then we water the sheep. While he yet spake with 10 them, Rachel came with her father's sheep ; for she kept them. And it came to pass, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well's 11 mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother. And Jacob kissed Rachel, 12 and lifted up his voice, and wept. And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's brother, 13 and that he was Rebekah's son : and she ran and told her father. And it came to pass, when Laban heard the tidings of Jacob his sister's son, that he ran to meet him, and em- braced him, and kissed him, and brought him to his house. And he told Laban all these 14 things. And Laban said to him, Surely thou art my bone and my flesh. And he abode 15 with him the space of a month. And Laban said unto Jacob, Because thou art my brother, 16 shouldest thou therefore serve me for nought ? tell me, what shall thy wages be? And Laban had two daughters : the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger 17 was Rachel. And Leah's eyes were tender ; but Rachel was beautiful and well favored. 18 And Jacob loved Rachel ; and he said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy younger 19 daughter. And Laban said, It is better that I give her to thee, than that I should give her 20 to another man : abide with me. And Jacob served seven years for Rachel ; and they 21 seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her. And Jacob said unto Laban, 22 Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in unto her. And Laban gath- 23 ered together all the men of the place, and made a feast. And it came to pass in the even- ing, that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to him ; and he went in unto her. 24 And Laban gave Zilpah his handmaid unto his daughter Leah for an handmaid. And it 25 came to pass in the morning that, behold, it was Leah : and he said to Laban, What is this thou hast done unto me ? did not I serve with thee for Rachel ? wherefore then hast 26 thou beguiled me? And Laban said, It is not so done in our place, to give the younger 27 before the firstborn. Fulfil the week of this one, and we will give thee the other also for 28 the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years. And Jacob did so, and 29 fulfilled her week : and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife. And Laban gave to 30 Rachel his daughter Bilhah his handmaid to be her handmaid. And he went in also unto Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet seven other years. 31 And the LORD saw that Leah was hated, and he opened her womb : but Rachel was bar- 32 ren. And Leah conceived, and bare a son, and she called his name Reuben : for she said, 33 Because the LORD hath looked upon my affliction ; for now my husband will love me. And she conceived again, and bare a son ; and said, Because the LORD hath heard that I am 34 hated, he hath therefore given me this son also : and she called his name Simeon. And she conceived again, and bare a son ; and said, Now this time will my husband be joined 35 unto me, because I have borne him three sons : therefore was his name called Levi. And she conceived again, and bare a son : and she said, This time will I praise the LORD : therefore she called his name Judah ; and she left bearing. 30 : 1 And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister ; and 2 she said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die. And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel : and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit 3 of the womb ? And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her ; that she may bear 4 upon my knees, and I also may obtain children by her. And she gave him Bilhah her 5 handmaid to wife : and Jacob went in unto her. And Bilhah conceived, and bare Jacob a 6 son. And Rachel said, God hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath 7 given me a son : therefore called she his name Dan. And Bilhah Rachel's handmaid con- 8 ceived again, and bare Jacob a second son. And Rachel said, With mighty wrestlings have 9 I wrestled with my sister, and have prevailed : and she called his name Naphtali. When Leah saw that she had left bearing, she took Zilpah her handmaid, and gave her to Jacob 10 to wife. And Zilpah Leah's handmaid bare Jacob a son. And Leah said, Fortunate ! and 11 she called his name Gad. And Zilpah Leah's handmaid bare Jacob a second son. And 12 Leah said, Happy am I ! for the daughters will call me happy : and she called his name 13 Asher. And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the 14 field, and brought them unto his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, Give me, I 15 pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes. And she said unto her, Is it a small matter that thou hast taken away my husband ? and wouldest thou take away my son's mandrakes also ? 16 And Rachel said, Therefore he shall lie with thee to-night for thy son's mandrakes. And Jacob came from the field in the evening, and Leah went out to meet him, and said, Thou must come in unto me ; for I have surely hired thee with my son's mandrakes. And he 17 lay with her that night. And God hearkened unto Leah, and she conceived, and bare 18 Jacob a fifth son. And Leah said, God hath given me my hire, because I gave my hand- 19 maid to my husband : and she called his name Issachar. And Leah conceived again, and 20 bare a sixth son to Jacob. And Leah said, God hath endowed me with a good dowry ; now will my husband dwell with me, because I have borne him six sons : and she called 21 his name Zebulun. And afterward she bare a daughter, and called her name Dinah. 22 And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb. And 23 she conceived, and bare a son : and said, God hath taken away my reproach : and she 24 called his name Joseph, saying, The LORD add to me another son. 25 And it came to pass, when Rachel had borne Joseph, that Jacob said unto Laban, Send 26 me away, that I may go unto mine own place, and to my country. Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served thee, and let me go : for thou knowest my service 27 wherewith I have served thee. And Laban said unto him, If now I have found favor in 28 thine eyes, turey : for I have divined that the LORD hath blessed me for thy sake. And he 29 said, Appoint me thy wages, and I will give it. And he said unto him, Thou knowest 30 how I have served thee, and how thy cattle hath fared with me. For it was little which thou hadst before I came, and it hath increased unto a multitude ; and the LORD hath blessed thee whithersoever I turned : and now when shall I provide for mine own house 31 also ? And he said, What shall I give thee ? And Jacob said, Thou shalt not give me 32 aught : if thou wilt do this thing for me, I will again feed thy flock and keep it. I will pass through all thy flock to-day, removing from thence every speckled and spotted one, and every black one among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats : 33 and of such shall be my hire. So shall my righteousness answer for me hereafter, when thou shalt come concerning my hire that is before thee : every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and black among the sheep, that if found with me shall be 34 counted stolen. And Laban said, Behold, I would it might be according to thy word. 35 And he removed that day the he-goats that were ring-traked and spotted, and all the she- goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white in it, and all the black ones 36 among the sheep, and gave them into the hand of his sons ; and he set three days' journey 37 betwixt himself and Jacob : and Jacob fed the rest of Laban's flocks. And Jacob took him rods of fresh poplar, and of the almond and of the plane tree ; and peeled white strakes in 38 them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had peeled over against the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs where the flocks 39 came to drink; and they conceived when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived 40 before the rods, and the flocks brought forth ringstraked, speckled, and spotted. And Jacob separated the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the ringstraked and all the black in the flock of Laban; and he put his own droves apart, and put them not unto 41 Laban's flock. And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger of the flock did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the flock in the gutters, that they might con- 42 ceive among the rods; but when the flock were feeble, he put them not in: so the feebler 43 were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's. And the man increased exceedingly, and had large flocks, and maidservants and menservants, and camels and asses. 2-10. Wells are still the spots where the youth and girls of Bedouin life congregate, and at the wells alone is Oriental courtship carried on to this day. The Syrian girl, especially if a Druse or a Christian, unlike the secluded daughter of the towns, is frequently intrusted with the care of her father's flock. The well, the most precious of possessions, is carefully closed with a heavy slab until all those whose flocks are entitled to share its water have gathered. The time is noon. The first comers gather and report the gossip of the tribe. The story of Jacob and Rachel is, in its most minute details, a transcript of the Arab life of to-day. H. B. T. There is a remarkable analogy in the two arrivals of Jacob and Abraham's servant at Haran—for not only did they come to the same city, but probably to the same well, where the same scene of pastoral and ancient simplicity is acted over again. The interview with Rachel is quite a counterpart to that with Rebekah; and the emotions of the two strangers are the same and alike natural—those of the elder, Abraham's servant, being of a graver and more solemn character than those of Jacob, whose sensibilities were more vivid and tender. There was a providence in both; and we recognize in them the similar dealings of God with the patriarchs of two generations. T. C. Robinson informs us, "Over most of the cisterns is laid a broad and thick flat stone, with a round hole cut in the middle, forming the mouth of the cistern. This hole we found in many cases covered with a heavy stone, which it would require two or three men to roll away." The established regulation of the well demanded that the stone should not be rolled away until all the flocks had been brought together. But when Jacob learned that the approaching shepherdess was Laban's daughter, he oversteps this arrangement, and, in the overflowing joy of his heart, he offers his services, and rolls away the stone. K. 11. The unmarried daughters of the nomad Arabs to this day keep the flocks. The meeting is in the highest degree touching and natural. The forlorn man driven from his father's house by peril of his life, was at once met, not only with his own flesh and blood, but with her who in a moment becomes to him the centre of his new and recovered life. The history is drawn from the very deepest wells of human emotion. His service done, and his impassioned manner, justify his taking the privilege of a near relative, and all doubt on this is removed by his own avowal. Observe the continual and studied repetition, "the daughter of Laban his mother's brother,"—"the flock of Laban his mother's brother,"—"her father's brother,"—"Rebekah's son,"—"Jacob his sister's son." The joy of meeting is imparted to her whom he met: she runs and tells her father. And he again, in his turn, welcomes the wayfarer with the same affectionate ardor. Alf. There was much to awaken strong emotion—the damsel was the daughter of "his mother's brother;" the sheep were "the sheep of his mother's brother." It is not without purpose that his mother is thus presented to us. It appraises us that his mother was present to Jacob's mind. He pictured to himself, that just as that maiden appeared there before him, so, in that very place, had his mother appeared before Abraham's servant many years before—and that now he was among the scenes of her youth, of which she had often spoke to him. We can therefore well understand how, when he kissed his fair cousin and told her who he was, "he lifted up his voice and wept." This is a fine touch of nature. We begin to feel that there is truth in this man, of whom we have not yet seen much that is good. Our hearts begin to go with him. His future career begins to interest us. Kit. 19. Had Laban really possessed the generosity which his words seem to express, he would have given Jacob the object of his choice without compelling him to wait seven years for her. Though it was proper for Jacob to make the offer he did, it was mean and sordid for Laban to accept it. But it is evident that his own private interest was all that he studied. In his sister Rebekah's marriage there were presents of gold and silver, and costly raiment—things which wrought much on his mind. But here were none of these moving inducements. Here was a poor man who could only talk of promised blessings; but upon these he set no value. He was governed by sight, and not by faith; and seeing that Abraham's descendants were partial to his family, he resolved to make his market of it. "Indeed he sold her to him for some years' service. This was Laban or Nabal, choose you which. Their names were not more like than their natures." (Trapp.)—God makes use elsewhere of the circumstance of this servitude of Jacob to keep up a spirit of humility, as well as a memory of their ancestry, among the children of Israel. It was a part of the confession required to be made by every Israelite when he presented his basket of first ripe fruits before the Lord, "A Syrian ready to perish was my father," alluding to Jacob's poverty and distress when he first came, at this time, into Syria. Again, when the prophet Hosea (12:12) reproves the people for their luxury and pride and haughtiness, he reminds them that "Jacob fled into the country of Syria, and Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he kept sheep." It would, no doubt, tend to abate the loftiness of spirit of many of the wealthy and the great of this world, if they would look back upon the humble and perhaps servile condition of the founders of their families. Bush. 20. And Jacob served—hard service in keeping sheep. Seven years for Rachel. The purity and intensity of Jacob's affection was declared not alone by the proposal of a seven years' term of servitude,—a long period of waiting for a man of fifty-seven, if not seventy-seven, years of age,—but also by the spirit in which he served his avaricious relative. Many as the days were that required to intervene before he obtained possession of his bride, they were rendered happy by the sweet society of Rachel. And they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her. "Words breathing the purest tenderness, and expressing more emphatically than the flowery hyperboles of romantic phraseology the deep attachment of an affectionate heart" (Kalisch); words too which show the lofty appreciation Jacob had of the personal worth of his future bride. T. W.—This is a step in Jacob's training in the fulfilment of God's promise at Bethel. It shows a new feature in his character. We see not the man of cunning devices, but one full of pure, self sacrificing love. Fourteen years of service willingly given to purchase, according to Eastern custom, his bride. Montgomery. 23-25. This imposition is the Nemesis that overtakes Jacob, and must have reminded him of the similar wrong of which himself had been guilty. As instead of the beloved son he had brought to Isaac him whom he had despised and neglected, so Laban now substitutes the despised Leah for his beloved Rachel. But as then Isaac had rightly blessed the son whom he had not loved, so also was Jacob's wife, though not beloved, yet destined for him by God. For it was Leah and not Rachel who became the mother of that son who afterward inherited the most precious part in the promise. K.—The conduct of Laban is perfectly intelligible as the outcome of his sordid avarice; but it is difficult to understand how Leah could acquiesce in a proposal so base as to wrong her sister by marrying one who neither sought nor loved her. She must herself have been attached to Jacob; and it is probable that Laban had explained to her his plan for bringing about a double wedding. Whitelaw. He who, by subtility and falsehood, stole away the blessing intended for his brother, is punished for his deceit, by finding a Leah where he expected a Rachel. He who employed undue advantage to arrive at the right of the firstborn, has undue advantage taken of him in having the firstborn put in the place of the younger. He who could practise upon a father's blindness, though to obtain a laudable end, is, in his turn, practised upon by a father, employing the cover of the night to accomplish a very unwarrantable purpose. Hunter.—In such a way God often deals with men, causing them to reap the bitter fruits of sin, even when they have lamented and forsaken it. "When thou shalt make an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee." Bush.—Jacob was paid in his own coin. He had cheated his own father when he pretended to be Esau, and now his father-in-law cheated him. Herein, how unrighteous soever Laban was, the Lord was righteous. Even the righteous, if they take a false step, are sometimes thus recompensed in the earth. Many that are not, like Jacob, disappointed in the person, soon find themselves, as much to their grief, disappointed in the character. H.—He, the younger, had taken the place of the elder to gain the father's blessing. In this case the imposture is reversed, and practised upon himself. He did not recognize Leah, as his father did not recognize him. Here it was devised by a father, there it was a mother's work. Moreover it was part of the divine purpose that Leah should be his wife, and the intricacies of human cunning are made to subserve the plans of the Most High. Leah became the progenitor of Him, the promised, who was to prove the blessing of the nations. C. G. B. 26-30. Laban shielded himself behind the pretence of a national custom, not to give away a younger before a firstborn sister. But he readily proposed to give to Jacob Rachel also, in return for other seven years of service. Jacob consented, and the second union was celebrated immediately upon the close of Leah's marriage festivities. It were an entire mistake to infer from the silence of Scripture that this double marriage of Jacob received Divine approbation. As always, Scripture states facts, but makes no comment. That sufficiently appears from the life-long sorrow, disgrace, and trials which, in the retributive providence of God, followed as the consequence of this double union. A. E.—Laban is at least not so unjust as to require Jacob to discharge his second servitude before the marriage with Rachel. Immediately after the marriage-week is past, he gives to Jacob Rachel as his wife. The ceremony lasted seven days, from the symbolical idea attaching to the number seven, as being that of the covenant. Thus, instead of one, Jacob had two wives, and these sisters. K.—Jacob did not design it, but to have kept as true to Rachel as his father had done to Rebekah; he that had lived without a wife to the 84th year of his age, could then have been very well content with one: but Laban, to dispose of his two daughters without portions, and to get seven years' service more out of Jacob, thus imposes upon him, and draws him into such a strait by his fraud. H. 27. Fulfil her week.** The marriage feast lasted seven days; it would not, therefore, have been proper to break off the solemnities to which the men of the place had been invited (ver. 22), and probably Laban wished to keep his fraud from the public eye; therefore he informs Jacob, that if he will fulfil the marriage week for Leah, he will give him Rachel at the end of it, on condition of his serving seven other years. To this the necessity of the case caused Jacob to agree; and thus Laban had fourteen years' service instead of seven; for it is not likely that Jacob would have served even seven days for Leah, as his affection was wholly set on Rachel, the wife of his own choice. By this stratagem Laban gained a settlement for both his daughters. Jacob had before practised deceit, and is now deceived; and Laban, the instrument of it, was afterward deceived himself. A. C. 31. Rachel, whom he loved, is barren: Leah, who was despised, is fruitful: how wisely God weighs out to us our favors and crosses in an equal balance; so tempering our sorrows that they may not oppress, and our joys that they may not transport us! each one hath some matter of envy to others, and of grief to himself. Leah envies Rachel's beauty and love; Rachel envies Leah's fruitfulness; yet Leah would not be barren, nor Rachel blear-eyed. Bp. II.— 32-35. Leah bore in succession four sons, whom she significantly named Reuben ("behold! a son"), saying, "Surely Jehovah hath looked upon my affliction;" Simeon ("hearing"), "Because Jehovah hath heard that I was hated;" Levi ("cleaving," or "joined"), in the hope "Now this time will my husband cleave to me;" and Judah ("praised," viz., be Jehovah), since she said: "Now will I praise Jehovah." It deserves special notice, that in the birth of at least three of these sons, Leah not only recognized God, but specially acknowledged Him as Jehovah, the covenant-God. A. E. The Lord, who had decreed temporary barrenness for Rachel the fair, opened the womb of Leah the despised; neither to compensate Leah for the loss of Jacob's love, nor to punish Jacob for his sinful partiality; but to manifest his power, to show that children are the heritage of the Lord, to vindicate his sovereignty, to attest that God giveth families to whomsoever he will, and to suggest that the line of promise was designed to be not the fruit of nature, but the gift of grace. T. W. Jacob served doubly for Rachel; but his service was amply paid afterward, although for a time the veil of disappointment hid the purpose of God. While Leah, as the mother of Judah, was the true ancestress of Messiah, still it was in Joseph, the son of Rachel, that Jacob's heart was satisfied, and that the history of the kingdom of God was most manifestly carried on and its glory set forth. As in the case of Sarah and Rebekah, so in that of Rachel, the birth of the representative seed is connected with special bestowments of grace. Roberts. 30: 1. The eager desire for offspring among the Hebrew women is easily accounted for, if we bear in mind that the distinguishing blessing of Abraham was a numerous posterity, and in particular one illustrious person in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed. But Rachel's language was that of a sinful impatience, for which it would seem, that in the righteous providence of God she afterward paid dear, as she died in giving birth to Benjamin (ch. 37: 16-19). Bush.—It is remarkable that as soon as Rachel had children (literally, sons) she did die. It is impossible to read this and not to form an unfavorable estimate of Rachel. There is at the same time an impetuosity and an ungodliness in her speech to her husband. Af. 2. It was a very grave and pious reply which Jacob gave to Rachel's peevish demand: Am I in God's stead? The Chaldee paraphrases it well, D est thou ask sons of me? Oughtest thou not to ask from before the Lord? The Arabic reads it, "Am I above God; can I give thee that which God denies thee?" This was said like a plain man. He acknowledges the hand of God in the affliction which he was a sharer with her in. He hath withheld the fruit of the womb. Note, Whatever we want, it is God that withholds it, a sovereign Lord, most wise, holy, and just, that may do what he will with his own, and is debtor to no man; that never did, nor ever can do, any wrong to any of his creatures. The keys of the clouds, of the heart, of the grave, and of the womb, are four keys which God has in his hand, and which (the Rabbins say) he in trusts neither with angel nor seraphim. H. 3-9. It is remarkable how much against his will, and against his eventual peace, Jacob, who would have been content and happy with Rachel only, was absolutely driven, by the force of circumstances, to take not only two wives, but four. Having got the wrong wife in the first instance, he could only obtain the right one, by taking her as an addition to the first. Then, as the beloved one proved childless, he could not refuse her importunities to take her handmaid Bilhah, as Abraham had taken Hagar, that she might, through her, obtain children, and be put on equality with her fruitful sister and rival, Leah. Having done this, and the plan having produced the desired results, he could not, in justice, refuse Leah the same advantage, and was obliged to take her handmaid, Zilpah, in like manner. Thus Jacob became encumbered with four wives at once, all through his first disappointment, by the culpable contrivance of Laban. With respect to these handmaids, it should be observed, that they were slaves, whom Laban had presented to his daughters, as their own peculiar property at the time of their marriage, and who were entirely at their disposal, and free from the control of the husband. Such handmaidens had before been given to Rebekah, and had accompanied her to the land of Canaan. We meet with these dotal servants frequently in the ancient and modern East, and even among the classical ancients. Their condition, indeed, among the Greeks and Romans, seems to have been in all rerespects similar to that in which it here appears. Kit. 10-24. In the rivalry here disclosed, both parties were competitors for Jacob's good will; and both hoped for success, as the worldly often do in seeking their selfish ends, from the divine blessing on their own devices. God overrules all for ultimate good, and through such instruments as these works out his wise and beneficent ends; and herein are seen the wisdom and the mystery of his providence. In this disclosure of the interior life of Jacob's household we have an instructive picture of the evils of polygamy, in its legitimate results as here described. The peace of the domestic fireside is destroyed by conflicting rival interests. The paternal home, the sanctuary where God intended that all divine influences should centre and harmonize, in the development and growth of the human spirit into the likeness of God, is made the scene of discord and strife. It is no wonder, that from such a nursery proceeded such characters as are some of those described in the subsequent family history of Jacob. T. J. C. 14-24. On the part both of Rachel and Leah it was a miserable compact; and a pitiable spectacle it surely was, that of two rival wives contracting with one another about their husband's society. Rachel disposes of Jacob for a night in consideration of a handful of mandrakes, and Leah counts herself entitled to Jacob's favors as a boon which she had purchased with Reuben's yellow apples. Not to speak of the humiliation in all this to Jacob, and the continual misery to which he must have been subjected between his ardent sister-wives, think of the wretchedness it must have entailed upon the women themselves, and the disgrace it must have brought into the rival homes. A more powerful condemnation of polygamy it will be difficult to find, or a more signal illustration of the retribution which sooner or later follows on the heels of transgression. T. W. There was much amiss in the contest and competition between these two sisters, yet God brought good out of this evil; for the time being now at hand when the seed of Abraham must begin to increase and multiply, thus Jacob's family was replenished with twelve sons, heads of the thousands of Israel, from whom the celebrated twelve tribes descended, and were named. H.—The narrative is meant to show that the mercy of God, and not natural means, bestows children upon these women. Leah does not refuse to her sister the mandragora of her son. Yet Leah conceives, and Rachel remains barren, and this because the former had called upon the Lord, and He had heard her (verse 17). Again, it is when God remembers Rachel (verse 22), that she conceives. To enforce this truth, the Holy Ghost here brings before us a picture of human life, without keeping anything back. Bauum. That her family might yet further be built up, is the blessing Leah desires and devoutly prays for, as is intimated, where God hearkened unto Leah. Bishop Patrick well suggests here, that the true reason of this contest between Jacob's wives and their giving their maids to be his wives, was the earnest desire they had to fulfil the promise made to Abraham (and now lately renewed to Jacob), that his seed should be as the stars of heaven for multitude, and that in one Seed of his, the Messiah, all the nations of the earth should be blessed. And he thinks it had been below the dignity of this sacred history, to take such particular notice of these things, if there had not been some such great consideration in them. H.—This view is strongly confirmed by the almost uniform reference of the sisters to God's dealing with them in connection with the successive births. B. 21. It is not usual to enumerate female descendants. Dinah's name is mentioned for the sake of the history in ch. 34. Jacob had more daughters: compare ch. 37:35 with 46:7. Alf. 22. And God hearkened to her. It appears that Rachel sought God by prayer, and that he heard her, so that her prayer and faith obtained what her impatience and unbelief had prevented. A. C.—23, 24.** The whole narrative is full of God's justice and of man's weakness and unworthiness. The plain and hated wife-sister is blessed with children; the husband's heart is won toward her; the beautiful and beloved one is led, through crosses and failings, and her husband's anger, to a humbler mind, God in time compensating her for her affliction. Alf. The whole account with all its lights and shades is another proof of the impartiality of the divine historian, and a strong evidence of the authenticity of the Pentateuch. Neither the spirit of deceit nor the partiality of friendship could ever pen such an account. A. C. 25,26. Jacob was desirous to go to Canaan, though he had a great family to take with him, and no provision yet made for them. He had got wives and children with Laban, but nothing else; yet he does not solicit Laban to give him either a portion with his wives, or the maintenance of some of his children. No, all his request is, Give me my wives and my children, and send me away. H.—27. But when he intiintimated this wish to his father-in-law, Laban was unwilling to part with one by whom he had so largely profited. With a characteristic confusion of heathen ideas with a dim knowledge of the being of Jehovah, Laban said to Jacob (we here translate literally): "If I have found grace in thy sight (i.e. tarry), for I have divined (ascertained by magic), and Jehovah hath blessed me for thy sake." The same attempt to place Jehovah as the God of Abraham by the side of the god of Nahor—not denying, indeed, the existence of Jehovah, but that he was the only true and living God—occurs again later when Laban made a covenant with Jacob. It also frequently recurs in the later history of Israel. Both strange nations and Israel itself, when in a state of apostasy, did not deny that Jehovah was God, but they tried to place Him on a level with other and false deities. A. E. #### JACOB'S SCHEME OF INCREASE (verses 25-43). Laban, who had experienced how remarkably the blessing of God had rested upon all that his son-in-law had done, endeavors by all means in his power to retain his services. With selfish readiness he agrees to the demand made by Jacob, that all the young of the flock which shall be speckled or spotted were to become his hire. But here also the cunning and calculation, which formed an element in Jacob's natural character, appear as strikingly as formerly in his relation to Esau. As then, so now, the purposes of God coincide with those of Jacob, notwithstanding the means by which he seeks to attain his ends. Jacob meets cunning with cunning, but Jehovah allows success to follow his cunning. K. Jacob's stratagem against Laban. This was the employment of a triple artifice: (1) by means of piled rods to produce party-colored animals in Laban's flock; (2) on securing these, so to use them as to increase their number; and (3) to direct the animals in such a fashion that the stronger and healthier portion of the flock should be his, and the feebler Laban's. That Jacob's stratagem did not fail is apparent; but how far it was due to the particular expedient employed cannot be so easily determined. The extraordinary rapidity with which brown and speckled animals were produced appears to point to the intervention of a special providence in Jacob's behalf. That in what Jacob did there was nothing fraudulent may be inferred from the fact that he acted under the Divine approval (ch. 31:12), and made use of nothing but the superior knowledge of the habits of animals which he had acquired through his long experience in keeping sheep. T. W.—Thus it happened that however frequently Laban changed the conditions of agreement, eventually the advantage is always on the side of Jacob, and the flocks which by agreement became his increased very rapidly. K. Rich in nothing but wives and children, he now desired to return to his father's house, accounting his charge his wealth. But God meant him yet more good. Laban sees that both his family and his flocks were well increased by Jacob's service. Not his love therefore but his gain makes him loath to part. Even Laban's covetousness is made by God the means to enrich Jacob. Behold, his strait master entreats him to that recompense which made his nephew mighty and himself envious: God, considering his hard service, paid him wages out of Laban's folds. In the very shapes and colors of brute creatures there is a divine hand, which disposeth them to his own ends. Small and unlikely means shall prevail, where God intends an effect. Little peeled sticks of hazel or poplar laid in the troughs shall enrich Jacob with an increase of his spotted flocks; Laban's sons might have tried the same means and failed: God would have Laban know, that he put a difference betwixt Jacob and him; that as for fourteen years he had multiplied Jacob's charge of cattle to Laban, so now for the last six years he would multiply Laban's flock to Jacob: and if Laban had the more, yet the better were Jacob's. Bp. II. 28-34. In our estimate of Jacob's conduct, we must remember what passed in these verses. It was with the distinct view of "providing for his own house also" that Jacob made this compact. Laban might have known, and doubtless did know, that it would be hard driven; and a man with flocks and herds surely could not be ignorant of the stratagem which Jacob meant to, and did, employ. In fact, his very precaution in ver. 36 shows that he was aware of the influence of the spotted cattle. Aif. 31-33. Thou shalt not give me anything. This shows that Jacob had no stock from Laban to begin with, "I will pass through all thy flock to-day" with thee. "Remove thou thence every speckled and spotted sheep, and every brown sheep among the lambs, and the spotted and speckled among the goats." These were the rare colors, as in the East the sheep are usually white, and the goats black or dark brown. And such shall be my hire. Such as these uncommon party-colored cattle, when they shall appear among the flock already cleared of them; and not those of this description that are now removed. For in this case Laban would have given Jacob something; whereas Jacob was resolved to be entirely dependent on the divine providence for his hire. And my righteousness will answer for me. The color will determine at once whose the animal is. 31-36.** Laban willingly consents to so favorable a proposal, removes the party-colored animals from the flock, gives them into the hands of his sons, and puts an interval of three days' journey between them and the pure stock which remains in Jacob's hands. Jacob is now to begin with nothing, and have for his hire any party-colored lambs or kids that appear in those flocks, from which every specimen of this rare class has been carefully removed. M.—From henceforth, only what out of the white flocks were born ring-straked should be Jacob's property. Laban had acted here with the greatest severity and exactness, and he had no right to complain if he were dealt with according to the strict letter of the law. Geri. The agreement between Jacob and Laban depends upon the fact that, in the East, the sheep are commonly white and the goats black, while speckled and spotted animals are rarely seen. All spotted and dark sheep, and all speckled goats, are removed from the flock intrusted to Jacob, and led over to the flocks intrusted to the sons of Laban, so that only sheep of pure white color and goats of pure black color remain. All in that flock which should bear different colors were to become the hire of Jacob; and as in the ordinary course of nature, anything of the kind expected by Jacob was scarcely to be anticipated, Laban agrees to his demand, selfishly rejoicing over what he supposes the folly of his nephew. And yet Laban comes off worst in a compact which apparently seemed so very advantageous to him. K. The whole proceeding is that of one cunning man against another. Laban does not leave the matter in Jacob's hands, as proposed (ver. 32), but takes it into his own, and intrusts that part of the flock which is Jacob's hire to his (Laban's) sons, putting them at a distance from his own flock, which remains with Jacob, and keeping them studiously separate, to prevent the result which nevertheless Jacob's superior cunning brought about in the end. Aif.—In effecting his purpose at least, he did not use any unlawful means. We are to judge this history as many others in the Old Testament, in which, though God does not counsel or sanction the acts, He still allows them to be successful, for the sake of carrying out His designs in relation to His kingdom. Geri. 37-43. Darwin himself could scarcely have devised a more scientifically complete experiment on the "variation of animals under domestication" than that which Jacob conducted among the flocks of Laban. The setting of the "pillar rods" in the "watering troughs," and that by selection before the stronger cattle and at "breeding time," shows, if anything could show, an acquaintance with the modifiability of life-processes through the intelligent use of exterior agencies. Thomas.—37-40. His first device is to place party-colored rods before the eyes of the cattle at the rutting season, that they might drop lambs and kids varied with speckles, patches, or streaks of white. He had learned from experience that there is a congruence between the colors of the objects contemplated by the dams at that season and those of their young. At all events they bare many straked, speckled, and spotted lambs and kids. He now separated the lambs, and set the faces of the flock toward the young of the rare colors, doubtless to affect them in the same way as the piled rods. Put his own folds by themselves. These are the party-colored cattle that from time to time appeared in the flock of Laban. 41, 42. In order to secure the stronger cattle, Jacob added the second device of employing the party-colored rods only when the strong cattle conceived. The sheep in the East lamb twice a year, and it is supposed that the lambs dropped in autumn are stronger than those dropped in the spring. On this supposition Jacob used his artifice in the spring, and not in the autumn. It is probable, however, that he made his experiments on the healthy and vigorous cattle, without reference to the season of the year. 43. The result is here stated. The man brake forth exceedingly, became rapidly rich. M.—Jacob's ultimate advancement over Laban comes out with greater prominence in the ensuing chapter; the present notices his amazing prosperity. "The man increased exceedingly;" and, in spite of Laban's craft and avarice combined, eventually eclipsed him in the possession of flocks and herds. Whitelaw. 29 : 1 THEN Jacob went on his journey, and came to the land of the children of the east. And 2 he looked, and behold a well in the field, and, lo, three flocks of sheep lying there by it; for out of that well they watered the flocks : and the stone upon the well's mouth was great. 3 And thither were all the flocks gathered : and they rolled the stone from the well's mouth, 4 and watered the sheep, and put the stone again upon the well's mouth in its place. And Jacob said unto them, My brethren, whence be ye? And they said, Of Haran are we. 5 And he said unto them, Know ye Laban the son of Nahor? And they said, We know him, 6 And he said unto them, Is it well with him? And they said, It is well : and, behold, 7 Rachel his daughter cometh with the sheep. And he said, Lo, it is yet high day, neither is it time that the cattle should be gathered together : water ye the sheep, and go and feed 8 them. And they said, We cannot, until all the flocks be gathered together, and they roll 9 the stone from the well's mouth ; then we water the sheep. While he yet spake with 10 them, Rachel came with her father's sheep ; for she kept them. And it came to pass, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well's 11 mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother. And Jacob kissed Rachel, 12 and lifted up his voice, and wept. And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's brother, 13 and that he was Rebekah's son : and she ran and told her father. And it came to pass, when Laban heard the tidings of Jacob his sister's son, that he ran to meet him, and em- braced him, and kissed him, and brought him to his house. And he told Laban all these 14 things. And Laban said to him, Surely thou art my bone and my flesh. And he abode 15 with him the space of a month. And Laban said unto Jacob, Because thou art my brother, 16 shouldest thou therefore serve me for nought ? tell me, what shall thy wages be? And Laban had two daughters : the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger 17 was Rachel. And Leah's eyes were tender ; but Rachel was beautiful and well favored. 18 And Jacob loved Rachel ; and he said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy younger 19 daughter. And Laban said, It is better that I give her to thee, than that I should give her 20 to another man : abide with me. And Jacob served seven years for Rachel ; and they 21 seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her. And Jacob said unto Laban, 22 Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in unto her. And Laban gath- 23 ered together all the men of the place, and made a feast. And it came to pass in the even- ing, that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to him ; and he went in unto her. 24 And Laban gave Zilpah his handmaid unto his daughter Leah for an handmaid. And it 25 came to pass in the morning that, behold, it was Leah : and he said to Laban, What is this thou hast done unto me ? did not I serve with thee for Rachel ? wherefore then hast 26 thou beguiled me? And Laban said, It is not so done in our place, to give the younger 27 before the firstborn. Fulfil the week of this one, and we will give thee the other also for 28 the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years. And Jacob did so, and 29 fulfilled her week : and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife. And Laban gave to 30 Rachel his daughter Bilhah his handmaid to be her handmaid. And he went in also unto Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet seven other years. 31 And the LORD saw that Leah was hated, and he opened her womb : but Rachel was bar- 32 ren. And Leah conceived, and bare a son, and she called his name Reuben : for she said, 33 Because the LORD hath looked upon my affliction ; for now my husband will love me. And she conceived again, and bare a son ; and said, Because the LORD hath heard that I am 34 hated, he hath therefore given me this son also : and she called his name Simeon. And she conceived again, and bare a son ; and said, Now this time will my husband be joined 35 unto me, because I have borne him three sons : therefore was his name called Levi. And she conceived again, and bare a son : and she said, This time will I praise the LORD : therefore she called his name Judah ; and she left bearing. 30 : 1 And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister ; and 2 she said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die. And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel : and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit 3 of the womb ? And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her ; that she may bear 4 upon my knees, and I also may obtain children by her. And she gave him Bilhah her 5 handmaid to wife : and Jacob went in unto her. And Bilhah conceived, and bare Jacob a 6 son. And Rachel said, God hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath 7 given me a son : therefore called she his name Dan. And Bilhah Rachel's handmaid con- 8 ceived again, and bare Jacob a second son. And Rachel said, With mighty wrestlings have 9 I wrestled with my sister, and have prevailed : and she called his name Naphtali. When Leah saw that she had left bearing, she took Zilpah her handmaid, and gave her to Jacob 10 to wife. And Zilpah Leah's handmaid bare Jacob a son. And Leah said, Fortunate ! and 11 she called his name Gad. And Zilpah Leah's handmaid bare Jacob a second son. And 12 Leah said, Happy am I ! for the daughters will call me happy : and she called his name 13 Asher. And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the 14 field, and brought them unto his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, Give me, I 15 pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes. And she said unto her, Is it a small matter that thou hast taken away my husband ? and wouldest thou take away my son's mandrakes also ? 16 And Rachel said, Therefore he shall lie with thee to-night for thy son's mandrakes. And Jacob came from the field in the evening, and Leah went out to meet him, and said, Thou must come in unto me ; for I have surely hired thee with my son's mandrakes. And he 17 lay with her that night. And God hearkened unto Leah, and she conceived, and bare 18 Jacob a fifth son. And Leah said, God hath given me my hire, because I gave my hand- 19 maid to my husband : and she called his name Issachar. And Leah conceived again, and 20 bare a sixth son to Jacob. And Leah said, God hath endowed me with a good dowry ; now will my husband dwell with me, because I have borne him six sons : and she called 21 his name Zebulun. And afterward she bare a daughter, and called her name Dinah. 22 And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb. And 23 she conceived, and bare a son : and said, God hath taken away my reproach : and she 24 called his name Joseph, saying, The LORD add to me another son. 25 And it came to pass, when Rachel had borne Joseph, that Jacob said unto Laban, Send 26 me away, that I may go unto mine own place, and to my country. Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served thee, and let me go : for thou knowest my service 27 wherewith I have served thee. And Laban said unto him, If now I have found favor in 28 thine eyes, turey : for I have divined that the LORD hath blessed me for thy sake. And he 29 said, Appoint me thy wages, and I will give it. And he said unto him, Thou knowest 30 how I have served thee, and how thy cattle hath fared with me. For it was little which thou hadst before I came, and it hath increased unto a multitude ; and the LORD hath blessed thee whithersoever I turned : and now when shall I provide for mine own house 31 also ? And he said, What shall I give thee ? And Jacob said, Thou shalt not give me 32 aught : if thou wilt do this thing for me, I will again feed thy flock and keep it. I will pass through all thy flock to-day, removing from thence every speckled and spotted one, and every black one among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats : 33 and of such shall be my hire. So shall my righteousness answer for me hereafter, when thou shalt come concerning my hire that is before thee : every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and black among the sheep, that if found with me shall be 34 counted stolen. And Laban said, Behold, I would it might be according to thy word. 35 And he removed that day the he-goats that were ring-traked and spotted, and all the she- goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white in it, and all the black ones 36 among the sheep, and gave them into the hand of his sons ; and he set three days' journey 37 betwixt himself and Jacob : and Jacob fed the rest of Laban's flocks. And Jacob took him rods of fresh poplar, and of the almond and of the plane tree ; and peeled white strakes in 38 them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had peeled over against the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs where the flocks 39 came to drink; and they conceived when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived 40 before the rods, and the flocks brought forth ringstraked, speckled, and spotted. And Jacob separated the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the ringstraked and all the black in the flock of Laban; and he put his own droves apart, and put them not unto 41 Laban's flock. And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger of the flock did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the flock in the gutters, that they might con- 42 ceive among the rods; but when the flock were feeble, he put them not in: so the feebler 43 were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's. And the man increased exceedingly, and had large flocks, and maidservants and menservants, and camels and asses. 2-10. Wells are still the spots where the youth and girls of Bedouin life congregate, and at the wells alone is Oriental courtship carried on to this day. The Syrian girl, especially if a Druse or a Christian, unlike the secluded daughter of the towns, is frequently intrusted with the care of her father's flock. The well, the most precious of possessions, is carefully closed with a heavy slab until all those whose flocks are entitled to share its water have gathered. The time is noon. The first comers gather and report the gossip of the tribe. The story of Jacob and Rachel is, in its most minute details, a transcript of the Arab life of to-day. H. B. T. There is a remarkable analogy in the two arrivals of Jacob and Abraham's servant at Haran—for not only did they come to the same city, but probably to the same well, where the same scene of pastoral and ancient simplicity is acted over again. The interview with Rachel is quite a counterpart to that with Rebekah; and the emotions of the two strangers are the same and alike natural—those of the elder, Abraham's servant, being of a graver and more solemn character than those of Jacob, whose sensibilities were more vivid and tender. There was a providence in both; and we recognize in them the similar dealings of God with the patriarchs of two generations. T. C. Robinson informs us, "Over most of the cisterns is laid a broad and thick flat stone, with a round hole cut in the middle, forming the mouth of the cistern. This hole we found in many cases covered with a heavy stone, which it would require two or three men to roll away." The established regulation of the well demanded that the stone should not be rolled away until all the flocks had been brought together. But when Jacob learned that the approaching shepherdess was Laban's daughter, he oversteps this arrangement, and, in the overflowing joy of his heart, he offers his services, and rolls away the stone. K. 11. The unmarried daughters of the nomad Arabs to this day keep the flocks. The meeting is in the highest degree touching and natural. The forlorn man driven from his father's house by peril of his life, was at once met, not only with his own flesh and blood, but with her who in a moment becomes to him the centre of his new and recovered life. The history is drawn from the very deepest wells of human emotion. His service done, and his impassioned manner, justify his taking the privilege of a near relative, and all doubt on this is removed by his own avowal. Observe the continual and studied repetition, "the daughter of Laban his mother's brother,"—"the flock of Laban his mother's brother,"—"her father's brother,"—"Rebekah's son,"—"Jacob his sister's son." The joy of meeting is imparted to her whom he met: she runs and tells her father. And he again, in his turn, welcomes the wayfarer with the same affectionate ardor. Alf. There was much to awaken strong emotion—the damsel was the daughter of "his mother's brother;" the sheep were "the sheep of his mother's brother." It is not without purpose that his mother is thus presented to us. It appraises us that his mother was present to Jacob's mind. He pictured to himself, that just as that maiden appeared there before him, so, in that very place, had his mother appeared before Abraham's servant many years before—and that now he was among the scenes of her youth, of which she had often spoke to him. We can therefore well understand how, when he kissed his fair cousin and told her who he was, "he lifted up his voice and wept." This is a fine touch of nature. We begin to feel that there is truth in this man, of whom we have not yet seen much that is good. Our hearts begin to go with him. His future career begins to interest us. Kit. 19. Had Laban really possessed the generosity which his words seem to express, he would have given Jacob the object of his choice without compelling him to wait seven years for her. Though it was proper for Jacob to make the offer he did, it was mean and sordid for Laban to accept it. But it is evident that his own private interest was all that he studied. In his sister Rebekah's marriage there were presents of gold and silver, and costly raiment—things which wrought much on his mind. But here were none of these moving inducements. Here was a poor man who could only talk of promised blessings; but upon these he set no value. He was governed by sight, and not by faith; and seeing that Abraham's descendants were partial to his family, he resolved to make his market of it. "Indeed he sold her to him for some years' service. This was Laban or Nabal, choose you which. Their names were not more like than their natures." (Trapp.)—God makes use elsewhere of the circumstance of this servitude of Jacob to keep up a spirit of humility, as well as a memory of their ancestry, among the children of Israel. It was a part of the confession required to be made by every Israelite when he presented his basket of first ripe fruits before the Lord, "A Syrian ready to perish was my father," alluding to Jacob's poverty and distress when he first came, at this time, into Syria. Again, when the prophet Hosea (12:12) reproves the people for their luxury and pride and haughtiness, he reminds them that "Jacob fled into the country of Syria, and Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he kept sheep." It would, no doubt, tend to abate the loftiness of spirit of many of the wealthy and the great of this world, if they would look back upon the humble and perhaps servile condition of the founders of their families. Bush. 20. And Jacob served—hard service in keeping sheep. Seven years for Rachel. The purity and intensity of Jacob's affection was declared not alone by the proposal of a seven years' term of servitude,—a long period of waiting for a man of fifty-seven, if not seventy-seven, years of age,—but also by the spirit in which he served his avaricious relative. Many as the days were that required to intervene before he obtained possession of his bride, they were rendered happy by the sweet society of Rachel. And they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her. "Words breathing the purest tenderness, and expressing more emphatically than the flowery hyperboles of romantic phraseology the deep attachment of an affectionate heart" (Kalisch); words too which show the lofty appreciation Jacob had of the personal worth of his future bride. T. W.—This is a step in Jacob's training in the fulfilment of God's promise at Bethel. It shows a new feature in his character. We see not the man of cunning devices, but one full of pure, self sacrificing love. Fourteen years of service willingly given to purchase, according to Eastern custom, his bride. Montgomery. 23-25. This imposition is the Nemesis that overtakes Jacob, and must have reminded him of the similar wrong of which himself had been guilty. As instead of the beloved son he had brought to Isaac him whom he had despised and neglected, so Laban now substitutes the despised Leah for his beloved Rachel. But as then Isaac had rightly blessed the son whom he had not loved, so also was Jacob's wife, though not beloved, yet destined for him by God. For it was Leah and not Rachel who became the mother of that son who afterward inherited the most precious part in the promise. K.—The conduct of Laban is perfectly intelligible as the outcome of his sordid avarice; but it is difficult to understand how Leah could acquiesce in a proposal so base as to wrong her sister by marrying one who neither sought nor loved her. She must herself have been attached to Jacob; and it is probable that Laban had explained to her his plan for bringing about a double wedding. Whitelaw. He who, by subtility and falsehood, stole away the blessing intended for his brother, is punished for his deceit, by finding a Leah where he expected a Rachel. He who employed undue advantage to arrive at the right of the firstborn, has undue advantage taken of him in having the firstborn put in the place of the younger. He who could practise upon a father's blindness, though to obtain a laudable end, is, in his turn, practised upon by a father, employing the cover of the night to accomplish a very unwarrantable purpose. Hunter.—In such a way God often deals with men, causing them to reap the bitter fruits of sin, even when they have lamented and forsaken it. "When thou shalt make an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee." Bush.—Jacob was paid in his own coin. He had cheated his own father when he pretended to be Esau, and now his father-in-law cheated him. Herein, how unrighteous soever Laban was, the Lord was righteous. Even the righteous, if they take a false step, are sometimes thus recompensed in the earth. Many that are not, like Jacob, disappointed in the person, soon find themselves, as much to their grief, disappointed in the character. H.—He, the younger, had taken the place of the elder to gain the father's blessing. In this case the imposture is reversed, and practised upon himself. He did not recognize Leah, as his father did not recognize him. Here it was devised by a father, there it was a mother's work. Moreover it was part of the divine purpose that Leah should be his wife, and the intricacies of human cunning are made to subserve the plans of the Most High. Leah became the progenitor of Him, the promised, who was to prove the blessing of the nations. C. G. B. 26-30. Laban shielded himself behind the pretence of a national custom, not to give away a younger before a firstborn sister. But he readily proposed to give to Jacob Rachel also, in return for other seven years of service. Jacob consented, and the second union was celebrated immediately upon the close of Leah's marriage festivities. It were an entire mistake to infer from the silence of Scripture that this double marriage of Jacob received Divine approbation. As always, Scripture states facts, but makes no comment. That sufficiently appears from the life-long sorrow, disgrace, and trials which, in the retributive providence of God, followed as the consequence of this double union. A. E.—Laban is at least not so unjust as to require Jacob to discharge his second servitude before the marriage with Rachel. Immediately after the marriage-week is past, he gives to Jacob Rachel as his wife. The ceremony lasted seven days, from the symbolical idea attaching to the number seven, as being that of the covenant. Thus, instead of one, Jacob had two wives, and these sisters. K.—Jacob did not design it, but to have kept as true to Rachel as his father had done to Rebekah; he that had lived without a wife to the 84th year of his age, could then have been very well content with one: but Laban, to dispose of his two daughters without portions, and to get seven years' service more out of Jacob, thus imposes upon him, and draws him into such a strait by his fraud. H. 27. Fulfil her week.** The marriage feast lasted seven days; it would not, therefore, have been proper to break off the solemnities to which the men of the place had been invited (ver. 22), and probably Laban wished to keep his fraud from the public eye; therefore he informs Jacob, that if he will fulfil the marriage week for Leah, he will give him Rachel at the end of it, on condition of his serving seven other years. To this the necessity of the case caused Jacob to agree; and thus Laban had fourteen years' service instead of seven; for it is not likely that Jacob would have served even seven days for Leah, as his affection was wholly set on Rachel, the wife of his own choice. By this stratagem Laban gained a settlement for both his daughters. Jacob had before practised deceit, and is now deceived; and Laban, the instrument of it, was afterward deceived himself. A. C. 31. Rachel, whom he loved, is barren: Leah, who was despised, is fruitful: how wisely God weighs out to us our favors and crosses in an equal balance; so tempering our sorrows that they may not oppress, and our joys that they may not transport us! each one hath some matter of envy to others, and of grief to himself. Leah envies Rachel's beauty and love; Rachel envies Leah's fruitfulness; yet Leah would not be barren, nor Rachel blear-eyed. Bp. II.— 32-35. Leah bore in succession four sons, whom she significantly named Reuben ("behold! a son"), saying, "Surely Jehovah hath looked upon my affliction;" Simeon ("hearing"), "Because Jehovah hath heard that I was hated;" Levi ("cleaving," or "joined"), in the hope "Now this time will my husband cleave to me;" and Judah ("praised," viz., be Jehovah), since she said: "Now will I praise Jehovah." It deserves special notice, that in the birth of at least three of these sons, Leah not only recognized God, but specially acknowledged Him as Jehovah, the covenant-God. A. E. The Lord, who had decreed temporary barrenness for Rachel the fair, opened the womb of Leah the despised; neither to compensate Leah for the loss of Jacob's love, nor to punish Jacob for his sinful partiality; but to manifest his power, to show that children are the heritage of the Lord, to vindicate his sovereignty, to attest that God giveth families to whomsoever he will, and to suggest that the line of promise was designed to be not the fruit of nature, but the gift of grace. T. W. Jacob served doubly for Rachel; but his service was amply paid afterward, although for a time the veil of disappointment hid the purpose of God. While Leah, as the mother of Judah, was the true ancestress of Messiah, still it was in Joseph, the son of Rachel, that Jacob's heart was satisfied, and that the history of the kingdom of God was most manifestly carried on and its glory set forth. As in the case of Sarah and Rebekah, so in that of Rachel, the birth of the representative seed is connected with special bestowments of grace. Roberts. 30: 1. The eager desire for offspring among the Hebrew women is easily accounted for, if we bear in mind that the distinguishing blessing of Abraham was a numerous posterity, and in particular one illustrious person in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed. But Rachel's language was that of a sinful impatience, for which it would seem, that in the righteous providence of God she afterward paid dear, as she died in giving birth to Benjamin (ch. 37: 16-19). Bush.—It is remarkable that as soon as Rachel had children (literally, sons) she did die. It is impossible to read this and not to form an unfavorable estimate of Rachel. There is at the same time an impetuosity and an ungodliness in her speech to her husband. Af. 2. It was a very grave and pious reply which Jacob gave to Rachel's peevish demand: Am I in God's stead? The Chaldee paraphrases it well, D est thou ask sons of me? Oughtest thou not to ask from before the Lord? The Arabic reads it, "Am I above God; can I give thee that which God denies thee?" This was said like a plain man. He acknowledges the hand of God in the affliction which he was a sharer with her in. He hath withheld the fruit of the womb. Note, Whatever we want, it is God that withholds it, a sovereign Lord, most wise, holy, and just, that may do what he will with his own, and is debtor to no man; that never did, nor ever can do, any wrong to any of his creatures. The keys of the clouds, of the heart, of the grave, and of the womb, are four keys which God has in his hand, and which (the Rabbins say) he in trusts neither with angel nor seraphim. H. 3-9. It is remarkable how much against his will, and against his eventual peace, Jacob, who would have been content and happy with Rachel only, was absolutely driven, by the force of circumstances, to take not only two wives, but four. Having got the wrong wife in the first instance, he could only obtain the right one, by taking her as an addition to the first. Then, as the beloved one proved childless, he could not refuse her importunities to take her handmaid Bilhah, as Abraham had taken Hagar, that she might, through her, obtain children, and be put on equality with her fruitful sister and rival, Leah. Having done this, and the plan having produced the desired results, he could not, in justice, refuse Leah the same advantage, and was obliged to take her handmaid, Zilpah, in like manner. Thus Jacob became encumbered with four wives at once, all through his first disappointment, by the culpable contrivance of Laban. With respect to these handmaids, it should be observed, that they were slaves, whom Laban had presented to his daughters, as their own peculiar property at the time of their marriage, and who were entirely at their disposal, and free from the control of the husband. Such handmaidens had before been given to Rebekah, and had accompanied her to the land of Canaan. We meet with these dotal servants frequently in the ancient and modern East, and even among the classical ancients. Their condition, indeed, among the Greeks and Romans, seems to have been in all rerespects similar to that in which it here appears. Kit. 10-24. In the rivalry here disclosed, both parties were competitors for Jacob's good will; and both hoped for success, as the worldly often do in seeking their selfish ends, from the divine blessing on their own devices. God overrules all for ultimate good, and through such instruments as these works out his wise and beneficent ends; and herein are seen the wisdom and the mystery of his providence. In this disclosure of the interior life of Jacob's household we have an instructive picture of the evils of polygamy, in its legitimate results as here described. The peace of the domestic fireside is destroyed by conflicting rival interests. The paternal home, the sanctuary where God intended that all divine influences should centre and harmonize, in the development and growth of the human spirit into the likeness of God, is made the scene of discord and strife. It is no wonder, that from such a nursery proceeded such characters as are some of those described in the subsequent family history of Jacob. T. J. C. 14-24. On the part both of Rachel and Leah it was a miserable compact; and a pitiable spectacle it surely was, that of two rival wives contracting with one another about their husband's society. Rachel disposes of Jacob for a night in consideration of a handful of mandrakes, and Leah counts herself entitled to Jacob's favors as a boon which she had purchased with Reuben's yellow apples. Not to speak of the humiliation in all this to Jacob, and the continual misery to which he must have been subjected between his ardent sister-wives, think of the wretchedness it must have entailed upon the women themselves, and the disgrace it must have brought into the rival homes. A more powerful condemnation of polygamy it will be difficult to find, or a more signal illustration of the retribution which sooner or later follows on the heels of transgression. T. W. There was much amiss in the contest and competition between these two sisters, yet God brought good out of this evil; for the time being now at hand when the seed of Abraham must begin to increase and multiply, thus Jacob's family was replenished with twelve sons, heads of the thousands of Israel, from whom the celebrated twelve tribes descended, and were named. H.—The narrative is meant to show that the mercy of God, and not natural means, bestows children upon these women. Leah does not refuse to her sister the mandragora of her son. Yet Leah conceives, and Rachel remains barren, and this because the former had called upon the Lord, and He had heard her (verse 17). Again, it is when God remembers Rachel (verse 22), that she conceives. To enforce this truth, the Holy Ghost here brings before us a picture of human life, without keeping anything back. Bauum. That her family might yet further be built up, is the blessing Leah desires and devoutly prays for, as is intimated, where God hearkened unto Leah. Bishop Patrick well suggests here, that the true reason of this contest between Jacob's wives and their giving their maids to be his wives, was the earnest desire they had to fulfil the promise made to Abraham (and now lately renewed to Jacob), that his seed should be as the stars of heaven for multitude, and that in one Seed of his, the Messiah, all the nations of the earth should be blessed. And he thinks it had been below the dignity of this sacred history, to take such particular notice of these things, if there had not been some such great consideration in them. H.—This view is strongly confirmed by the almost uniform reference of the sisters to God's dealing with them in connection with the successive births. B. 21. It is not usual to enumerate female descendants. Dinah's name is mentioned for the sake of the history in ch. 34. Jacob had more daughters: compare ch. 37:35 with 46:7. Alf. 22. And God hearkened to her. It appears that Rachel sought God by prayer, and that he heard her, so that her prayer and faith obtained what her impatience and unbelief had prevented. A. C.—23, 24.** The whole narrative is full of God's justice and of man's weakness and unworthiness. The plain and hated wife-sister is blessed with children; the husband's heart is won toward her; the beautiful and beloved one is led, through crosses and failings, and her husband's anger, to a humbler mind, God in time compensating her for her affliction. Alf. The whole account with all its lights and shades is another proof of the impartiality of the divine historian, and a strong evidence of the authenticity of the Pentateuch. Neither the spirit of deceit nor the partiality of friendship could ever pen such an account. A. C. 25,26. Jacob was desirous to go to Canaan, though he had a great family to take with him, and no provision yet made for them. He had got wives and children with Laban, but nothing else; yet he does not solicit Laban to give him either a portion with his wives, or the maintenance of some of his children. No, all his request is, Give me my wives and my children, and send me away. H.—27. But when he intiintimated this wish to his father-in-law, Laban was unwilling to part with one by whom he had so largely profited. With a characteristic confusion of heathen ideas with a dim knowledge of the being of Jehovah, Laban said to Jacob (we here translate literally): "If I have found grace in thy sight (i.e. tarry), for I have divined (ascertained by magic), and Jehovah hath blessed me for thy sake." The same attempt to place Jehovah as the God of Abraham by the side of the god of Nahor—not denying, indeed, the existence of Jehovah, but that he was the only true and living God—occurs again later when Laban made a covenant with Jacob. It also frequently recurs in the later history of Israel. Both strange nations and Israel itself, when in a state of apostasy, did not deny that Jehovah was God, but they tried to place Him on a level with other and false deities. A. E. #### JACOB'S SCHEME OF INCREASE (verses 25-43). Laban, who had experienced how remarkably the blessing of God had rested upon all that his son-in-law had done, endeavors by all means in his power to retain his services. With selfish readiness he agrees to the demand made by Jacob, that all the young of the flock which shall be speckled or spotted were to become his hire. But here also the cunning and calculation, which formed an element in Jacob's natural character, appear as strikingly as formerly in his relation to Esau. As then, so now, the purposes of God coincide with those of Jacob, notwithstanding the means by which he seeks to attain his ends. Jacob meets cunning with cunning, but Jehovah allows success to follow his cunning. K. Jacob's stratagem against Laban. This was the employment of a triple artifice: (1) by means of piled rods to produce party-colored animals in Laban's flock; (2) on securing these, so to use them as to increase their number; and (3) to direct the animals in such a fashion that the stronger and healthier portion of the flock should be his, and the feebler Laban's. That Jacob's stratagem did not fail is apparent; but how far it was due to the particular expedient employed cannot be so easily determined. The extraordinary rapidity with which brown and speckled animals were produced appears to point to the intervention of a special providence in Jacob's behalf. That in what Jacob did there was nothing fraudulent may be inferred from the fact that he acted under the Divine approval (ch. 31:12), and made use of nothing but the superior knowledge of the habits of animals which he had acquired through his long experience in keeping sheep. T. W.—Thus it happened that however frequently Laban changed the conditions of agreement, eventually the advantage is always on the side of Jacob, and the flocks which by agreement became his increased very rapidly. K. Rich in nothing but wives and children, he now desired to return to his father's house, accounting his charge his wealth. But God meant him yet more good. Laban sees that both his family and his flocks were well increased by Jacob's service. Not his love therefore but his gain makes him loath to part. Even Laban's covetousness is made by God the means to enrich Jacob. Behold, his strait master entreats him to that recompense which made his nephew mighty and himself envious: God, considering his hard service, paid him wages out of Laban's folds. In the very shapes and colors of brute creatures there is a divine hand, which disposeth them to his own ends. Small and unlikely means shall prevail, where God intends an effect. Little peeled sticks of hazel or poplar laid in the troughs shall enrich Jacob with an increase of his spotted flocks; Laban's sons might have tried the same means and failed: God would have Laban know, that he put a difference betwixt Jacob and him; that as for fourteen years he had multiplied Jacob's charge of cattle to Laban, so now for the last six years he would multiply Laban's flock to Jacob: and if Laban had the more, yet the better were Jacob's. Bp. II. 28-34. In our estimate of Jacob's conduct, we must remember what passed in these verses. It was with the distinct view of "providing for his own house also" that Jacob made this compact. Laban might have known, and doubtless did know, that it would be hard driven; and a man with flocks and herds surely could not be ignorant of the stratagem which Jacob meant to, and did, employ. In fact, his very precaution in ver. 36 shows that he was aware of the influence of the spotted cattle. Aif. 31-33. Thou shalt not give me anything. This shows that Jacob had no stock from Laban to begin with, "I will pass through all thy flock to-day" with thee. "Remove thou thence every speckled and spotted sheep, and every brown sheep among the lambs, and the spotted and speckled among the goats." These were the rare colors, as in the East the sheep are usually white, and the goats black or dark brown. And such shall be my hire. Such as these uncommon party-colored cattle, when they shall appear among the flock already cleared of them; and not those of this description that are now removed. For in this case Laban would have given Jacob something; whereas Jacob was resolved to be entirely dependent on the divine providence for his hire. And my righteousness will answer for me. The color will determine at once whose the animal is. 31-36.** Laban willingly consents to so favorable a proposal, removes the party-colored animals from the flock, gives them into the hands of his sons, and puts an interval of three days' journey between them and the pure stock which remains in Jacob's hands. Jacob is now to begin with nothing, and have for his hire any party-colored lambs or kids that appear in those flocks, from which every specimen of this rare class has been carefully removed. M.—From henceforth, only what out of the white flocks were born ring-straked should be Jacob's property. Laban had acted here with the greatest severity and exactness, and he had no right to complain if he were dealt with according to the strict letter of the law. Geri. The agreement between Jacob and Laban depends upon the fact that, in the East, the sheep are commonly white and the goats black, while speckled and spotted animals are rarely seen. All spotted and dark sheep, and all speckled goats, are removed from the flock intrusted to Jacob, and led over to the flocks intrusted to the sons of Laban, so that only sheep of pure white color and goats of pure black color remain. All in that flock which should bear different colors were to become the hire of Jacob; and as in the ordinary course of nature, anything of the kind expected by Jacob was scarcely to be anticipated, Laban agrees to his demand, selfishly rejoicing over what he supposes the folly of his nephew. And yet Laban comes off worst in a compact which apparently seemed so very advantageous to him. K. The whole proceeding is that of one cunning man against another. Laban does not leave the matter in Jacob's hands, as proposed (ver. 32), but takes it into his own, and intrusts that part of the flock which is Jacob's hire to his (Laban's) sons, putting them at a distance from his own flock, which remains with Jacob, and keeping them studiously separate, to prevent the result which nevertheless Jacob's superior cunning brought about in the end. Aif.—In effecting his purpose at least, he did not use any unlawful means. We are to judge this history as many others in the Old Testament, in which, though God does not counsel or sanction the acts, He still allows them to be successful, for the sake of carrying out His designs in relation to His kingdom. Geri. 37-43. Darwin himself could scarcely have devised a more scientifically complete experiment on the "variation of animals under domestication" than that which Jacob conducted among the flocks of Laban. The setting of the "pillar rods" in the "watering troughs," and that by selection before the stronger cattle and at "breeding time," shows, if anything could show, an acquaintance with the modifiability of life-processes through the intelligent use of exterior agencies. Thomas.—37-40. His first device is to place party-colored rods before the eyes of the cattle at the rutting season, that they might drop lambs and kids varied with speckles, patches, or streaks of white. He had learned from experience that there is a congruence between the colors of the objects contemplated by the dams at that season and those of their young. At all events they bare many straked, speckled, and spotted lambs and kids. He now separated the lambs, and set the faces of the flock toward the young of the rare colors, doubtless to affect them in the same way as the piled rods. Put his own folds by themselves. These are the party-colored cattle that from time to time appeared in the flock of Laban. 41, 42. In order to secure the stronger cattle, Jacob added the second device of employing the party-colored rods only when the strong cattle conceived. The sheep in the East lamb twice a year, and it is supposed that the lambs dropped in autumn are stronger than those dropped in the spring. On this supposition Jacob used his artifice in the spring, and not in the autumn. It is probable, however, that he made his experiments on the healthy and vigorous cattle, without reference to the season of the year. 43. The result is here stated. The man brake forth exceedingly, became rapidly rich. M.—Jacob's ultimate advancement over Laban comes out with greater prominence in the ensuing chapter; the present notices his amazing prosperity. "The man increased exceedingly;" and, in spite of Laban's craft and avarice combined, eventually eclipsed him in the possession of flocks and herds. Whitelaw. 1. And he heard the words of Laban's sons, saying, Jacob hath taken away all that was our father's; and of that which was our father's hath he gotten all this glory. And Jacob be- 3 held the countenance of Laban, and, behold, it was not toward him as beforetime. And the Lobo said unto Jacob, Return unto the land of thy fathers, and to thy kindred; and I will be 4 with thee. And Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to the field unto his flock, and said 5 unto them, I see your father's countenance, that it is not toward me as beforetime; but the 6 God of my father hath been with me. And ye know that with all my power I have served 7 your father. And your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times; but God 8 suffered him not to hurt me. If he said thus, The speckled shall be thy wages; then all the flock bare speckled; and if he said thus, The ringstraked shall be thy wages; then bare all 9 the flock ringstraked. Thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father, and given them to 10 me. And it came to pass at the time that the flock conceived, that I lifted up mine eyes, and saw in a dream, and, behold, the he-goats which leaped upon the flock were ringstraked, 11 speckled, and grisled. And the angel of God said unto me in the dream, Jacob: and I said, 12 Here am I. And he said, Lift up now thine eyes, and see, all the he-goats which leap upon the flock are ringstraked, speckled, and grisled: for I have seen all that Laban deeth unto 13 thee. I am the God of Beth el, where thou anointedst a pillar, where thou vowedst a vow unto me: now arise, get thee out from this land, and return unto the land of thy nativity, 14 And Rachel and Leah answered and said unto him, Is there yet any portion or inheritance for 15 us in our father's house? Are we not counted of him strangers? for he hath sold us, and 16 hath also quite devoured our money. For all the riches which God hath taken away from our father, that is ours and our children's; now then, whatsoever God hath said unto thee, do, 17 Then Jacob rose up, and set his sons and his wives upon the camels; and he carried away 18 all his cattle, and all his substance which he had gathered, the cattle of his getting, which he 19 had gathered in Paddan-aram, for to go to Isaac his father unto the land of Canaan. Now Laban was gone to shear his sheep; and Rachel stole the teraphim that were her father's. 20 And Jacob stole away unawares to Laban the Syrian, in that he told him not that he fled. 21. So he fled with all that he had; and he rose up, and passed over the River, and set his face toward the mountain of Gilead. 22 And it was told Laban on the third day that Jacob was fled. And he took his brethren with him, and pursued after him seven days' journey; and he overtook him in the mountain of Gilead. And God came to Laban the Syrian in a dream of the night, and said unto him, Take heed to thyself that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad. And Laban came up with Jacob. Now Jacob had pitched his tent in the mountain; and Laban with his brethren pitched in the mountain of Gilead. And Laban said to Jacob, What hast thou done, that thou hast stolen away unawares to me, and carried away my daughters as captives of the sword? Wherefore didst thou flee secretly, and steal away from me; and didst not tell me, that I might have sent thee away with mirth and with songs, with tabret and with harp; and hast not suffered me to kiss my sons and my daughters? now hast thou done foolishly. It is in the power of my hand to do you huts: but the God of your father spake unto me yesternight, saying, Take heed to thyself that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad. And now, though thou wouldest needs be gone, because thou sore longest after thy father's house, yet wherefore hast thou stolen my gods? And Jacob answered and said to Laban, Because I was afraid: for I said, Lest thou shouldest take thy daughters from me by force. With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, he shall not live: before our brethren discern thou what is thine with me, and take it to thee. For Jacob knew not that Rachel had stolen them. And Laban went into Jacob's tent, and into Leah's tent, and into the tent of the two maidservants; but he found them not. And he went out of Leah's tent, and entered into Rachel's tent. Now Rachel had taken the teraphim, and put them in the camel's furniture, and sat upon them. And Laban felt about all the tent, but found them not. And she said to her father, Let not my lord be angry that I cannot rise up before thee; for the manner of women is upon me. And he searched, but found not the teraphim. And Jacob was wroth, and chode with Laban: and Jacob answered and said to Laban, What is my trespass? what is my sin, that thou hast hotly pursued after me? Whereas thou hast felt about all my stuff, what hast thou found of all thy household stuff? Set it here before my brethren and thy brethren, that they may judge betwixt us two. This twenty years have I been with thee; thy ewes and thy she-goats have not cast their young, and the rams of thy flocks have I not eaten. That which was torn of beasts I brought not unto thee; I bare the loss of it; of my hand didst thou require it, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. Thus I was; in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep fled from mine eyes. These twenty years have I been in thy house; I served thee fourteen years for thy two daughters, and six years for thy flock; and thou hast changed my wages ten times. Except the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the Fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely now hadst thou sent me away empty. God hath seen mine affliction and the labor of my hands, and rebuked thee yester night. And Laban answered and said unto Jacob, The daughters are my daughters, and the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks, and all that thou seest is mine; and what can I do this day unto these my daughters, or unto their children which they have borne? And now come, let us make a covenant, I and thou; and let it be for a witness between me and thee. And Jacob took a stone, and set it up for a pillar. And Jacob said unto his brethren, Gather stones; and they took stones, and made an heap; and they did eat there by the heap. And Laban called it Jegar-sahadutha: but Jacob called it Galeed. And Laban said, This heap is witness between me and thee this day. Therefore was the name of it called Galeed: and Mizpah, for he said, The LORD watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another. If thou shalt afflict my daughters, and if thou shalt take wives beside my daughters, no man is with us: see, God is witness betwixt me and thee. And Laban said to Jacob, Behold this heap, and behold the pillar, which I have set betwixt me and thee. This heap be witness, and the pillar be witness, that I will not pass over this heap to thee, and that thou shalt not pass over this heap and this pillar unto me, for harm. The God of Abraham, and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge betwixt us. And Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac. And Jacob offered a sacrifice in the mountain, and called his brethren to eat bread: and they did eat bread, and tarried all night in the mountain. And early in the morning Laban rose up, and kissed his sons and his daughters, and blessed them: and Laban departed, and returned unto his place. Jacob was now commanded in a vision by "the God of Bethel" to return to the land of his birth; and he fled secretly from Laban, who had not concealed his envy, to go back to his father Isaac, after twenty years spent in Laban's service—fourteen for his wives, and six for his cattle. Jacob, having passed the Euphrates, struck across the desert by the great fountain at Palmyra; then traversed the eastern part of the plain of Damascus and the plateau of Bashan, and entered Gilead, which is the range of mountains east of the Jordan, forming the frontier between Palestine and the Assyrian desert. Laban called his kindred to the pursuit, and overtook Jacob on the third day in Mount Gilead. P. S. Jacob was now ninety-six years of age. It has become manifest that he cannot obtain leave of Laban to return home. He must, therefore, either come off by the high hand, or by secret flight. Jacob has many reasons for preferring the latter course. 1, 2. His prosperity provokes the envy and slander of Laban's sons, and Laban himself becomes estranged. 3. The Lord now commands Jacob to return, and promises his presence to protect him. 4-13. Jacob opens his mind fully to Rachel and Leah. Rachel, we observe, is put first. Several new facts come out in his discourse to them. Ye know—Jacob's appeal to his wives on this point—that with all my might I served your father. He means, of course, to the extent of his engagement. During the last six years he was to provide for his own house, as the Lord permitted him, with the full knowledge and concurrence of Laban. Beyond this, which is a fair and acknowledged exception, he has been faithful in keeping the cattle of Laban. Your father deceived me, and changed my wages ten times; that is, as often as he could. God suffered him not to hurt me. Jacob left his hire to the providence of God. He thought himself bound at the same time to use all legitimate means for the attainment of the desired end. His expedients may have been perfectly legitimate in the circumstances, but they were evidently of no avail without the divine blessing. And they would become wholly ineffectual when his wages were changed. Hence he says, God took the cattle and gave them to me. 10-13. Jacob seems here to record two dreams, the former of which indicates the result by a symbolic representation, which ascribes it rather to the God of nature than to the man of art. The second dream makes allusion to the former as a process still going on up to the present time. This appears to be an encouragement to Jacob now to commit himself to the Lord on his way home. The angel of the Lord announces himself as the God of Bethel, and recalls to Jacob the pillar and the vow. The angel, then, is Jehovah manifesting himself to human apprehension. M. The dream first related (in v. 10) seems to have occurred near the commencement, if not before, of his final and successful arrangement with Laban. It may have suggested his devices, or have been suggested by them; or the same train of waking thoughts may have suggested both. The second dream is of higher significance, and occurred near the close of his connection with Laban; see the last sentence of v. 13. In relating this to his wives, to account to them for his successful competition with Laban, he says nothing of the means by which he himself sought to insure it. The dream implies no judgment on these means; and only reminds him that it was the divine favor that thwarted and punished the grasping and cruel avarice of Laban. Whatever judgment may be formed of Jacob's own conduct, the reader of the narrative will admit the justice of his complaint when he says (in v. 42): "Thou wouldst now have sent me away empty." T. J. C. Jacob's reasons for departing were, that God had commanded him to return; that he had been very badly treated by Laban, whom to the best of his power he had faithfully served; and that now the increase of wealth which God had given to him was viewed with jealous eyes by Laban and his family. 14-16. The wives' reasons lay, first, in their assent to Jacob's own reasons. But, beside this, they had special reasons of their own. They had clearly, they said, nothing to expect from their father, who treated them as strangers, belonging to Jacob rather than to himself. And, furthermore, by selling them for Jacob's services, he had appropriated all the advantages to himself; for if he had been paid for them in goods or money, custom would have required him to have employed some part of it in gifts to them; which, in the way he had proceeded, was avoided, whereby they were left without the separate means to which they were, by their rank in life, entitled. Kit. The whole speech of Jacob is inconsistent with the view that he had cheated and overreached Laban throughout. And vv. 7, 8 reveal to us another contribution to our judgment on this matter. Laban had done all he could to overreach on his side: he had frequently (ten times is used to signify very often) and capriciously changed the form of Jacob's hire; but all to no purpose: God defeated his schemes and turned them against himself. Alf.—These words contain a clear vindication of Jacob from the charge brought against him by Laban's sons (v. 1), of having despoiled their father of his wealth. In whatever form his wages were to be paid to him, God, and not he, had so ordered the course of things that it should turn to his advantage, and this he would gratefully acknowledge. Bush. 12. The providence of God had taken notice of the hardships that Laban had put upon him, and took this way to right him; for I have seen all that Laban doeth unto thee. There is more of equity in the distributions of Divine Providence than we are aware of, and by them the wronged are righted really though perhaps insensibly. 13. I am the God of Bethel. That was the place where the covenant was renewed with him. Worldly prosperity and success are doubly sweet and comfortable when we see them flowing not from common providence, but from covenant-love; to perform the mercy prom sed; when we have them from God as the God of Bethel, from those promises of the life which now is that belong to godliness. H.—For more than twenty years the voice of God has been silent; but now in the sky at Mesopotamia the light ariseth in darkness. That one declaration, “I am the God of Bethel,” awakens a series of beautiful memories and joyful expectations; and when the pilgrim’s staff is resumed, Jacob is at least assured he shall not return to the land of his fathers unaccompanied or unprotected! Is it marvel, amid all changes of times and circumstances, that the name “God of Bethel” has for ages been treasured in many a believer’s heart? This name, when well considered, has the same significance to us as that of Jehovah: it is a covenant designation, and makes us know the Almighty as the unchanging, faithful Guide of His people on their earthly pilgrimage. Van O. 14. The answer of his wives is the only loyal one they could make, and is again entirely against the idea of guilt on Jacob’s part. It is simply founded on the facts which have gone before in the history. Their father had sold them to Jacob: they were entirely severed from him, and he spared no pains to show them this; Jacob’s earnings, which were theirs also, their father was endeavoring to defraud them of. So that their consent is freely given to do that which God had commanded their husband. Af. 18,19. It was honestly done to take no more than his own with him, the cattle of his getting (v. 18). He took what Providence gave him and was content with that, and would not take the repair of his damages into his own hands. Yet Rachel was not so honest as her husband, she stole her father’s images (v. 19), and carried them away with her. H. The teraphim of her father. These images, which are mentioned through the whole history up to the Babylonish captivity, were a kind of household god, images in the likeness of men (so Michal put such an image in the bed, and pretended it was David, 1 Sam. 19: 13). From several passages we gather that they were consulted and gave oracles in some way, though we do not now know how. Gerl.—Teraphim were small images, kept as domestic idols or household gods. This was one of the practices of heathen superstition often met with in the Old Testament. Among the Hebrews, it was not so much a form of idolatry as a corrupting superstition engrafted on the true religion. Laban, in * 30, calls these images his gods; and in ch. 35: 4, “strange gods” are spoken of, in connection with another superstitious observance, as being in Jacob’s family after his return to his home in Palestine. It is not necessary to suppose that they were strictly objects of worship. They were held in superstitious veneration as dispensers of good fortune, and as a protection against evil influences. They were also consulted as oracles (Zech. 10: 2); properly, “the teraphim have spoken vanity.” T. J. C.—These were a sort of “family-idols,” figures of human shape, borrowed from the heathen world around him, which Laban probably used as a kind of oracle, to discover the future, or the fortunate issue of any undertaking. Such teraphim also appear from time to time in Israel, until, under Josiah, they were rooted out as “abominations.” C. G. B. 21-30. The story of his final flight to Canaan is perfect in its Oriental coloring. At the head of his flocks and herds; with his wives, children and slaves, he strikes away, across the Euphrates, at the utmost speed so cumbered a march allows, for Mount Gilead, the outpost of “his own country.” His flight remains unsuspected for three days, but, then, Laban, hearing of it, sets off on swift camels in pursuit; overtaking the fugitives on the seventh day, while they were still among the richly wooded and watered hills of Gilead, which mark off the fertile land from the desert, east of the Jordan. The five tents of Jacob and his wives had been pitched on the slope of the hills, apparently where they reach their highest elevation of 5000 feet, not far from the Jabbok, the camels and flocks lying around, and now those of Laban are set up on a neighboring hill, specially known as Mount Gilead. It is a moment of real danger to Jacob, for Laban’s kinsmen, as the men of his tribe with him are called, are much the stronger. He had given his daughters no inheritance, and had treated Jacob with the utmost duplicity and harshness, but with true Arab dissimulation he chides Jacob for having stolen away without giving him an opportunity of dismissing him and his wives with a parting feast, or even letting him give his daughters a farewell kiss. That he was thus placable, was due, we are told, to a dream he had had overnight, warning him to do Jacob no harm. But the fugitives had done him the terrible wrong of stealing his “gods,” and these must be given back. Geikie. Gilead, or Mount Gilead, signifies “rocky region,” and was a name given to the range of mountains extending from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, in contrast with the "Mishor," or plains and downs of Bashan. Southward, Gilead gradually blends with the highlands of Moab, while eastward there was no defined boundary, as it melts insensibly, first into plains, then into the great Syrian desert. From north to south its extent was about sixty miles. It is first mentioned here. H. B. T. 24. The very night before he came up with him, God interposed in the quarrel, rebuked Laban and sheltered Jacob, charging Laban not to speak unto him either good or bad, that is, to say nothing against his going on with his journey, for that it proceeded from the Lord. Laban, during his seven days' march, had been full of rage against Jacob, but God comes to him, and with one word ties his hands, though he does not turn his heart. The safety of good men is very much owing to the hold God has of the consciences of bad men, and the access he has to them. God sometimes appears wonderfully for the deliverance of his people, then when they are upon the very brink of ruin. H. 26-30. Throughout his address Laban means to insinuate that Jacob had no cause to leave him on account of anything he had done; that where there was so much secrecy, there must be something dishonorable; and that in pursuing him he was moved only by affection for his children. But his words are obviously full of hypocrisy. However he may talk about his regard to his children and grandchildren, that which lay nearest his heart was the substance which Jacob had taken with him, and which he no doubt meant in some way to recover. But he acts the part of thousands, who, when galled by an evil conscience, endeavor to ease themselves of its reproaches by transferring the blame from themselves to the persons they have wronged. He reproaches Jacob with a conduct which he well knew had resulted entirely from his own harshness and severity; and with the utmost self-complaisance talks of the liberal and generous things which he intended to have done, after the call and occasion are over, and when his generosity is in no danger of being put to the test. Bush.—It is remarkable that Laban, in his complaint, says not a word about the property; but having been prevented from the proceedings he contemplated, he makes the offence rest upon the unfriendly distrust evinced by this secret departure. He complains that his daughters had been carried away like captives taken with the sword. And again, he had not been suffered to kiss his daughters, before what was meant to be a final separation. The poor man is full of his daughters; for whom, according to their own account, he has no real regard at all. Kit. The entire scene is eminently rich in allusions to Oriental manners and customs. The behavior of Laban is true to life, and every expression is familiar to my ear "as household words." Laban says: The God of your father spake unto me yesternight, saying, Take thou heed that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad. Now we should think that Laban was uttering his own condemnation, and it appears strange that Jacob did not retort upon him by asking, Why, then, have you followed me? You have disobeyed the command of God, according to your own admission. Jacob, however, knew very well that such a plea would avail nothing. Laban believed that he fulfilled the intent of the divine command merely by refraining to injure Jacob, and so the latter understood it. The terms of the order were most comprehensive and stringent; but the real intention was to forbid violence, and this sort of construction must be applied to Oriental language in a thousand cases, or we shall push simple narratives into absurdities. W. M. Thompson. 32. Knew not. Jacob acted with perfect honesty toward Laban. Henceforth we perceive no further trace of his former craftiness. The dealings of God's providence had removed his old characteristics; and the genuine trust in God, which had from the first lain dormant in his heart, is now called forth. Gerl. 33. A saddle, so constructed as to be easy and comfortable for women on a journey, would be a convenient seat for their use in the tent, while halting for the night or for a few days' repose. Such are now in use in Eastern countries. T. J. C.—35. The stratagem succeeded to her wish, and Laban departed without suspicion. It seems natural to suppose that Rachel did believe that by the use of these teraphium Laban could find out their flight and the direction they took, and therefore she stole them, and having stolen them, she was afraid to acknowledge the theft, and probably might think that they would be of some use to herself. Therefore, for these two reasons, she brought them away. 36-42. And Jacob was wroth, and chode with Laban. The expostulation of Jacob with Laban, and their consequent agreement, are told in this place with great spirit and dignity. Jacob was conscious that though he had made use of cunning to increase his flocks, yet Laban had been on the whole a great gainer by his services. He had served him at least twenty years, fourteen for Rachel and Leah, and six for the cattle. Twenty years of a man's life devoted to incessant labor, and constantly exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather, deserve more than an ordinary reward. Laban's constitutional sin was covetousness, and it appears to have governed all his conduct, and to have rendered him regardless of the interests of his children so long as he could secure his own. That he had frequently falsified his agreement with Jacob, though the particulars are not specified, we have already had reason to conjecture from vs. 7, and with this Jacob charges him. A. C.—In ignorance, and under the strong impulse of indignation at such a charge, Jacob bids Laban search through all the camp for anything that he could claim as his; and as to the gods alleged to be stolen, "with whomsoever thou findest them, let him not live." Had Rachel not shared her father's and husband's skill in deceit, it had fared ill with her and Jacob; but she succeeded in concealing the images, and stopping the search. Laban having thus openly failed to substantiate the charge, Jacob's lips are angrily opened, and in the language almost of poetry and rhythm, he upbraids his father-in-law for all his conduct toward him during the past twenty years. We go so fully along with him in the eloquence of his wrath, that our only regret is in the remembrance that it is founded on the fiction of Rachel's innocence. W. H.—There is a deal of nature in this free and indignant outbreak of Jacob's—restrained by the fear of a detention that might have involved some of his family; but when that fear had passed away, and its operation as a check was removed—then the sense of injury, kept under till now, comes forth in loud and open remonstrances against him who had inflicted it. It is this trueness to humanity which stamps an authentic character on the whole narrative. T. C. 42. Except the God of my father.** With exemplary humility, and a devout sense of his dependence on the blessing of heaven, Jacob here refers his prosperity to its true source; and in so doing he administers a keen reproof to Laban. He gives him plainly to understand that, notwithstanding this specious talk about his regard for his children, and his sending him away with songs, with tabret and with harp, yet it was owing to a special interposition of the Almighty that he was not stripped of everything he had. Laban had made a merit of obeying the dream, but Jacob was not to be imposed upon by such a pretence. He therefore construes the divine visitation into an evidence of his evil design, one by which God intended expressly to rebuke him, and thus plead the cause of the injured. As to the twofold title which he here applies to the Most High, "The God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac"—the reason assigned for it by Adam Clarke strikes us as extremely plausible, viz. that "Abraham was long since dead, and God was his unalienable portion forever. Isaac was yet alive in a state of probation, living in the fear of God; not exempt from the danger of falling, therefore God is said to be his fear; not only the object of his religious worship in a general way, but that holy and just God, before whom he was working out his salvation with fear and trembling—fear, lest he should fall; and trembling, lest he should offend." Bush. 44-49. Laban, despite his hypocritical professions of how affectionate their leave-taking might have been if Jacob had not "stolen away," stood convicted of selfishness and unkindness. In fact, if the conduct of Jacob, even in his going away, had been far from straightforward, that of Laban was of the most unprincipled kind. However, peace was restored between them, and a covenant made, in virtue of which neither party was to cross for hostile purposes the memorial pillar which they erected, and to which Laban gave a Chaldee and Jacob a Hebrew name, meaning "the heap of witness." Hypocritically as in the mouth of Laban the additional name of Mizpah sounds, which he gave to this pillar, it is a very significant designation to mark great events in our lives, especially our alliances and our undertakings. For Mizpah means "watchtower," and the words which accompanied the giving of this name were: "Jehovah watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another." A. E. 53. That when Abraham was with Nahor and Terah they were idolaters is clearly intimated (Josh. 24:2). "The God of Abraham, of Nahor, and of Terah," therefore, were words capable of a very ill construction. It is, in fact, little else than swearing by the idols of his Chaldean ancestors, and a virtual reproach of Jacob for having forsaken the religion of his forefathers. Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac. Jacob seems evidently aware of Laban's design in thus referring to their early ancestors, and therefore, that he might bear an unequivocal testimony against all idolatry, even that of Abraham in his younger years, he would swear only "by the Fear of his father Isaac," who had never worshipped any other than the true God. Bush. 55. And Laban rose up. There is something that restraineth men from doing some evils, to which they have not only a natural proneness but an actual desire and purpose. When we behold Laban, who had pursued seven days after Jacob in an hostile manner, upon overtaking him to no more than expostulate with him, and then kiss him and bless him and return to his place; and when we behold Esau, who had vowed the death of Jacob, and who went forth to meet him with four hundred men, armed as it should seem for his destruction, yet run to meet him on his approach, and embrace him and fall on his neck and kiss him; it cannot be imagined that such a stop should be made but by the restraint of some overruling hand; nor may we doubt that every such restraint, by whatsoever second and subordinate means it be furthered, is yet the proper work of God, as proceeding from his irresistible providence. It was God that turned Laban's revengeful thoughts into a friendly expostulation; it was the same God that turned Esau's inveterate malice into a kind, brotherly congratulation. Bp. Sanderson. Laban departed, and returned unto his place. That is, to Haran. This parting proved final. We hear no more of Laban, or of the family of Nahor. They might for several ages retain some knowledge of Jehovah; but mixing with it the superstitions of the country, they naturally would, as there is little doubt they did, sink into gross idolatry and be lost among the heathens. Bash.—In Laban and his tribe, as they sweep out of sight into the Eastern Desert, we lose the last trace of the connection of Israel with the Chaldean Ur or the Mesopotamian Haran. A. P. S. Laban is the man who appreciates the social value of virtue, truthfulness, fidelity, temperance, godliness, but wishes to enjoy their fruits without the pain of cultivating the qualities themselves. He is scrupulous as to the character of those he takes into his employment, and seeks to connect himself in business with good men. In his domestic life, he acts on the idea which his experience has suggested to him, that persons really godly will make his home more peaceful, better regulated, safer than otherwise it might be. But he never for one moment entertains the idea of himself becoming a godly man. In all ages there are Labans, who clearly recognize the utility and worth of a connection with God, who have been much mixed up with persons in whom that worth was very conspicuous, and who yet, at the last, "depart and return unto their place," like Jacob's father-in-law, without having themselves entered into any affectionate relations with God. Dods. One cannot help thinking that this family at Haran must have been a wily, politic, deceitful set. Laban was characterized by it all over. Rebekah had her full share; and we can detect no small spice of it in their descendants, as in Jacob on the one hand and Rachel on the other. There seems to have been a very unformed morale among them; and, besides this, there was a great avarice in Laban, who was altogether of a very harsh and repulsive character. T. C.—When we reflect upon Rebekah's conduct in the mode of obtaining Isaac's blessing for Jacob; when we consider Jacob's own proceedings in securing the birthright and the blessing; when we regard Laban's scandalous deceit in respect of Jacob's marriage—in which his daughter Leah took part; and when we look to the various proceedings of the two sisters as rival wives; with the theft of her father's images by Rachel, and her readiness at lying and deception to conceal that theft—we have, taken altogether, about as full an amount of immorality and lack of truthfulness as it would be easy to find in any one family. Dr. Chalmers remarks: "Altogether, our notion is very much confirmed with regard to the low standard of virtue in those days—not that we have a higher morality, but a higher rule of morality, than in the patriarchal ages of the world. They had a worse system of virtue in those days, even though at present we should fall short of them in practice. They had an inferior schooling to what we now have—a dimmer moral light—whether they were before or behind us in actual observances." All this is admirably just and true, and we cannot do better than bear these ideas in mind in considering the doubtful conduct of some personages in the early scriptural history. KV. Writers unfriendly to revealed religion, starting with the notion that the Mosaic narrative is uniformly exemplary, not historical, have enlarged with malicious triumph on the delinquencies of the patriarchs and their descendants. Perplexity and triumph surely equally groundless! Had the avowed design of the intercourse of God with the patriarchs been their own unimpeachable perfection; had that of the Jewish polity been the establishment of a divine Utopia, advanced to premature civilization, and overleaping at once those centuries of slow improvement, through which the rest of mankind were to pass, then it might have been diffi- cult to give a reasonable account of the manifest nature. So far from this being the case, an ulterior purpose is evident throughout. The patriarchs and their descendants are the depositaries of certain great religious truths, the unity, omnipotence, and providence of God, not solely for their own use and advantage, but as conservators for the future universal benefit of mankind. Hence, provided the great end, the preservation of those truths, was eventually obtained, human affairs took their ordinary course; the common passions and motives of mankind were left in undisturbed operation. Superior in one respect alone, the ancestors of the Jews and the Jews themselves were not beyond their age or country in acquirements, in knowledge, or even in morals; as far as morals are modified by usage and opinion. They were polygamists, like the rest of the Eastern world; they acquired the virtues and the vices of each state of society through which they passed. Higher and purer notions of the Deity, though they tend to promote and improve, by no means necessarily enforce moral perfection; their influence will be regulated by the social state of the age in which they are promulgated, and the bias of the individual character to which they are addressed. Neither the actual interposition of the Almighty in favor of an individual or nation, nor his employment of them as instruments for certain important purposes, stamps the seal of divine approbation on all their actions; in some cases, as in the deception practised by Jacob on his father, the worst part of their character manifestly contributes to the purpose of God; still the nature of the action is not altered; it is to be judged by its motive, not by its undesigned consequence. Allowance, therefore, being always made for their age and social state, the patriarchs, kings, and other Hebrew worthies are amenable to the same verdict which would be passed on the eminent men of Greece or Rome. Excepting where they act under the express commandment of God, they have no exemption from the judgment of posterity; and on the same principle, while God is on the scene, the historian will write with caution and reverence; while man will judge with freedom, justice, and impartiality. Milman. in prayer, is, what he has said to us. God's promises, as they are the surest guide of our desires in prayer, and furnish us with the best petitions, so they are the firmest ground of our hopes, and furnish us with the best pleas. H. For differing views as to the Chronology of Jacob's Life, see Bible Commentary, vol. 1, pp. 177-179, and Pulpit Com. Genesis, p. 383. B. 1. 1 AND Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. And Jacob said when he saw 2 them, This is God's host: and he called the name of that place Mahanaim. 2. 3 And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother unto the land of Seir, the field 4 of Edom. And he commanded them, saying, Thus shall ye say unto my lord Esau; Thus 5 saith thy servant Jacob, I have sojourned with Laban, and stayed until now: and I have oxen, and asses and flocks, and menservants and maidservants: and I have sent to tell my 6 lord, that I may find grace in thy sight. And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, We came to thy brother Esau, and moreover he cometh to meet thee, and four hundred men with 7 him. Then Jacob was greatly afraid and was distressed: and he divided the people that was 8 with him, and the flocks, and the herds, and the camels, into two companies; and he said, If Esau come to the one company, and smite it, then the company which is left shall escape. 3. 9 And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, O Lord, which 10 saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will do thee good: I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast shewed unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two com- 11 panies. Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I 12 fear him, lest he come and smite me, the mother with the children. And thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude. 13. And he lodged there that night; and took of that which he had with him a present for 14 Esau his brother; two hundred she-goats and twenty he-goats, two hundred ewes and twenty 15 rams, thirty milch camels and their colts, forty kine and ten bulls, twenty she-asses and ten 16 foals. And he delivered them into the hand of his servants, every drove by itself; and said 17 unto his servants, Pass over before me, and put a space betwixt drove and drove. And he commanded the foremost, saying, When Esau my brother meeteth thee, and asketh thee, say 18 ing, Whose art thou? and whither goest thou? and whose are these before thee? then thou shalt say, They be thy servant Jacob's; it is a present sent unto my lord Esau: and, behold, 19 he also is behind us. And he commanded also the second, and the third, and all that fol- lowed the droves, saying, On this manner shall ye speak unto Esau, when ye find him; and 20 ye shall say, Moreover, behold, thy servant Jacob is behind us. For he said, I will appease him with the present that goeth before me, and afterward I will see his face; peradventure 21 he will accept me. So the present passed over before him: and he himself lodged that night in the company. 22 And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two handmaids, and his eleven 23 children, and passed over the ford of Jabbok. And he took them, and sent them over the stream, and sent over that he had. Chap. 32. In the events of this chapter we find the turning point in the life of Jacob. Before, we notice halting on both sides, continual attempts at self-deliverance, artifices and cunning, weak and defective faith; afterward, we descry humility and resignation to the will of God, confidence and trust in God and in His leadings. At last the catastrophe, long preparing, takes place, by which old Jacob is to become a new man, and the wild excrescences of a richly endowed nature are to be removed. It is only now that we can understand how God had borne with all his perversity and so visibly blessed him, notwithstanding his cunning and his artifices. All this tended, through the mercy of God, to lead him to repentance. Much labor and sorrow, many trials and chastisements, and much pity and patience, were required before Jacob, so strong and wise in himself, was humbled and broken in heart. But the more glorious also was the fruit of this long and difficult training. The former stages in the life of Jacob were only preparatory to that great and striking event to which they pointed. All along it had been a struggle on the part of a clever and strong, a self-confident and self-sufficient person, who was only sure of the result when he helped himself—a contest with God, who wished to break his strength and his wisdom, in order to bestow upon him real strength and real wisdom. The life of Jacob had been a continuous struggle carried on by the patriarch with the weapons of his own strength and wisdom, and by God with the weapons of grace, of patience, and of long-suffering. This stage in his life closes with these fervent prayers, in which his oppressed heart found relief. K. 1,2. Leaving the mountains of Gilead, Jacob had entered the land of promise, in what afterward became the possession of God. A glorious prospect here opened before him. Such beauty, fruitfulness, freshness of verdure, and richness of pasturage; dark mountain forests above, and rich plains below, as poor Palestine, denuded of its trees, and with them of its moisture—a land of ruins—has not known these many, many centuries! And there, as he entered the land, “the angels of God met him.” Twenty years before they had met him, on leaving it, at Bethel, and, so to speak, accompanied him on his journey. And now in similar pledge they welcomed him on his return. Only then they had been angels ascending and descending on their ministry, while now they were “angel hosts” to defend him in the impending contest, whence also Jacob called the name of that place Mahanaim, “two hosts,” or “two camps.” And if at Bethel he had seen them in a “dream,” they now appeared to him when waking, as if to convey yet stronger assurance. A. E. Many years before Jacob saw the mystical ladder connecting heaven and earth, and the angels of God thereupon ascending and descending from the one to the other. Now, in circumstances of danger, he sees the angels of God on earth, encamped beside or around his own camp. He recognizes them as God's camp, and names the place Mahanaim, from the double encampment. This vision is not dwelt upon, as it is the mere sequel of the former scene at Bethel. Mahanaim has been identified with Mahneh, about eight miles from the cairn of Laban and Jacob. M.—The name was handed on to after-ages, and the place became the sanctuary of the Transjordanic tribes. He was still on the heights of the Transjordanic hills, beyond the deep defile where the Jabbok, as its name implies, “wrestles” with the mountains through which it descends to the Jordan. A. P. S. God’s hosts now become visible to allay the fear of man’s hosts. Having just escaped one host of enemies, another is coming forth to meet him. At this juncture the heavenly messengers make their appearance, teaching him to whom he owed his late escape, and that he who had delivered did deliver, and he might safely trust would still deliver him; thus making good the previous promise (Gen. 28 : 15), “Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land.” It does not appear, indeed, that they were charged with any verbal communication, but Jacob would have no difficulty in inferring the object of their mission, to work in his mind an assurance of the overruling and protecting providence of God. Thus, too, when the vision of the fiery chariots was vouchsafed to Elisha’s servant, it was left to his own mind to draw the proper conclusion from such a cheering spectacle. Bush. 4-9. Jacob now sends a message to Esau apprising him of his arrival. Unto the land of Seir. Arabia Petrea, with which Esau became connected by his marriage with a daughter of Ishmael. He was now married fifty-six years to his first two wives, and twenty to his last, and therefore had a separate and extensive establishment of children and grandchildren. 6. Four hundred men with him. This was a formidable force. Esau had begun to live by the sword, and had surrounded himself with a numerous body of followers. Associated by marriage with the Hittitec and the Ishmaelites, he had risen to the rank of a powerful chieftain. It is vain to conjecture with what intent Esau advanced at the head of so large a retinue. It is probable that he was accustomed to a strong escort, that he wished to make an imposing appearance before his brother. 7, 8. Jacob, remembering his own former dealings with him, has good cause for alarm. He betakes himself to the means of deliverance. He disposes of his horde into two camps, that if one were attacked and captured, the other might meanwhile escape. He never neglects to take all the precautions in his power. M. 9-12. Next, he seeks help from God. This prayer is the first on record, for the intercession of Abraham for Sodom was more of a remonstrance or argument than a prayer. It does not seem that there could be a finer model for a special prayer than this,—the most ancient of all. He first claims his interest in the broad covenant with Abraham and Isaac, just as we might, and ought to, set forth our interests in the mercies covenanted to us in Christ; then he urges the covenant of personal mercies and promises; then he confesses his utter unworthiness of the blessings that have been showered upon him, yet venturing, notwithstanding, to hope for deliverance from the danger that lay before him. Kit. The very first sentence of Jacob’s prayer has this peculiarity about it, that it is steeped in humility; for he does not address the Lord as his own God at the first, but as the God of Abraham and Isaac. The prayer itself, though it is very urgent, is as lowly as it is earnest. With all its intensity, there is a loving remembrance of who Jacob is, and who Jehovah is; and the suppliant speaks in terms fit to be used toward the thrice holy God by a man of lowly heart. Spurgeon.—Such was the humble self-denying sense he had of his own unworthiness, that he did not call God his own God, but a God in covenant with his ancestors, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac; and this he could the better plead, because the covenant, by divine designation, was entailed upon him. God’s covenant with our fathers may be a comfort to us when we are in distress. H. He approaches God as the God of his father, and as such a God in covenant. This was laying hold of the divine faithfulness. It was the prayer of faith; and though we may not have exactly the same plea in our approaches to God, yet we have one that is more endearing and more prevalent. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is a character which excites more hope and in which more great and precious promises have been made than in any other. He addresses him as his own God, pleading what he had promised to him, as well as to his fathers. “Who saidst unto me, Return,” etc. Jehovah has never made promises to us in the same extraordinary way that he did to Jacob; but, whatever he has promised to believers in general may be pleaded by every one of them in particular, especially when encountering opposition in the path of duty. Another remarkable feature in this prayer is the deep spirit of self-abasement which breathes through it. While he celebrates the great mercy and truth of God toward him, he acknowledges himself unworthy of the least instance of either. The original is, if possible, still more emphatic; “I am less than all the mercies,” etc., as if he not only disclaimed the worthiness of merit, but also that of meekness. In view of his own sinful conduct on a former occasion, he is amazed at the returns of mercy and truth which he had met with from a gracious God. By sin he had reduced himself in a manner to nothing; but God's goodness had made him great. Bush.—In this confession he gives to God alone the glory, as formerly he had taken it to himself, and in this prayer he casts away all confidence in his own strength and wisdom, which hitherto had been the anchor of his life, and he implicitly throws himself upon God and his promise. K. On the one hand, Jacob seems the father of Jewish guile, fear, unscrupulousness and thrift. On the other, he appears not only as the deeply faithful lover in his youth and the most tender father, but as an elevated, majestic man of faith, who believed in high things, who valued them, and who left on record such words of lowliness and penitence for his faults, in such genuine tones, that the purest, most repentant hearts take them up from age to age and repeat them as their own: "I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies." Mercer.—He does not say, "all thy mercy"—the word is in the plural—"the least of all thy mercies." For God has many bands of mercies; favors never come alone, they visit us in troops. All the trees in God's vineyard are full of boughs, and each bough is loaded with fruit. All the flowers in God's garden bloom double, and some of them bloom sevenfold. We have not mercy only, but mercies numerous as the sand. Mercy for the past, the present, the future; mercy to temper sorrows, mercy to purify joys; mercy for our sinful things, mercy for our holy things. "All thy mercies;" the expression has a vast acreage of meaning. He does not know how to express his sense of obligation except with plurals and universals. He seems to say to the Lord, "Because of all this great goodness, I pray thee go on to deal well with thy servant. Save me from Esau, or all thy mercies will be lost. Hast thou not in thy past love given pledge to me to keep me even to the end?" Mercy and truth all through the Bible are continually joined together, "All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth." Spurgeon.—It was the just and humble acknowledgment of Jacob to God, "I am less than the least of all thy mercies." God rewards his faithful servants, not according to the dignity of their works, but his own liberality and munificence. In dispensing his favors, he does not respect the meanness of our persons or services, but gives to us as a God. And the clearest notion of the Deity is, that he is a being infinite in all perfections, therefore all-sufficient, and most willing to make his creatures completely happy. Bates. Thankfulness was Jacob's distinguishing grace, as faith was Abraham's. Abraham appears ever to have been looking forward in hope—Jacob looking back in memory: the one rejoicing in the future, the other in the past. Jacob's happiness lay, not in looking forward to the hope, but backward upon the experience, of God's mercies toward him. He delighted lovingly to trace, and gratefully to acknowledge, what had been given, leaving the future to itself. Such was Jacob, living in memory rather than in hope, counting times, recording seasons, keeping days; having his history by heart, and his past life in his hand; and as if to carry on his mind into that of his descendants, it was enjoined upon them, that once a year every Israelite should appear before God with a basket of fruit of the earth, and call to mind what God had done for him and his father Jacob, and express his thankfulness for it. Well were it for us, if we had the character of mind instanced in Jacob, and enjoined on his descendants; the temper of dependence upon God's providence, and thankfulness under it, and careful memory of all He has done for us. It would be well if we were in the habit of looking at all we have as God's gift, undeservedly given, and day by day continued to us solely by His mercy. He gave; He may take away. He gave us all we have, life, health, strength, reason, enjoyment, the light of conscience; whatever we have good and holy within us; whatever faith we have; whatever of a renewed will; whatever love toward Him; whatever power over ourselves; whatever prospect of heaven. He gave us relatives, friends, education, training, knowledge, the Bible, the Church. All comes from Him. While He continues His blessings, we should follow David and Jacob, by living in constant praise and thanksgiving, and in offering up to Him of His own. Newman. 11,12. Jacob's petition was that of a kind husband and a tender father. But it was mainly in the character of a believer in the promises, and one deeply concerned for the divine glory, that it was offered. It was as though he had said, "If my life, and that of the mother with the children be cut off, how are thy promises to be fulfilled?" It is natural for us, as husbands and parents, to be importunate with God for the well-being of those who are so nearly related to us; but the way to obtain mercy for them is to seek it in subordination to the divine glory. Bush.—Thou saidst, I will deal well with thee, and again in the close, Thou saidst, I will surely do thee good. The best we can say to God Deliver me, I pray thee! To this deliverance he urgeth the Lord by no less than seven arguments. First, God's covenant with Abraham and Isaac; as if he had said, Remember those names with whom thou madest solemn covenants of protection, both to them and their posterity. The second is from God's particular command for this journey, "Thou saidst unto me, return;" I departed by thy direction, and therefore thou, O Lord, art ever engaged to give me defence while I yield thee obedience. Thirdly, he puts him in mind of his promises. Thou saidst, "I will deal well with thee," and that includes all other promises made unto him; these he makes as a bulwark to defend him, as his anchor in the storm. This anchor must fail and this bulwark be broken down before danger comes to me. If thy promise stand, I cannot fail. The fourth is the confession of his own unworthiness. Faith is always humble, and while we are most confident in God's word we are most distrustful of our own undesert: "I am not worthy of the least of all thy mercies." Though I am thus bold to urge thy covenant, yet I am as ready to acknowledge my own undesert. Thou art a debtor by the promise thou hast made me, not by any performance of mine to thee. Fifthly, he seeks to continue the current of God's favor by showing how plentifully it had already streamed unto him, which he doth by way of antithesis, setting his former poverty in opposition to his present riches: "With my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands;" that is, thou hast blessed me abundantly, and shall my brother's malice blast all? The sixth argument is the greatness and eminence of his peril: "I fear lest he come and slay the mother upon the children"—a proverbial speech in the holy Scriptures, like that of cutting off branch and root in one day, both denoting total excision or an utter overthrow. Seventhly, he closes by re-enforcing the mention of the promise which he urgeth more strongly than before. There it was only, "Thou saidst I will deal well with thee;" but here it is, "Thou saidst, In doing good I will do thee good"—that is, as it is rendered in our translation, "I will surely do thee good," and therefore let not my brother do me evil. We see Jacob's prayer was a pleading of reasons with God, and himself in the issue got not only a new blessing but a new name: Israel, a prince with God, a prevailer both with God and men. Caryl. 13-21. His final act of preparation is the sending of gifts to Esau. Here again Jacob shows his worldly wisdom. The disposition of this princely present in several droves, following one another at intervals (v. 16), was such as to repeat the favorable impression made by each, as they successively came before Esau accompanied with a conciliatory message. The announcement made with the first, and repeated with each succeeding one, "thy servant Jacob is behind us," would give time for reflection and kindly impressions, before their meeting. The number of those who had charge of the present, and successively made their appearance with their several messages, was also an expression of consideration and respect for the personage to whom it was delivered. T. J. C. 22,23. As soon as he judges that the weaker members of the camp are refreshed enough to begin their eventful march, he rises and goes from tent to tent awaking the sleepers, and quickly forming them into their usual line of march, sends them over the brook in the darkness, and himself is left alone. Dods. 32 : 24 And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the 25 day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his 26 thigh: and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was strained, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou 27 bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he 28 said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for thou hast striven with God 29 and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, 30 thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he 31 blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for, said he, I have 32 seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. And the sun rose upon him as he passed 33 over Penuel, and he halted upon his thigh. Therefore the children of Israel eat not the 34 sinew of the hip which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because he touched 35 the hollow of Jacob's thigh in the sinew of the hip. 33 : 1 And Jacob lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, Esau came, and with him four 2 hundred men. And he divided the children unto Leah, and unto Rachel, and unto the two handmaids. And he put the handmaids and their children foremost, and Leah and 3 her children after, and Rachel and Joseph hindermost. And he himself passed over be- 4 fore them, and bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother. And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed 5 him: and they wept. And he lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children; 6 and said, Who are these with thee? And he said, The children which God hath gra- 7 ciously given thy servant. Then the handmaids came near, they and their children, and 8 they bowed themselves. And Leah also and her children came near, and bowed them- 9 selves: and after came Joseph near and Rachel, and they bowed themselves. And he said, What meanest thou by all this company which I met? And he said, To find grace 10 in the sight of my lord. And Esau said, I have enough; my brother, let that thou hast 11 be thine. And Jacob said, Nay, I pray thee, if now I have found grace in thy sight, then 12 receive my present at my hand: forasmuch as I have seen thy face, as one seeth the face 13 of God, and thou wast pleased with me. Take, I pray thee, my gift that is brought to thee; because God hath dealt graciously with me, and because I have enough. And he 14 urged him, and he took it. And he said, Let us take our journey, and let us go, and I 15 will go before thee. And he said unto him, My lord knoweth that the children are ten- der, and that the flocks and herds with me give suck: and if they overdrive them one 16 day, all the flocks will die. Let my lord, I pray thee, pass over before his servant: and 17 I will lead on softly, according to the pace of the cattle that is before me and according 18 to the pace of the children, until I come unto my lord unto Seir. And Esau said, Let 19 me now leave with thee some of the folk that are with me. And he said, What needeth 20 it? let me find grace in the sight of my lord. So Esau returned that day on his way unto 21 Seir. And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built him an house, and made booths for his cattle: therefore the name of the place is called Succoth. 22 And Jacob came in peace to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when 23 he came from Paddan-aram; and encamped before the city. And he bought the parcel of ground, where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem's 24 father, for an hundred pieces of money. And he erected there an altar, and called it 25 El-elohe-Israel. The primary meaning of this story is, that Jacob, whose courage fails before his brother, and the reward of whose wiles threatens to be lost at one blow, is shown how man, despairing in his guilt, must wrestle out his cause with God, but that when he has gained the blessing from God, he has no more to be afraid of from any man. At the same time, Jacob's combat, when he first wrestles with bodily strength, is per- haps a picture of the perverseness of his former life, in which he believed himself to be able to force the fulfilment of the promise by the con- tinual use of carnal means, and had made it difficult enough for the divine leadings to be- come master of him. His becoming lame is then meant to show that God does not permit Himself to be forced by natural strength. But then Jacob becomes victorious by the weapon of prayer (comp. Hos. 12 : 4). As the natural character of Jacob, the intriguing holder of the heel—the tough, shrewd man—prefigures the natural character of the nation that descended from him, so the spiritual character of God's people is prefigured in the wrestler with God. O. The failings of the patriarchs are human, and the fact that they are not passed over in their history makes even the story of these shepherds of priceless worth to me. The timid Isaac, the crafty Jacob, stand before me as they really were; but they also show that the craft of the latter was of little service to him, and in his old age he shows a chastened and tried character which makes him a Ulysses among those Shepherd Fathers. His history is an instructive mirror of the human heart, and God Himself has effaced the blots which the youthful Jacob bore in his very name. "Thou shalt be no longer Jacob," says He, "but a hero of God, Israel," a name of honor which the poetry of the race adopts. It is not bodily might that is recorded in it, but the heroism of God, prayer and faith. . . . Jacob has divided his camp and flocks from fear of a nocturnal surprise by his brother. And lo, there appears the divine form of a heavenly warrior and wrestles with him. All vanish with the dawn—indeed the tone and color of the whole narrative move dimly, as if under the mysterious shades of night. The wrestler does not give his name, but leaves it to be conjectured. Jacob does not triumph, tells the story to no one, only wonders how a simple shepherd like him could have seen Elohim face to face and still live. But the great charm is the inner lesson. It is shown the trembling patriarch how idle it is to fear Esau, when he has overcome Jehovah by his prayer. Herder. It was a real transaction, but symbolical of Jacob's past, present, and future. The "man" who wrestled with Jacob "until the breaking of day" was Jehovah. Jacob had, indeed, been the believing heir to the promises, but all his life long he had wrestled with God—sought to attain success in his own strength and by his own devices. Seeming to contend with man, he had really contended with God. And God had also contended with him. At last further contest was impossible: Jacob had become disabled, for God had touched the hollow of his thigh. In the presence of Esau Jacob was helpless. But before he could encounter his most dreaded earthly enemy, he must encounter God, with Whom he had all along, though unwittingly, contended by his struggles and devices. The contest with Esau was nothing; the contest with Jehovah everything. The Lord could not be on Jacob's side, till he had been disabled, and learned to use other weapons than those of his own wrestling. Then it was that Jacob recognized with whom he had hitherto wrestled. Now he resorted to other weapons, even to prayer; and he sought and found another victory, even in the blessing of Jehovah and by His strength. Then also, truly at "the breaking of day," he obtained a new name, and with it new power, in which he prevailed with God and man. Jacob, indeed, "halted upon his thigh;" but he was now Israel, a Prince with God. A. E. 24. The man here spoken of is an appearance of God, that appearance of which we have before spoken, whose words are uttered in the Person and name of God himself. Alf.—In giving the reason for calling the name of the place Peniel (v. 30), he says, "for I have seen God face to face." Here then it is obvious that he who is at one time called "a man," is at another called "the Angel," and again designated by the august title of "God;" leaving us to the inevitable inference that the mysterious wrestler was no other than the divine personage so frequently brought before us under the appellation of "the Angel"—"the Angel of the Lord"—"the Angel of the Covenant;" that is, in other words, the Son of God appearing in that nature which he afterward assumed in accomplishing the work of our redemption. Could there be the least remaining doubt on the subject it is dispelled by the further statement of Hosea (12:4, 5), "He found him in Bethel, and there he spake with us; even the Lord of Hosts; the Lord is his memorial;" i.e. the name by which he is perpetually to be remembered in connection with this event. Bush. We suppose the contest of Jacob to have taken place in outward reality, and in a state of wakefulness. Even the halting which was the consequence of this wrestling could only have been the result of a real and outward contest. It is quite decisive that the text contains not the slightest indication that this wrestling had been different from the passage over Jabbok (v. 23), and from the breaking of the day (v. 26 compared with v. 31). And it is not more difficult to believe that the angel of the Lord should, under certain circumstances, have really wrestled with Jacob than that he should outwardly and perceptibly have entered the tent of Abraham, have allowed his feet to be washed, and condescended to partake of the feast which the patriarch had hospitably spread for him. K.—If God could partake of the hospitality of Abraham, and take Lot by the hand to deliver him from Sodom, we cannot affirm that he may not, for a worthy end, enter into a bodily conflict with Jacob. These various manifestations of God to man differ only in degree. If we admit any one, we are bound by parity of reason to accept all the others. M. 25,26. All along Jacob's life had been the struggle of a clever and strong, a pertinacious and enduring, a self-confident and self-sufficient person, who was sure of the result only when he helped himself—a contest with God, who wished to break his strength and wisdom, in order to bestow upon him real strength in divine weakness, and real wisdom in divine folly. K.—All this self-confidence culminates now, and in one final and sensible struggle, his Jacob-nature, his natural propensity to wrest what he desires and win what he aims at, from the most unwilling opponent, does its very utmost and does it in vain. And as the first faint dawn appears, and he begins dimly to make out the face, the quiet breathing of which he had felt on his own during the contest, the man with whom he wrestles touches the strongest sinew in Jacob's body, and the muscle on which the wrestler most depends shrivels at the touch and reveals to the falling Jacob how utterly futile had been all his skill and obstinacy and how quickly the stranger might have thrown and mastered him. It is at this touch, which discovers the Almighty power of Him with whom he has been contending, that the whole nature of Jacob goes down before God. He sees how foolish and vain has been his obstinate persistence in striving to trick God out of his blessing, or wrest it from Him, and now he owns his utter incapacity to advance one step in this way, he admits to himself that he is stopped, weakened in the way, thrown on his back, and can effect nothing, simply nothing, by what he thought would effect all; and, therefore, he passes from wrestling to praying, and with tears, as Hosea says, sobs out from the broken heart of the strong man, "I will not let thee go except thou bless me." Dods. This mysterious wrestler has wrestled from him, by one touch, all his might, and he can no longer stand alone. Without any support whatever from himself, he hangs upon the conqueror, and in that condition learns by experience the practice of sole reliance on one mightier than himself. This is the turning-point in this strange drama. Despairing now of his own strength, he is Jacob still: he declares his determination to cling on until his conqueror bless him. He now knows he is in the hand of a higher power, who can disable and again enable, who can curse and also bless. He knows himself also to be now utterly helpless without the healing, quickening, protecting power of his victor, and, though he die in the effort, he will not let him go without receiving this blessing. Jacob's sense of his total debility and utter defeat is now the secret of his power with his friendly vanquisher. He can overthrow all the prowess of the self-reliant, but He cannot resist the earnest entreaty of the helpless. M. "Let me go," he said, "for the day breaketh." He could have gone without asking leave of Jacob; but he suffers the firm embrace, and he asks relief from it only to draw out from Jacob the declaration, "I will not let thee go until thou bless me." Thus at last it is—when utterly stripped of the power by which he had previously maintained the struggle—when ceasing from wrestling, he simply clasps, and cleaves, and clings, and weeps, and prays, that Jacob prevails, and becomes in turn the conqueror. 27. "What is thy name?" the mysterious stranger says. The old name, representing the old character, must be confessed before the new name, representing the new character, is bestowed. "Thy name shall no more be called Jacob"—a supplanter, an overreacher, a successful wrestler with Esau or Laban—"but Israel"—a prince of God: "for as a prince hast thou power with God, and hast prevailed" W. H. Jacob is here knighted in the field, and has a title of honor given him by Him that is the Fountain of honor, which will remain to his praise to the end of time. Yet this was not all; having power with God, he shall have power with men too. Having prevailed for a blessing from Heaven, he shall prevail for Esau's favor. Whatever enemies we have, if we can but make God our Friend, we are well off; they that by faith have power in Heaven, have thereby as much power on earth as they have occasion for. An interest in the angel's blessing is better than acquaintance with his name. The tree of life is better than the tree of knowledge. Thus Jacob carried his point; a blessing he wrestled for, and a blessing he had; nor did ever any of his praying seed seek in vain. See how wonderfully God condescends to countenance and crown importunate prayer: those that resolve, though God slay them, yet to trust in him, will at length be more than conquerors. H.—In allusion to this transaction, the Most High says by the Prophet (Is. 45: 19), "I said not to the seed of Jacob seek ye me in vain." The seed of Jacob is specified rather than the seed of Abraham, from this eminent instance of Jacob's praying and prevailing in a season of extremity, and thus carrying an implication that his "seed" would inherit their father's spirit in this respect. Bush. 28. No more Jacob shall thy name be called, but Israel,—a prince of God, in God, with God. In a personal conflict, depending on thyself, thou wert no match for God. But in prayer, depending on another, thou hast prevailed with God. There are three acts in this dramatic scene : first, Jacob wrestling with the Omnipotent in the form of a man, in which he is signally defeated ; second, Jacob importunately supplicating Jehovah, in which he prevails as a prince of God ; third, Jacob receiving the blessing of a new name, a new development of spiritual life. M. 32. Sinew of the hip.** Whatever be the literal sense of the words, they doubtless mean the “sciatic nerve,” which is one of the largest in the body, and extends down the thigh and leg to the ankle. The Arabs still use this same word (Nasheh or Naseh) to designate the sciatic nerve. The custom prevailing among the Jews to this day of abstaining religiously from eating this sinew seems a lasting monument of the historical truth of this wonderful event in the life of Jacob. E. H. B. Once that the touch of the Divine finger, once that the consciousness of the close and antagonistic presence of the Unseen, the Omnipotent, is felt—what an instant change in Jacob’s feelings and Jacob’s conduct! The new nature symbolized by the new name begins already to reveal itself. All his old self-confidence is gone. His only trust is in the love and pity and great power of the Being upon whom he hangs. No thought of Esau is in the mind, no fear of Esau in the heart. Other and far deeper thoughts and feelings fill mind and heart. To know him—the Eternal, the Almighty, the All Holy One ; to stand right with him, be blessed by him, is the one thing that engrosses and absorbs. “And Jacob asked him, saying, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there.” W. H.—From this moment was revealed in Jacob distinctly that higher nature, that powerful grip upon spiritual things, which Paul calls “laying hold upon eternal life,” that singular life and power in the beliefs of the soul which must prevail. From this moment dates, though with many declensions, the true patriarch. Mercer.—His old life falls from him : purified and sanctified by God’s gracious dealings with him, he is no longer to bear the old name Jacob, polluted as it was by his deceit ; but he is to be called by a new name, which shall be a witness of his victory in the severest trial—a victory gained by distrust of himself and firm trust in God’s promise. God’s manifestation to him is not destructive of life—his soul is preserved ; and though he halts on his thigh, the sun rises full of blessing upon him. This history is not only full of signification to Jacob, but it represents the combat and the triumph of the soldiers of God in their severest trials. At different times in their life God seems to be an adversary, to withdraw His grace and protection ; they find themselves in great peril outwardly or inwardly ; and they have nothing on which to rely but God’s promise, in naked faith, without the comfort of His presence in their souls. These are the times when God is pleased to crown His true combatants, and for their greater confirmation to relieve them from their distresses. Geri. No purpose is more settled in the counsels of heaven, than to beat down the vain self-confidence which in one form or other is so prone to intrude itself into the devoutest doings of even the best of men. Some secret reliance upon their own strength, or uprightness, or understanding, mingles with the workings of their hearts, and prevents that entire renunciation of themselves which is essential to their being filled with the fulness of God. But when the Most High begins to wrestle with a soul, that is, to carry on more effectually the work of grace, he struggles with him in such a manner as to abase every high thing that exalts itself within him, and bring him to the lowest depths of self-abasement and self-annihilation. He will leave him nothing to plead but his pure gratuitous mercy in Christ. He will cause him, by his hidden influences in his heart, to feel that he has no alternative remaining but to embrace with the arms of faith the Son of God, and thus, as a crippled conqueror, to prevail. He thus learns to believe from the heart the declaration that “it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.” In a word, we may see, in this incident of the mystical conflict, how completely the Lord designs to strip the sinner of every relic of self-confidence, that he may cast himself, weak, weary, lame, halting, and helpless, into the arms of the all-sufficient Saviour. Bush. Very significant to Jacob in his after life must have been the lameness consequent on this night’s struggle. He, the wrestler, had to go halting all his days. To the end some men bear the marks of the heavy stroke by which God first humbled them. It came in a sudden shock that broke the health, or in a disappointment which nothing now given can ever quite obliterate the trace of, or in circumstances painfully and permanently altered. With many men God is forced to such treatment ; if any of us are under it, God forbid we should mistake it ; meaning and lie prostrate and despairing in the darkness instead of clinging to Him who has smitten and will heal us. Dads. They who bear the name of Israel have the same power to prevail with God that Jacob had at Peniel. The Angel of the covenant acted as though he could not break away from the eager patriarch. The effect was the same as though he could not. So it is with the struggle of other saints. How often is the appearance strongly held out that "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." Griffa. God often holds the suppliant in suspense for the sake of throwing him upon self-examination. It may be simply indispensable both for the good of the suppliant and for the honor of God that he should be put to the deepest self-searching, to compel reflection and consideration for the purpose of convicting him of some sin that must needs be seen, confessed, repented of and put utterly away. We must not overlook the great fact that when God grants signal blessings in answer to any man's prayer, it will be taken as a tacit indorsement on God's part of this man's spiritual state. It will be considered as God's testimony that he is not "regarding iniquity in his heart"—that there are no iniquities palpable to the world and present to the man's own consciousness—indulged and not condemned and forsaken. On this principle it often happens that God must needs compel the praying soul to the most thorough heart-searching and to the most absolute and complete renunciation of known sin, before he can honorably and safely bestow signal blessings. If we place this obvious principle of God's spiritual administration alongside of the well known facts of Jacob's history, we shall readily see reasons, apparently all-sufficient, for this long delay and this remarkable struggle of prayer before the blessing was given. The Lord was searching his servant and impressing some great principles of practical duty upon his mind under circumstances well adapted to insure very thorough reformation. H. C. A spirit of prayer is a demonstration of an Israel of God; this Jacob had, this he made use of, and by this he obtained the name of Israel. A spirit of prayer in straits, difficulties, and distresses—a spirit of prayer when alone, in private, in the night, when no eye seeth but God's, then to be at it, then to lay hold of God, then to wrestle, to hold fast, and not to give over until the blessing is obtained, is a sign of one that is an Israel of God. Banyan. To make Christ's forgiving love my own there must be the personal contact of my soul with the loving heart of Christ, the individual act of my own coming to Him, and, as the old Puritans used to say, "my transacting" with Him. Like the ocean of the atmosphere, His love encompasses me, and in it I live, and move, and have my being. But I must let it flow into my spirit, and stir the dormant music of my soul. I can shut it out, sealing my heart love-tight against it. I do shut it out, unless by my own conscious, personal act I yield myself to Him, unless by my own faith I come to Him, and meet Him. As if there were not another soul on earth, I and He must meet, and in solitude deep as that of death, each man for himself must yield to Incarnate Love, and receive eternal life. The flocks and herds, the wives and children have all to be sent away, and Jacob is left alone, before the mysterious Wrestler comes whose touch of fire lames the whole nature of sin and death, whose inbreathed power strengthens to hold Him fast till He speaks a blessing who desires to be overcome, and makes our yielding to Him our prevailing with Him. As one of the old mystics called prayer "the flight of the lonely man to the only God," so we may call the act of faith the meeting of the soul alone with Christ alone. A. M. The words of the Wrestler at the brook Jabok, "Let me go, for the day breaketh," express the truth that spiritual things will not submit themselves to sensible tests. When we seek to let the full daylight, by which we discern other objects, stream upon them, they elude our grasp. When we fancy we are on the verge of having our doubts forever scattered, and our suppositions changed into certainties, the very approach of clear knowledge and demonstration seems to drive those sensitive spiritual presences into darkness. As Pascal remarked, and remarked as the mouthpiece of all souls that have earnestly sought for God, The world only gives us indications of the presence of a God who conceals himself. What is possible, God has done. He has made Himself known in Christ. We are assured, on testimony that stands every kind of test, that in Him, if nowhere else, we find God. Dods. That this was the turning-point in Jacob's inner life, the bestowment of the new name would of itself have led us to expect. A careful study of his life establishes it. Dividing that life into two parts—the 97 years that preceded, and the 50 that followed the great interview at Peniel—we find little in the former to attract; not a little, on the other hand, to repel. Abundance, indeed, of good materials of character exhibit themselves: nothing shallow, nothing weak, all of good quality and proportion, quick intelligence, warm affection, poetic sentiment, large and varied capacities for work, firmness of purpose, fertility of resource, unfaltering self-confidence; but the presence, withal, of a selfish and sneaking cunning, an aptness for deceit and treachery in dealing even with nearest friends; and the absence of any clear tokens of the continuous and dominant influence of the ancestral faith—the first vision at Bethel making apparently but a temporary impression—one that faded away amid the manifold engagements of the strange and troubled life at Paddan-aram. In the second section, the fifty years that date from Peniel, Jacob appears a quite altered man; the old nature, doubtless, still there, but thoroughly restrained and subdued. Not a trace of craft in any one piece of conduct: the crooked cunning ways followed no more. For adroitness there is simplicity; for falsehood, truth. Self-confidence has got its death-wound in that midnight meeting. Trial follows trial, bereavement succeeds bereavement. Under severe and protracted discipline, the higher spiritual nature grows and ripens, till at the close the piety of Abraham and Isaac, their faith in God and in his special promises, shines forth in Jacob in undimmed lustre. W. H. # The Meeting with Esau. 33 : 4. Esau was moved and melted into tenderness by a responsive influence to the prayer of Jacob from on high, but still through the subordinate means which Jacob did well in putting into operation. The successive appliances, first of the costly gifts, secondly of his own personal appearance, and thirdly of the successive presentations of his family, were all exceedingly well devised on the part of Jacob; and one cannot help admiring at the same time the exhibition of Esau. He had many good points and properties. Constitutionally, and as viewed in the light of a natural man, there was much to like and to admire in him. T. C. 9,10. Jacob might truly say, not in mere compliment, that the sight of Esau's face had been to him as the sight of God's face, discerning as he did in his brother's altered mind to him a sign of the divine favor. 13, 14. The excuse was genuine. Tender children, such as many of Jacob's were, would be injured, and flocks in milk, or with young, would die even with a day's overdriving; and therefore could not keep pace with Esau and his men. Observe Jacob addresses Esau always as "my lord," but Esau speaks to Jacob as "my brother." The one had a guilty conscience, which forbade him to touch on the brotherly relation; the other was clear on this matter. Alf.—There was nothing in Jacob's language to his brother which, when translated from Eastern to our Western modes of conduct and expression, is inconsistent with proper self-respect. If he declined the offer of an armed guard, it was because he felt he needed not an earthly host to protect him. Besides, it was manifestly impossible for cattle and tender children to keep up with a Bedouin warrior band. A. E. 16. Esau retires to make room for Jacob; he leaves to him the land of his inheritance, and disappears on his way to the wild mountains of Seir. In those wild mountains, in the red hills of Edom, in the caves and excavations to which the soft sandstone rocks so readily lend themselves, in the cliffs which afterward gave to the settlement the name of "Sela" or "Petra," lingered the ancient aboriginal tribe of the Horites or dwellers in the holes of the rock. These "the children of Esau succeeded, and destroyed from before them, and dwelt in their stead." It was the rough rocky country described in their father's blessing: a savage dwelling, "away from the fatness of the earth and the dew of heaven;" by the sword they were to live; a race of hunters among the mountains. A. P. S. The best about Esau is "good nature," which is but nature after all, nature and not grace. As contemplated according to the higher requirements and demands which God makes on men, he is described by the Apostle in a single word, but one full of significance, "a profane person;" one with no sanctuary in his soul, with little sense or none of the privileges so glorious and unique which were the inheritance of the elect family, and of himself as the centre of that family, divinely appointed to this honor. That the prerogatives of the firstborn, slighted and despised by him, should pass to his younger brother, lay in the very nature and moral necessity of things. There were no fitnesses, no predispositions for this honor in him; rather the most marked unfitnesses for standing at the head of the great religious movement in which was wrapped up the whole future hope of the world. Trench. 17. Jacob turned in a north-westerly direction to Succoth, a place still east of Jordan, and afterward in the possession of the tribe of Gad. Here he probably made a lengthened stay, for we read that "he built him an house, and made booths for his cattle," whence also the name of Succoth, or "booths." A. E.—That the stay at Succoth was more than a mere ordinary halt for rest and refreshment upon a journey, is apparent; but can we form any idea of its probable length? We have ten years here to come and go upon, for so long was the interval between Jacob's reaching the borders of Canaan and his arrival at Hebron. Over these intervening years we have to distribute the incidents recorded in the 33d, 34th, and 35th chapters of Genesis. To allow of Dinah and her brothers being of anything like sufficient age, it is necessary to throw the events narrated in the 34th chapter as far on as possible toward the close of this period. If we assign a year to the journey from Shechem to Bethel, Ephrath, Edar, and Mamre, there remain nine years to be divided between Succoth and Shechem. But did Jacob actually allow ten years to elapse after reaching the banks of the Jordan before visiting his aged parent at Mamre? That after so long a separation Jacob should have lived continuously so many years so near to Hebron as he was at Succoth and at Shechem—a single week enough to carry him to and fro, and give him a day or two with Isaac—without once going to see him, is incredible. W. H. Jacob may have paid one or more cisits to his father, either from Shechem or even from Succoth, without the circumstance being expressly mentioned in the narrative. From chap. 35:8, compared with chap. 24:59, we gather that soon after his return Jacob must have come into immediate contact with the house of his father, for we find the nurse of Rebekah, who had been in the house of Isaac, now in that of Jacob. But Jacob no longer subordinated his own household to that of his father, because in virtue of God's leading; He had now been constituted the representative of the promise, while after Isaac had bestowed the blessing upon Jacob, his work, so far as he was the representative of the promise, was finished. K. 18. Came in peace to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan. The words seem designedly chosen to indicate that God had amply fulfilled what Jacob had asked at Bethel: to "come again in peace." A. E. In Abraham's time, we do not read of any city of Shechem. The phrase used is, "the place of Sichem," meaning, probably, the place where Sichem, or Shechem, afterward stood. The city of Shechem would seem to have taken its name from the son of Hamor, the prince of whom Jacob bought his parcel of ground, and hence would date from about the time of Jacob's sojourn there. Shechem is midway between Jerusalem and Nazareth—and between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. The broad valley running north and south through the territory of ancient Ephraim—the ancient Moreb, the modern Mukhna—is flanked on the west by a range of abrupt and lofty hills. The road usually followed leads through the plain along the base of these hills. Travelling northward by this road, we reach, some six or seven miles from the southern limit of the plain, the point where a cross-valley from the west breaks through the range of hills over against us. This cross-valley, where it issues into the great valley, is half a mile wide. The hills, at the points of intersection, rise to the dignity of mountain promontories; that on the north being the historical "Ebal," while that on the south is the still more renowned "Gerizim." Out a little from the base of Gerizim, just where the edges of the two valleys meet, is Jacob's Well; while a few hundred yards to the north, or near the middle of the cross-valley, is the little Mohammedan structure known as "The Tomb of Joseph." N. C. B.—See Sketch Map, New Testament, vol. 1, pp. 96 and 100. Coming from the south, you continue up the plain of Mukhna until Mount Gerizim faces boldly upon it on your left. Passing the eastern front of Gerizim and looking westward, you see at a glance the Vale of Shechem, running east and west, with Mount Gerizim on the south and Ebal on the north. Just where you turn is Jacob's Well. Gerizim and Ebal, it will be noted, are lofty parallel ridges, with the narrow Vale of Shechem between them. Gerizim stands two thousand eight hundred and forty-eight feet above the sea, and Ebal three thousand and seventy-six feet. At the eastern opening of the vale is Jacob's Well; a mile to the west is the city of Nāblūs, replacing the old Shechem and lying at the foot of the ridge of Gerizim. About a half mile north of Jacob's Well is a village called Askar, probably the Sychar whence came the "woman of Samaria" with whom our Lord held converse as he sat by Jacob's Well. Dulles. The patriarchal associations of Shechem are almost as suggestive as those of Hebron itself; not only beginning with Abraham, but being made impressive by existing relics—Jacob's Well and the Tomb of Joseph answering severally to Abraham's Oak and the Cave of Machpelah. But beyond Hebron Shechem was made memorable by a visit of our Saviour to its vicinity, and by the delivery there of a recorded discourse of the Great Teacher—a discourse not only fraught with heavenly truth and power, but also characterized by local and historical references, such as fitted it to the time and place and purpose of His address. N. C. B. # 19. For a hundred pieces of money. Hebrew kestiah, lamb, but here to be rendered in the plural "lambs," by which is probably meant a kind of coin with the image of a lamb stamped upon it. "The primitive race of men being shepherds, and their wealth consisting in their cattle, in which Abraham is said to have been rich, for greater convenience metals were substituted for the commodity itself. It was natural for the representative sign to bear impressed the object which it represented; and thus, accordingly, the earliest coins were stamped with the figure of an ox or a sheep." (Maurice Iod, Antiq.) Thus the ancient Athenians had a coin called βονς ox, because it was stamped with the image of an ox. Thus, too, the Latin word for money, pecunia, is derived from pecus, cattle, from the image stamped upon it. The custom no doubt arose from the fact that in primitive times the coin was the ordinary value of the animal whose image it bore. Bush. # 20. And he erected there an altar. At the same place where Abraham had built his first altar (chap. 12 : 7). Abraham dedicated his "unto the LORD, who appeared unto him;" Jacob his, unto "God, the God of Israel," which was the new name that God had given him. The place was at or near Shechem : so that the woman of Samaria might well say as she did to our Saviour, that "their fathers worshipped God in that mount." Wall.—This whole transaction was an act of faith on the part of Jacob. The purchase of land, and that in the very place where God had first promised Abraham that the land should be his, showed his conviction in the certainty of that promise as renewed to him and his seed : the erection of an altar on this his own land connected the act of purchase with the God in whose promise he trusted : and the naming of that altar bespoke special faith in the symbolic meaning of the name which God had given him. Alf. The Oak of Moreb, the first camp and altar of Abraham in the Land of Promise, was before Shechem (Gen. 12 : 6), at the entrance of the valley, in the plain, and, therefore, close to Jacob's Well. There is no spot in sacred story more accurately marked out than this; and here we are on the very spot consecrated by the presence of our Divine Saviour; exactly where we are sitting He sat. The arched arcade that protected the well and invited the wayworn traveller by its shade, has long since crumbled; but its pillars and ruins are strewn around us. This is the parcel of ground that Jacob bought of Hamor, the father of Shechem, where, like his grandfather, he first encamped when he came from the land of the east : here he, too, erected his altar, and here he sank that well, which has remained to the present day. The very circumstances of the case explain both his purchase and his sinking this well. Though the plain is the richest in the land, yet the streams in it are few. The brook that flows eastward from the valley is but scanty, for most of the springs drain to the west. Two of the three great fountains on this side the city were within its boundaries, and the third belonged to the village hard by. Jacob knew well the jealousy between the settled inhabitants and the nomad herdsmen, who would certainly not be permitted to water their flocks within the precincts; and, therefore, with that cautious prudence which ever stamped his character, he purchases a small piece of land, quite outside the valley, where there could be no suspicion of his making a stronghold, and in it he sinks this well—which must have been, for those times, a most costly work—deeper far than the wells sunk by his grandfather Abraham, under similar circumstances, at Beersheba. . . . The sinking of a well in the East is a greater work than the erection of a castle or fortress, and whether the wells be those of Abraham at Beersheba or of Jacob at Shechem, they hand down the name of their constructor from generation to generation as the benefactor of posterity. How truly in keeping with Jacob's peace-loving character was this act of sinking a well in the plain at such enormous cost, so near the city and its abundant springs and rills; fearing lest his sons should be brought into collision with the men of Shechem concerning that water which was far more precious than land. Yet with characteristic caution he first purchased the piece of land of the lord of the country—of Hamor the father of Shechem. H. B. T. The well is 75 feet deep, 7 feet 6 inches diameter, and is lined throughout with rough masonry, as it is dug in alluvial soil. Every one visiting the well throws stones down for the satisfaction of hearing them strike the bottom, and in this way, as well as from the débris of the ruined church built over the well during the fourth century, it has become filled up to probably more than half of its original depth. Lieut. Anderson. See New Testament, vol. 1, Section 22. The beautiful biographies of the Old Testament reveal to us the hand of God, leading the patriarchs and other holy men along a perpetual pilgrimage, in which they are as really without self-direction as was Israel in the wilderness. Surely the way of Abram was not in himself, when God called him out of the East, led him into Canaan, and into Egypt, and through a long life gave him no inheritance, no, not so much as to set his foot on. The wanderings of Jacob were as little under his own control. And we have only to look back upon our own little biography, however quiet and uneventful that history may have been, to learn, that of the great body of events, very few have been at our own disposal. A higher wisdom hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of our habitation; hath ordered how we should be educated; the field of our labor; the afflictions which have entered into our discipline, and the stations which we now occupy. J. W. A. For differing views as to the Chronology of Jacob's Life, see Bible Commentary, vol. 1, pp. 177-179, and Pulpit Com. Genesis, p. 383. B. 1. 1 AND Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. And Jacob said when he saw 2 them, This is God's host: and he called the name of that place Mahanaim. 2. 3 And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother unto the land of Seir, the field 4 of Edom. And he commanded them, saying, Thus shall ye say unto my lord Esau; Thus 5 saith thy servant Jacob, I have sojourned with Laban, and stayed until now: and I have oxen, and asses and flocks, and menservants and maidservants: and I have sent to tell my 6 lord, that I may find grace in thy sight. And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, We came to thy brother Esau, and moreover he cometh to meet thee, and four hundred men with 7 him. Then Jacob was greatly afraid and was distressed: and he divided the people that was 8 with him, and the flocks, and the herds, and the camels, into two companies; and he said, If Esau come to the one company, and smite it, then the company which is left shall escape. 3. 9 And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, O Lord, which 10 saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will do thee good: I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast shewed unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two com- 11 panies. Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I 12 fear him, lest he come and smite me, the mother with the children. And thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude. 13. And he lodged there that night; and took of that which he had with him a present for 14 Esau his brother; two hundred she-goats and twenty he-goats, two hundred ewes and twenty 15 rams, thirty milch camels and their colts, forty kine and ten bulls, twenty she-asses and ten 16 foals. And he delivered them into the hand of his servants, every drove by itself; and said 17 unto his servants, Pass over before me, and put a space betwixt drove and drove. And he commanded the foremost, saying, When Esau my brother meeteth thee, and asketh thee, say 18 ing, Whose art thou? and whither goest thou? and whose are these before thee? then thou shalt say, They be thy servant Jacob's; it is a present sent unto my lord Esau: and, behold, 19 he also is behind us. And he commanded also the second, and the third, and all that fol- lowed the droves, saying, On this manner shall ye speak unto Esau, when ye find him; and 20 ye shall say, Moreover, behold, thy servant Jacob is behind us. For he said, I will appease him with the present that goeth before me, and afterward I will see his face; peradventure 21 he will accept me. So the present passed over before him: and he himself lodged that night in the company. 22 And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two handmaids, and his eleven 23 children, and passed over the ford of Jabbok. And he took them, and sent them over the stream, and sent over that he had. Chap. 32. In the events of this chapter we find the turning point in the life of Jacob. Before, we notice halting on both sides, continual attempts at self-deliverance, artifices and cunning, weak and defective faith; afterward, we descry humility and resignation to the will of God, confidence and trust in God and in His leadings. At last the catastrophe, long preparing, takes place, by which old Jacob is to become a new man, and the wild excrescences of a richly endowed nature are to be removed. It is only now that we can understand how God had borne with all his perversity and so visibly blessed him, notwithstanding his cunning and his artifices. All this tended, through the mercy of God, to lead him to repentance. Much labor and sorrow, many trials and chastisements, and much pity and patience, were required before Jacob, so strong and wise in himself, was humbled and broken in heart. But the more glorious also was the fruit of this long and difficult training. The former stages in the life of Jacob were only preparatory to that great and striking event to which they pointed. All along it had been a struggle on the part of a clever and strong, a self-confident and self-sufficient person, who was only sure of the result when he helped himself—a contest with God, who wished to break his strength and his wisdom, in order to bestow upon him real strength and real wisdom. The life of Jacob had been a continuous struggle carried on by the patriarch with the weapons of his own strength and wisdom, and by God with the weapons of grace, of patience, and of long-suffering. This stage in his life closes with these fervent prayers, in which his oppressed heart found relief. K. 1,2. Leaving the mountains of Gilead, Jacob had entered the land of promise, in what afterward became the possession of God. A glorious prospect here opened before him. Such beauty, fruitfulness, freshness of verdure, and richness of pasturage; dark mountain forests above, and rich plains below, as poor Palestine, denuded of its trees, and with them of its moisture—a land of ruins—has not known these many, many centuries! And there, as he entered the land, “the angels of God met him.” Twenty years before they had met him, on leaving it, at Bethel, and, so to speak, accompanied him on his journey. And now in similar pledge they welcomed him on his return. Only then they had been angels ascending and descending on their ministry, while now they were “angel hosts” to defend him in the impending contest, whence also Jacob called the name of that place Mahanaim, “two hosts,” or “two camps.” And if at Bethel he had seen them in a “dream,” they now appeared to him when waking, as if to convey yet stronger assurance. A. E. Many years before Jacob saw the mystical ladder connecting heaven and earth, and the angels of God thereupon ascending and descending from the one to the other. Now, in circumstances of danger, he sees the angels of God on earth, encamped beside or around his own camp. He recognizes them as God's camp, and names the place Mahanaim, from the double encampment. This vision is not dwelt upon, as it is the mere sequel of the former scene at Bethel. Mahanaim has been identified with Mahneh, about eight miles from the cairn of Laban and Jacob. M.—The name was handed on to after-ages, and the place became the sanctuary of the Transjordanic tribes. He was still on the heights of the Transjordanic hills, beyond the deep defile where the Jabbok, as its name implies, “wrestles” with the mountains through which it descends to the Jordan. A. P. S. God’s hosts now become visible to allay the fear of man’s hosts. Having just escaped one host of enemies, another is coming forth to meet him. At this juncture the heavenly messengers make their appearance, teaching him to whom he owed his late escape, and that he who had delivered did deliver, and he might safely trust would still deliver him; thus making good the previous promise (Gen. 28 : 15), “Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land.” It does not appear, indeed, that they were charged with any verbal communication, but Jacob would have no difficulty in inferring the object of their mission, to work in his mind an assurance of the overruling and protecting providence of God. Thus, too, when the vision of the fiery chariots was vouchsafed to Elisha’s servant, it was left to his own mind to draw the proper conclusion from such a cheering spectacle. Bush. 4-9. Jacob now sends a message to Esau apprising him of his arrival. Unto the land of Seir. Arabia Petrea, with which Esau became connected by his marriage with a daughter of Ishmael. He was now married fifty-six years to his first two wives, and twenty to his last, and therefore had a separate and extensive establishment of children and grandchildren. 6. Four hundred men with him. This was a formidable force. Esau had begun to live by the sword, and had surrounded himself with a numerous body of followers. Associated by marriage with the Hittitec and the Ishmaelites, he had risen to the rank of a powerful chieftain. It is vain to conjecture with what intent Esau advanced at the head of so large a retinue. It is probable that he was accustomed to a strong escort, that he wished to make an imposing appearance before his brother. 7, 8. Jacob, remembering his own former dealings with him, has good cause for alarm. He betakes himself to the means of deliverance. He disposes of his horde into two camps, that if one were attacked and captured, the other might meanwhile escape. He never neglects to take all the precautions in his power. M. 9-12. Next, he seeks help from God. This prayer is the first on record, for the intercession of Abraham for Sodom was more of a remonstrance or argument than a prayer. It does not seem that there could be a finer model for a special prayer than this,—the most ancient of all. He first claims his interest in the broad covenant with Abraham and Isaac, just as we might, and ought to, set forth our interests in the mercies covenanted to us in Christ; then he urges the covenant of personal mercies and promises; then he confesses his utter unworthiness of the blessings that have been showered upon him, yet venturing, notwithstanding, to hope for deliverance from the danger that lay before him. Kit. The very first sentence of Jacob’s prayer has this peculiarity about it, that it is steeped in humility; for he does not address the Lord as his own God at the first, but as the God of Abraham and Isaac. The prayer itself, though it is very urgent, is as lowly as it is earnest. With all its intensity, there is a loving remembrance of who Jacob is, and who Jehovah is; and the suppliant speaks in terms fit to be used toward the thrice holy God by a man of lowly heart. Spurgeon.—Such was the humble self-denying sense he had of his own unworthiness, that he did not call God his own God, but a God in covenant with his ancestors, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac; and this he could the better plead, because the covenant, by divine designation, was entailed upon him. God’s covenant with our fathers may be a comfort to us when we are in distress. H. He approaches God as the God of his father, and as such a God in covenant. This was laying hold of the divine faithfulness. It was the prayer of faith; and though we may not have exactly the same plea in our approaches to God, yet we have one that is more endearing and more prevalent. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is a character which excites more hope and in which more great and precious promises have been made than in any other. He addresses him as his own God, pleading what he had promised to him, as well as to his fathers. “Who saidst unto me, Return,” etc. Jehovah has never made promises to us in the same extraordinary way that he did to Jacob; but, whatever he has promised to believers in general may be pleaded by every one of them in particular, especially when encountering opposition in the path of duty. Another remarkable feature in this prayer is the deep spirit of self-abasement which breathes through it. While he celebrates the great mercy and truth of God toward him, he acknowledges himself unworthy of the least instance of either. The original is, if possible, still more emphatic; “I am less than all the mercies,” etc., as if he not only disclaimed the worthiness of merit, but also that of meekness. In view of his own sinful conduct on a former occasion, he is amazed at the returns of mercy and truth which he had met with from a gracious God. By sin he had reduced himself in a manner to nothing; but God's goodness had made him great. Bush.—In this confession he gives to God alone the glory, as formerly he had taken it to himself, and in this prayer he casts away all confidence in his own strength and wisdom, which hitherto had been the anchor of his life, and he implicitly throws himself upon God and his promise. K. On the one hand, Jacob seems the father of Jewish guile, fear, unscrupulousness and thrift. On the other, he appears not only as the deeply faithful lover in his youth and the most tender father, but as an elevated, majestic man of faith, who believed in high things, who valued them, and who left on record such words of lowliness and penitence for his faults, in such genuine tones, that the purest, most repentant hearts take them up from age to age and repeat them as their own: "I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies." Mercer.—He does not say, "all thy mercy"—the word is in the plural—"the least of all thy mercies." For God has many bands of mercies; favors never come alone, they visit us in troops. All the trees in God's vineyard are full of boughs, and each bough is loaded with fruit. All the flowers in God's garden bloom double, and some of them bloom sevenfold. We have not mercy only, but mercies numerous as the sand. Mercy for the past, the present, the future; mercy to temper sorrows, mercy to purify joys; mercy for our sinful things, mercy for our holy things. "All thy mercies;" the expression has a vast acreage of meaning. He does not know how to express his sense of obligation except with plurals and universals. He seems to say to the Lord, "Because of all this great goodness, I pray thee go on to deal well with thy servant. Save me from Esau, or all thy mercies will be lost. Hast thou not in thy past love given pledge to me to keep me even to the end?" Mercy and truth all through the Bible are continually joined together, "All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth." Spurgeon.—It was the just and humble acknowledgment of Jacob to God, "I am less than the least of all thy mercies." God rewards his faithful servants, not according to the dignity of their works, but his own liberality and munificence. In dispensing his favors, he does not respect the meanness of our persons or services, but gives to us as a God. And the clearest notion of the Deity is, that he is a being infinite in all perfections, therefore all-sufficient, and most willing to make his creatures completely happy. Bates. Thankfulness was Jacob's distinguishing grace, as faith was Abraham's. Abraham appears ever to have been looking forward in hope—Jacob looking back in memory: the one rejoicing in the future, the other in the past. Jacob's happiness lay, not in looking forward to the hope, but backward upon the experience, of God's mercies toward him. He delighted lovingly to trace, and gratefully to acknowledge, what had been given, leaving the future to itself. Such was Jacob, living in memory rather than in hope, counting times, recording seasons, keeping days; having his history by heart, and his past life in his hand; and as if to carry on his mind into that of his descendants, it was enjoined upon them, that once a year every Israelite should appear before God with a basket of fruit of the earth, and call to mind what God had done for him and his father Jacob, and express his thankfulness for it. Well were it for us, if we had the character of mind instanced in Jacob, and enjoined on his descendants; the temper of dependence upon God's providence, and thankfulness under it, and careful memory of all He has done for us. It would be well if we were in the habit of looking at all we have as God's gift, undeservedly given, and day by day continued to us solely by His mercy. He gave; He may take away. He gave us all we have, life, health, strength, reason, enjoyment, the light of conscience; whatever we have good and holy within us; whatever faith we have; whatever of a renewed will; whatever love toward Him; whatever power over ourselves; whatever prospect of heaven. He gave us relatives, friends, education, training, knowledge, the Bible, the Church. All comes from Him. While He continues His blessings, we should follow David and Jacob, by living in constant praise and thanksgiving, and in offering up to Him of His own. Newman. 11,12. Jacob's petition was that of a kind husband and a tender father. But it was mainly in the character of a believer in the promises, and one deeply concerned for the divine glory, that it was offered. It was as though he had said, "If my life, and that of the mother with the children be cut off, how are thy promises to be fulfilled?" It is natural for us, as husbands and parents, to be importunate with God for the well-being of those who are so nearly related to us; but the way to obtain mercy for them is to seek it in subordination to the divine glory. Bush.—Thou saidst, I will deal well with thee, and again in the close, Thou saidst, I will surely do thee good. The best we can say to God Deliver me, I pray thee! To this deliverance he urgeth the Lord by no less than seven arguments. First, God's covenant with Abraham and Isaac; as if he had said, Remember those names with whom thou madest solemn covenants of protection, both to them and their posterity. The second is from God's particular command for this journey, "Thou saidst unto me, return;" I departed by thy direction, and therefore thou, O Lord, art ever engaged to give me defence while I yield thee obedience. Thirdly, he puts him in mind of his promises. Thou saidst, "I will deal well with thee," and that includes all other promises made unto him; these he makes as a bulwark to defend him, as his anchor in the storm. This anchor must fail and this bulwark be broken down before danger comes to me. If thy promise stand, I cannot fail. The fourth is the confession of his own unworthiness. Faith is always humble, and while we are most confident in God's word we are most distrustful of our own undesert: "I am not worthy of the least of all thy mercies." Though I am thus bold to urge thy covenant, yet I am as ready to acknowledge my own undesert. Thou art a debtor by the promise thou hast made me, not by any performance of mine to thee. Fifthly, he seeks to continue the current of God's favor by showing how plentifully it had already streamed unto him, which he doth by way of antithesis, setting his former poverty in opposition to his present riches: "With my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands;" that is, thou hast blessed me abundantly, and shall my brother's malice blast all? The sixth argument is the greatness and eminence of his peril: "I fear lest he come and slay the mother upon the children"—a proverbial speech in the holy Scriptures, like that of cutting off branch and root in one day, both denoting total excision or an utter overthrow. Seventhly, he closes by re-enforcing the mention of the promise which he urgeth more strongly than before. There it was only, "Thou saidst I will deal well with thee;" but here it is, "Thou saidst, In doing good I will do thee good"—that is, as it is rendered in our translation, "I will surely do thee good," and therefore let not my brother do me evil. We see Jacob's prayer was a pleading of reasons with God, and himself in the issue got not only a new blessing but a new name: Israel, a prince with God, a prevailer both with God and men. Caryl. 13-21. His final act of preparation is the sending of gifts to Esau. Here again Jacob shows his worldly wisdom. The disposition of this princely present in several droves, following one another at intervals (v. 16), was such as to repeat the favorable impression made by each, as they successively came before Esau accompanied with a conciliatory message. The announcement made with the first, and repeated with each succeeding one, "thy servant Jacob is behind us," would give time for reflection and kindly impressions, before their meeting. The number of those who had charge of the present, and successively made their appearance with their several messages, was also an expression of consideration and respect for the personage to whom it was delivered. T. J. C. 22,23. As soon as he judges that the weaker members of the camp are refreshed enough to begin their eventful march, he rises and goes from tent to tent awaking the sleepers, and quickly forming them into their usual line of march, sends them over the brook in the darkness, and himself is left alone. Dods. 32 : 24 And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the 25 day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his 26 thigh: and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was strained, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou 27 bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he 28 said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for thou hast striven with God 29 and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, 30 thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he 31 blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for, said he, I have 32 seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. And the sun rose upon him as he passed 33 over Penuel, and he halted upon his thigh. Therefore the children of Israel eat not the 34 sinew of the hip which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because he touched 35 the hollow of Jacob's thigh in the sinew of the hip. 33 : 1 And Jacob lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, Esau came, and with him four 2 hundred men. And he divided the children unto Leah, and unto Rachel, and unto the two handmaids. And he put the handmaids and their children foremost, and Leah and 3 her children after, and Rachel and Joseph hindermost. And he himself passed over be- 4 fore them, and bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother. And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed 5 him: and they wept. And he lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children; 6 and said, Who are these with thee? And he said, The children which God hath gra- 7 ciously given thy servant. Then the handmaids came near, they and their children, and 8 they bowed themselves. And Leah also and her children came near, and bowed them- 9 selves: and after came Joseph near and Rachel, and they bowed themselves. And he said, What meanest thou by all this company which I met? And he said, To find grace 10 in the sight of my lord. And Esau said, I have enough; my brother, let that thou hast 11 be thine. And Jacob said, Nay, I pray thee, if now I have found grace in thy sight, then 12 receive my present at my hand: forasmuch as I have seen thy face, as one seeth the face 13 of God, and thou wast pleased with me. Take, I pray thee, my gift that is brought to thee; because God hath dealt graciously with me, and because I have enough. And he 14 urged him, and he took it. And he said, Let us take our journey, and let us go, and I 15 will go before thee. And he said unto him, My lord knoweth that the children are ten- der, and that the flocks and herds with me give suck: and if they overdrive them one 16 day, all the flocks will die. Let my lord, I pray thee, pass over before his servant: and 17 I will lead on softly, according to the pace of the cattle that is before me and according 18 to the pace of the children, until I come unto my lord unto Seir. And Esau said, Let 19 me now leave with thee some of the folk that are with me. And he said, What needeth 20 it? let me find grace in the sight of my lord. So Esau returned that day on his way unto 21 Seir. And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built him an house, and made booths for his cattle: therefore the name of the place is called Succoth. 22 And Jacob came in peace to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when 23 he came from Paddan-aram; and encamped before the city. And he bought the parcel of ground, where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem's 24 father, for an hundred pieces of money. And he erected there an altar, and called it 25 El-elohe-Israel. The primary meaning of this story is, that Jacob, whose courage fails before his brother, and the reward of whose wiles threatens to be lost at one blow, is shown how man, despairing in his guilt, must wrestle out his cause with God, but that when he has gained the blessing from God, he has no more to be afraid of from any man. At the same time, Jacob's combat, when he first wrestles with bodily strength, is per- haps a picture of the perverseness of his former life, in which he believed himself to be able to force the fulfilment of the promise by the con- tinual use of carnal means, and had made it difficult enough for the divine leadings to be- come master of him. His becoming lame is then meant to show that God does not permit Himself to be forced by natural strength. But then Jacob becomes victorious by the weapon of prayer (comp. Hos. 12 : 4). As the natural character of Jacob, the intriguing holder of the heel—the tough, shrewd man—prefigures the natural character of the nation that descended from him, so the spiritual character of God's people is prefigured in the wrestler with God. O. The failings of the patriarchs are human, and the fact that they are not passed over in their history makes even the story of these shepherds of priceless worth to me. The timid Isaac, the crafty Jacob, stand before me as they really were; but they also show that the craft of the latter was of little service to him, and in his old age he shows a chastened and tried character which makes him a Ulysses among those Shepherd Fathers. His history is an instructive mirror of the human heart, and God Himself has effaced the blots which the youthful Jacob bore in his very name. "Thou shalt be no longer Jacob," says He, "but a hero of God, Israel," a name of honor which the poetry of the race adopts. It is not bodily might that is recorded in it, but the heroism of God, prayer and faith. . . . Jacob has divided his camp and flocks from fear of a nocturnal surprise by his brother. And lo, there appears the divine form of a heavenly warrior and wrestles with him. All vanish with the dawn—indeed the tone and color of the whole narrative move dimly, as if under the mysterious shades of night. The wrestler does not give his name, but leaves it to be conjectured. Jacob does not triumph, tells the story to no one, only wonders how a simple shepherd like him could have seen Elohim face to face and still live. But the great charm is the inner lesson. It is shown the trembling patriarch how idle it is to fear Esau, when he has overcome Jehovah by his prayer. Herder. It was a real transaction, but symbolical of Jacob's past, present, and future. The "man" who wrestled with Jacob "until the breaking of day" was Jehovah. Jacob had, indeed, been the believing heir to the promises, but all his life long he had wrestled with God—sought to attain success in his own strength and by his own devices. Seeming to contend with man, he had really contended with God. And God had also contended with him. At last further contest was impossible: Jacob had become disabled, for God had touched the hollow of his thigh. In the presence of Esau Jacob was helpless. But before he could encounter his most dreaded earthly enemy, he must encounter God, with Whom he had all along, though unwittingly, contended by his struggles and devices. The contest with Esau was nothing; the contest with Jehovah everything. The Lord could not be on Jacob's side, till he had been disabled, and learned to use other weapons than those of his own wrestling. Then it was that Jacob recognized with whom he had hitherto wrestled. Now he resorted to other weapons, even to prayer; and he sought and found another victory, even in the blessing of Jehovah and by His strength. Then also, truly at "the breaking of day," he obtained a new name, and with it new power, in which he prevailed with God and man. Jacob, indeed, "halted upon his thigh;" but he was now Israel, a Prince with God. A. E. 24. The man here spoken of is an appearance of God, that appearance of which we have before spoken, whose words are uttered in the Person and name of God himself. Alf.—In giving the reason for calling the name of the place Peniel (v. 30), he says, "for I have seen God face to face." Here then it is obvious that he who is at one time called "a man," is at another called "the Angel," and again designated by the august title of "God;" leaving us to the inevitable inference that the mysterious wrestler was no other than the divine personage so frequently brought before us under the appellation of "the Angel"—"the Angel of the Lord"—"the Angel of the Covenant;" that is, in other words, the Son of God appearing in that nature which he afterward assumed in accomplishing the work of our redemption. Could there be the least remaining doubt on the subject it is dispelled by the further statement of Hosea (12:4, 5), "He found him in Bethel, and there he spake with us; even the Lord of Hosts; the Lord is his memorial;" i.e. the name by which he is perpetually to be remembered in connection with this event. Bush. We suppose the contest of Jacob to have taken place in outward reality, and in a state of wakefulness. Even the halting which was the consequence of this wrestling could only have been the result of a real and outward contest. It is quite decisive that the text contains not the slightest indication that this wrestling had been different from the passage over Jabbok (v. 23), and from the breaking of the day (v. 26 compared with v. 31). And it is not more difficult to believe that the angel of the Lord should, under certain circumstances, have really wrestled with Jacob than that he should outwardly and perceptibly have entered the tent of Abraham, have allowed his feet to be washed, and condescended to partake of the feast which the patriarch had hospitably spread for him. K.—If God could partake of the hospitality of Abraham, and take Lot by the hand to deliver him from Sodom, we cannot affirm that he may not, for a worthy end, enter into a bodily conflict with Jacob. These various manifestations of God to man differ only in degree. If we admit any one, we are bound by parity of reason to accept all the others. M. 25,26. All along Jacob's life had been the struggle of a clever and strong, a pertinacious and enduring, a self-confident and self-sufficient person, who was sure of the result only when he helped himself—a contest with God, who wished to break his strength and wisdom, in order to bestow upon him real strength in divine weakness, and real wisdom in divine folly. K.—All this self-confidence culminates now, and in one final and sensible struggle, his Jacob-nature, his natural propensity to wrest what he desires and win what he aims at, from the most unwilling opponent, does its very utmost and does it in vain. And as the first faint dawn appears, and he begins dimly to make out the face, the quiet breathing of which he had felt on his own during the contest, the man with whom he wrestles touches the strongest sinew in Jacob's body, and the muscle on which the wrestler most depends shrivels at the touch and reveals to the falling Jacob how utterly futile had been all his skill and obstinacy and how quickly the stranger might have thrown and mastered him. It is at this touch, which discovers the Almighty power of Him with whom he has been contending, that the whole nature of Jacob goes down before God. He sees how foolish and vain has been his obstinate persistence in striving to trick God out of his blessing, or wrest it from Him, and now he owns his utter incapacity to advance one step in this way, he admits to himself that he is stopped, weakened in the way, thrown on his back, and can effect nothing, simply nothing, by what he thought would effect all; and, therefore, he passes from wrestling to praying, and with tears, as Hosea says, sobs out from the broken heart of the strong man, "I will not let thee go except thou bless me." Dods. This mysterious wrestler has wrestled from him, by one touch, all his might, and he can no longer stand alone. Without any support whatever from himself, he hangs upon the conqueror, and in that condition learns by experience the practice of sole reliance on one mightier than himself. This is the turning-point in this strange drama. Despairing now of his own strength, he is Jacob still: he declares his determination to cling on until his conqueror bless him. He now knows he is in the hand of a higher power, who can disable and again enable, who can curse and also bless. He knows himself also to be now utterly helpless without the healing, quickening, protecting power of his victor, and, though he die in the effort, he will not let him go without receiving this blessing. Jacob's sense of his total debility and utter defeat is now the secret of his power with his friendly vanquisher. He can overthrow all the prowess of the self-reliant, but He cannot resist the earnest entreaty of the helpless. M. "Let me go," he said, "for the day breaketh." He could have gone without asking leave of Jacob; but he suffers the firm embrace, and he asks relief from it only to draw out from Jacob the declaration, "I will not let thee go until thou bless me." Thus at last it is—when utterly stripped of the power by which he had previously maintained the struggle—when ceasing from wrestling, he simply clasps, and cleaves, and clings, and weeps, and prays, that Jacob prevails, and becomes in turn the conqueror. 27. "What is thy name?" the mysterious stranger says. The old name, representing the old character, must be confessed before the new name, representing the new character, is bestowed. "Thy name shall no more be called Jacob"—a supplanter, an overreacher, a successful wrestler with Esau or Laban—"but Israel"—a prince of God: "for as a prince hast thou power with God, and hast prevailed" W. H. Jacob is here knighted in the field, and has a title of honor given him by Him that is the Fountain of honor, which will remain to his praise to the end of time. Yet this was not all; having power with God, he shall have power with men too. Having prevailed for a blessing from Heaven, he shall prevail for Esau's favor. Whatever enemies we have, if we can but make God our Friend, we are well off; they that by faith have power in Heaven, have thereby as much power on earth as they have occasion for. An interest in the angel's blessing is better than acquaintance with his name. The tree of life is better than the tree of knowledge. Thus Jacob carried his point; a blessing he wrestled for, and a blessing he had; nor did ever any of his praying seed seek in vain. See how wonderfully God condescends to countenance and crown importunate prayer: those that resolve, though God slay them, yet to trust in him, will at length be more than conquerors. H.—In allusion to this transaction, the Most High says by the Prophet (Is. 45: 19), "I said not to the seed of Jacob seek ye me in vain." The seed of Jacob is specified rather than the seed of Abraham, from this eminent instance of Jacob's praying and prevailing in a season of extremity, and thus carrying an implication that his "seed" would inherit their father's spirit in this respect. Bush. 28. No more Jacob shall thy name be called, but Israel,—a prince of God, in God, with God. In a personal conflict, depending on thyself, thou wert no match for God. But in prayer, depending on another, thou hast prevailed with God. There are three acts in this dramatic scene : first, Jacob wrestling with the Omnipotent in the form of a man, in which he is signally defeated ; second, Jacob importunately supplicating Jehovah, in which he prevails as a prince of God ; third, Jacob receiving the blessing of a new name, a new development of spiritual life. M. 32. Sinew of the hip.** Whatever be the literal sense of the words, they doubtless mean the “sciatic nerve,” which is one of the largest in the body, and extends down the thigh and leg to the ankle. The Arabs still use this same word (Nasheh or Naseh) to designate the sciatic nerve. The custom prevailing among the Jews to this day of abstaining religiously from eating this sinew seems a lasting monument of the historical truth of this wonderful event in the life of Jacob. E. H. B. Once that the touch of the Divine finger, once that the consciousness of the close and antagonistic presence of the Unseen, the Omnipotent, is felt—what an instant change in Jacob’s feelings and Jacob’s conduct! The new nature symbolized by the new name begins already to reveal itself. All his old self-confidence is gone. His only trust is in the love and pity and great power of the Being upon whom he hangs. No thought of Esau is in the mind, no fear of Esau in the heart. Other and far deeper thoughts and feelings fill mind and heart. To know him—the Eternal, the Almighty, the All Holy One ; to stand right with him, be blessed by him, is the one thing that engrosses and absorbs. “And Jacob asked him, saying, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there.” W. H.—From this moment was revealed in Jacob distinctly that higher nature, that powerful grip upon spiritual things, which Paul calls “laying hold upon eternal life,” that singular life and power in the beliefs of the soul which must prevail. From this moment dates, though with many declensions, the true patriarch. Mercer.—His old life falls from him : purified and sanctified by God’s gracious dealings with him, he is no longer to bear the old name Jacob, polluted as it was by his deceit ; but he is to be called by a new name, which shall be a witness of his victory in the severest trial—a victory gained by distrust of himself and firm trust in God’s promise. God’s manifestation to him is not destructive of life—his soul is preserved ; and though he halts on his thigh, the sun rises full of blessing upon him. This history is not only full of signification to Jacob, but it represents the combat and the triumph of the soldiers of God in their severest trials. At different times in their life God seems to be an adversary, to withdraw His grace and protection ; they find themselves in great peril outwardly or inwardly ; and they have nothing on which to rely but God’s promise, in naked faith, without the comfort of His presence in their souls. These are the times when God is pleased to crown His true combatants, and for their greater confirmation to relieve them from their distresses. Geri. No purpose is more settled in the counsels of heaven, than to beat down the vain self-confidence which in one form or other is so prone to intrude itself into the devoutest doings of even the best of men. Some secret reliance upon their own strength, or uprightness, or understanding, mingles with the workings of their hearts, and prevents that entire renunciation of themselves which is essential to their being filled with the fulness of God. But when the Most High begins to wrestle with a soul, that is, to carry on more effectually the work of grace, he struggles with him in such a manner as to abase every high thing that exalts itself within him, and bring him to the lowest depths of self-abasement and self-annihilation. He will leave him nothing to plead but his pure gratuitous mercy in Christ. He will cause him, by his hidden influences in his heart, to feel that he has no alternative remaining but to embrace with the arms of faith the Son of God, and thus, as a crippled conqueror, to prevail. He thus learns to believe from the heart the declaration that “it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.” In a word, we may see, in this incident of the mystical conflict, how completely the Lord designs to strip the sinner of every relic of self-confidence, that he may cast himself, weak, weary, lame, halting, and helpless, into the arms of the all-sufficient Saviour. Bush. Very significant to Jacob in his after life must have been the lameness consequent on this night’s struggle. He, the wrestler, had to go halting all his days. To the end some men bear the marks of the heavy stroke by which God first humbled them. It came in a sudden shock that broke the health, or in a disappointment which nothing now given can ever quite obliterate the trace of, or in circumstances painfully and permanently altered. With many men God is forced to such treatment ; if any of us are under it, God forbid we should mistake it ; meaning and lie prostrate and despairing in the darkness instead of clinging to Him who has smitten and will heal us. Dads. They who bear the name of Israel have the same power to prevail with God that Jacob had at Peniel. The Angel of the covenant acted as though he could not break away from the eager patriarch. The effect was the same as though he could not. So it is with the struggle of other saints. How often is the appearance strongly held out that "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." Griffa. God often holds the suppliant in suspense for the sake of throwing him upon self-examination. It may be simply indispensable both for the good of the suppliant and for the honor of God that he should be put to the deepest self-searching, to compel reflection and consideration for the purpose of convicting him of some sin that must needs be seen, confessed, repented of and put utterly away. We must not overlook the great fact that when God grants signal blessings in answer to any man's prayer, it will be taken as a tacit indorsement on God's part of this man's spiritual state. It will be considered as God's testimony that he is not "regarding iniquity in his heart"—that there are no iniquities palpable to the world and present to the man's own consciousness—indulged and not condemned and forsaken. On this principle it often happens that God must needs compel the praying soul to the most thorough heart-searching and to the most absolute and complete renunciation of known sin, before he can honorably and safely bestow signal blessings. If we place this obvious principle of God's spiritual administration alongside of the well known facts of Jacob's history, we shall readily see reasons, apparently all-sufficient, for this long delay and this remarkable struggle of prayer before the blessing was given. The Lord was searching his servant and impressing some great principles of practical duty upon his mind under circumstances well adapted to insure very thorough reformation. H. C. A spirit of prayer is a demonstration of an Israel of God; this Jacob had, this he made use of, and by this he obtained the name of Israel. A spirit of prayer in straits, difficulties, and distresses—a spirit of prayer when alone, in private, in the night, when no eye seeth but God's, then to be at it, then to lay hold of God, then to wrestle, to hold fast, and not to give over until the blessing is obtained, is a sign of one that is an Israel of God. Banyan. To make Christ's forgiving love my own there must be the personal contact of my soul with the loving heart of Christ, the individual act of my own coming to Him, and, as the old Puritans used to say, "my transacting" with Him. Like the ocean of the atmosphere, His love encompasses me, and in it I live, and move, and have my being. But I must let it flow into my spirit, and stir the dormant music of my soul. I can shut it out, sealing my heart love-tight against it. I do shut it out, unless by my own conscious, personal act I yield myself to Him, unless by my own faith I come to Him, and meet Him. As if there were not another soul on earth, I and He must meet, and in solitude deep as that of death, each man for himself must yield to Incarnate Love, and receive eternal life. The flocks and herds, the wives and children have all to be sent away, and Jacob is left alone, before the mysterious Wrestler comes whose touch of fire lames the whole nature of sin and death, whose inbreathed power strengthens to hold Him fast till He speaks a blessing who desires to be overcome, and makes our yielding to Him our prevailing with Him. As one of the old mystics called prayer "the flight of the lonely man to the only God," so we may call the act of faith the meeting of the soul alone with Christ alone. A. M. The words of the Wrestler at the brook Jabok, "Let me go, for the day breaketh," express the truth that spiritual things will not submit themselves to sensible tests. When we seek to let the full daylight, by which we discern other objects, stream upon them, they elude our grasp. When we fancy we are on the verge of having our doubts forever scattered, and our suppositions changed into certainties, the very approach of clear knowledge and demonstration seems to drive those sensitive spiritual presences into darkness. As Pascal remarked, and remarked as the mouthpiece of all souls that have earnestly sought for God, The world only gives us indications of the presence of a God who conceals himself. What is possible, God has done. He has made Himself known in Christ. We are assured, on testimony that stands every kind of test, that in Him, if nowhere else, we find God. Dods. That this was the turning-point in Jacob's inner life, the bestowment of the new name would of itself have led us to expect. A careful study of his life establishes it. Dividing that life into two parts—the 97 years that preceded, and the 50 that followed the great interview at Peniel—we find little in the former to attract; not a little, on the other hand, to repel. Abundance, indeed, of good materials of character exhibit themselves: nothing shallow, nothing weak, all of good quality and proportion, quick intelligence, warm affection, poetic sentiment, large and varied capacities for work, firmness of purpose, fertility of resource, unfaltering self-confidence; but the presence, withal, of a selfish and sneaking cunning, an aptness for deceit and treachery in dealing even with nearest friends; and the absence of any clear tokens of the continuous and dominant influence of the ancestral faith—the first vision at Bethel making apparently but a temporary impression—one that faded away amid the manifold engagements of the strange and troubled life at Paddan-aram. In the second section, the fifty years that date from Peniel, Jacob appears a quite altered man; the old nature, doubtless, still there, but thoroughly restrained and subdued. Not a trace of craft in any one piece of conduct: the crooked cunning ways followed no more. For adroitness there is simplicity; for falsehood, truth. Self-confidence has got its death-wound in that midnight meeting. Trial follows trial, bereavement succeeds bereavement. Under severe and protracted discipline, the higher spiritual nature grows and ripens, till at the close the piety of Abraham and Isaac, their faith in God and in his special promises, shines forth in Jacob in undimmed lustre. W. H. # The Meeting with Esau. 33 : 4. Esau was moved and melted into tenderness by a responsive influence to the prayer of Jacob from on high, but still through the subordinate means which Jacob did well in putting into operation. The successive appliances, first of the costly gifts, secondly of his own personal appearance, and thirdly of the successive presentations of his family, were all exceedingly well devised on the part of Jacob; and one cannot help admiring at the same time the exhibition of Esau. He had many good points and properties. Constitutionally, and as viewed in the light of a natural man, there was much to like and to admire in him. T. C. 9,10. Jacob might truly say, not in mere compliment, that the sight of Esau's face had been to him as the sight of God's face, discerning as he did in his brother's altered mind to him a sign of the divine favor. 13, 14. The excuse was genuine. Tender children, such as many of Jacob's were, would be injured, and flocks in milk, or with young, would die even with a day's overdriving; and therefore could not keep pace with Esau and his men. Observe Jacob addresses Esau always as "my lord," but Esau speaks to Jacob as "my brother." The one had a guilty conscience, which forbade him to touch on the brotherly relation; the other was clear on this matter. Alf.—There was nothing in Jacob's language to his brother which, when translated from Eastern to our Western modes of conduct and expression, is inconsistent with proper self-respect. If he declined the offer of an armed guard, it was because he felt he needed not an earthly host to protect him. Besides, it was manifestly impossible for cattle and tender children to keep up with a Bedouin warrior band. A. E. 16. Esau retires to make room for Jacob; he leaves to him the land of his inheritance, and disappears on his way to the wild mountains of Seir. In those wild mountains, in the red hills of Edom, in the caves and excavations to which the soft sandstone rocks so readily lend themselves, in the cliffs which afterward gave to the settlement the name of "Sela" or "Petra," lingered the ancient aboriginal tribe of the Horites or dwellers in the holes of the rock. These "the children of Esau succeeded, and destroyed from before them, and dwelt in their stead." It was the rough rocky country described in their father's blessing: a savage dwelling, "away from the fatness of the earth and the dew of heaven;" by the sword they were to live; a race of hunters among the mountains. A. P. S. The best about Esau is "good nature," which is but nature after all, nature and not grace. As contemplated according to the higher requirements and demands which God makes on men, he is described by the Apostle in a single word, but one full of significance, "a profane person;" one with no sanctuary in his soul, with little sense or none of the privileges so glorious and unique which were the inheritance of the elect family, and of himself as the centre of that family, divinely appointed to this honor. That the prerogatives of the firstborn, slighted and despised by him, should pass to his younger brother, lay in the very nature and moral necessity of things. There were no fitnesses, no predispositions for this honor in him; rather the most marked unfitnesses for standing at the head of the great religious movement in which was wrapped up the whole future hope of the world. Trench. 17. Jacob turned in a north-westerly direction to Succoth, a place still east of Jordan, and afterward in the possession of the tribe of Gad. Here he probably made a lengthened stay, for we read that "he built him an house, and made booths for his cattle," whence also the name of Succoth, or "booths." A. E.—That the stay at Succoth was more than a mere ordinary halt for rest and refreshment upon a journey, is apparent; but can we form any idea of its probable length? We have ten years here to come and go upon, for so long was the interval between Jacob's reaching the borders of Canaan and his arrival at Hebron. Over these intervening years we have to distribute the incidents recorded in the 33d, 34th, and 35th chapters of Genesis. To allow of Dinah and her brothers being of anything like sufficient age, it is necessary to throw the events narrated in the 34th chapter as far on as possible toward the close of this period. If we assign a year to the journey from Shechem to Bethel, Ephrath, Edar, and Mamre, there remain nine years to be divided between Succoth and Shechem. But did Jacob actually allow ten years to elapse after reaching the banks of the Jordan before visiting his aged parent at Mamre? That after so long a separation Jacob should have lived continuously so many years so near to Hebron as he was at Succoth and at Shechem—a single week enough to carry him to and fro, and give him a day or two with Isaac—without once going to see him, is incredible. W. H. Jacob may have paid one or more cisits to his father, either from Shechem or even from Succoth, without the circumstance being expressly mentioned in the narrative. From chap. 35:8, compared with chap. 24:59, we gather that soon after his return Jacob must have come into immediate contact with the house of his father, for we find the nurse of Rebekah, who had been in the house of Isaac, now in that of Jacob. But Jacob no longer subordinated his own household to that of his father, because in virtue of God's leading; He had now been constituted the representative of the promise, while after Isaac had bestowed the blessing upon Jacob, his work, so far as he was the representative of the promise, was finished. K. 18. Came in peace to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan. The words seem designedly chosen to indicate that God had amply fulfilled what Jacob had asked at Bethel: to "come again in peace." A. E. In Abraham's time, we do not read of any city of Shechem. The phrase used is, "the place of Sichem," meaning, probably, the place where Sichem, or Shechem, afterward stood. The city of Shechem would seem to have taken its name from the son of Hamor, the prince of whom Jacob bought his parcel of ground, and hence would date from about the time of Jacob's sojourn there. Shechem is midway between Jerusalem and Nazareth—and between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. The broad valley running north and south through the territory of ancient Ephraim—the ancient Moreb, the modern Mukhna—is flanked on the west by a range of abrupt and lofty hills. The road usually followed leads through the plain along the base of these hills. Travelling northward by this road, we reach, some six or seven miles from the southern limit of the plain, the point where a cross-valley from the west breaks through the range of hills over against us. This cross-valley, where it issues into the great valley, is half a mile wide. The hills, at the points of intersection, rise to the dignity of mountain promontories; that on the north being the historical "Ebal," while that on the south is the still more renowned "Gerizim." Out a little from the base of Gerizim, just where the edges of the two valleys meet, is Jacob's Well; while a few hundred yards to the north, or near the middle of the cross-valley, is the little Mohammedan structure known as "The Tomb of Joseph." N. C. B.—See Sketch Map, New Testament, vol. 1, pp. 96 and 100. Coming from the south, you continue up the plain of Mukhna until Mount Gerizim faces boldly upon it on your left. Passing the eastern front of Gerizim and looking westward, you see at a glance the Vale of Shechem, running east and west, with Mount Gerizim on the south and Ebal on the north. Just where you turn is Jacob's Well. Gerizim and Ebal, it will be noted, are lofty parallel ridges, with the narrow Vale of Shechem between them. Gerizim stands two thousand eight hundred and forty-eight feet above the sea, and Ebal three thousand and seventy-six feet. At the eastern opening of the vale is Jacob's Well; a mile to the west is the city of Nāblūs, replacing the old Shechem and lying at the foot of the ridge of Gerizim. About a half mile north of Jacob's Well is a village called Askar, probably the Sychar whence came the "woman of Samaria" with whom our Lord held converse as he sat by Jacob's Well. Dulles. The patriarchal associations of Shechem are almost as suggestive as those of Hebron itself; not only beginning with Abraham, but being made impressive by existing relics—Jacob's Well and the Tomb of Joseph answering severally to Abraham's Oak and the Cave of Machpelah. But beyond Hebron Shechem was made memorable by a visit of our Saviour to its vicinity, and by the delivery there of a recorded discourse of the Great Teacher—a discourse not only fraught with heavenly truth and power, but also characterized by local and historical references, such as fitted it to the time and place and purpose of His address. N. C. B. # 19. For a hundred pieces of money. Hebrew kestiah, lamb, but here to be rendered in the plural "lambs," by which is probably meant a kind of coin with the image of a lamb stamped upon it. "The primitive race of men being shepherds, and their wealth consisting in their cattle, in which Abraham is said to have been rich, for greater convenience metals were substituted for the commodity itself. It was natural for the representative sign to bear impressed the object which it represented; and thus, accordingly, the earliest coins were stamped with the figure of an ox or a sheep." (Maurice Iod, Antiq.) Thus the ancient Athenians had a coin called βονς ox, because it was stamped with the image of an ox. Thus, too, the Latin word for money, pecunia, is derived from pecus, cattle, from the image stamped upon it. The custom no doubt arose from the fact that in primitive times the coin was the ordinary value of the animal whose image it bore. Bush. # 20. And he erected there an altar. At the same place where Abraham had built his first altar (chap. 12 : 7). Abraham dedicated his "unto the LORD, who appeared unto him;" Jacob his, unto "God, the God of Israel," which was the new name that God had given him. The place was at or near Shechem : so that the woman of Samaria might well say as she did to our Saviour, that "their fathers worshipped God in that mount." Wall.—This whole transaction was an act of faith on the part of Jacob. The purchase of land, and that in the very place where God had first promised Abraham that the land should be his, showed his conviction in the certainty of that promise as renewed to him and his seed : the erection of an altar on this his own land connected the act of purchase with the God in whose promise he trusted : and the naming of that altar bespoke special faith in the symbolic meaning of the name which God had given him. Alf. The Oak of Moreb, the first camp and altar of Abraham in the Land of Promise, was before Shechem (Gen. 12 : 6), at the entrance of the valley, in the plain, and, therefore, close to Jacob's Well. There is no spot in sacred story more accurately marked out than this; and here we are on the very spot consecrated by the presence of our Divine Saviour; exactly where we are sitting He sat. The arched arcade that protected the well and invited the wayworn traveller by its shade, has long since crumbled; but its pillars and ruins are strewn around us. This is the parcel of ground that Jacob bought of Hamor, the father of Shechem, where, like his grandfather, he first encamped when he came from the land of the east : here he, too, erected his altar, and here he sank that well, which has remained to the present day. The very circumstances of the case explain both his purchase and his sinking this well. Though the plain is the richest in the land, yet the streams in it are few. The brook that flows eastward from the valley is but scanty, for most of the springs drain to the west. Two of the three great fountains on this side the city were within its boundaries, and the third belonged to the village hard by. Jacob knew well the jealousy between the settled inhabitants and the nomad herdsmen, who would certainly not be permitted to water their flocks within the precincts; and, therefore, with that cautious prudence which ever stamped his character, he purchases a small piece of land, quite outside the valley, where there could be no suspicion of his making a stronghold, and in it he sinks this well—which must have been, for those times, a most costly work—deeper far than the wells sunk by his grandfather Abraham, under similar circumstances, at Beersheba. . . . The sinking of a well in the East is a greater work than the erection of a castle or fortress, and whether the wells be those of Abraham at Beersheba or of Jacob at Shechem, they hand down the name of their constructor from generation to generation as the benefactor of posterity. How truly in keeping with Jacob's peace-loving character was this act of sinking a well in the plain at such enormous cost, so near the city and its abundant springs and rills; fearing lest his sons should be brought into collision with the men of Shechem concerning that water which was far more precious than land. Yet with characteristic caution he first purchased the piece of land of the lord of the country—of Hamor the father of Shechem. H. B. T. The well is 75 feet deep, 7 feet 6 inches diameter, and is lined throughout with rough masonry, as it is dug in alluvial soil. Every one visiting the well throws stones down for the satisfaction of hearing them strike the bottom, and in this way, as well as from the débris of the ruined church built over the well during the fourth century, it has become filled up to probably more than half of its original depth. Lieut. Anderson. See New Testament, vol. 1, Section 22. The beautiful biographies of the Old Testament reveal to us the hand of God, leading the patriarchs and other holy men along a perpetual pilgrimage, in which they are as really without self-direction as was Israel in the wilderness. Surely the way of Abram was not in himself, when God called him out of the East, led him into Canaan, and into Egypt, and through a long life gave him no inheritance, no, not so much as to set his foot on. The wanderings of Jacob were as little under his own control. And we have only to look back upon our own little biography, however quiet and uneventful that history may have been, to learn, that of the great body of events, very few have been at our own disposal. A higher wisdom hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of our habitation; hath ordered how we should be educated; the field of our labor; the afflictions which have entered into our discipline, and the stations which we now occupy. J. W. A. 1. And Dinah the daughter of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. And Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her; and he took her, and lay with her, and humbled her. And his soul clave unto Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the damsel, and spake kindly unto the damsel. And Shechem spake unto his father Hamor, saying, Get me this damsel to wife. Now Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter; and his sons were with his cattle in the field: and Jacob held his peace until they came. And Hamor the father of Shechem went out unto Jacob to commune with him. And the sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard it: and the men were grieved, and they were very wroth, because he had wrought folly in Israel in lying with Jacob's daughter; which thing ought not to be done. And Hamor communed with them, saying, The soul of my son Shechem longeth for your daughter: I pray you give her unto him to wife. And make ye marriages with us; give your daughters unto us, and take our daughters unto you. And ye shall dwell with us: and the land shall be before you; dwell and trade ye therein, and get you possessions therein. And Shechem said unto her father and unto her brethren, Let me find grace in your eyes, and what ye shall say unto me I will give. Ask me never so much dowry and gift, and I will give according as ye shall say unto me: but give me the damsel to wife. And the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and Hamor his father with guile, and spake, because he had defiled Dinah their sister, and said unto them, We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one that is uncircumcised; for that were a reproach unto us: only on this condition will we consent unto you: if ye will be as we be, that every male of you be circumcised; then will we give our daughters unto you, and we will take your daughters to us, and we will dwell with you, and we will become one people. But if ye will not hearken unto us, to be circumcised; then will we take our daughter, and we will be gone. And their words pleased Hamor, and Shechem Hamor's son. And the young man deferred not to do the thing, because he had delight in Jacob's daughter: and he was honored above all the house of his father. And Hamor and Shechem his son came unto the gate of their city, and communed with the men of their city, saying, These men are peaceable with us; therefore let them dwell in the land, and trade therein; for, behold, the land is large enough for them; let us take their daughters to us for wives, and let us give them our daughters. Only on this condition will the men consent unto us to dwell with us, to become one people, if every male among us be circumcised, as they are circumcised. Shall not their cattle and their substance and all their beasts be ours? only let us consent unto them, and they will dwell with us. And unto Hamor and unto Shechem his son hearkened all that went out of the gate of his city; and every male was circumcised, all that went out of the gate of his city. And it came to pass on the third day, when they were sore, that two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brethren, took each man his sword, and came upon the city unawares, and slew all the males. And they slew Hamor and Shechem his son with the edge of the sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem's house, and went forth. The sons of Jacob came upon the slain, and spoiled the city, because they had defiled their sister. They took their flocks and their herds and their asses, and that which was in the city, and that which was in the field; and all their wealth, and all their little ones and their wives, took they captive and spoiled, even all that was in the house. And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, Ye have troubled me, to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites; and, I being few in number, they will gather themselves together against me and smite me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house. And they said, Should he deal with our sister as with an harlot? The Bible hides nothing of shame; is not afraid of words which make the cheek burn; conceals nothing of moral crippleness, infirmity, or weakness, or evil. The Bible holds everything up in the light. Recognize, at least, the fearless honesty of the book. This is not a gallery of artistic figures; this is no gathering together of dramatic characters—painted, arrayed, taught to perform their part aesthetically, without fault and beyond criticism; these are living men and women—when they pray, when they sin, when they shout like a host of worshippers, and when they fall down like a host of rebels, or flee like a host of cowards. The Bible paints real characters. God says what is true about every one of us. If there is shame in it, we must feel it; the wrong is ours, not his. No other book could be so dauntless, could paint what we call the defective side of human nature with so bold a hand and yet claim to be the revelation of God. J. P. The events related in this chapter could not have happened till Jacob had lived six or seven years in the neighborhood of Shechem; for in a less time than this the two brothers could not have arrived at man's estate, nor Dinah herself have attained a marriageable age. Bush. The history of Dinah is recorded to convince future ages that the sins of impurity are so hateful to God that they seldom go unpunished in this world; if they do, worse will be their punishment in the next. Bp. Wilson. 1. Dinah went out to see. When this happened, the Scripture does not inform us. She was probably fifteen or sixteen years of age. The occasion of the calamity, Josephus tells us, was a great festival held at Shechem, which she ventured to go to, desirous of seeing the spectacles and fashions of the place. Stackhouse. 7. Folly in Israel. The first instance on record where the family of Jacob is designated by the title of "Israel." The word "folly" in Scriptural usage implies an act of shameless turpitude committed against the Divine precept. The "fool" of the Scriptures is not by interpretation a simpleton, but a sinner; and "folly," instead of mental infirmity, is moral delinquency, and that of an aggravated character. This should be especially borne in mind in reading the book of Proverbs. It is not unlikely that from the present example the phraseology here employed became proverbially applied to express the same sinful conduct. Bush. As the cunning of Jacob forms a prototype of the future national character, so now also the carnal pride of the sons in their pre-eminence over the heathen indicates one of the main characteristics of the Jewish people at a later period. K.—A history like this brings typically before us all the aberrations caused during the course of history, when the belief in the high pre-eminence of Israel was in a carnal manner cherished by carnally-minded men. The feeling that they were the sons of Jacob, the chosen race, that any violation of their honor must be more terribly revenged than in the case of others, and that not even submission to the rite of circumcision could atone for it, appears to have mainly influenced the conduct of the sons of Jacob. Gerl. The heads of the Jewish tribes, as we become better acquainted with them, are full of all rude and savage impulses, impatient of home subjection, not yet tamed by the sterner discipline of law. Just the inclinations and tendencies which we saw in Esau are in them. At the same time they have inherited much of their father's craft; they will compare their ends by force or cunning, or both. It is no Arcadian picture; the simple life of shepherds, as the book of Genesis represents it, is infected with vices which we think the most foreign from simplicity. Maurice. The intention was malicious, as appears by the sequel of the story; all they aimed at was to prepare them for the day of slaughter. Bloody designs have often been covered and carried on, with a pretence of religion; thus they have been accomplished most plausibly, and most securely. But this dissembled piety is, doubtless, double iniquity. Religion is never more injured, nor God's sacraments more profaned, than when they are thus used for a cloak of maliciousness. H. To execute rigor upon a submissive offender, is more merciless than just; or if the punishment had been both just and proportionable from another, yet from them which had vowed peace and affinity, it was shamefully unjust. To disappoint the trust of another, and to neglect our own promise and fidelity for private purposes, adds faithlessness unto our cruelty. What impiety was this; instead of honoring a holy sign, to take an advantage by it! Bp. H. It was true that Shechem had done ill, but he was endeavoring to atone for it, and was as honest and honorable after the deed as the case would admit. It was true that Shechem had done ill; but what was that to all the Shechemites? Does one man sin, and will they be wroth with all the town? Must the innocent fall with the guilty? This was barbarous indeed. But that which above all aggravated the cruelty was the most perfidious treachery that was in it. The Shechemites had submitted to their conditions, and had done that upon which they had promised to become one people with them; yet they act as sworn enemies to those to whom they were lately become sworn friends, making as light of their covenant as they did of the laws of humanity. And are these the sons of Israel? Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce. This also added to the crime, that they made a holy ordinance of God subservient to their wicked design, so making that odious; as if it were not enough for them to shame themselves and their family, they bring a reproach upon that honorable badge of their religion; justly would it be called a bloody ordinance. H. Jacob's sons, making every allowance for their outraged feelings, acquitted themselves most detestably in this whole transaction. The allegation of a religious principle in the proposition which they made makes it all the more atrocious; and they stand forth in an aggravated likeness as the genuine descendants of the maternal family whence they sprung. There was something diabolical in the deceit wherewith the plot was constructed, and the appalling cruelty of its termination—when a hecatomb of innocent men and families was offered up to appease their vengeance. Altogether, it was a most revolting tragedy. T. C. Their atrocious wickedness elicited from the dying lips of their father the prophetic denunciation (Gen. 49:7). "Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath, for it was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel." Bash.—As a token of the divine displeasure at this treachery and cruelty, they were excluded from the subsequent blessing, sharing in this respect the fate of Reuben, the firstborn, who incurred the same punishment from a similar cause. Hence it was that the promise of becoming the progenitor of the Messias devolved upon the fourth son, Judah. Moses, however, though himself a Levite, relates this enormity of Levi without a scruple,—a sufficient proof that he wrote in the service of God and truth, and not for any selfish purpose or personal interest. C. G. B.—In all the simplicity of truth he gives an unvarnished statement of atrocities which have reflected everlasting disgrace upon the memory of the founder of his line. Would an impostor have done this? The story teaches us, with affecting emphasis, how one sin leads on to another, and, like flames of fire, spreads desolation on every side! Dissipation leads to seduction; seduction produces wrath; wrath thirsts for revenge; the thirst of revenge has recourse to treachery; treachery issues in murder; and murder is followed by lawless depredation! Bash. The whole of this miserable story has its place in the development of the kingdom of God. No alliance can be true and safe which is not upon the foundation of the Divine covenants. Circumcision without faith is a mere carnal ordinance, working evil. The sin of Shechem was avenged, but it was avenged by the commission of a greater sin by Simeon and Levi. It was not thus that the kingdom of God was to be spread. "Ye have troubled me," Jacob said. And so have all worldly agencies and methods troubled the true Church. It is better to suffer at the hands of the wicked than to make compromising alliance with them. The worldly Church has filled the world with misery. Abuse of Divine things has been the source of innumerable evils, not only among the people of God, but even in the sphere of men's secular life. But notwithstanding the sin of Simeon and Levi, their prompt execution of the Divine judgment upon the sin of Shechem must have produced a wholesome fear in the country, and connected that fear with moral purity. The sins of unchastity and violation of family rights were monstrously prevalent among the heathen people of Canaan, and it was doubtless ordered that this outbreak of human passion should bear witness for God as the God of purity and the God of households, who blesses the life which is free from the defilement of sensual indulgence, and in which the bonds of relationship and virtuous marriages and the sanctities of home are deeply reverenced. We read afterward, "the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them." Pul. Com. 1. 1 And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, who appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother. 2. 2 Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and purify yourselves, and change your garments: and let us arise, and go up to Beth-el; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went. And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and the rings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem. And they journeyed: and a great terror was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob. 3. 6 So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan (the same is Beth-el), he and all the people that were with him. And he built there an altar, and called the place El-beth-el: because there God was revealed unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother. And Deborah Rebekah's nurse died, and she was buried below Beth-el under the oak: and the name of it was called Allon-bacut. 4. 9 And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came from Paddan-aram, and blessed him. 5. 10 And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel. And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and 12 kings shall come out of thy loins ; and the land which I gave unto Abraham and Isaac, to thee 13 I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land. And God went up from him in 14 the place where he spake with him. And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he spake with him, a pillar of stone : and he poured out a drink offering thereon, and poured oil 15 thereon. And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him, Beth-el. 16 And they journeyed from Beth-el ; and there was still some way to come to Ephrath : and 17 Rachel travailed, and she had hard labour. And it came to pass, when she was in hard labour, 18 that the midwife said unto her, Fear not ; for now thou shalt have another son. And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing (for she died), that she called his name Ben-oni : but his 19 father called him Benjamin. And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath (the 20 same is Beth-lehem). And Jacob set up a pillar upon her grave : the same is the Pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day. 27 And Jacob came unto Isaac his father to Mamre, to Kiriath-arba (the same is Hebron), where 28 Abraham and Isaac sojourned. And the days of Isaac were an hundred and fourscore years. 29 And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered unto his people, old and full of days ; and Esau and Jacob his sons buried him. 1-8. Jacob returns to Bethel. He receives the direction from God. He had now been for some years lingering in Succoth and Shechem. There may have been intercourse between him and his father's house during this interval. The presence of Deborah, Rebekah's nurse (v. 8), in his family, is a plain intimation of this. M 1. Of the manner in which the present com- munication was made to him, nothing is said : but the purport of it was that he should remove to Bethel, situated about thirty miles south of Shechem, build there an altar, and perform the vow which he had previously made (Gen. 28 : 20, 22). It was now about thirty years since that vow was made : Jacob had dwelt eight or ten in Canaan since his return from Paddan- aram, and had now attained to one hundred and six years of age ; yet for some reason unex- plained he had hitherto delayed to pay it. Bush.—God reminds Jacob of his vow at Bethel, and sends him thither to perform it. Jacob had said in the day of his distress, If I come again in peace this stone shall be God's house (ch. 28 : 22). God had performed his part of the bargain, and had given Jacob more than bread to eat, and raiment to put on—he had got an estate, and was become two bands ; but, it should seem, he had forgotten his vow, or, at least, had too long deferred the performance of it. Seven or eight years it was now since he came to Canaan ; he had purchased ground there, and had built an altar in remembrance of God's last appearance to him when he called him Israel (ch. 33 : 19, 20) ; but Bethel still is forgotten. H. The mercy of God changed the flight from Shechem into a pilgrimage to Bethel. In itself the Divine command (to go to Bethel) implied a Di- vine assurance in this danger ; for if God calls him to Bethel, He would surely bring him safely thither. But the place to which he was directed to go conveyed even more fully this assurance, for in Bethel he had found a refuge with God at the time of his first trouble. Then, God had promised to protect, to bless, and to bring back him, who, poor and forsaken, had to flee the land ; now, this prediction is richly fulfilled— Jacob has returned unscathed to the Holy Land, the rich proprietor of large flocks. K. Of the truth that God remembers all his own mercies to his people, every act of his love tow- ard every one of them, here is a confirma- tion. After thirty years, the vision at Bethel was fresh as ever in His memory. A mere dream of the night, sent by Him to comfort one of the least of his servants, is not forgotten. This we can believe ; but it is hard to believe that the Lord remembers the petty movements and workings of our minds, that the mighty God should hold in mind the promises of a worm. But hold them he does. He takes special notice of every word we utter that has a reference to himself, and every purpose we form. He records the vows we make to him, and his mind dwells on them as though he de- lighted in them, and longed to have them ful- filled. "I remember thee," he says to his church of old, "the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals." Many years before this, he lets Jacob see that he remembers the kindness of his early years ; "I am the God of Bethel where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me ;" and now he refers to the same transaction again. 2-1. Jacob's directions to prepare for worship at Bethel. His neglect to carefully instruct his sons had borne bitter fruit. It necessitates the sudden and difficult effort now put forth to in- duce his sons to seek with him to serve God. He cannot rightly worship God unless his children and household are with him in spirit, Jacob's neglect had led to carelessness by his sons of the Divine service. He could not himself enter heartily on the service until he had discharged his duty as guide and instructor to his family. F Hastings. Strange gods. The household deities—the teraphim, such as Rachel took with her. At all times among the Israelites there was united together with the worship of the one true God very much idolatry, in which the unbelief, or half-hearted belief of the people sought support. Gerl.—These "strange gods" were idolatrous and superstitious objects of which his sons had, as he knew, just before acquired possession, when they pillaged the town of Shechem—valuable for the materials of which they were composed, but which Jacob feared might in the end prove dangerous. The part of the injunction which directs the people to purify themselves, and to put on clean vestures, is remarkable as the first example of the personal cleanness which was afterward regarded as essential to a becoming appearance before God in worship—a salutary observance, which became a matter of ceremonial law under Moses, but which, like many other observances of the law, had its origin in earlier times. Kit. 4. Earrings were frequently used as amulets, believed to arrest evil, or to act as a charm; they were often covered with allegorical figures or mysterious sentences, according to the deities to which they were consecrated; they formed therefore one of the ordinary instruments of superstitious usages. Kalisch. 5. After the sanguinary conduct of Jacob's sons, is it not surprising that the neighboring tribes did not join together, and extirpate the whole family? So they certainly would, had not the terror of God fallen upon them. Jacob and the major part of his family were innocent of this great transgression; and on the preservation of their lives the accomplishment of great events depended; therefore God watches over them, and shields them from the hands of their enemies. A. C. 8. "Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died, and she was buried beneath Bethel, under an oak, and the name of it was called Allon-bachuth (the oak of weeping)." Thus Deborah's long and faithful service in the household of Isaac, and the family-mourning over the old, tried family friend, are deemed worthy of perpetual memorial in the Book of God! But from the circumstance that Deborah died in the house of Jacob, we infer not only that her mistress Rebekah was dead, but that there must have been some intercourse between Isaac and Jacob since his return to Canaan. Most probably Jacob had visited his aged parent, though Scripture does not mention it, because it in no way affects the history of the covenant. A. E. 9-15. God appeared unto Jacob again.** He was now at Bethel, the place from which he may be considered to have set out for Paddan-aram, and where he made his vow that if God would be with him and be his God, he would make that place the house of God. He had now come back again to the same spot; he had fulfilled his vow by consecrating Bethel as the temple of God; this might then well be considered as the accomplishment of his return from Paddan-aram. Accordingly God appears to him here once more, promises him again, and more emphatically, protection, blessing, inheritance, confirms the name of Israel to him, and assures him that his posterity shall be numerous, powerful and blessed. And Jacob, recognizing the fulfilment of all that had been promised him when he fled from Esau, and of all that his vows had pointed to, rears again a stone pillar as he had done forty years before, and again solemnly names the place Bethel. The whole of this history thoroughly fits in to all that has gone before. 11. I am God Almighty.** El-Shaddal. It was by this name that God revealed himself to Abram, when he changed his name to Abraham, and promised him the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession (ch. 17:8). The use of the same name here is singularly appropriate. E. H. B. 16-20. They draw near to a place then known only by its ancient Canaanite name, and now for the first time mentioned in history, "Ephrath, which is Bethlehem." The village appears spread along its narrow ridge, but they are not to reach it. "There Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath." A. P. S.—Rachel had passionately said, Give me children, or else I die; and now that she had children (for this was her second), she died. Dying is here called the departing of her soul. The death of the body is but the departure of the soul to the world of spirits. H. 19. Ephrath, which is Bethlehem.** Ephrath, or Ephrata, was the old, and Bethlehem the later name of this town. "Bethlehem" means "house of bread;" but we do not know on what occasion it was imposed. The town was in the allotment of the tribe of Judah, being situated about six miles south of Jerusalem, on the road to Hebron. It was a city in the time of Boaz (Ruth 3:11), whose grandson was Jesse, the father of David, who was born and reared there; in consequence of which the place is very frequently distinguished as "the city of David." Bush. 20. And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave. This monument of Rachel's is the first that we read of in Scripture. It was certainly standing when Moses wrote, as appears from this verse; and mention is made of it just before Saul was anointed king (1 Sam. 10:2). The monument now shown for it is a modern and Turkish structure. Maundrell. 27. At last Jacob came to his journey's end, "unto Isaac his father, unto Mamre, unto the city of Arbah, which is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac sojourned." During the years of his stay at Succoth and Shechem Jacob had probably often visited his father, as he was only a few days' journey distant from him; but now in the latter days of Isaac's life he went altogether into his neighborhood, taking with him his flocks and herds. Gert.—He came to dwell with him, and to be the comfort of his old age. Bp. Patrick.—Isaac had the comfort of seeing the promise of God, in this instance of earthly prosperity, made good to himself and to Abraham; as a sure pledge that the spiritual promises, that "in their seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed," would be made good in God's due time. Bp. Wilson. 28,29. Here the life of Isaac is closed. Joseph must have been, at the time of Jacob's return, in his thirteenth year, and therefore his father in his hundred and fourth. Isaac was consequently in his hundred and sixty-third year. He survived the return of Jacob to Hebron about seventeen years, and the sale of Joseph his grandson about thirteen. M—His sons Esau and Jacob buried him. As Isaac and Ishmael had buried Abraham. Hence it appears the friendship between Esau and Jacob continued after their interview on Jacob's return. Bp. Patrick.—Had the death of Isaac been introduced in the proper order of time, it would have fallen in the midst of the history of Joseph; but it occurred about twelve or fifteen years after his being sold into Egypt. Esau and Jacob were 120 years of age at the death of their father, and from their uniting, as Isaac and Ishmael had done on a similar occasion, in performing the funeral obsequies of their father, it is to be inferred that the reconciliation between them was cordial and lasting. Bush. But from henceforward the two branches of Isaac's family were entirely separated. The country about Mount Seir became the permanent residence of the Edozites, who were governed first by independent sheiks or princes, afterward were united under one monarchy. Jacob continued to dwell in Canaan, with his powerful family and ample possessions, until dissensions among his sons prepared the way for more important changes, which seemed to break forever the connection between the race of Abraham and the land of Canaan, but ended in establishing them as the sole possessors of the whole territory. Milman. The dates and incidents in the life of Isaac may be tabulated as follows: | ISAAC. Age. | ABRAHAM. Age. | JACOB. Age. | Incident. | Record. | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Birth | 100 | .. | ... | xxi. | | 25 | 125 | .. | Mount Moriah... | xxii. | | 37 | 137 | .. | Death of Sarah... | xxiii. | | 40 | 140 | .. | Marriage of Isaac... | xxv. | | 60 | 160 | .. | Birth of Esau and Jacob | xxv. | | 75 | 175 | 15 | Death of Abraham... | xxv. | | 100 | .. | 40 | Marriage of Esau... | xxvi. | | 123 | .. | 63 | Death of Ishmael... | xxv. | | .. | .. | .. | Abimelech... | xxvi. | | 137 | .. | 77 | Jacob's departure... | ... | | 151 | .. | 91 | Birth of Joseph... | xxx. | | 157 | .. | 97 | Return of Jacob... | xxxi. | | 168 | .. | 108 | Joseph sold... | xxxvii | | 180 | .. | 120 | Death of Isaac... | xxxv. | A glance at this table reveals how little comparatively is told us of Isaac. He is born somewhere in the neighborhood of Gerar, in the 100th year of his father's life. His birth rekindles the old feud between Sarah and Hagar, which reaches its height when, at the feast made on the day of the weaning, Ishmael is seen making scornful mirth of the new-born child. At Sarah's imperious demand, supported by the Divine direction, Hagar and Ishmael are sorrowfully sent forth by Abraham to seek another home. Isaac remains the sole and undisputed heir of the promises. Looking back upon the life of Isaac, the few frailties and failures it displays are lost in the remembrance of his sublime act of submission and self-surrender on Mount Moriah; his veneration for his father's character, and constant willingness to walk in his steps; his humility in accepting all from God as coming to him for his father's sake; his attachment to his mother; his affection for his wife; his fondness—undue it may have been, yet touchingly tender—for the rough but generous Esau; the unexpressed and unostentations, but deep, serene, meditative piety which sustained and cheered him throughout the long, lonely years before his death. His truly was a spirit easy to be entreated, open to forgiveness, shut against malice, incapable of revenge; showing much of the temper inculcated by him of whom on Mount Moriah he was the type; the meekest, most placable, most patient, most peace-loving most home-loving of the patriarchs. W. H. This chapter closes the ninth of the pieces or documents marked off by the phrase "these are the generations." Its opening event was the birth of Isaac (25:19), which took place in the hundredth year of Abraham, and therefore seventy-five years before his death recorded in the seventh document. As the seventh purports to be the generations of Terah (11:27) and relates to Abraham, who was his offspring, so the present document, containing the generations of Isaac, refers chiefly to the sons of Isaac, and especially to Jacob, as the heir of promise. M. 35. 21 And Israel journeyed, and spread his tent beyond the tower of Eder. And it came to 22 pass, while Israel dwelt in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine: and Israel heard of it. 23. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve: the sons of Leah; Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, and 24. Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and Zebulun: the sons of Rachel; Joseph 25 and Benjamin: and the sons of Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid; Dan and Naphtali: and the 26 sons of Zdpah, Leah's handmaid; Gad and Asher: these are the sons of Jacob, which were born to him in Paddan-aram. 36:1 Now these are the generations of Esau (the same is Edom). Esau took his wives of the 2 daughters of Canaan; Adah the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Oholibamah the daugh- 3 ter of Anah, the daughter of Zibeon the Hivite; and Basemath Ishmael's daughter, sister 4 of Nebaioth. And Adah bare to Esau Eliphaz; and Basemath bare Reuel; and Oholi- 5 bamah bare Jeush, and Jalam, and Korah: these are the sons of Esau, which were born 6 unto him in the land of Canaan. And Esau took his wives, and his sons, and his daughters, and all the souls of his house, and his cattle, and all his beasts, and all his possesssions, which he had gathered in the land of Canaan; and went into a land away from his 7 brother Jacob. For their substance was too great for them to dwell together; and the 8 land of their sojournings could not bear them because of their cattle. And Esau dwelt in 9 mount Seir; Esau is Edom. And these are the generations of Esau the father of the 10. Edomites in mount Seir: these are the names of Esau's sons; Eliphaz the son of Adah 11 the wife of Esau, Reuel the son of Basemath the wife of Esau. And the sons of Eliphaz 12 were Teman, Omar, Zepho, and Garam, and Kenaz. And Timna was concubine to Eliphaz Esau's son; and she bare to Eliphaz Amalek: these are the sons of Adah Esau's 13 wife. And these are the sons of Reuel; Nahath, and Zerah, Shammah, and Mizzah: 14 these were the sons of Basemath Esau's wife. And these were the sons of Oholibamah the daughter of Anah, the daughter of Zibeon, Esau's wife: and she bare to Esau Jeush, 15 and Jalam, and Korah. These are the dukes of the sons of Esau: the sons of Eliphaz the firstborn of Esau; duke Teman, duke Omar, duke Zepho, duke Kenaz, duke Korah, duke 16. Garam, duk. Amalek: these are the dukes that came of Eliphaz in the land of Edom; 17 these are the sons of Adah. And these are the sons of Reuel Esau's son; duke Nahath, duke Zerah, duke Shammah, duke Mizzah: these are the dukes that came of Reuel in the 18 land of Edom; these are the sons of Basemath Esau's wife. And these are the sons of Oholibamah Esau's wife; duke Jeush, duke Jalam, duke Korah: these are the dukes that 19 came of Oholibamah the daughter of Anah, Esau's wife. These are the sons of Esau, and these are their dukes: the same is Edom. 20. These are the sons of Seir the Horite, the inhabitants of the land; Lotan and Shobal 21 and Zibeon and Anah, and Dishon and Ezer and Dishon: these are the dukes that came 22 of the Horites, the children of Seir in the land of Edom. And the children of Lotan 23 were Hori and Hemam; and Lotan's sister was Timna. And these are the children of 24. Shobal; Alvan and Manahath and Ebal, Shepho and Onam. And these are the children of Zibeon; Aiah and Anah: this is Anah who found the hot springs in the wilderness, as 25 he fed the asses of Zibeon his father. And these are the children of Anah; Dishon and 26. Oholibamah the daughter of Anah. And these are the children of Dishon; Hemdan and 27. Eshban and Ithran and Cheran. These are the children of Ezer; Bilhan and Zaavan 28 and Akan. These are the children of Dishon; Uz and Aran. These are the dukes that 29 came of the Horites; duke Lotan, duke Shobal, duke Zibeon, duke Anah, duke Dishon. 30 duke Ezer, duke Dishan : these are the dukes that came of the Horites, according to their dukes in the land of Seir. 31. And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any 32 king over the children of Israel. And Bela the son of Beor reigned in Edom ; and the 33 name of his city was Dinhabah. And Bela died, and Jobab the son of Zerah of Bozrah 34 reigned in his stead. And Jobab died, and Husham of the land of the Temanites reigned 35 in his stead. And Husham died, and Hadad the son of Bedad, who smote Mid-an in the 36 field of Moab, reigned in his stead : and the name of his city was Avith. And Hadad 37 died, and Samlah of Masrekah reigned in his stead. And Samlah died, and Shaul of Re- 38 hoboth by the River reigned in his stead. And Shaul died, and Baal-hanan the son of 39. Achbor reigned in his stead. And Baal-hanan the son of Achbor died, and Hadar reigned in his stead: and the name of his city was Pau ; and his wife's name was Mehetabel, the 40 daughter of Matred, the daughter of Me-zahab. And these are the names of the dukes that came of Esau, according to their families, after their places, by their names ; duke 41. Timnah, duke Alvah, duke Jetheth ; duke Oholibamah, duke Elah, duke Finon ; duke 42. Kenaz, duke Teman, duke Mibzar ; duke Magdiel, duke Iram ; these be the dukes of 43. Edom, according to their habitations in the land of their possession. This is Esau the father of the Edomites. 38 : 1 And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brethren, and turned 2 in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah. And Judah saw there a daughter of 3 a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua ; and he took her, and went in unto her. And 4 she conceived, and bare a son ; and he called his name Er. And she conceived again, and 5 bare a son ; and she called his name Onan. And she yet again bare a son, and called his 6 name Shelah ; and he was at Chezib, when she bare him. And Judah took a wife for Er 7 his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the 8 sight of the LORD ; and the LORD slew him. And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her, and raise up seed 9 to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his ; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest he should 10 give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did was evil in the sight of the LORD 11 and he slew him also. Then said Judah to Tamar his daughter in law, Remain a widow in thy father's house, till Shelah my son be grown up ; for he said, Lest he also die, like 12 his brethren. And Tamar went and dwelt in her father's house. And in process of time Shua's daughter, the wife of Judah, died ; and Judah was comforted, and went up unto 13 his sheepshearers to Timnah, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite. And it was told 14. Tamar, saying, Behold, thy father in law goeth up to Timnah to shear his sheep. And she put off from her the garments of her widowhood, and covered herself with her veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in the gate of Enaim, which is by the way to Timnah ; for 15 she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she was not given unto him to wife. When Judah 16 saw her, he thought her to be an harlot ; for she had covered her face. And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee ; for he knew not that she was his daughter in law. And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou 17 mayest come in unto me ? And he said, I will send thee a kid of the goats from the 18 flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it ? And he said, What pledge shall I give thee ? And she said, Thy signet and thy cord, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave them to her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him. 19. And she arose, and went away, and put off her veil from her, and put on the garments of 20 her widowhood. And Judah sent the kid of the goats by the hand of his friend the Adul- 21 lamite, to receive the pledge from the woman's hand ; but he found her not. Then he asked the men of her place, saying, Where is the harlot that was at Enaim by the way- 22 side ? And they said, There hath been no harlot here. And he returned to Judah, and said, I have not found her ; and also the men of the place said, There hath been no harlot 23 here. And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be put to shame : behold, I sent 24 this kid, and thou hast not found her. And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot ; and moreover, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and 25 let her be burnt. When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child ; and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are 26 these, the signet, and the cords, and the staff. And Judah acknow'edged them, and said, She is more righteous than I ; forasmuch as I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he 27 knew her again no more. And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold, 28 twins were in her womb. And it came to pass, when she travailed, that one put out a hand : and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came 29 out first. And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out ; and she said, Wherefore hast thou made a breach for thyself ? therefore his name should be heard of, not by Jacob only, but by all that read the sacred story to the end of time. We afterward learn (Gen. 49:4) that he lost the birthright in consequence of it. Judgment never fails in the end to wait upon transgression. By his conduct, however, in reference to his brother Joseph (Gen. 37:20, 22), he seems to have obtained, in behalf of his posterity at least, a mitigation of his punishment. Both. It is a mercy that the Scripture record of human life is painted to us in such dark colors as it is. The Bible saints were not the heroes of romance, for then they might have been painted spotless. They were the men of real life, and the details of that life sometimes guilty enough. But, then, life was an earnest thing with them. It was transgression, if you will; but then it was sore, buffeting struggle after that—much toiling and wandering in sharp suffering, that none knew but God: it was the penitence of men bent manfully on turning back to God. And so they fought their way back till they struggled out of the thick darkness into the clear light of day and peace. Let us lay this to heart. It is not the having been “far off” that makes peace impossible. It is not sin—no, not the darkest—that shuts out from restoration: “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God.” It is languid indecision, desperate sulemness, anything which keeps a man away from Christ, that prevents peace; but in all this world there is nothing else. F. W. R. 23-26. A complete list of the sons of Jacob, now that Benjamin the youngest was born. This is the first time we have the names of these heads of the twelve tribes together; afterward, we find them very often spoken of and enumerated, even to the end of the Bible (Rev. 7:4; 21:12). H. Ch. 26: Esau and the Edomites. As in ch. 25, the history gives the genealogies of Abraham’s descendants by other wives in order to dispose of them, and to treat the line of Isaac, so here it gives the genealogies of the descendants of Esau in order to have done with them and to advance in the line of Jacob. In both cases the races enumerated are those which in subsequent times had to do with Israel. Af.—It was, as necessary to register the generations of Esau as those of Jacob, in order to show that the Messiah did not spring from the former, but that he did spring from the later. The genealogical tables, so frequently met with in the sacred writings, are standing proofs of the truth of the prophecies that the Messiah should come from a particular family; which prophecies were clearly fulfilled in the birth of Christ. And they testify that the Messiah thus promised is found in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who incontestably sprang from the last, the only remaining branch of the family of David. These registers were religiously preserved among the Jews till the destruction of Jerusalem, after which they were all destroyed; insomuch that there is not a Jew in the universe who can trace himself to the family of David; consequently all expectation of a Messiah to come is, even on their own principles, nugatory and absurd; since nothing remains to legitimate his birth. When Christ came all these registers were in existence. When Matthew and Luke wrote all these registers were still in existence; and had they pretended what could not have been supported, an appeal to the registers would have convicted them of a falsehood. But no Jew attempted to do this, notwithstanding the excess of their malice against Christ and his followers; and because they did not do it, we may safely assert no Jew could do it. Thus the foundation standeth sure. A. C. S. Mount Seir is the mountain ridge extending along the east side of the valley of Arabah, from the Dead Sea to the Elanitic Gulf. The name signifies rough, or rugged. Af. Esau himself, in the lifetime of his father, migrated with his Canaanitish wives to this country, which afterward became the home of his descendants. This mountainous but fertile region had long been occupied by the Horites, whose territories they at first shared, but afterward, at a period antecedent to the Exodus, took possession of. In proof of their importance as a people even in these earliest times, a list of eight kings is given (vs. 31) who “reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king in Israel.” Of their hereditary enmity to the chosen People we find traces not only in their refusal to allow their “brother Israel” (Num. 20:14) to pass through their land during the wanderings in the wilderness, though the request was made under circumstances of the utmost urgency, but from the terms in which we find them denounced by the later prophets. The warlike character of Esau was perpetuated in the latest of his descendants. They were ultimately brought into close alliance with their ancient foes. But, according to Josephus, the children of Israel found reason to die and the children of Esau no less as allies than as open enemies. Even in his own day that historian describes them as “a turbulent and unruly race, rushing to battle as if they were going to a feast.” Lee. 15-19. The first dukes of Edom. The Al-lugh or duke is the head of the tribe among the Edomites, like the Nasi or prince among the Israelites. 20. Horte. The Horites—dwellers in caves (Troglodytes)—were the original inhabitants of Seir, and were driven out by the Edomites (Deut. 2:12); but they appear still to have remained among them in a part of the land. Esau had a Horite, Abolibamah, as his wife; his son Elphaz, a Horite, Timna, as a concubine, which would mark a declension on the part of the Horites. The families of this tribe are mentioned, because the descent of Abolibamah and Timna is given. The Horites derive their names from the caves, many of them hewn out of the rock, and from their underground dwellings. These are still to be seen in great numbers. Geri. 20-30. In the midst of this genealogy of the Edomites, here is inserted the genealogy of the Horites, those Canaanites, or Hittites, that were the natives of mount Seir. This comes in here, not only to give light to the story, but to be a standing reflection upon the Edomites for intermarrying with them, by which, it is probable, they learned their way, and corrupted themselves. Esau having sold his birthright, and lost his blessing and entered into alliance with the Hittites, his posterity and the sons of Seir are here reckoned together. Those that treacherously desert God's church, are justly numbered with those that were never in it; apostate Edomites stand on the same ground with accursed Horites. H. 31-39. The series of eight kings here enumerated are plainly elective, as not one succeeds his father. The king co-exists with the dukes, who are again enumerated at the close of the list, and are mentioned in the song of Moses (Ex. 15:15). These dukes are no doubt the electors of the common sovereign, who is designed to give unity and strength to the nation. It is natural to suppose that no sovereign was elected till after the death of Esau, and, therefore, if he lived as long as Jacob, after the children of Israel had been seventeen years in Egypt. 31. Before a king reigned over his children of Israel, simply means before there was a monarchy established in Israel. It does not imply that monarchy began in Israel immediately after these kings. M.—In the previous chapter (vs. 11), there had been an emphatic promise from God Almighty (El-Shaddai) to Jacob that "kings should come out of his loins." The Israelites, no doubt, cherished a constant hope of such a kingdom and such a kingly race. Moses himself (Deut. 28:36) prophesied concerning the king that the Israelites should set over them; and hence it was not unnatural that, when recording the eight kings, who had reigned in the family of Esau up to his own time, he should have noted that as yet no king had risen from the family of his brother Jacob, to whom a kingly progeny had been promised. E. H. B. 39. The last of the eight kings, of whom it is not said that he died, seems to have been the contemporary of Moses, who made application to him for leave to pass through his land. If this be so, it follows that the remainder of Genesis comes immediately from the hand of Moses; a result which is in accordance with other indications that have presented themselves in the previous part of this book. This interesting monument of antiquity, notwithstanding its brevity, we shall find to be arranged with admirable precision. M. 42. Mount Seir is called the land of their possession. While the Israelites dwelt in the house of bondage, and their Canaan was only the land of promise, the Edomites dwelt in their own habitations, and Seir was in their possession. The children of this world have their all in hand, and nothing in hope, while the children of God have their all in hope, and next to nothing in hand. But, all things considered, it is better to have Canaan in promise than mount Seir in possession. H.—A worldly Esau may have his mount Seir, may have his portion at once, without any discipline, any acquaintance with God or himself. But Israel, the beloved of God, must forego rest, must wait, and suffer, and fight, in the way to it. One exercise of faith and patience must succeed to another; and by these they must be trained into a meetness for the Canaan promised to them as their inheritance. And such is the Christian's calling. He must reckon on trial and conflict; he must learn to endure it, to go forward, and quit himself as a man, taking up his cross and carrying it patiently, yes, cheerfully, as what all his brethren are doing, as what God called him to when he called him to glory, and in assured faith that it shall soon be exchanged for glory. F. Goede. The notice here taken of Esau is a kind of final leave taken of him and of his posterity, for we hear no more of them but as enemies of the chosen people. He is presented to our view for a moment, as surrounded with a glare of earthly glory, but as there is nothing stable without the pale of the kingdom of God, the curtain speedily drops upon all his splendor and pomp, and it is seen no more. The spirit of inspiration pausing for a moment to show that no word of God, however slight, fails of its effect, immediately passes to its main drift, and directs our view to the more abiding and truly glorious concerns of the line of Jacob. Bush. Ch. 28: The Bible makes no apology, draws no curtain, makes no excuse; on it goes; taking life as it is, and describing it without flattery or fear. The Bible is true to the very root and reality of things. The book does not ignore facts, but faces them, names them, proposes remedies for them, and searches into the root and core of the whole of them. Evil be to him that evil thinks. These things belong to a greater whole; they must not be detached; the part that would be intolerable is essential to the whole that is beautiful. J. P. The removal to Egypt was needful in order to separate the sons of Jacob from the people of the land. How readily constant contact with the Canaanites would have involved even the best of them in horrible vices appears from the history of Judah, when, after the selling of Joseph, he had left his father's house, and, joining himself to the people of the country, both he and his rapidly became conformed to the abominations around. A. E. The history of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar. The object of this parenthetical chapter seems to be to show how near the offspring of Jacob were to falling into the habits and loathsome sins of the Canaanitish peoples; and to pave the way for the history of their removal into the land of Egypt, which took place by means of Joseph's being sold and carried thither. At the same time it defines and accounts for the two main branches in the kingly line of Judah. Af.—It supplies a very important link. In the Teledoth, or family history, of Jacob, the two chief persons were Joseph and Judah; Joseph from his high character, his personal importance, his influence in the future destinies of the race, and his typical foreshadowing of the Messiah; Judah, from his obtaining the virtual right of primogeniture, and from his being the ancestor of David and of the Son of David. E. H. B. We see in this story how one interest—that for their families, and the preservation of them—overpowered every other feeling, even the sense of shame in a woman. The sanctity of an ancient descent, as it had been brought out of Mesopotamia by Abraham's posterity, and the establishment of the duties of the brother-in law (the Levirate, from a Latin word, levir, a husband's brother), are forcibly put forth by this narrative. The law was, that when a widow was left childless, it was the brother's duty to marry the widow, and the firstborn son of this marriage was to be regarded as the child of the deceased brother. The purport of the laws of the Israelites on the subject (no doubt derived from the patriarchs), was to preserve as much as possible the heirs in a direct line. The father lived in the son—the whole family descended from him was in a certain sense himself. Govt. 21,22. The word rendered havid, in these two verses, and for which we have no other intelligible expression, means connected; namely, to the goddess of licentiousness, to whose temple and worship her gains were devoted. The name, and the custom on which it was founded, only partially reveal the fearful corruption of religion and morals wherever idolatry prevailed. T. J. C. 23. By the man whose these are.** It is obvious that Tamar might before this have exposed Judah, had she been so inclined. In this, however, it does not appear that she was influenced by vindictive feelings toward Judah, or that she had any wish to hold him up to public abhorrence, but simply to vindicate her own conduct: while God, in the mean time, was carrying on his purpose to bring the offender, by this means, to a penitent confession of his fault. Instead of boldly summoning him into her presence, and requiring of him to stand forth as her accuser before the judges, she does not even name him, nor seek an interview, but sends to him the pledged articles, leaving it to his own conscience to rebuke him before God. Bach. Not till she was in actual peril of a horrible death did she expose the author of her ignominy, and then only to himself. Though highly culpable, in the eye of the divine law, for the course she adopted, she seems to have intended merely to test her own rights, denied her by the timid policy of Judah. In regard to these rights, Judah himself acknowledged that her claim was just, and that he was the offender. Allowance must of course be made, in her case, for the loose sentiments and practices of the age. It has been justly said that her conduct, culpable as it was, was marked by shrewdness, tenderness, and magnanimity. 26. She is more in the right than I. That is, her cause is more just than mine; I am the offender. He admits that in withholding Shelah, her rightful husband (v. 11), he had been guilty of a wrong, and that her claim, which he had denied, was just. T. J. C. We account for the tenacity with which TAMAR clung to her claims on the family of Judah by her anxiety to have a child from the family of Judah. And the less, by her birth as a heathen, she was entitled to any connection with the chosen race, the more jealously did she insist on the rights which marriage had given her. The same views, but in an infinitely higher and nobler form, appear under similar circumstances in the case of Ruth. However we may feel the deep aberration of Tamar, we cannot ignore that in it a higher faith was concealed. K.—Under the arts of Tamar in regard to Judah there still lay concealed faith in the sanctity of the customs and ordinances of the chosen race of Israel. For this reason, too, Judah bore her testimony, “She is more righteous than I.” At the same time we see with what honesty and candor the Holy Scripture paints mankind; how God chooses his people not for any apparent external virtues, but according to his own free grace; how the whole of the scheme for the recovery of sinful man is a work of free favor; and, in fine, how there was enough of sin in Israel’s family to require a speedy and severe purification, which did not long tarry. C. G. B. The birth of Pharez forms the central point of this chapter, as, according to the law, he occupied the place of the firstborn of Judah. All that precedes only forms the basis for this account, and is so circumstantially narrated only because it at the same time affords a deep insight into the personal position and the history of Judah. Again the history of Judah and of his house is of such importance, because in his prophetic blessing Jacob assigns to Judah the sceptre of principality among the tribes of Israel; and the primogeniture of Pharez is brought out so prominently because Nahshon, the eminent prince and leader in Israel, during the journey through the wilderness, is a descendant of Pharez (Nu. 2:3). “But”—we continue with Baumgarten—“we may look beyond the natural horizon of Moses; for we do not merely say that Moses has written this account, but also that the Holy Ghost has written it. We therefore perceive in this narrative a glance into ages yet future. We call to mind that king David had sprung from Nahshon (Ruth 4:18-22), and that Jesus of Nazareth, who was made of God both Lord and Christ, was the son of David. We are therefore now tracing the lineage of Jesus Christ, and looking forward to Him who is both the commencement and the end of all things.” The narrative discloses the sins of Judah with the same openness and faithfulness as it details the moral aberrations of other patriarchs and kings, for the purpose of showing that the high position assigned to them in the kingdom of God, and to which they were called and trained, was not due to their own virtue and excellency, but to the sovereign mercy of Him that had called them. K. I find not many of Jacob’s sons more faulty than Judah; who yet is singled out from all the rest to be the royal progenitor of Christ, and to be honored with the dignity of the birth-right, that God’s election might not be of merit, but of grace; else howsoever he might have sped alone, Tamar had never been joined with him in this line. Bp. H.—It is wonderful that this incestuous transaction should form one step of that chain which led to the birth of our Saviour. It is spoken of by commentators as a thing that deepens his humiliation. In associating himself by relationship with such an atrocity as this, his redemption descends to the lowest depths of human guilt and depravity. It casts a light on the infinite mercy of God; and makes me to feel in this alliance of the transcendental with the terrestrial in its grossest form, that God’s ways are not as man’s ways. T. C. The four oldest sons of Jacob fell under very foul guilt. Reuben and Judah under the guilt of incest, Simeon and Levi under the guilt of murder; yet they were patriarchs; of Levi came the priests, of Judah the kings and Messiah; thus they became examples of repentance, and monuments of pardoning mercy. H. 1. 1 And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, who appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother. 2. 2 Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and purify yourselves, and change your garments: and let us arise, and go up to Beth-el; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went. And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and the rings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem. And they journeyed: and a great terror was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob. 3. 6 So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan (the same is Beth-el), he and all the people that were with him. And he built there an altar, and called the place El-beth-el: because there God was revealed unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother. And Deborah Rebekah's nurse died, and she was buried below Beth-el under the oak: and the name of it was called Allon-bacut. 4. 9 And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came from Paddan-aram, and blessed him. 5. 10 And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel. And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and 12 kings shall come out of thy loins ; and the land which I gave unto Abraham and Isaac, to thee 13 I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land. And God went up from him in 14 the place where he spake with him. And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he spake with him, a pillar of stone : and he poured out a drink offering thereon, and poured oil 15 thereon. And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him, Beth-el. 16 And they journeyed from Beth-el ; and there was still some way to come to Ephrath : and 17 Rachel travailed, and she had hard labour. And it came to pass, when she was in hard labour, 18 that the midwife said unto her, Fear not ; for now thou shalt have another son. And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing (for she died), that she called his name Ben-oni : but his 19 father called him Benjamin. And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath (the 20 same is Beth-lehem). And Jacob set up a pillar upon her grave : the same is the Pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day. 27 And Jacob came unto Isaac his father to Mamre, to Kiriath-arba (the same is Hebron), where 28 Abraham and Isaac sojourned. And the days of Isaac were an hundred and fourscore years. 29 And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered unto his people, old and full of days ; and Esau and Jacob his sons buried him. 1-8. Jacob returns to Bethel. He receives the direction from God. He had now been for some years lingering in Succoth and Shechem. There may have been intercourse between him and his father's house during this interval. The presence of Deborah, Rebekah's nurse (v. 8), in his family, is a plain intimation of this. M 1. Of the manner in which the present com- munication was made to him, nothing is said : but the purport of it was that he should remove to Bethel, situated about thirty miles south of Shechem, build there an altar, and perform the vow which he had previously made (Gen. 28 : 20, 22). It was now about thirty years since that vow was made : Jacob had dwelt eight or ten in Canaan since his return from Paddan- aram, and had now attained to one hundred and six years of age ; yet for some reason unex- plained he had hitherto delayed to pay it. Bush.—God reminds Jacob of his vow at Bethel, and sends him thither to perform it. Jacob had said in the day of his distress, If I come again in peace this stone shall be God's house (ch. 28 : 22). God had performed his part of the bargain, and had given Jacob more than bread to eat, and raiment to put on—he had got an estate, and was become two bands ; but, it should seem, he had forgotten his vow, or, at least, had too long deferred the performance of it. Seven or eight years it was now since he came to Canaan ; he had purchased ground there, and had built an altar in remembrance of God's last appearance to him when he called him Israel (ch. 33 : 19, 20) ; but Bethel still is forgotten. H. The mercy of God changed the flight from Shechem into a pilgrimage to Bethel. In itself the Divine command (to go to Bethel) implied a Di- vine assurance in this danger ; for if God calls him to Bethel, He would surely bring him safely thither. But the place to which he was directed to go conveyed even more fully this assurance, for in Bethel he had found a refuge with God at the time of his first trouble. Then, God had promised to protect, to bless, and to bring back him, who, poor and forsaken, had to flee the land ; now, this prediction is richly fulfilled— Jacob has returned unscathed to the Holy Land, the rich proprietor of large flocks. K. Of the truth that God remembers all his own mercies to his people, every act of his love tow- ard every one of them, here is a confirma- tion. After thirty years, the vision at Bethel was fresh as ever in His memory. A mere dream of the night, sent by Him to comfort one of the least of his servants, is not forgotten. This we can believe ; but it is hard to believe that the Lord remembers the petty movements and workings of our minds, that the mighty God should hold in mind the promises of a worm. But hold them he does. He takes special notice of every word we utter that has a reference to himself, and every purpose we form. He records the vows we make to him, and his mind dwells on them as though he de- lighted in them, and longed to have them ful- filled. "I remember thee," he says to his church of old, "the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals." Many years before this, he lets Jacob see that he remembers the kindness of his early years ; "I am the God of Bethel where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me ;" and now he refers to the same transaction again. 2-1. Jacob's directions to prepare for worship at Bethel. His neglect to carefully instruct his sons had borne bitter fruit. It necessitates the sudden and difficult effort now put forth to in- duce his sons to seek with him to serve God. He cannot rightly worship God unless his children and household are with him in spirit, Jacob's neglect had led to carelessness by his sons of the Divine service. He could not himself enter heartily on the service until he had discharged his duty as guide and instructor to his family. F Hastings. Strange gods. The household deities—the teraphim, such as Rachel took with her. At all times among the Israelites there was united together with the worship of the one true God very much idolatry, in which the unbelief, or half-hearted belief of the people sought support. Gerl.—These "strange gods" were idolatrous and superstitious objects of which his sons had, as he knew, just before acquired possession, when they pillaged the town of Shechem—valuable for the materials of which they were composed, but which Jacob feared might in the end prove dangerous. The part of the injunction which directs the people to purify themselves, and to put on clean vestures, is remarkable as the first example of the personal cleanness which was afterward regarded as essential to a becoming appearance before God in worship—a salutary observance, which became a matter of ceremonial law under Moses, but which, like many other observances of the law, had its origin in earlier times. Kit. 4. Earrings were frequently used as amulets, believed to arrest evil, or to act as a charm; they were often covered with allegorical figures or mysterious sentences, according to the deities to which they were consecrated; they formed therefore one of the ordinary instruments of superstitious usages. Kalisch. 5. After the sanguinary conduct of Jacob's sons, is it not surprising that the neighboring tribes did not join together, and extirpate the whole family? So they certainly would, had not the terror of God fallen upon them. Jacob and the major part of his family were innocent of this great transgression; and on the preservation of their lives the accomplishment of great events depended; therefore God watches over them, and shields them from the hands of their enemies. A. C. 8. "Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died, and she was buried beneath Bethel, under an oak, and the name of it was called Allon-bachuth (the oak of weeping)." Thus Deborah's long and faithful service in the household of Isaac, and the family-mourning over the old, tried family friend, are deemed worthy of perpetual memorial in the Book of God! But from the circumstance that Deborah died in the house of Jacob, we infer not only that her mistress Rebekah was dead, but that there must have been some intercourse between Isaac and Jacob since his return to Canaan. Most probably Jacob had visited his aged parent, though Scripture does not mention it, because it in no way affects the history of the covenant. A. E. 9-15. God appeared unto Jacob again.** He was now at Bethel, the place from which he may be considered to have set out for Paddan-aram, and where he made his vow that if God would be with him and be his God, he would make that place the house of God. He had now come back again to the same spot; he had fulfilled his vow by consecrating Bethel as the temple of God; this might then well be considered as the accomplishment of his return from Paddan-aram. Accordingly God appears to him here once more, promises him again, and more emphatically, protection, blessing, inheritance, confirms the name of Israel to him, and assures him that his posterity shall be numerous, powerful and blessed. And Jacob, recognizing the fulfilment of all that had been promised him when he fled from Esau, and of all that his vows had pointed to, rears again a stone pillar as he had done forty years before, and again solemnly names the place Bethel. The whole of this history thoroughly fits in to all that has gone before. 11. I am God Almighty.** El-Shaddal. It was by this name that God revealed himself to Abram, when he changed his name to Abraham, and promised him the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession (ch. 17:8). The use of the same name here is singularly appropriate. E. H. B. 16-20. They draw near to a place then known only by its ancient Canaanite name, and now for the first time mentioned in history, "Ephrath, which is Bethlehem." The village appears spread along its narrow ridge, but they are not to reach it. "There Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath." A. P. S.—Rachel had passionately said, Give me children, or else I die; and now that she had children (for this was her second), she died. Dying is here called the departing of her soul. The death of the body is but the departure of the soul to the world of spirits. H. 19. Ephrath, which is Bethlehem.** Ephrath, or Ephrata, was the old, and Bethlehem the later name of this town. "Bethlehem" means "house of bread;" but we do not know on what occasion it was imposed. The town was in the allotment of the tribe of Judah, being situated about six miles south of Jerusalem, on the road to Hebron. It was a city in the time of Boaz (Ruth 3:11), whose grandson was Jesse, the father of David, who was born and reared there; in consequence of which the place is very frequently distinguished as "the city of David." Bush. 20. And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave. This monument of Rachel's is the first that we read of in Scripture. It was certainly standing when Moses wrote, as appears from this verse; and mention is made of it just before Saul was anointed king (1 Sam. 10:2). The monument now shown for it is a modern and Turkish structure. Maundrell. 27. At last Jacob came to his journey's end, "unto Isaac his father, unto Mamre, unto the city of Arbah, which is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac sojourned." During the years of his stay at Succoth and Shechem Jacob had probably often visited his father, as he was only a few days' journey distant from him; but now in the latter days of Isaac's life he went altogether into his neighborhood, taking with him his flocks and herds. Gert.—He came to dwell with him, and to be the comfort of his old age. Bp. Patrick.—Isaac had the comfort of seeing the promise of God, in this instance of earthly prosperity, made good to himself and to Abraham; as a sure pledge that the spiritual promises, that "in their seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed," would be made good in God's due time. Bp. Wilson. 28,29. Here the life of Isaac is closed. Joseph must have been, at the time of Jacob's return, in his thirteenth year, and therefore his father in his hundred and fourth. Isaac was consequently in his hundred and sixty-third year. He survived the return of Jacob to Hebron about seventeen years, and the sale of Joseph his grandson about thirteen. M—His sons Esau and Jacob buried him. As Isaac and Ishmael had buried Abraham. Hence it appears the friendship between Esau and Jacob continued after their interview on Jacob's return. Bp. Patrick.—Had the death of Isaac been introduced in the proper order of time, it would have fallen in the midst of the history of Joseph; but it occurred about twelve or fifteen years after his being sold into Egypt. Esau and Jacob were 120 years of age at the death of their father, and from their uniting, as Isaac and Ishmael had done on a similar occasion, in performing the funeral obsequies of their father, it is to be inferred that the reconciliation between them was cordial and lasting. Bush. But from henceforward the two branches of Isaac's family were entirely separated. The country about Mount Seir became the permanent residence of the Edozites, who were governed first by independent sheiks or princes, afterward were united under one monarchy. Jacob continued to dwell in Canaan, with his powerful family and ample possessions, until dissensions among his sons prepared the way for more important changes, which seemed to break forever the connection between the race of Abraham and the land of Canaan, but ended in establishing them as the sole possessors of the whole territory. Milman. The dates and incidents in the life of Isaac may be tabulated as follows: | ISAAC. Age. | ABRAHAM. Age. | JACOB. Age. | Incident. | Record. | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Birth | 100 | .. | ... | xxi. | | 25 | 125 | .. | Mount Moriah... | xxii. | | 37 | 137 | .. | Death of Sarah... | xxiii. | | 40 | 140 | .. | Marriage of Isaac... | xxv. | | 60 | 160 | .. | Birth of Esau and Jacob | xxv. | | 75 | 175 | 15 | Death of Abraham... | xxv. | | 100 | .. | 40 | Marriage of Esau... | xxvi. | | 123 | .. | 63 | Death of Ishmael... | xxv. | | .. | .. | .. | Abimelech... | xxvi. | | 137 | .. | 77 | Jacob's departure... | ... | | 151 | .. | 91 | Birth of Joseph... | xxx. | | 157 | .. | 97 | Return of Jacob... | xxxi. | | 168 | .. | 108 | Joseph sold... | xxxvii | | 180 | .. | 120 | Death of Isaac... | xxxv. | A glance at this table reveals how little comparatively is told us of Isaac. He is born somewhere in the neighborhood of Gerar, in the 100th year of his father's life. His birth rekindles the old feud between Sarah and Hagar, which reaches its height when, at the feast made on the day of the weaning, Ishmael is seen making scornful mirth of the new-born child. At Sarah's imperious demand, supported by the Divine direction, Hagar and Ishmael are sorrowfully sent forth by Abraham to seek another home. Isaac remains the sole and undisputed heir of the promises. Looking back upon the life of Isaac, the few frailties and failures it displays are lost in the remembrance of his sublime act of submission and self-surrender on Mount Moriah; his veneration for his father's character, and constant willingness to walk in his steps; his humility in accepting all from God as coming to him for his father's sake; his attachment to his mother; his affection for his wife; his fondness—undue it may have been, yet touchingly tender—for the rough but generous Esau; the unexpressed and unostentations, but deep, serene, meditative piety which sustained and cheered him throughout the long, lonely years before his death. His truly was a spirit easy to be entreated, open to forgiveness, shut against malice, incapable of revenge; showing much of the temper inculcated by him of whom on Mount Moriah he was the type; the meekest, most placable, most patient, most peace-loving most home-loving of the patriarchs. W. H. This chapter closes the ninth of the pieces or documents marked off by the phrase "these are the generations." Its opening event was the birth of Isaac (25:19), which took place in the hundredth year of Abraham, and therefore seventy-five years before his death recorded in the seventh document. As the seventh purports to be the generations of Terah (11:27) and relates to Abraham, who was his offspring, so the present document, containing the generations of Isaac, refers chiefly to the sons of Isaac, and especially to Jacob, as the heir of promise. M. 35. 21 And Israel journeyed, and spread his tent beyond the tower of Eder. And it came to 22 pass, while Israel dwelt in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine: and Israel heard of it. 23. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve: the sons of Leah; Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, and 24. Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and Zebulun: the sons of Rachel; Joseph 25 and Benjamin: and the sons of Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid; Dan and Naphtali: and the 26 sons of Zdpah, Leah's handmaid; Gad and Asher: these are the sons of Jacob, which were born to him in Paddan-aram. 36:1 Now these are the generations of Esau (the same is Edom). Esau took his wives of the 2 daughters of Canaan; Adah the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Oholibamah the daugh- 3 ter of Anah, the daughter of Zibeon the Hivite; and Basemath Ishmael's daughter, sister 4 of Nebaioth. And Adah bare to Esau Eliphaz; and Basemath bare Reuel; and Oholi- 5 bamah bare Jeush, and Jalam, and Korah: these are the sons of Esau, which were born 6 unto him in the land of Canaan. And Esau took his wives, and his sons, and his daughters, and all the souls of his house, and his cattle, and all his beasts, and all his possesssions, which he had gathered in the land of Canaan; and went into a land away from his 7 brother Jacob. For their substance was too great for them to dwell together; and the 8 land of their sojournings could not bear them because of their cattle. And Esau dwelt in 9 mount Seir; Esau is Edom. And these are the generations of Esau the father of the 10. Edomites in mount Seir: these are the names of Esau's sons; Eliphaz the son of Adah 11 the wife of Esau, Reuel the son of Basemath the wife of Esau. And the sons of Eliphaz 12 were Teman, Omar, Zepho, and Garam, and Kenaz. And Timna was concubine to Eliphaz Esau's son; and she bare to Eliphaz Amalek: these are the sons of Adah Esau's 13 wife. And these are the sons of Reuel; Nahath, and Zerah, Shammah, and Mizzah: 14 these were the sons of Basemath Esau's wife. And these were the sons of Oholibamah the daughter of Anah, the daughter of Zibeon, Esau's wife: and she bare to Esau Jeush, 15 and Jalam, and Korah. These are the dukes of the sons of Esau: the sons of Eliphaz the firstborn of Esau; duke Teman, duke Omar, duke Zepho, duke Kenaz, duke Korah, duke 16. Garam, duk. Amalek: these are the dukes that came of Eliphaz in the land of Edom; 17 these are the sons of Adah. And these are the sons of Reuel Esau's son; duke Nahath, duke Zerah, duke Shammah, duke Mizzah: these are the dukes that came of Reuel in the 18 land of Edom; these are the sons of Basemath Esau's wife. And these are the sons of Oholibamah Esau's wife; duke Jeush, duke Jalam, duke Korah: these are the dukes that 19 came of Oholibamah the daughter of Anah, Esau's wife. These are the sons of Esau, and these are their dukes: the same is Edom. 20. These are the sons of Seir the Horite, the inhabitants of the land; Lotan and Shobal 21 and Zibeon and Anah, and Dishon and Ezer and Dishon: these are the dukes that came 22 of the Horites, the children of Seir in the land of Edom. And the children of Lotan 23 were Hori and Hemam; and Lotan's sister was Timna. And these are the children of 24. Shobal; Alvan and Manahath and Ebal, Shepho and Onam. And these are the children of Zibeon; Aiah and Anah: this is Anah who found the hot springs in the wilderness, as 25 he fed the asses of Zibeon his father. And these are the children of Anah; Dishon and 26. Oholibamah the daughter of Anah. And these are the children of Dishon; Hemdan and 27. Eshban and Ithran and Cheran. These are the children of Ezer; Bilhan and Zaavan 28 and Akan. These are the children of Dishon; Uz and Aran. These are the dukes that 29 came of the Horites; duke Lotan, duke Shobal, duke Zibeon, duke Anah, duke Dishon. 30 duke Ezer, duke Dishan : these are the dukes that came of the Horites, according to their dukes in the land of Seir. 31. And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any 32 king over the children of Israel. And Bela the son of Beor reigned in Edom ; and the 33 name of his city was Dinhabah. And Bela died, and Jobab the son of Zerah of Bozrah 34 reigned in his stead. And Jobab died, and Husham of the land of the Temanites reigned 35 in his stead. And Husham died, and Hadad the son of Bedad, who smote Mid-an in the 36 field of Moab, reigned in his stead : and the name of his city was Avith. And Hadad 37 died, and Samlah of Masrekah reigned in his stead. And Samlah died, and Shaul of Re- 38 hoboth by the River reigned in his stead. And Shaul died, and Baal-hanan the son of 39. Achbor reigned in his stead. And Baal-hanan the son of Achbor died, and Hadar reigned in his stead: and the name of his city was Pau ; and his wife's name was Mehetabel, the 40 daughter of Matred, the daughter of Me-zahab. And these are the names of the dukes that came of Esau, according to their families, after their places, by their names ; duke 41. Timnah, duke Alvah, duke Jetheth ; duke Oholibamah, duke Elah, duke Finon ; duke 42. Kenaz, duke Teman, duke Mibzar ; duke Magdiel, duke Iram ; these be the dukes of 43. Edom, according to their habitations in the land of their possession. This is Esau the father of the Edomites. 38 : 1 And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brethren, and turned 2 in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah. And Judah saw there a daughter of 3 a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua ; and he took her, and went in unto her. And 4 she conceived, and bare a son ; and he called his name Er. And she conceived again, and 5 bare a son ; and she called his name Onan. And she yet again bare a son, and called his 6 name Shelah ; and he was at Chezib, when she bare him. And Judah took a wife for Er 7 his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the 8 sight of the LORD ; and the LORD slew him. And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her, and raise up seed 9 to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his ; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest he should 10 give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did was evil in the sight of the LORD 11 and he slew him also. Then said Judah to Tamar his daughter in law, Remain a widow in thy father's house, till Shelah my son be grown up ; for he said, Lest he also die, like 12 his brethren. And Tamar went and dwelt in her father's house. And in process of time Shua's daughter, the wife of Judah, died ; and Judah was comforted, and went up unto 13 his sheepshearers to Timnah, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite. And it was told 14. Tamar, saying, Behold, thy father in law goeth up to Timnah to shear his sheep. And she put off from her the garments of her widowhood, and covered herself with her veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in the gate of Enaim, which is by the way to Timnah ; for 15 she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she was not given unto him to wife. When Judah 16 saw her, he thought her to be an harlot ; for she had covered her face. And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee ; for he knew not that she was his daughter in law. And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou 17 mayest come in unto me ? And he said, I will send thee a kid of the goats from the 18 flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it ? And he said, What pledge shall I give thee ? And she said, Thy signet and thy cord, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave them to her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him. 19. And she arose, and went away, and put off her veil from her, and put on the garments of 20 her widowhood. And Judah sent the kid of the goats by the hand of his friend the Adul- 21 lamite, to receive the pledge from the woman's hand ; but he found her not. Then he asked the men of her place, saying, Where is the harlot that was at Enaim by the way- 22 side ? And they said, There hath been no harlot here. And he returned to Judah, and said, I have not found her ; and also the men of the place said, There hath been no harlot 23 here. And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be put to shame : behold, I sent 24 this kid, and thou hast not found her. And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot ; and moreover, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and 25 let her be burnt. When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child ; and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are 26 these, the signet, and the cords, and the staff. And Judah acknow'edged them, and said, She is more righteous than I ; forasmuch as I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he 27 knew her again no more. And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold, 28 twins were in her womb. And it came to pass, when she travailed, that one put out a hand : and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came 29 out first. And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out ; and she said, Wherefore hast thou made a breach for thyself ? therefore his name should be heard of, not by Jacob only, but by all that read the sacred story to the end of time. We afterward learn (Gen. 49:4) that he lost the birthright in consequence of it. Judgment never fails in the end to wait upon transgression. By his conduct, however, in reference to his brother Joseph (Gen. 37:20, 22), he seems to have obtained, in behalf of his posterity at least, a mitigation of his punishment. Both. It is a mercy that the Scripture record of human life is painted to us in such dark colors as it is. The Bible saints were not the heroes of romance, for then they might have been painted spotless. They were the men of real life, and the details of that life sometimes guilty enough. But, then, life was an earnest thing with them. It was transgression, if you will; but then it was sore, buffeting struggle after that—much toiling and wandering in sharp suffering, that none knew but God: it was the penitence of men bent manfully on turning back to God. And so they fought their way back till they struggled out of the thick darkness into the clear light of day and peace. Let us lay this to heart. It is not the having been “far off” that makes peace impossible. It is not sin—no, not the darkest—that shuts out from restoration: “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God.” It is languid indecision, desperate sulemness, anything which keeps a man away from Christ, that prevents peace; but in all this world there is nothing else. F. W. R. 23-26. A complete list of the sons of Jacob, now that Benjamin the youngest was born. This is the first time we have the names of these heads of the twelve tribes together; afterward, we find them very often spoken of and enumerated, even to the end of the Bible (Rev. 7:4; 21:12). H. Ch. 26: Esau and the Edomites. As in ch. 25, the history gives the genealogies of Abraham’s descendants by other wives in order to dispose of them, and to treat the line of Isaac, so here it gives the genealogies of the descendants of Esau in order to have done with them and to advance in the line of Jacob. In both cases the races enumerated are those which in subsequent times had to do with Israel. Af.—It was, as necessary to register the generations of Esau as those of Jacob, in order to show that the Messiah did not spring from the former, but that he did spring from the later. The genealogical tables, so frequently met with in the sacred writings, are standing proofs of the truth of the prophecies that the Messiah should come from a particular family; which prophecies were clearly fulfilled in the birth of Christ. And they testify that the Messiah thus promised is found in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who incontestably sprang from the last, the only remaining branch of the family of David. These registers were religiously preserved among the Jews till the destruction of Jerusalem, after which they were all destroyed; insomuch that there is not a Jew in the universe who can trace himself to the family of David; consequently all expectation of a Messiah to come is, even on their own principles, nugatory and absurd; since nothing remains to legitimate his birth. When Christ came all these registers were in existence. When Matthew and Luke wrote all these registers were still in existence; and had they pretended what could not have been supported, an appeal to the registers would have convicted them of a falsehood. But no Jew attempted to do this, notwithstanding the excess of their malice against Christ and his followers; and because they did not do it, we may safely assert no Jew could do it. Thus the foundation standeth sure. A. C. S. Mount Seir is the mountain ridge extending along the east side of the valley of Arabah, from the Dead Sea to the Elanitic Gulf. The name signifies rough, or rugged. Af. Esau himself, in the lifetime of his father, migrated with his Canaanitish wives to this country, which afterward became the home of his descendants. This mountainous but fertile region had long been occupied by the Horites, whose territories they at first shared, but afterward, at a period antecedent to the Exodus, took possession of. In proof of their importance as a people even in these earliest times, a list of eight kings is given (vs. 31) who “reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king in Israel.” Of their hereditary enmity to the chosen People we find traces not only in their refusal to allow their “brother Israel” (Num. 20:14) to pass through their land during the wanderings in the wilderness, though the request was made under circumstances of the utmost urgency, but from the terms in which we find them denounced by the later prophets. The warlike character of Esau was perpetuated in the latest of his descendants. They were ultimately brought into close alliance with their ancient foes. But, according to Josephus, the children of Israel found reason to die and the children of Esau no less as allies than as open enemies. Even in his own day that historian describes them as “a turbulent and unruly race, rushing to battle as if they were going to a feast.” Lee. 15-19. The first dukes of Edom. The Al-lugh or duke is the head of the tribe among the Edomites, like the Nasi or prince among the Israelites. 20. Horte. The Horites—dwellers in caves (Troglodytes)—were the original inhabitants of Seir, and were driven out by the Edomites (Deut. 2:12); but they appear still to have remained among them in a part of the land. Esau had a Horite, Abolibamah, as his wife; his son Elphaz, a Horite, Timna, as a concubine, which would mark a declension on the part of the Horites. The families of this tribe are mentioned, because the descent of Abolibamah and Timna is given. The Horites derive their names from the caves, many of them hewn out of the rock, and from their underground dwellings. These are still to be seen in great numbers. Geri. 20-30. In the midst of this genealogy of the Edomites, here is inserted the genealogy of the Horites, those Canaanites, or Hittites, that were the natives of mount Seir. This comes in here, not only to give light to the story, but to be a standing reflection upon the Edomites for intermarrying with them, by which, it is probable, they learned their way, and corrupted themselves. Esau having sold his birthright, and lost his blessing and entered into alliance with the Hittites, his posterity and the sons of Seir are here reckoned together. Those that treacherously desert God's church, are justly numbered with those that were never in it; apostate Edomites stand on the same ground with accursed Horites. H. 31-39. The series of eight kings here enumerated are plainly elective, as not one succeeds his father. The king co-exists with the dukes, who are again enumerated at the close of the list, and are mentioned in the song of Moses (Ex. 15:15). These dukes are no doubt the electors of the common sovereign, who is designed to give unity and strength to the nation. It is natural to suppose that no sovereign was elected till after the death of Esau, and, therefore, if he lived as long as Jacob, after the children of Israel had been seventeen years in Egypt. 31. Before a king reigned over his children of Israel, simply means before there was a monarchy established in Israel. It does not imply that monarchy began in Israel immediately after these kings. M.—In the previous chapter (vs. 11), there had been an emphatic promise from God Almighty (El-Shaddai) to Jacob that "kings should come out of his loins." The Israelites, no doubt, cherished a constant hope of such a kingdom and such a kingly race. Moses himself (Deut. 28:36) prophesied concerning the king that the Israelites should set over them; and hence it was not unnatural that, when recording the eight kings, who had reigned in the family of Esau up to his own time, he should have noted that as yet no king had risen from the family of his brother Jacob, to whom a kingly progeny had been promised. E. H. B. 39. The last of the eight kings, of whom it is not said that he died, seems to have been the contemporary of Moses, who made application to him for leave to pass through his land. If this be so, it follows that the remainder of Genesis comes immediately from the hand of Moses; a result which is in accordance with other indications that have presented themselves in the previous part of this book. This interesting monument of antiquity, notwithstanding its brevity, we shall find to be arranged with admirable precision. M. 42. Mount Seir is called the land of their possession. While the Israelites dwelt in the house of bondage, and their Canaan was only the land of promise, the Edomites dwelt in their own habitations, and Seir was in their possession. The children of this world have their all in hand, and nothing in hope, while the children of God have their all in hope, and next to nothing in hand. But, all things considered, it is better to have Canaan in promise than mount Seir in possession. H.—A worldly Esau may have his mount Seir, may have his portion at once, without any discipline, any acquaintance with God or himself. But Israel, the beloved of God, must forego rest, must wait, and suffer, and fight, in the way to it. One exercise of faith and patience must succeed to another; and by these they must be trained into a meetness for the Canaan promised to them as their inheritance. And such is the Christian's calling. He must reckon on trial and conflict; he must learn to endure it, to go forward, and quit himself as a man, taking up his cross and carrying it patiently, yes, cheerfully, as what all his brethren are doing, as what God called him to when he called him to glory, and in assured faith that it shall soon be exchanged for glory. F. Goede. The notice here taken of Esau is a kind of final leave taken of him and of his posterity, for we hear no more of them but as enemies of the chosen people. He is presented to our view for a moment, as surrounded with a glare of earthly glory, but as there is nothing stable without the pale of the kingdom of God, the curtain speedily drops upon all his splendor and pomp, and it is seen no more. The spirit of inspiration pausing for a moment to show that no word of God, however slight, fails of its effect, immediately passes to its main drift, and directs our view to the more abiding and truly glorious concerns of the line of Jacob. Bush. Ch. 28: The Bible makes no apology, draws no curtain, makes no excuse; on it goes; taking life as it is, and describing it without flattery or fear. The Bible is true to the very root and reality of things. The book does not ignore facts, but faces them, names them, proposes remedies for them, and searches into the root and core of the whole of them. Evil be to him that evil thinks. These things belong to a greater whole; they must not be detached; the part that would be intolerable is essential to the whole that is beautiful. J. P. The removal to Egypt was needful in order to separate the sons of Jacob from the people of the land. How readily constant contact with the Canaanites would have involved even the best of them in horrible vices appears from the history of Judah, when, after the selling of Joseph, he had left his father's house, and, joining himself to the people of the country, both he and his rapidly became conformed to the abominations around. A. E. The history of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar. The object of this parenthetical chapter seems to be to show how near the offspring of Jacob were to falling into the habits and loathsome sins of the Canaanitish peoples; and to pave the way for the history of their removal into the land of Egypt, which took place by means of Joseph's being sold and carried thither. At the same time it defines and accounts for the two main branches in the kingly line of Judah. Af.—It supplies a very important link. In the Teledoth, or family history, of Jacob, the two chief persons were Joseph and Judah; Joseph from his high character, his personal importance, his influence in the future destinies of the race, and his typical foreshadowing of the Messiah; Judah, from his obtaining the virtual right of primogeniture, and from his being the ancestor of David and of the Son of David. E. H. B. We see in this story how one interest—that for their families, and the preservation of them—overpowered every other feeling, even the sense of shame in a woman. The sanctity of an ancient descent, as it had been brought out of Mesopotamia by Abraham's posterity, and the establishment of the duties of the brother-in law (the Levirate, from a Latin word, levir, a husband's brother), are forcibly put forth by this narrative. The law was, that when a widow was left childless, it was the brother's duty to marry the widow, and the firstborn son of this marriage was to be regarded as the child of the deceased brother. The purport of the laws of the Israelites on the subject (no doubt derived from the patriarchs), was to preserve as much as possible the heirs in a direct line. The father lived in the son—the whole family descended from him was in a certain sense himself. Govt. 21,22. The word rendered havid, in these two verses, and for which we have no other intelligible expression, means connected; namely, to the goddess of licentiousness, to whose temple and worship her gains were devoted. The name, and the custom on which it was founded, only partially reveal the fearful corruption of religion and morals wherever idolatry prevailed. T. J. C. 23. By the man whose these are.** It is obvious that Tamar might before this have exposed Judah, had she been so inclined. In this, however, it does not appear that she was influenced by vindictive feelings toward Judah, or that she had any wish to hold him up to public abhorrence, but simply to vindicate her own conduct: while God, in the mean time, was carrying on his purpose to bring the offender, by this means, to a penitent confession of his fault. Instead of boldly summoning him into her presence, and requiring of him to stand forth as her accuser before the judges, she does not even name him, nor seek an interview, but sends to him the pledged articles, leaving it to his own conscience to rebuke him before God. Bach. Not till she was in actual peril of a horrible death did she expose the author of her ignominy, and then only to himself. Though highly culpable, in the eye of the divine law, for the course she adopted, she seems to have intended merely to test her own rights, denied her by the timid policy of Judah. In regard to these rights, Judah himself acknowledged that her claim was just, and that he was the offender. Allowance must of course be made, in her case, for the loose sentiments and practices of the age. It has been justly said that her conduct, culpable as it was, was marked by shrewdness, tenderness, and magnanimity. 26. She is more in the right than I. That is, her cause is more just than mine; I am the offender. He admits that in withholding Shelah, her rightful husband (v. 11), he had been guilty of a wrong, and that her claim, which he had denied, was just. T. J. C. We account for the tenacity with which TAMAR clung to her claims on the family of Judah by her anxiety to have a child from the family of Judah. And the less, by her birth as a heathen, she was entitled to any connection with the chosen race, the more jealously did she insist on the rights which marriage had given her. The same views, but in an infinitely higher and nobler form, appear under similar circumstances in the case of Ruth. However we may feel the deep aberration of Tamar, we cannot ignore that in it a higher faith was concealed. K.—Under the arts of Tamar in regard to Judah there still lay concealed faith in the sanctity of the customs and ordinances of the chosen race of Israel. For this reason, too, Judah bore her testimony, “She is more righteous than I.” At the same time we see with what honesty and candor the Holy Scripture paints mankind; how God chooses his people not for any apparent external virtues, but according to his own free grace; how the whole of the scheme for the recovery of sinful man is a work of free favor; and, in fine, how there was enough of sin in Israel’s family to require a speedy and severe purification, which did not long tarry. C. G. B. The birth of Pharez forms the central point of this chapter, as, according to the law, he occupied the place of the firstborn of Judah. All that precedes only forms the basis for this account, and is so circumstantially narrated only because it at the same time affords a deep insight into the personal position and the history of Judah. Again the history of Judah and of his house is of such importance, because in his prophetic blessing Jacob assigns to Judah the sceptre of principality among the tribes of Israel; and the primogeniture of Pharez is brought out so prominently because Nahshon, the eminent prince and leader in Israel, during the journey through the wilderness, is a descendant of Pharez (Nu. 2:3). “But”—we continue with Baumgarten—“we may look beyond the natural horizon of Moses; for we do not merely say that Moses has written this account, but also that the Holy Ghost has written it. We therefore perceive in this narrative a glance into ages yet future. We call to mind that king David had sprung from Nahshon (Ruth 4:18-22), and that Jesus of Nazareth, who was made of God both Lord and Christ, was the son of David. We are therefore now tracing the lineage of Jesus Christ, and looking forward to Him who is both the commencement and the end of all things.” The narrative discloses the sins of Judah with the same openness and faithfulness as it details the moral aberrations of other patriarchs and kings, for the purpose of showing that the high position assigned to them in the kingdom of God, and to which they were called and trained, was not due to their own virtue and excellency, but to the sovereign mercy of Him that had called them. K. I find not many of Jacob’s sons more faulty than Judah; who yet is singled out from all the rest to be the royal progenitor of Christ, and to be honored with the dignity of the birth-right, that God’s election might not be of merit, but of grace; else howsoever he might have sped alone, Tamar had never been joined with him in this line. Bp. H.—It is wonderful that this incestuous transaction should form one step of that chain which led to the birth of our Saviour. It is spoken of by commentators as a thing that deepens his humiliation. In associating himself by relationship with such an atrocity as this, his redemption descends to the lowest depths of human guilt and depravity. It casts a light on the infinite mercy of God; and makes me to feel in this alliance of the transcendental with the terrestrial in its grossest form, that God’s ways are not as man’s ways. T. C. The four oldest sons of Jacob fell under very foul guilt. Reuben and Judah under the guilt of incest, Simeon and Levi under the guilt of murder; yet they were patriarchs; of Levi came the priests, of Judah the kings and Messiah; thus they became examples of repentance, and monuments of pardoning mercy. H. Such a record as this thirty-eighth chapter of Genesis excites the clamor of scoffing unbelief against the moral teachings of the Old Testament; and even suggests to some classes of Christians the theory that the Old Testament worship is of an inferior sort to that of the New Testament, because patriarchy and the chosen ones in the covenant of God are represented as guilty of great immoralities. It is sufficient to reply simply to this clamor that it rests entirely upon the misconceptions of the objector himself as to the plan and purpose of that Old Testament record. These objectors would have the inspired penman to sketch characters for us after the fashion of our modern biographies, which too often present us with mere ideal men that never existed, or rather the beatified ghosts of departed heroes. The Old Testament aims to furnish us a gallery of characters intended as often for our warning as for our example. It is not intended to set forth, merely for our admiration, perfect ideals of character in any single character but that character of the "Son of Man." All others are pictures of living men and women, with all the blots and blurs of a fallen humanity upon them, and "the old man" still adhering to them, even after the work of Divine grace has begun in the soul, and that under the most favorable circumstances. These objectors seem to forget that this Old Testament sets out with the account of how humanity, at first perfect, has fallen and become degraded; and its purpose is not simply to inculcate moral maxims, but to trace the history of an intervention of divine grace to restore the fallen humanity instead of leaving it to its native gravitation toward utter brutishness, following its physical nature, or utter devilishness, following its spiritual nature. And its aim is to describe the conflict which ever comes from the attempt to develop out of this fallen humanity a new and regenerate humanity. If the Scriptures anywhere indorsed these heroes of the faith, and all the covenant people of God as perfect models of character for your imitation, then might you object to the picture of Noah and Lot as intoxicated; of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as guilty of falsehood; of Judah as driven by lust to incest; of Moses as guilty of manslaughter, and David of murder and adultery. Or if you can show that God is represented as approving of these outbreaks of wickedness, that would be another matter, and there would be some point to this objection. But intelligently read and candidly judged, the Old Testament nowhere represents God as approving of any moral principle that is not approved in the New Testament, and that does not meet the approval also of every enlightened conscience. Nor in any instance does this history, exhibiting such remarkable fidelity in portraying its characters in all their faults as well as their virtues, fail to exhibit the sins and failings and foibles of the noblest of its heroes, as bringing upon them the marks of God's disapproval in the sorrow and suffering which infallibly followed—just as Jacob now is reaping in old age the fruits of the sins and foibles of his earlier years. S. R. 1. And Jacob dwelt in the land of his father's sojournings, in the land of Canaan. These are 2 the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and he was a lad with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father's 3 wives: and Joseph brought the evil report of them unto their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a 4 coat of many colors. And his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren; and they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him. And Joseph dreamed a 5 dream, and he told it to his brethren: and they hated him yet the more. And he said unto 6 them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: for, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves came 7 round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet 8 the more for his dreams, and for his words. And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed yet a dream; and, behold, the sun and the 9 moon and eleven stars made obeisance to me. And he told it to his father, and to his brethren; and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to 10 thee to the earth? And his brethren envied him; but his father kept the saying in mind. 12. And his brethren went to feed their father's flock in Shechem. And Israel said unto Joseph, 13 Do not thy brethren feed the flock in Shechem? come, and I will send thee unto them. And 14 he said to him, Here am I. And he said to him, Go now, see whether it be well with thy 15 brethren, and well with the flock; and bring me word again. So he sent him out of the vale 16 of Hebron, and he came to Shechem. And a certain man found him, and, behold, he was 17 wandering in the field; and the man asked him, saying, What seekest thou? And he said, I 18 seek my brethren: tell me, I pray thee, where they are feeding the flock. And the man said, 19 They are departed hence; for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. And Joseph went after 20 his brethren, and found them in Dothan. And they saw him afar off, and before he came 21 near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him. And they said one to another, Be- 22 hold, this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into one 23 of the pits, and we will say, An evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will be- 24 come of his dreams. And Reuben heard it, and delivered him out of their hand; and said, 25 Let us not take his life. And Reuben said unto them, Shed no blood; cast him into this pit 26 that is in the wilderness, but lay no hand upon him: that he might deliver him out of their 27 hand, to restore him to his father. And it came to pass, when Joseph was come unto his 28 brethren, that they stript Joseph of his coat, the coat of many colors that was on him; and 29 they took him, and cast him into the pit; and the pit was empty, there was no water in it. 30 And they sat down to eat bread: and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a 31 travelling company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead, with their camels bearing spicery and 32 balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt. And Judah said unto his brethren, What 33 profit is it if we slay our brother and conceal his blood? Come, and let us sell him to the 34 Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother, our flesh. And his 35 brethren hearkened unto him. And there passed by Midianites, merchantmen; and they 36 drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces 37 of silver. And they brought Joseph into Egypt. And Reuben returned unto the pit; and, 38 behold, Joseph was not in the pit; and he rent his clothes. And he returned unto his breth- 39 ren, and said, The child is not; and I, whither shall I go? And they took Joseph's coat, and 40 killed a he-goat, and dipped the coat in the blood; and they sent the coat of many colors, and 41 they brought it to their father; and said, This have we found: know now whether it be thy 42 son's coat or not. And he knew it, and said, It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured 43 him; Joseph is without doubt torn in pieces. And Jacob rent his garments, and put sack- 44 cloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his 45 daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will 46 go down to the grave to my son mourning. And his father wept for him. And the Midian- 37 ites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, the captain of the guard. The story of Joseph is simply the traditional account of the events which first led to the prolonged sojourn of the Israelites in a land which was neither their original nor their destined home, but one in which, in their own affecting phrase, they were strangers in a far country. Evidently, before it was written out in Genesis, the legend had often been repeated orally in their tents, at their camp-fires, and by the mothers of the tribe in teaching their children. And the story also had a strong local coloring; at that early day, the very dawn of the historical epoch of mankind, it would have been intelligible only to a people who knew all about Egypt, and had also heard much about Canaan, and the long journey through the desert between these two countries. It has the true ring of genuineness; it breathes the air of Egypt and the desert in the old, old times. F. Bowen.—The life and fortunes of Joseph, embracing one tenth of the book of Genesis, form a story of unrivalled attraction, whether we consider the simplicity and beauty of the narrative, the pathos of the events, or the moral lessons which it teaches. Viewed merely as a human composition, as a specimen of simple, graceful, eloquent, and pathetic narrative, it has no parallel. We find in it all that gives beauty to the finest drama—a perfect unity of design; a richness and variety of incident involving the plot in obscurity, yet gradually drawing to its intended development; and the whole issuing happily, rewarding pre-eminent virtue with appropriate honors and blessings, and visiting iniquity with deserved humiliation and punishment. It is a story which persons of all ages, and minds of all orders, peruse with equal interest; and the degree of secret moral influence which the spotless example of Joseph has exercised upon countless numbers of the readers of the Scriptures, can never be appreciated till the day of the revelation of all things. We behold in him one who in every period of life, in every change of condition, in every variety of relation, secures our confidence, our respect, our love. In adversity, we see him evincing exemplary patience and resignation; in temptation, inflexible firmness; in exaltation, unaffected simplicity, integrity, gentleness, and humility. Bush. In the history of Joseph and his brethren, a train of events, apparently natural, and arising out of each other, is overruled to the accomplishment of the purposes and prophecies of God, without any interference with, or control over, the free agency of man; and the history furnishes us with a complete specimen of the mode in which an all-wise Providence still governs the world. G. T.—Without infringing individual liberty or diminishing the guilt of those who sought to thwart the purposes of Heaven, those results were brought about which had been foreordained by Him whose counsels run parallel with the ages. Free, yet instruments in the accomplishment of a divine plan! The incidents in Joseph's life furnish an argument in favor of an overruling Providence so overwhelming that no sophistry can successfully blunt its force. J. S. V. Joseph is frequently spoken of as a "type of Christ." It may be doubted whether this is not too strong a statement of the case, since the Scriptures nowhere speak of him as any constituted type, and it is a wise maxim that nothing is properly a type except what the Scriptures make typical either directly or by very direct implication. But in the sense that the life of Joseph is the foreshadowing of things yet to come, it is a type of that of Jesus Christ. S. R.—It is the tendency of all history to be typical. We read it very inattentively if we do not see that it is constantly throwing itself up into representative men and events. This is the tendency, above all, of Divine history, for God's providence guides it in a special manner outwardly, and God's Spirit breathes through it all, with a grand unity of aspiration, to one central event. That there should be types in such a history is most natural. Ker. When we come to the New Testament history, we find that a large part of this Old Testament historic record was intended to symbolize and shadow forth great historic truths of the future; just as the ritualism of the Old Testament worship was designed to shadow forth the great ideas of the redemption in the future for faith to lay hold upon. The infinite mind who prepresides in all this history prearranging all with reference to the coming Messiah to assume humanity, so that not only in the institutions of worship of the old church were they taught to see the shadowing of great truths, but in the history of God's transaction all was fitted in like manner to foreshadow the coming of Christ. Of this pre-eminently is Lord Bacon's saying true: "History is prophecy." S. R. 2. These are the generations of Jacob.** The Toledoth, or genealogical history of Isaac began (ch. 25 : 19) after the death of his father Abraham, a few verses having been allotted (vv. 12-18) to dispose of the history of his brother Ishmael. In the same manner, the Toledoth of Jacob are given in this chapter after the death of his father Isaac, ch. 36 having intervened to account for Esau and his family. Many of the preceding chapters had been occupied with the history of Jacob and his sons, but Jacob's Toledoth begin at this point, because now he has become the sole head and father of the chosen seed. The Toledoth, or family history, of Jacob continues now till his death. Joseph, being seventeen years old. This history goes back a few years; for Isaac must have been living when Joseph was seventeen. But the historian had fully wound up the history of Isaac before commencing the Toledoth of Jacob; and he now gives unity to the history of the descent into Egypt by beginning with the adolescence of Joseph, his father's fondness for him, and his brothers' jealousy of him. E. H. B. 3. The Hebrew words mean simply, "a tunic reaching to the extremities." They describe a garment such as was commonly worn in Egypt and the adjacent lands—a long white linen robe extending to the ankles and wrists, and embroidered with a narrow stripe of color round the edge of the skirt and the sleeves. And if this white linen garment be but a poor substitute for the rich, gorgeous robe which has so long held its place in our thoughts, it has its compensations. For it helps us to understand the envy, the fierce murderous jealousy, of Joseph's brethren. That they should be moved to kill him, or even to sell him for a slave, because he wore a gay coat and went fine, is almost inconceivable; but this long linen tunic meant more than a mere coat of many hues. It was worn, as a rule, only by the most noble and opulent classes, by kings' sons and daughters, by priests and scribes, by those who were exempt from manual labor. Cox — A full-length garment; covering the whole person, the body of the garment extending to the feet, and the sleeves to the wrists. Such garments were worn only by persons exempted from manual labor, and were indicative of rank and wealth. The injudicious partiality of Jacob conferred this distinction on the favorite child of his old age. On the contrary, the ordinary dress, such as was worn by persons engaged in active employments, extended but a little below the knee, the sleeves reaching only to the elbow. T. J. C. 4. Could not bid peace to him. The partiality of his father, exhibited in so weak a manner, provokes the anger of his brothers, who cannot bid him good-day, or greet him in the ordinary terms of good-will. M.—We are taught here the evil of favoritism in the family. The balance, as between the different children in the same household, must be held evenly by the parents. One may be brighter, or more amiable, or more companionable than another, but before the discipline of the family they ought to be all on a level. They are all alike children of the father, and should be dealt with by him on principles of the strictest equity. In some respects their differences of disposition will require differences of treatment, but they should be all kept on an equality. W. M. T. 10. Joseph's dream came true, though his white tunic was soon soiled with the sand of the desert pit and with the blood of the goat's kid. Joseph's dream came true, though it was fulfilled in a way and by means too wonderful for him to anticipate. Instead of simply succeeding to his father's inheritance, and ruling his eleven brethren, he stood next to Pharaoh, and governed busy, populous Egypt. His father and brothers did make obeisance unto him. Nay, the very sun and moon, which govern the tides and rains, and mete out years of famine and years of plenty, even these served him and helped him to the throne. Through the pit and the prison, by the path of sorrow and captivity, he rose to be the very centre of the world; for "all the world went down into Egypt to buy corn of Joseph." Cox. 11. Envied him. Envy is the breath of the old serpent. It is pure devil, as it is also purely spiritual. It needs no body, no concupiscent organization, no appetites or fleshly motions, no nerves even, for the exercise of its devilish energies. It is a soul-poison, yet acting fearfully upon the body itself, bringing more death into it than seemingly stronger and more tumultuous passions that have their nearer seat in the fleshly nature. It is "rottenness in the bones." T. L. Kept the saying in mind. There is something very impressive in the silent thoughtfulness fulness of Jacob. It is like the pondering in her heart by Mary of the things that were told her. This is the third time in which Jacob is introduced as thinking what he did not speak, but laid up in silence. It accords with the policy of his character. T. C. 12-14. By a remarkable combination of events and interweaving of their life-web by the hand of Providence, the opportunity is offered for the development of their hatred of Joseph by his brethren. The immense flocks of Jacob, combined with those of Isaac, his father, are too numerous to find pasturage in the vale of Hebron, where Isaac has always resided, and to which Jacob has come. Some larger provision must be made for pasturage. Nothing more natural than that Jacob should think of sending his flocks to his former range at foot of Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, for there he had purchased most excellent land about a mile and a half from Shechem, and he would avail himself of its advantages. Perhaps it is now the latter part of summer, and the pastures in the south about Hebron are more parched than sixty miles north in the shady nooks and hills about Shechem. S. R. 15-17. Joseph found not his brethren at Shechem itself, but a stranger directed him to "Dothan," the two wells, whither they had gone. Dothan was beautifully situated, about twelve miles north from Samaria. Northward spread richest pasture-lands; a few swelling hills separated it from the great plain of Esdraelon. From its position it must have been the key to the passes of Esdraelon, and so, as guarding the entrance from the north, not only of Ephraim, but of Palestine itself. On the crest of one of those hills the extensive ruins of Dothan are still pointed out, and at its southern foot still wells up a fine spring of living water. From these hills Gideon afterward descended upon the host of Midian. It was here that Joseph overtook his brethren, and was cast into the dry well. And it was from that height that the sons of Jacob must have seen the Arab caravan slowly winding from Jordan on its way to Egypt, when they sold their brother, in the vain hope of binding the word and arresting the hand of God. A. E. In the afternoon we came out upon a plain of rich meadow-land. It is a crescent-shaped plain, hill-encirceled, unbroken by fence or hedge or wall. Not a house enlivens its broad, still expanse. On the farther side is a hill, steep, but not very high. At its foot is a grand well, with a building enclosing it. We look about us on well and plain with a rare delight. This is Tell Dothan — the Dothan to which that Joseph whom we have loved ever since, in childhood, his story fell upon eager ears, wandered in search of his brethren. No wonder that the sons of Jacob led their flocks and herds hither, for it is a charming plain. The pasturage would suffice for even their thousands of sheep, of goats and cattle. Later in Jewish history Dothan appears as the residence of the prophet Elisha. Benhadad the Syrian encircled the hill with his army, that he might capture this troublesome prophet, but the host was smitten with confusion of sight and led away from Dothan to Samaria. The reply of Elisha to his terrified attendant, “Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them,” has become one of the watchwords of the Christian life. It first rang bravely out at this Dothan. Dalles. It is a striking illustration of how, when God has a general purpose to accomplish, as this sending Joseph into Egypt, he overrules and directs all the little things which as second causes operate to accomplish his purpose. Had these brethren of Joseph remained near Shechem they would probably not have accomplished their crime. They could not have so easily concealed it from their father. And no caravans to Egypt passed that way to offer a chance to sell him into slavery. Thus this incidental departure to Dothan was a mesh of the web. S. R. 18. They conspired against him to slay him. Envy has completed its work; now they coolly contemplate murder. 22.** Their plan meets opposition from an unexpected source. Reuben said, “Shed no blood; but cast him into this pit, that he might rid him out of their hands and deliver him to his father again.” Reuben is the last of the ten from whom we would have expected mercy. His sincerity seems to be fully attested by his subsequent anguish, by his vivid remembrance of the painful incidents of this tragic scene and by his offer to assume the responsibility of Benjamin’s safe return from Egypt. J. S. V. Reuben, of all the brothers, had most reason to be jealous of Joseph, for he was the first-born, and so entitled to those distinguishing favors which Jacob was conferring on Joseph; yet he proves his best friend. Reuben’s temper seems to have been soft and effeminate, which had betrayed him to the sin of uncleanness; while the temper of the two next brothers, Simeon and Levi, was fierce, which betrayed them to the sin of murder, a sin which Reuben startled at the thought of. Our natural consticonstitution should be guarded against those sins to which it is most inclinable, and improved (as Reuben’s here) against those sins to which it is most averse. Reuben made a proposal which they thought would effectually answer their intention of destroying Joseph, and yet which he designed should answer his intention of rescuing Joseph out of their hands, and restoring him to his father, probably hoping thereby to recover his father’s favor, which he had lately lost; but God overruled all to serve his own purpose of making Joseph an instrument to save much people alive. H. Crime begets crime. Envy brought forth malice, deceit, lying, the intent of murder, and the kindred crime of man stealing. Such a fountain of iniquity is the heart of man! What a dreadful secret had these ten men to carry all their lives! And poor old Jacob!—his final retribution for the deception practised upon his brother comes in this cruel deception, that shall carry him mourning down into the grave! God, indeed, had better thoughts for him; but the guilt of men remains the same, however God may overrule it for good. As we cannot charge upon God our own evil-doings, neither can we credit ourselves with the good which God brings out of evil. J. P. T. 24. The numerous rock-hewn cisterns that are found everywhere would furnish a suitable pit in which they might have thrust him; and as these cisterns are shaped like a bottle, with a narrow mouth, it would be impossible for any one imprisoned within it to extricate himself without assistance. These cisterns are now all cracked and useless; they are, however, the most undoubted evidences that exist of the handiwork of the inhabitants in ancient times. Lieut. Anderson. 25. They sat down to eat bread.** In this heartless meal Reuben can have taken no part. It appears from verse 29, that he must have left his brethren, perhaps with the very purpose of seeking means to rescue Joseph. The simplicity and truthfulness of the narrative are all the more apparent by the indifference of the writer to the question how and why it was that Reuben was absent at this point of the history. A forger would have been likely to tell all about it. E. H. B. — The heartless barbarity with which the brethren of Joseph sat down to eat and drink the very dainties he had brought them from his father, while they left him, as they thought, to starve, has been regarded by all later generations as the height of hard-hearted indifference. Amos, at a loss to describe the recklessness of his own generation, falls back upon this incident, and cries woe upon those "that drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointment, but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph." Dals. 27,28. Whatsoever they thought, God never meant that Joseph should perish in that pit; and therefore he sends very Ishmaelites, to ransom him from his brethren; the seed of him that persecuted his brother Isaac shall now redeem Joseph from his brethren's persecution. Bp. H.—There was much commerce between Egypt and Asia. The spices and resins so much used in Egypt for embalming were brought from the East. Slaves, too, were always in demand. The route of caravans crossing the Jordan at Beisan lay near Dothan; so that these Ishmaelitish traders naturally passed that way. Thus every incident of the narrative is verified by the geographical features of the country, and by the commercial customs of the times. J. P. T. The same company of men in v. 27 are called "Ishmaelites," in v. 28, "Midianites," and in v. 36 (Hebrew), "Medanites;" this diversity of appellation being designed to intimate that they were a mixed people, made up of different races, and perhaps for that reason called in the Chaldean "Arabians," which signifies mixed. "Here," says Dr. Vincent (Com. and Nav. of the Anc.), "upon opening the oldest history in the world, we find the Ishmaelites from Gilead conducting a caravan loaded with the spices of India, the balsam and myrrh of Hadramaut; and in the regular course of their traffic proceeding to Egypt for a market. The date of this transaction is more than seventeen centuries before the Christian era, and notwithstanding its antiquity, it has all the genuine features of a caravan crossing the Desert at the present hour." The route of these Ishmaelites toward Egypt may be easily traced. They passed the Jordan, which is fordable in many places during the summer months, then took their way through the valley of Jezreel or Esdraelon, which lay but little northward from Dothan—a valley running from east to west, and leading from the Jordan, in the most convenient way, to the shores of the Mediterranean. Hence they could journey in the safest and most speedy manner to Egypt. Bush. It is worth while to note specially here the remarkable undesigned coincidences and agreements of the record with the entire topography of the scene of this transaction, which Moses never saw, and with the facts developed by the recently discovered monuments of that era in Egypt. In the first place, on travelling over the country in which these events are recorded to have taken place, you will be struck with the exactness with which the history fits in with the entire topography of the country. Here is still Jacob's well and Shechem, and the fertile piece of ground, and here, following the tract of Joseph northward from it is Dothan; here are the pits or bottle-shaped wells, like Jacob's well, and dry in the late summer, into which Joseph was put, and so constructed that it would be impossible to get out without assistance, since they swell out to eight or nine feet in the middle. And here just at Dothan is the juncture of the narrow valleys leading north from Esdraelon, along which runs the highway from the East, between the plains of the Euphrates and the Nile. Nowhere but just along that line would any Ishmaelitish caravan have passed by to which they could sell a slave. And there to-day may be seen the long camel train passing east and west along the point of Gilboa, reminding one when seen in the distance of a long railway train, each camel led by a halter attached to the saddle of the one before it. And, on the other hand, on the monuments and in the paintings during this century, disentombed from the ruins of Egypt and collected in the galleries at London, Paris, Berlin, Cairo, are displayed the life and manners and customs of those ancient civilizations in Egypt arranged according to their successive dynasties and ages, exhibiting precisely the same facts which this record implies. Pictures of these very caravans of merchants coming from the East to Egypt, as their great mart; of slaves brought in with them, and slaves sent in as tribute from subject provinces; of slaves of all colors, at their various sorts of service—those such as the boy Joseph occupying business positions in their master's service, sturdy Africans doing the drudgery, Arab runners, etc. S. R. Full little did Joseph think when he went to seek his brethren, that this was the last time he should see his father's house; full little did his brethren think when they sold him to the Ishmaelites, to have once seen him in the throne of Egypt. God's decree runs on; and, while we either think not of it or oppose it, is performed. Bp. H.—They thought that if he were sold for a slave, he would never be a lord, if sold into Egypt would never be their lord; yet all this was working toward it. The wrath of man shall praise God, and the remainder of wrath he will restrain (Ps. 76:10). Joseph's brethren were wonderfully restrained from murdering him, and their selling him as wonderfully turned to God's praise. H. From this history of Joseph, we might conclude that he was himself quite passive in the whole transaction. Yet when the brothers talk together upon this same subject many years afterward in Egypt, they say one to another, "We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us, and we would not hear." These fervent entreaties are sunk in the direct history of the event, and only come out by accident after all. Blunt. These brothers of Joseph were bent on making the realization of his dreams impossible, and yet the thing which they did was one step toward the bringing about of the elevation of their brother. They were made to see it afterward; and they were working under no constraint. Nobody compelled them to give up their first idea of putting Joseph to death. The proposal to put him into a pit was purely spontaneous with Reuben, and they were at liberty to act upon it or not as they chose. The same thing was true of the suggestion of Judah about selling him to the Ishmaelites. Each party was seeking its own ends, and yet they were all contributing to bring about the purpose of God concerning Joseph. We cannot explain the "law" of it, but we clearly see the fact. Oh the marvellous wisdom of that providence of God which thus, without doing violence to the will of any human being, lays all their actions under tribute for the furtherance of its designs! W. M. T. 29. And Reuben returned unto the pit.** From this it is evident that Reuben was absent when Joseph was sold, and consequently did not consent at the time to the deed. He mourns bitterly on finding his plan defeated. Joseph is now lost to his father forever, and he pictures to himself the anguish of that new affliction which threatened to fall upon the good old man after the severe griefs which he had already sustained from his own misbehavior and that of his brethren. He pours out his bitter complaints to his hard-hearted brethren, but to little purpose. They could not well undo what was done, nor had they any wish to undo it. Bush. Reuben intends to deliver Joseph from the vengeance of his brothers, and secretly to send him back to his father. Beside his natural kindness, as the firstborn, Reuben would feel himself more particularly responsible to his father. Judah also wished to preserve the life of Joseph, but he agrees with his other brothers in deeming it necessary that he should be removed, so that thereby the possibility of having his dreams realized should be set aside. As they probably thought that the realization of these dreams was dependent on his investiture with the rights of primogeniture, it appeared the most sure means of attaining their object to sell him as a slave into a distant country. Thus, we conclude with Ranke: "The narrative has now reached the point when it seems as if the direct contrary of Joseph's former prophetic dreams should take place. He whose superiority his parents and brothers were to acknowledge, now lives as a slave in a foreign land." K. 35. Daughters.** Of whom, besides Dinah, he perhaps had several. Daughters, when not the subjects of any remarkable history, are not enumerated in the genealogical register. Gert. I will go down to the grave to my son mourning. A more correct version is, "I will go down to my son mourning into Sheol." This is the first of the sixty-five instances in which the proper name Sheol occurs in the Old Testament. It is a precise equivalent of the Greek Hades, which is found ten times in the New Testament. The word never means grave, for which the Hebrew has a term uniformly used to denote the earthly receptacle of a dead body, but always the place of departed spirits, whether good or evil. It thus distinctly conveyed the idea of the soul's existence after death. The patriarch's conceptions of this unseen world were doubtless dim and vague, but he expected to meet Joseph there, and his use of the word is quite inconsistent with the notion that death is the extinction of the whole man. ... According to Old Testament usage, Sheol (or Hades) was the receptacle of all the dead without exception. Thither went the patriarch Jacob, and thither also went such men as the unscrupulous Joab and the malignant Shimei (1 Kings 2 : 6-9). The primary idea is that it is the realm of the dead, and as such concentrates in itself whatever terror death has for man. Hence the combination of the two terms as in the 18th Psalm, "the sorrows of Sheol (Hades), and the snares of death" (comp. Ps. 116 : 3 ; Job 17 : 16 ; Prov. 5 : 5) And as natural death is a symbol of spiritual death, and images that remoteness from God, the fountain of life, which is the worst of all evils, so the region called Sheol (or Hades) came to be regarded as the place to which especially the ungodly belong (Ps. 9 : 17 ; 49 : 14). This accounts for the dread with which the Old Testament believers, such as David (Ps. 6 : 5) and Hezekiah (Is. 38 : 18), usually thought and spoke of it; although in their better moments they had an assured conviction that God would show them the path of life where there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16:11), that he would redeem them from Sheol (49:15), that after guiding them by his counsel here he would receive them to glory (73:24), and therefore that even in death he was their portion forever (73:20). . . . The grave and the p't refer primarily to the body, and so miss the very point of Sheol, which refers to the spirit. The only safe way is to transliterate the word throughout, and then the English reader, studying all the passages in which it occurs, can arrive at his own conclusion as to its meaning. Chambers. The noun "Sheol" is made from the verb Shaal, having the sense, to ask, to demand; and conceives of the place as evermore demanding, insatiable; that which is never full; never has enough. The current Hebrew conceptions of the word may be seen in Prov. 30:15, 16, and Isa. 5:14, and Hab. 2:5. "There are three things that are never satisfied; yea four say not, It is enough: the grave" (Sheol). "Therefore hell (Sheol) hath enlarged herself and opened her mouth without measure; and their glory, and their multitude and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth shall descend into it." "Who enlargeth his desire as hell" (Sheol) "and is as Death, and cannot be satisfied." As to the location of Sheol it seems clear that they thought of it as an under-world, as somehow beneath the surface of the earth. We see this in the case of Korah and his company (Num. 16:28-34), and in De. 32:22. In regard to their conceptions of Sheol as a state of being for the righteous and the wicked dead, it is easy to see that holy men of the oldest time lacked the clear light of the gospel age. H. C. The under-world. By this term is meant (of course only in figurative conception) the abode of the departed, the world of spirits. It is conceived of as beneath (Is. 14:9), as under the earth (Rev. 5:3, 13; Philip. 2:10), as reached by digging into it (Amos 9:2); men are said to go down into it (Num. 16:33); its depth below is contrasted with the height of heaven above (Job 11:8). Such expressions are intended to accommodate what is said to common apprehension, and not to teach us anything respecting the locality of the abode of departed spirits. T. J. C. [For a different view of the meaning of "Sheol," see Dr. Shedd's recent book, "Endless Punishment of the Wicked."] Moses constantly spoke of the death of the godly patriarchs as a being "gathered to their people." He said this of Abraham (Gen. 25:8); of Ishmael (25:17); of Isaac (35:29); of Jacob (49:33). And he records these as Jacob's words when he supposed Joseph to have died: "I will go down into Sheol to my son mourning" (37:35). In the face of these facts can it be said that Moses knew nothing of the future life? Did he think the fathers—the righteous people—had passed by death into non-existence—into what was not life in any sense whatever? H. C. 36. And the Midianites sold him into Egypt.** Hebrew, the Medanites. These were the descendants of Medan, the son of Abraham (Gen. 25:2). Both these and the Midianites seem to have lived intermingled with the Ishmaelites, by which general name they are called (v. 25). Bush.—Joseph's history belongs henceforth to a wider sphere. The glimpse of Egypt, opened to us for a moment in the life of Abraham, now spreads into a vast and permanent prospect. A. P. S. We seem to have sufficient grounds for the belief that the Egypt of Joseph's time was that of the Middle Empire or Hyksos, an Asiatic people who held Egypt in subjection for some centuries before the great rising under Aahmes, which re-established a native dynasty upon the old throne of the Pharaohs. M. Chabas remarks that the Hyksos, or shepherd kings, after a time became "Egyptianized." "The science and the usages of Egypt introduced themselves among them. They surrounded themselves with learned men, built temples, encouraged statuary, while at the same time they inscribed their own names on the statues of the Old Empire, which were still standing, in the place of those of the Pharaohs who had erected them. It is this period of civilization which alone has left us the sphinxes, the statues, and the inscriptions which recall the art of Egypt; the manners of the foreign conquerors had by this time been sensibly softened." And again, "Apepi, the last shepherd king, was an enlightened prince, who maintained a college of men skilled in sacred lore, after the example of the Pharaohs of every age, and submitted all matters of importance to them for examination before he formed any decision." The Pharaoh of Joseph, according to the Syncellus, was this very Apepi, the last shepherd king, the predecessor of the Aahmes, who, after a long and severe struggle, expelled the Hyksos, and re-established in Egypt the rule of a native dynasty. G. R. ("Babylon and Egypt"). By the time that Joseph was sold into Egypt there was little outward difference between the court at Zoan and the court of the native princes at Thebes. The very names and titles borne by the Hyksos officials had become Egyptian; and though they still regarded the god Set as the chief object of their worship, they had begun to rebuild the Egyptian temples and pay honor to the Egyptian deities. Potiphar, to whom Joseph was sold, bore a purely Egyptian name, meaning “the gift of the risen one,” while the name of Potipherah, the high priest of On, whose daughter, Asenath, was married by Joseph, is equally Egyptian, and signifies “the gift of the Sun-God.” The Sun-God was the special deity of On; to him the great temple of the city was dedicated, and the name by which the place was known to the Greeks was Heliopolis, “the city of the sun.” Sayce. 1. 1 And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, who appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother. 2. 2 Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and purify yourselves, and change your garments: and let us arise, and go up to Beth-el; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went. And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and the rings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem. And they journeyed: and a great terror was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob. 3. 6 So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan (the same is Beth-el), he and all the people that were with him. And he built there an altar, and called the place El-beth-el: because there God was revealed unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother. And Deborah Rebekah's nurse died, and she was buried below Beth-el under the oak: and the name of it was called Allon-bacut. 4. 9 And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came from Paddan-aram, and blessed him. 5. 10 And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel. And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and 12 kings shall come out of thy loins ; and the land which I gave unto Abraham and Isaac, to thee 13 I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land. And God went up from him in 14 the place where he spake with him. And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he spake with him, a pillar of stone : and he poured out a drink offering thereon, and poured oil 15 thereon. And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him, Beth-el. 16 And they journeyed from Beth-el ; and there was still some way to come to Ephrath : and 17 Rachel travailed, and she had hard labour. And it came to pass, when she was in hard labour, 18 that the midwife said unto her, Fear not ; for now thou shalt have another son. And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing (for she died), that she called his name Ben-oni : but his 19 father called him Benjamin. And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath (the 20 same is Beth-lehem). And Jacob set up a pillar upon her grave : the same is the Pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day. 27 And Jacob came unto Isaac his father to Mamre, to Kiriath-arba (the same is Hebron), where 28 Abraham and Isaac sojourned. And the days of Isaac were an hundred and fourscore years. 29 And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered unto his people, old and full of days ; and Esau and Jacob his sons buried him. 1-8. Jacob returns to Bethel. He receives the direction from God. He had now been for some years lingering in Succoth and Shechem. There may have been intercourse between him and his father's house during this interval. The presence of Deborah, Rebekah's nurse (v. 8), in his family, is a plain intimation of this. M 1. Of the manner in which the present com- munication was made to him, nothing is said : but the purport of it was that he should remove to Bethel, situated about thirty miles south of Shechem, build there an altar, and perform the vow which he had previously made (Gen. 28 : 20, 22). It was now about thirty years since that vow was made : Jacob had dwelt eight or ten in Canaan since his return from Paddan- aram, and had now attained to one hundred and six years of age ; yet for some reason unex- plained he had hitherto delayed to pay it. Bush.—God reminds Jacob of his vow at Bethel, and sends him thither to perform it. Jacob had said in the day of his distress, If I come again in peace this stone shall be God's house (ch. 28 : 22). God had performed his part of the bargain, and had given Jacob more than bread to eat, and raiment to put on—he had got an estate, and was become two bands ; but, it should seem, he had forgotten his vow, or, at least, had too long deferred the performance of it. Seven or eight years it was now since he came to Canaan ; he had purchased ground there, and had built an altar in remembrance of God's last appearance to him when he called him Israel (ch. 33 : 19, 20) ; but Bethel still is forgotten. H. The mercy of God changed the flight from Shechem into a pilgrimage to Bethel. In itself the Divine command (to go to Bethel) implied a Di- vine assurance in this danger ; for if God calls him to Bethel, He would surely bring him safely thither. But the place to which he was directed to go conveyed even more fully this assurance, for in Bethel he had found a refuge with God at the time of his first trouble. Then, God had promised to protect, to bless, and to bring back him, who, poor and forsaken, had to flee the land ; now, this prediction is richly fulfilled— Jacob has returned unscathed to the Holy Land, the rich proprietor of large flocks. K. Of the truth that God remembers all his own mercies to his people, every act of his love tow- ard every one of them, here is a confirma- tion. After thirty years, the vision at Bethel was fresh as ever in His memory. A mere dream of the night, sent by Him to comfort one of the least of his servants, is not forgotten. This we can believe ; but it is hard to believe that the Lord remembers the petty movements and workings of our minds, that the mighty God should hold in mind the promises of a worm. But hold them he does. He takes special notice of every word we utter that has a reference to himself, and every purpose we form. He records the vows we make to him, and his mind dwells on them as though he de- lighted in them, and longed to have them ful- filled. "I remember thee," he says to his church of old, "the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals." Many years before this, he lets Jacob see that he remembers the kindness of his early years ; "I am the God of Bethel where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me ;" and now he refers to the same transaction again. 2-1. Jacob's directions to prepare for worship at Bethel. His neglect to carefully instruct his sons had borne bitter fruit. It necessitates the sudden and difficult effort now put forth to in- duce his sons to seek with him to serve God. He cannot rightly worship God unless his children and household are with him in spirit, Jacob's neglect had led to carelessness by his sons of the Divine service. He could not himself enter heartily on the service until he had discharged his duty as guide and instructor to his family. F Hastings. Strange gods. The household deities—the teraphim, such as Rachel took with her. At all times among the Israelites there was united together with the worship of the one true God very much idolatry, in which the unbelief, or half-hearted belief of the people sought support. Gerl.—These "strange gods" were idolatrous and superstitious objects of which his sons had, as he knew, just before acquired possession, when they pillaged the town of Shechem—valuable for the materials of which they were composed, but which Jacob feared might in the end prove dangerous. The part of the injunction which directs the people to purify themselves, and to put on clean vestures, is remarkable as the first example of the personal cleanness which was afterward regarded as essential to a becoming appearance before God in worship—a salutary observance, which became a matter of ceremonial law under Moses, but which, like many other observances of the law, had its origin in earlier times. Kit. 4. Earrings were frequently used as amulets, believed to arrest evil, or to act as a charm; they were often covered with allegorical figures or mysterious sentences, according to the deities to which they were consecrated; they formed therefore one of the ordinary instruments of superstitious usages. Kalisch. 5. After the sanguinary conduct of Jacob's sons, is it not surprising that the neighboring tribes did not join together, and extirpate the whole family? So they certainly would, had not the terror of God fallen upon them. Jacob and the major part of his family were innocent of this great transgression; and on the preservation of their lives the accomplishment of great events depended; therefore God watches over them, and shields them from the hands of their enemies. A. C. 8. "Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died, and she was buried beneath Bethel, under an oak, and the name of it was called Allon-bachuth (the oak of weeping)." Thus Deborah's long and faithful service in the household of Isaac, and the family-mourning over the old, tried family friend, are deemed worthy of perpetual memorial in the Book of God! But from the circumstance that Deborah died in the house of Jacob, we infer not only that her mistress Rebekah was dead, but that there must have been some intercourse between Isaac and Jacob since his return to Canaan. Most probably Jacob had visited his aged parent, though Scripture does not mention it, because it in no way affects the history of the covenant. A. E. 9-15. God appeared unto Jacob again.** He was now at Bethel, the place from which he may be considered to have set out for Paddan-aram, and where he made his vow that if God would be with him and be his God, he would make that place the house of God. He had now come back again to the same spot; he had fulfilled his vow by consecrating Bethel as the temple of God; this might then well be considered as the accomplishment of his return from Paddan-aram. Accordingly God appears to him here once more, promises him again, and more emphatically, protection, blessing, inheritance, confirms the name of Israel to him, and assures him that his posterity shall be numerous, powerful and blessed. And Jacob, recognizing the fulfilment of all that had been promised him when he fled from Esau, and of all that his vows had pointed to, rears again a stone pillar as he had done forty years before, and again solemnly names the place Bethel. The whole of this history thoroughly fits in to all that has gone before. 11. I am God Almighty.** El-Shaddal. It was by this name that God revealed himself to Abram, when he changed his name to Abraham, and promised him the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession (ch. 17:8). The use of the same name here is singularly appropriate. E. H. B. 16-20. They draw near to a place then known only by its ancient Canaanite name, and now for the first time mentioned in history, "Ephrath, which is Bethlehem." The village appears spread along its narrow ridge, but they are not to reach it. "There Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath." A. P. S.—Rachel had passionately said, Give me children, or else I die; and now that she had children (for this was her second), she died. Dying is here called the departing of her soul. The death of the body is but the departure of the soul to the world of spirits. H. 19. Ephrath, which is Bethlehem.** Ephrath, or Ephrata, was the old, and Bethlehem the later name of this town. "Bethlehem" means "house of bread;" but we do not know on what occasion it was imposed. The town was in the allotment of the tribe of Judah, being situated about six miles south of Jerusalem, on the road to Hebron. It was a city in the time of Boaz (Ruth 3:11), whose grandson was Jesse, the father of David, who was born and reared there; in consequence of which the place is very frequently distinguished as "the city of David." Bush. 20. And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave. This monument of Rachel's is the first that we read of in Scripture. It was certainly standing when Moses wrote, as appears from this verse; and mention is made of it just before Saul was anointed king (1 Sam. 10:2). The monument now shown for it is a modern and Turkish structure. Maundrell. 27. At last Jacob came to his journey's end, "unto Isaac his father, unto Mamre, unto the city of Arbah, which is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac sojourned." During the years of his stay at Succoth and Shechem Jacob had probably often visited his father, as he was only a few days' journey distant from him; but now in the latter days of Isaac's life he went altogether into his neighborhood, taking with him his flocks and herds. Gert.—He came to dwell with him, and to be the comfort of his old age. Bp. Patrick.—Isaac had the comfort of seeing the promise of God, in this instance of earthly prosperity, made good to himself and to Abraham; as a sure pledge that the spiritual promises, that "in their seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed," would be made good in God's due time. Bp. Wilson. 28,29. Here the life of Isaac is closed. Joseph must have been, at the time of Jacob's return, in his thirteenth year, and therefore his father in his hundred and fourth. Isaac was consequently in his hundred and sixty-third year. He survived the return of Jacob to Hebron about seventeen years, and the sale of Joseph his grandson about thirteen. M—His sons Esau and Jacob buried him. As Isaac and Ishmael had buried Abraham. Hence it appears the friendship between Esau and Jacob continued after their interview on Jacob's return. Bp. Patrick.—Had the death of Isaac been introduced in the proper order of time, it would have fallen in the midst of the history of Joseph; but it occurred about twelve or fifteen years after his being sold into Egypt. Esau and Jacob were 120 years of age at the death of their father, and from their uniting, as Isaac and Ishmael had done on a similar occasion, in performing the funeral obsequies of their father, it is to be inferred that the reconciliation between them was cordial and lasting. Bush. But from henceforward the two branches of Isaac's family were entirely separated. The country about Mount Seir became the permanent residence of the Edozites, who were governed first by independent sheiks or princes, afterward were united under one monarchy. Jacob continued to dwell in Canaan, with his powerful family and ample possessions, until dissensions among his sons prepared the way for more important changes, which seemed to break forever the connection between the race of Abraham and the land of Canaan, but ended in establishing them as the sole possessors of the whole territory. Milman. The dates and incidents in the life of Isaac may be tabulated as follows: | ISAAC. Age. | ABRAHAM. Age. | JACOB. Age. | Incident. | Record. | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Birth | 100 | .. | ... | xxi. | | 25 | 125 | .. | Mount Moriah... | xxii. | | 37 | 137 | .. | Death of Sarah... | xxiii. | | 40 | 140 | .. | Marriage of Isaac... | xxv. | | 60 | 160 | .. | Birth of Esau and Jacob | xxv. | | 75 | 175 | 15 | Death of Abraham... | xxv. | | 100 | .. | 40 | Marriage of Esau... | xxvi. | | 123 | .. | 63 | Death of Ishmael... | xxv. | | .. | .. | .. | Abimelech... | xxvi. | | 137 | .. | 77 | Jacob's departure... | ... | | 151 | .. | 91 | Birth of Joseph... | xxx. | | 157 | .. | 97 | Return of Jacob... | xxxi. | | 168 | .. | 108 | Joseph sold... | xxxvii | | 180 | .. | 120 | Death of Isaac... | xxxv. | A glance at this table reveals how little comparatively is told us of Isaac. He is born somewhere in the neighborhood of Gerar, in the 100th year of his father's life. His birth rekindles the old feud between Sarah and Hagar, which reaches its height when, at the feast made on the day of the weaning, Ishmael is seen making scornful mirth of the new-born child. At Sarah's imperious demand, supported by the Divine direction, Hagar and Ishmael are sorrowfully sent forth by Abraham to seek another home. Isaac remains the sole and undisputed heir of the promises. Looking back upon the life of Isaac, the few frailties and failures it displays are lost in the remembrance of his sublime act of submission and self-surrender on Mount Moriah; his veneration for his father's character, and constant willingness to walk in his steps; his humility in accepting all from God as coming to him for his father's sake; his attachment to his mother; his affection for his wife; his fondness—undue it may have been, yet touchingly tender—for the rough but generous Esau; the unexpressed and unostentations, but deep, serene, meditative piety which sustained and cheered him throughout the long, lonely years before his death. His truly was a spirit easy to be entreated, open to forgiveness, shut against malice, incapable of revenge; showing much of the temper inculcated by him of whom on Mount Moriah he was the type; the meekest, most placable, most patient, most peace-loving most home-loving of the patriarchs. W. H. This chapter closes the ninth of the pieces or documents marked off by the phrase "these are the generations." Its opening event was the birth of Isaac (25:19), which took place in the hundredth year of Abraham, and therefore seventy-five years before his death recorded in the seventh document. As the seventh purports to be the generations of Terah (11:27) and relates to Abraham, who was his offspring, so the present document, containing the generations of Isaac, refers chiefly to the sons of Isaac, and especially to Jacob, as the heir of promise. M. 35. 21 And Israel journeyed, and spread his tent beyond the tower of Eder. And it came to 22 pass, while Israel dwelt in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine: and Israel heard of it. 23. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve: the sons of Leah; Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, and 24. Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and Zebulun: the sons of Rachel; Joseph 25 and Benjamin: and the sons of Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid; Dan and Naphtali: and the 26 sons of Zdpah, Leah's handmaid; Gad and Asher: these are the sons of Jacob, which were born to him in Paddan-aram. 36:1 Now these are the generations of Esau (the same is Edom). Esau took his wives of the 2 daughters of Canaan; Adah the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Oholibamah the daugh- 3 ter of Anah, the daughter of Zibeon the Hivite; and Basemath Ishmael's daughter, sister 4 of Nebaioth. And Adah bare to Esau Eliphaz; and Basemath bare Reuel; and Oholi- 5 bamah bare Jeush, and Jalam, and Korah: these are the sons of Esau, which were born 6 unto him in the land of Canaan. And Esau took his wives, and his sons, and his daughters, and all the souls of his house, and his cattle, and all his beasts, and all his possesssions, which he had gathered in the land of Canaan; and went into a land away from his 7 brother Jacob. For their substance was too great for them to dwell together; and the 8 land of their sojournings could not bear them because of their cattle. And Esau dwelt in 9 mount Seir; Esau is Edom. And these are the generations of Esau the father of the 10. Edomites in mount Seir: these are the names of Esau's sons; Eliphaz the son of Adah 11 the wife of Esau, Reuel the son of Basemath the wife of Esau. And the sons of Eliphaz 12 were Teman, Omar, Zepho, and Garam, and Kenaz. And Timna was concubine to Eliphaz Esau's son; and she bare to Eliphaz Amalek: these are the sons of Adah Esau's 13 wife. And these are the sons of Reuel; Nahath, and Zerah, Shammah, and Mizzah: 14 these were the sons of Basemath Esau's wife. And these were the sons of Oholibamah the daughter of Anah, the daughter of Zibeon, Esau's wife: and she bare to Esau Jeush, 15 and Jalam, and Korah. These are the dukes of the sons of Esau: the sons of Eliphaz the firstborn of Esau; duke Teman, duke Omar, duke Zepho, duke Kenaz, duke Korah, duke 16. Garam, duk. Amalek: these are the dukes that came of Eliphaz in the land of Edom; 17 these are the sons of Adah. And these are the sons of Reuel Esau's son; duke Nahath, duke Zerah, duke Shammah, duke Mizzah: these are the dukes that came of Reuel in the 18 land of Edom; these are the sons of Basemath Esau's wife. And these are the sons of Oholibamah Esau's wife; duke Jeush, duke Jalam, duke Korah: these are the dukes that 19 came of Oholibamah the daughter of Anah, Esau's wife. These are the sons of Esau, and these are their dukes: the same is Edom. 20. These are the sons of Seir the Horite, the inhabitants of the land; Lotan and Shobal 21 and Zibeon and Anah, and Dishon and Ezer and Dishon: these are the dukes that came 22 of the Horites, the children of Seir in the land of Edom. And the children of Lotan 23 were Hori and Hemam; and Lotan's sister was Timna. And these are the children of 24. Shobal; Alvan and Manahath and Ebal, Shepho and Onam. And these are the children of Zibeon; Aiah and Anah: this is Anah who found the hot springs in the wilderness, as 25 he fed the asses of Zibeon his father. And these are the children of Anah; Dishon and 26. Oholibamah the daughter of Anah. And these are the children of Dishon; Hemdan and 27. Eshban and Ithran and Cheran. These are the children of Ezer; Bilhan and Zaavan 28 and Akan. These are the children of Dishon; Uz and Aran. These are the dukes that 29 came of the Horites; duke Lotan, duke Shobal, duke Zibeon, duke Anah, duke Dishon. 30 duke Ezer, duke Dishan : these are the dukes that came of the Horites, according to their dukes in the land of Seir. 31. And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any 32 king over the children of Israel. And Bela the son of Beor reigned in Edom ; and the 33 name of his city was Dinhabah. And Bela died, and Jobab the son of Zerah of Bozrah 34 reigned in his stead. And Jobab died, and Husham of the land of the Temanites reigned 35 in his stead. And Husham died, and Hadad the son of Bedad, who smote Mid-an in the 36 field of Moab, reigned in his stead : and the name of his city was Avith. And Hadad 37 died, and Samlah of Masrekah reigned in his stead. And Samlah died, and Shaul of Re- 38 hoboth by the River reigned in his stead. And Shaul died, and Baal-hanan the son of 39. Achbor reigned in his stead. And Baal-hanan the son of Achbor died, and Hadar reigned in his stead: and the name of his city was Pau ; and his wife's name was Mehetabel, the 40 daughter of Matred, the daughter of Me-zahab. And these are the names of the dukes that came of Esau, according to their families, after their places, by their names ; duke 41. Timnah, duke Alvah, duke Jetheth ; duke Oholibamah, duke Elah, duke Finon ; duke 42. Kenaz, duke Teman, duke Mibzar ; duke Magdiel, duke Iram ; these be the dukes of 43. Edom, according to their habitations in the land of their possession. This is Esau the father of the Edomites. 38 : 1 And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brethren, and turned 2 in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah. And Judah saw there a daughter of 3 a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua ; and he took her, and went in unto her. And 4 she conceived, and bare a son ; and he called his name Er. And she conceived again, and 5 bare a son ; and she called his name Onan. And she yet again bare a son, and called his 6 name Shelah ; and he was at Chezib, when she bare him. And Judah took a wife for Er 7 his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the 8 sight of the LORD ; and the LORD slew him. And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her, and raise up seed 9 to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his ; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest he should 10 give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did was evil in the sight of the LORD 11 and he slew him also. Then said Judah to Tamar his daughter in law, Remain a widow in thy father's house, till Shelah my son be grown up ; for he said, Lest he also die, like 12 his brethren. And Tamar went and dwelt in her father's house. And in process of time Shua's daughter, the wife of Judah, died ; and Judah was comforted, and went up unto 13 his sheepshearers to Timnah, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite. And it was told 14. Tamar, saying, Behold, thy father in law goeth up to Timnah to shear his sheep. And she put off from her the garments of her widowhood, and covered herself with her veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in the gate of Enaim, which is by the way to Timnah ; for 15 she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she was not given unto him to wife. When Judah 16 saw her, he thought her to be an harlot ; for she had covered her face. And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee ; for he knew not that she was his daughter in law. And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou 17 mayest come in unto me ? And he said, I will send thee a kid of the goats from the 18 flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it ? And he said, What pledge shall I give thee ? And she said, Thy signet and thy cord, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave them to her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him. 19. And she arose, and went away, and put off her veil from her, and put on the garments of 20 her widowhood. And Judah sent the kid of the goats by the hand of his friend the Adul- 21 lamite, to receive the pledge from the woman's hand ; but he found her not. Then he asked the men of her place, saying, Where is the harlot that was at Enaim by the way- 22 side ? And they said, There hath been no harlot here. And he returned to Judah, and said, I have not found her ; and also the men of the place said, There hath been no harlot 23 here. And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be put to shame : behold, I sent 24 this kid, and thou hast not found her. And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot ; and moreover, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and 25 let her be burnt. When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child ; and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are 26 these, the signet, and the cords, and the staff. And Judah acknow'edged them, and said, She is more righteous than I ; forasmuch as I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he 27 knew her again no more. And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold, 28 twins were in her womb. And it came to pass, when she travailed, that one put out a hand : and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came 29 out first. And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out ; and she said, Wherefore hast thou made a breach for thyself ? therefore his name should be heard of, not by Jacob only, but by all that read the sacred story to the end of time. We afterward learn (Gen. 49:4) that he lost the birthright in consequence of it. Judgment never fails in the end to wait upon transgression. By his conduct, however, in reference to his brother Joseph (Gen. 37:20, 22), he seems to have obtained, in behalf of his posterity at least, a mitigation of his punishment. Both. It is a mercy that the Scripture record of human life is painted to us in such dark colors as it is. The Bible saints were not the heroes of romance, for then they might have been painted spotless. They were the men of real life, and the details of that life sometimes guilty enough. But, then, life was an earnest thing with them. It was transgression, if you will; but then it was sore, buffeting struggle after that—much toiling and wandering in sharp suffering, that none knew but God: it was the penitence of men bent manfully on turning back to God. And so they fought their way back till they struggled out of the thick darkness into the clear light of day and peace. Let us lay this to heart. It is not the having been “far off” that makes peace impossible. It is not sin—no, not the darkest—that shuts out from restoration: “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God.” It is languid indecision, desperate sulemness, anything which keeps a man away from Christ, that prevents peace; but in all this world there is nothing else. F. W. R. 23-26. A complete list of the sons of Jacob, now that Benjamin the youngest was born. This is the first time we have the names of these heads of the twelve tribes together; afterward, we find them very often spoken of and enumerated, even to the end of the Bible (Rev. 7:4; 21:12). H. Ch. 26: Esau and the Edomites. As in ch. 25, the history gives the genealogies of Abraham’s descendants by other wives in order to dispose of them, and to treat the line of Isaac, so here it gives the genealogies of the descendants of Esau in order to have done with them and to advance in the line of Jacob. In both cases the races enumerated are those which in subsequent times had to do with Israel. Af.—It was, as necessary to register the generations of Esau as those of Jacob, in order to show that the Messiah did not spring from the former, but that he did spring from the later. The genealogical tables, so frequently met with in the sacred writings, are standing proofs of the truth of the prophecies that the Messiah should come from a particular family; which prophecies were clearly fulfilled in the birth of Christ. And they testify that the Messiah thus promised is found in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who incontestably sprang from the last, the only remaining branch of the family of David. These registers were religiously preserved among the Jews till the destruction of Jerusalem, after which they were all destroyed; insomuch that there is not a Jew in the universe who can trace himself to the family of David; consequently all expectation of a Messiah to come is, even on their own principles, nugatory and absurd; since nothing remains to legitimate his birth. When Christ came all these registers were in existence. When Matthew and Luke wrote all these registers were still in existence; and had they pretended what could not have been supported, an appeal to the registers would have convicted them of a falsehood. But no Jew attempted to do this, notwithstanding the excess of their malice against Christ and his followers; and because they did not do it, we may safely assert no Jew could do it. Thus the foundation standeth sure. A. C. S. Mount Seir is the mountain ridge extending along the east side of the valley of Arabah, from the Dead Sea to the Elanitic Gulf. The name signifies rough, or rugged. Af. Esau himself, in the lifetime of his father, migrated with his Canaanitish wives to this country, which afterward became the home of his descendants. This mountainous but fertile region had long been occupied by the Horites, whose territories they at first shared, but afterward, at a period antecedent to the Exodus, took possession of. In proof of their importance as a people even in these earliest times, a list of eight kings is given (vs. 31) who “reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king in Israel.” Of their hereditary enmity to the chosen People we find traces not only in their refusal to allow their “brother Israel” (Num. 20:14) to pass through their land during the wanderings in the wilderness, though the request was made under circumstances of the utmost urgency, but from the terms in which we find them denounced by the later prophets. The warlike character of Esau was perpetuated in the latest of his descendants. They were ultimately brought into close alliance with their ancient foes. But, according to Josephus, the children of Israel found reason to die and the children of Esau no less as allies than as open enemies. Even in his own day that historian describes them as “a turbulent and unruly race, rushing to battle as if they were going to a feast.” Lee. 15-19. The first dukes of Edom. The Al-lugh or duke is the head of the tribe among the Edomites, like the Nasi or prince among the Israelites. 20. Horte. The Horites—dwellers in caves (Troglodytes)—were the original inhabitants of Seir, and were driven out by the Edomites (Deut. 2:12); but they appear still to have remained among them in a part of the land. Esau had a Horite, Abolibamah, as his wife; his son Elphaz, a Horite, Timna, as a concubine, which would mark a declension on the part of the Horites. The families of this tribe are mentioned, because the descent of Abolibamah and Timna is given. The Horites derive their names from the caves, many of them hewn out of the rock, and from their underground dwellings. These are still to be seen in great numbers. Geri. 20-30. In the midst of this genealogy of the Edomites, here is inserted the genealogy of the Horites, those Canaanites, or Hittites, that were the natives of mount Seir. This comes in here, not only to give light to the story, but to be a standing reflection upon the Edomites for intermarrying with them, by which, it is probable, they learned their way, and corrupted themselves. Esau having sold his birthright, and lost his blessing and entered into alliance with the Hittites, his posterity and the sons of Seir are here reckoned together. Those that treacherously desert God's church, are justly numbered with those that were never in it; apostate Edomites stand on the same ground with accursed Horites. H. 31-39. The series of eight kings here enumerated are plainly elective, as not one succeeds his father. The king co-exists with the dukes, who are again enumerated at the close of the list, and are mentioned in the song of Moses (Ex. 15:15). These dukes are no doubt the electors of the common sovereign, who is designed to give unity and strength to the nation. It is natural to suppose that no sovereign was elected till after the death of Esau, and, therefore, if he lived as long as Jacob, after the children of Israel had been seventeen years in Egypt. 31. Before a king reigned over his children of Israel, simply means before there was a monarchy established in Israel. It does not imply that monarchy began in Israel immediately after these kings. M.—In the previous chapter (vs. 11), there had been an emphatic promise from God Almighty (El-Shaddai) to Jacob that "kings should come out of his loins." The Israelites, no doubt, cherished a constant hope of such a kingdom and such a kingly race. Moses himself (Deut. 28:36) prophesied concerning the king that the Israelites should set over them; and hence it was not unnatural that, when recording the eight kings, who had reigned in the family of Esau up to his own time, he should have noted that as yet no king had risen from the family of his brother Jacob, to whom a kingly progeny had been promised. E. H. B. 39. The last of the eight kings, of whom it is not said that he died, seems to have been the contemporary of Moses, who made application to him for leave to pass through his land. If this be so, it follows that the remainder of Genesis comes immediately from the hand of Moses; a result which is in accordance with other indications that have presented themselves in the previous part of this book. This interesting monument of antiquity, notwithstanding its brevity, we shall find to be arranged with admirable precision. M. 42. Mount Seir is called the land of their possession. While the Israelites dwelt in the house of bondage, and their Canaan was only the land of promise, the Edomites dwelt in their own habitations, and Seir was in their possession. The children of this world have their all in hand, and nothing in hope, while the children of God have their all in hope, and next to nothing in hand. But, all things considered, it is better to have Canaan in promise than mount Seir in possession. H.—A worldly Esau may have his mount Seir, may have his portion at once, without any discipline, any acquaintance with God or himself. But Israel, the beloved of God, must forego rest, must wait, and suffer, and fight, in the way to it. One exercise of faith and patience must succeed to another; and by these they must be trained into a meetness for the Canaan promised to them as their inheritance. And such is the Christian's calling. He must reckon on trial and conflict; he must learn to endure it, to go forward, and quit himself as a man, taking up his cross and carrying it patiently, yes, cheerfully, as what all his brethren are doing, as what God called him to when he called him to glory, and in assured faith that it shall soon be exchanged for glory. F. Goede. The notice here taken of Esau is a kind of final leave taken of him and of his posterity, for we hear no more of them but as enemies of the chosen people. He is presented to our view for a moment, as surrounded with a glare of earthly glory, but as there is nothing stable without the pale of the kingdom of God, the curtain speedily drops upon all his splendor and pomp, and it is seen no more. The spirit of inspiration pausing for a moment to show that no word of God, however slight, fails of its effect, immediately passes to its main drift, and directs our view to the more abiding and truly glorious concerns of the line of Jacob. Bush. Ch. 28: The Bible makes no apology, draws no curtain, makes no excuse; on it goes; taking life as it is, and describing it without flattery or fear. The Bible is true to the very root and reality of things. The book does not ignore facts, but faces them, names them, proposes remedies for them, and searches into the root and core of the whole of them. Evil be to him that evil thinks. These things belong to a greater whole; they must not be detached; the part that would be intolerable is essential to the whole that is beautiful. J. P. The removal to Egypt was needful in order to separate the sons of Jacob from the people of the land. How readily constant contact with the Canaanites would have involved even the best of them in horrible vices appears from the history of Judah, when, after the selling of Joseph, he had left his father's house, and, joining himself to the people of the country, both he and his rapidly became conformed to the abominations around. A. E. The history of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar. The object of this parenthetical chapter seems to be to show how near the offspring of Jacob were to falling into the habits and loathsome sins of the Canaanitish peoples; and to pave the way for the history of their removal into the land of Egypt, which took place by means of Joseph's being sold and carried thither. At the same time it defines and accounts for the two main branches in the kingly line of Judah. Af.—It supplies a very important link. In the Teledoth, or family history, of Jacob, the two chief persons were Joseph and Judah; Joseph from his high character, his personal importance, his influence in the future destinies of the race, and his typical foreshadowing of the Messiah; Judah, from his obtaining the virtual right of primogeniture, and from his being the ancestor of David and of the Son of David. E. H. B. We see in this story how one interest—that for their families, and the preservation of them—overpowered every other feeling, even the sense of shame in a woman. The sanctity of an ancient descent, as it had been brought out of Mesopotamia by Abraham's posterity, and the establishment of the duties of the brother-in law (the Levirate, from a Latin word, levir, a husband's brother), are forcibly put forth by this narrative. The law was, that when a widow was left childless, it was the brother's duty to marry the widow, and the firstborn son of this marriage was to be regarded as the child of the deceased brother. The purport of the laws of the Israelites on the subject (no doubt derived from the patriarchs), was to preserve as much as possible the heirs in a direct line. The father lived in the son—the whole family descended from him was in a certain sense himself. Govt. 21,22. The word rendered havid, in these two verses, and for which we have no other intelligible expression, means connected; namely, to the goddess of licentiousness, to whose temple and worship her gains were devoted. The name, and the custom on which it was founded, only partially reveal the fearful corruption of religion and morals wherever idolatry prevailed. T. J. C. 23. By the man whose these are.** It is obvious that Tamar might before this have exposed Judah, had she been so inclined. In this, however, it does not appear that she was influenced by vindictive feelings toward Judah, or that she had any wish to hold him up to public abhorrence, but simply to vindicate her own conduct: while God, in the mean time, was carrying on his purpose to bring the offender, by this means, to a penitent confession of his fault. Instead of boldly summoning him into her presence, and requiring of him to stand forth as her accuser before the judges, she does not even name him, nor seek an interview, but sends to him the pledged articles, leaving it to his own conscience to rebuke him before God. Bach. Not till she was in actual peril of a horrible death did she expose the author of her ignominy, and then only to himself. Though highly culpable, in the eye of the divine law, for the course she adopted, she seems to have intended merely to test her own rights, denied her by the timid policy of Judah. In regard to these rights, Judah himself acknowledged that her claim was just, and that he was the offender. Allowance must of course be made, in her case, for the loose sentiments and practices of the age. It has been justly said that her conduct, culpable as it was, was marked by shrewdness, tenderness, and magnanimity. 26. She is more in the right than I. That is, her cause is more just than mine; I am the offender. He admits that in withholding Shelah, her rightful husband (v. 11), he had been guilty of a wrong, and that her claim, which he had denied, was just. T. J. C. We account for the tenacity with which TAMAR clung to her claims on the family of Judah by her anxiety to have a child from the family of Judah. And the less, by her birth as a heathen, she was entitled to any connection with the chosen race, the more jealously did she insist on the rights which marriage had given her. The same views, but in an infinitely higher and nobler form, appear under similar circumstances in the case of Ruth. However we may feel the deep aberration of Tamar, we cannot ignore that in it a higher faith was concealed. K.—Under the arts of Tamar in regard to Judah there still lay concealed faith in the sanctity of the customs and ordinances of the chosen race of Israel. For this reason, too, Judah bore her testimony, “She is more righteous than I.” At the same time we see with what honesty and candor the Holy Scripture paints mankind; how God chooses his people not for any apparent external virtues, but according to his own free grace; how the whole of the scheme for the recovery of sinful man is a work of free favor; and, in fine, how there was enough of sin in Israel’s family to require a speedy and severe purification, which did not long tarry. C. G. B. The birth of Pharez forms the central point of this chapter, as, according to the law, he occupied the place of the firstborn of Judah. All that precedes only forms the basis for this account, and is so circumstantially narrated only because it at the same time affords a deep insight into the personal position and the history of Judah. Again the history of Judah and of his house is of such importance, because in his prophetic blessing Jacob assigns to Judah the sceptre of principality among the tribes of Israel; and the primogeniture of Pharez is brought out so prominently because Nahshon, the eminent prince and leader in Israel, during the journey through the wilderness, is a descendant of Pharez (Nu. 2:3). “But”—we continue with Baumgarten—“we may look beyond the natural horizon of Moses; for we do not merely say that Moses has written this account, but also that the Holy Ghost has written it. We therefore perceive in this narrative a glance into ages yet future. We call to mind that king David had sprung from Nahshon (Ruth 4:18-22), and that Jesus of Nazareth, who was made of God both Lord and Christ, was the son of David. We are therefore now tracing the lineage of Jesus Christ, and looking forward to Him who is both the commencement and the end of all things.” The narrative discloses the sins of Judah with the same openness and faithfulness as it details the moral aberrations of other patriarchs and kings, for the purpose of showing that the high position assigned to them in the kingdom of God, and to which they were called and trained, was not due to their own virtue and excellency, but to the sovereign mercy of Him that had called them. K. I find not many of Jacob’s sons more faulty than Judah; who yet is singled out from all the rest to be the royal progenitor of Christ, and to be honored with the dignity of the birth-right, that God’s election might not be of merit, but of grace; else howsoever he might have sped alone, Tamar had never been joined with him in this line. Bp. H.—It is wonderful that this incestuous transaction should form one step of that chain which led to the birth of our Saviour. It is spoken of by commentators as a thing that deepens his humiliation. In associating himself by relationship with such an atrocity as this, his redemption descends to the lowest depths of human guilt and depravity. It casts a light on the infinite mercy of God; and makes me to feel in this alliance of the transcendental with the terrestrial in its grossest form, that God’s ways are not as man’s ways. T. C. The four oldest sons of Jacob fell under very foul guilt. Reuben and Judah under the guilt of incest, Simeon and Levi under the guilt of murder; yet they were patriarchs; of Levi came the priests, of Judah the kings and Messiah; thus they became examples of repentance, and monuments of pardoning mercy. H. Sold him. The whole passage implies the existence in Egypt at this time of a traffic in slaves, who were foreigners, and valued at no very high rate. The monuments prove slaves to have been exceedingly numerous under the Ancient Empire. The king had a vast number; the estates of the nobles were cultivated by them; and a large body of hieroduli, or “sacred slaves,” was attached to most of the temples. Foreign slaves seem to have been preferred to native ones, and wars were sometimes undertaken less with the object of conquest or subjugation than with that of obtaining a profit by selling those who were taken prisoners in the slave market. G. R. 1. 1 And Joseph was brought down to Egypt; and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him of the hand of the Ishmaelites, which had brought him down thither. And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand. And Joseph found grace in his sight, and he ministered unto him; and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand. And it came to pass from the time that he made him overseer in his house, and over all that he had, that the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake; and the blessing of the Lord was upon all that he had, in the house and in the field. And he left all that he had in Joseph's hand; and he knew not aught that was with him, save the bread which he did eat. And Joseph was comely, and well favoured. And it came to pass after these things, that his master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph; and she said, Lie with me. But he refused, and said unto his master's wife, Behold, my master knoweth not what is with me in the house, and he hath put all that he hath into my hand; there is none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife; how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God? 10 And it came to pass, as she spake to Joseph day by day, that he hearkened not unto her, to lie by her, or to be with her. And it came to pass about this time, that he went into the house to do his work; and there was none of the men of the house there within. And she caught him by his garment, saying, Lie with me: and he left his garment in her hand, and fled, and got him out. And it came to pass, when she saw that he had left his garment in her hand, and was fled forth, that she called unto the men of her house, and spake unto them, saying, See, he hath brought in an Hebrew unto us to mock us; he came in unto me to lie with me, and I cried with a loud voice: and it came to pass, when he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried, that he left his garment by me, and fled, and got him out. And she laid up his garment by her, until his master came home. And she spake unto him according to these words, saying, The Hebrew servant, which thou hast brought unto us, came in unto me to mock me: and it came to pass, as I lifted up my voice and cried, that he left his garment by me, and fled out. And it came to pass, when his master heard the words of his wife, which she spake unto him, saying, After this manner did thy servant to me; that his wrath was kindled. And Joseph's master took him, and put him into the prison, the place where the king's prisoners were bound: and he was there in the prison. But the Lord was with Joseph, and shewed kindness unto him, and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph's hand all the prisoners that were in the prison; and whatsoever they did there, he was the doer of it. The keeper of the prison looked not to any thing that was under his hand, because the Lord was with him; and that which he did, the Lord made it to prosper. 1-6. From a slave, Joseph is made overseer to Potiphar. He was faithful, honest, upright, and conscientious, because in his earthly he served a heavenly Master, whose presence he always realized. Accordingly “Jehovah was with him,” and “Jehovah made all that he did to prosper in his hand." His master was not long in observing this. From an ordinary domestic slave he promoted him to be "overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand." The confidence was not misplaced. Jehovah's blessing henceforth rested upon Potiphar's substance, and he "left all that he had in Joseph's hand; and he knew not aught that he had, save the bread which he did eat." The sculptures and paintings of the ancient Egyptian tombs bring vividly before us the daily life and duties of Joseph. "The property of great men is shown to have been managed by scribes, who exercised a most methodical and minute supervision over all the operations of agriculture, gardening, the keeping of live stock, and fishing. Every product was carefully registered, to check the dishonesty of the laborers, who in Egypt have always been famous in this respect. Probably in no country was farming ever more systematic, Joseph's previous knowledge of tending flocks, and perhaps of husbandry, and his truthful character, exactly fitted him for the post of overseer. How long he filled it we are not told." (Pede.) A. E. He who acknowledges God in all his ways has the promise that God shall direct all his steps. Joseph's captivity shall promote God's glory; and to this end, God works in him, for him, and by him. Even the irreligious can see when the Most High distinguishes his followers: Joseph's master saw that Jehovah was with him. A. C.—He saw that Joseph was the object of supernatural care and favor; and this Moses ascribes to its true source. 5. And it came to pass from the time. The blessing of heaven previous to Joseph's advancement to the stewardship had rested more especially upon himself and his doings. He had been made to prosper in a signal manner, and Potiphar was constrained to acknowledge it. But now from this time the blessing of the Lord was upon Potiphar, upon all that he had, whether in the house or the field, but still for Joseph's sake. As Potiphar had shown himself disposed to favor the Lord's servant, the Lord will repay his kindness by blessing him. Bush. Joseph came into Egypt soon after he was 17 (ch. 37:2); he was thirteen years in Potiphar's service and in prison—of these, more than two in prison. B.—7-15. Quite in contrast with the usual oriental custom, women were exempt from seclusion, and moved in society with apparently entire freedom. This appears in the family of Potiphar. The ancient sculptures and paintings found in their tombs give a very full view of the domestic life of the ancient Egyptians, no point of which is more striking than the high social position of woman and the entire absence of the harem system of seclusion. "The wife is called the lady of the house." According to the monuments the women in Egypt lived under far less restraint than in the East, or even in Greece. Wilkinson's Egypt is full of testimony to this point. (Hengstenberg's Moses, p. 24) H. C. 7-10. Joseph resists the daily solicitations of his master's wife. None greater in this house than I. He pleads the unreserved trust his master had reposed in him. He is bound by the law of honor, the law of chastity (this great evil), and the law of piety (sin against God). Joseph uses the common name of God in addressing this Egyptian. He could employ no higher pleas than the above. M. Joseph's bearing in this case was worthy to be put on permanent record to pass down through all future generations to the end of time, a perfect model of both virtue and wisdom—the virtue that resists seductive temptation with unwavering firmness; and the wisdom that comprehends and applies the perfect methods of resisting temptation. Joseph did not daily with his tempter; did not suffer the temptation to gather new force, but met it instantly with the strongest considerations possible—"How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" The sense of a present God settled the question forever. There was indeed another line of consideration. Potiphar had trusted him most entirely; shall he abuse this trust? Never. Thus Joseph's course was at once decided. H. C. All the spite of his brethren was not so great a cross to him as the inordinate affection of his mistress. Temptations on the right hand are now more perilous and hard to resist, by how much they are more plausible and glorious; but the heart that is bent upon God knows how to walk steadily and indifferently betwixt the pleasures of sin and fears of evil. He saw this pleasure would advance him; yet resolves to contemn: a good heart will rather lie in the dust, than rise by wickedness. "How shall I do this, and sin against God?" He knew that all the honors of Egypt could not buy off the guilt of one sin, and therefore abhors her company: he that will be safe from the acts of evil must wisely avoid the occasions. As sin ends ever in shame when it is committed, so it makes us past shame that we may commit it. Bp. H.—By the grace of God he was enabled to resist the fierce assault, and to baffle a plot against his innocence more formidable than the cruel machinations of his brethren against his life. He achieved a victory over himself, such as has seldom been witnessed in this fallen world. Bush.—Nothing can be nobler than a true and thorough manhood, where, amid the seductions of sense, the soul still retains the mastery of itself by retaining its loyalty to God. Hamilton. 9. Sin against God. The direct sin would have been against his master; but Joseph clearly recognized that the true guilt of all sin consists in its breach of the law, and disobedience to the will of God. E. H. B.—So did David, after his great sin, in his penitential utterance: "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned." B. The sin he was tempted to, considering his youth, his beauty, his single state, and his plentiful living at the table of a ruler, was a sin which, one would think, might most easily beset him and betray him. The tempter was his mistress, whom it was his place to obey and his interest to oblige, whose favor would contribute more than anything to his preferment, and by whose means he might arrive at the highest honors of the court. On the other hand, it was at his utmost peril if he slighted her and made her his enemy. Opportunity favored the temptation. The tempter was in the house with him; his business led him to be, without any suspicion, where she was: none of the family were within, there appeared no danger of its being ever discovered, or, if it should be suspected, his mistress would protect him. To all this was added importunity, frequent constant importunity, to such a degree that at last she laid violent hands on him. His resistance of the temptation was very brave, and the victory truly honorable. The almighty grace of God enabled him to overcome this assault of the enemy. How can I do this? not only, How shall I? or How dare I? but How can I? "Not only sin against my master, my mistress, myself, my own body and soul; but against God?" The worst thing in sin is that it is against God, against his nature and his dominion, against his love and his design. They that love God, for this reason hate sin. H. What is his answer to the temptation? God! There is no other true answer. When the tempter comes we must take wing, and get away to God! There are temptations in life—temptations at every turning of the street—temptations in all the evolutions of daily circumstances—temptations that come suddenly, unexpectedly, flatteringly. There is no true, all-conquering, all-triumphant answer to the temptation of the devil but this,—God! He will deliver, if so be we put our trust in him. J. P. The words to his master's wife, "Can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" tell us that the child of the covenant believes the covenant. Away from the tents in which he has been brought up,—without any outward tokens to remind him of any lessons he has received there, in an hour of tremendous temptation,—he confesses a righteous Ruler, whom he is to obey; he trusts in him, and does obey him; he goes to prison for it. . . . We are in danger, when any great trial of our moral strength comes, of sinking ignominiously, if we have nothing better to rely upon than calculations of consequences, or religious terrors, or a sense of honor; all which the gusts of passion may scatter to the winds. Be sure that nothing will avail but trust in a present Helper and Deliverer; of One who cares more for us than we care for ourselves; who will not suffer any who trust in Him and not in themselves, to fall from Him. Maurice. 12. This second time is Joseph stripped of his garment; before in the violence of envy, now of lust; before of necessity, now of choice; before to deceive his father, now his master; for, behold, the pledge of his fidelity, which he left in those wicked hands, is made an evidence against him of that which he refused to do. Therefore did he leave his cloak, because he would not do that of which he is accused and condemned because he left it. What safety is there against great adversaries, when even arguments of innocence are used to convince of evil? Lust is a desperate madness when it is opposed; no hatred burns so furiously as that which arises from the quenched coals of love. By Hall. Joseph fled, and got him out. To know when to fight and when to fly, are of great importance in the Christian life. Some temptations must be manfully met, resisted, and thus overcome: from others we must fly. He who stands to contend or reason is infallibly ruined. A C.—There is but one thing which you have to fear in earth or heaven,—being untrue to your better selves, and therefore untrue to God. If you will not do the thing you know to be right, and say the thing you know to be true, then indeed you are weak. You are a coward, and sin against God, and suffer the penalty of your cowardice. You desert God, and therefore you cannot expect him to stand by you. C. Kingsley.—Not for what we can make by it, or for what it is worth, but for what it is, and for its relationship to God, let us do the right, and we may rest assured, however it may be now, that in the end we shall be on the winning side, for character is success—not position, not prosperity, not reputation—but character, and it is made and hardened and tempered in the fire of trial. Leave the reputation and the success, then, to look after themselves, and be not disconcerted if they should both be for a time under a cloud; but look well to the CHARACTER, for that is the main thing, and the life that secures that for Christ is always worth living. W. M. T. 14-18. Incriminate desire is turned to revenge. She charges upon him the crime of which she herself was alone guilty, and she shows the evidence of his purity as the proof of his guilt. To appearances, the innocent one is the guilty; the guilty one is the innocent. Accordingly Joseph is cast into prison. Potiphar's palace has crumbled to decay, and Potiphar's wife has long since entered a world where falsehood will not shield the guilty; but slander still lives, and has its temporary triumphs. It seems to have a marvellous adaptation to all countries, to all ages, and to all states of society. Born of malice, fed on ruined reputations, clad in the stolen robes of virtue and polished into the likeness of a holy detestation of wrongdoing—slander, notwithstanding her innate loathlessness, has attained a prominence which true goodness deplores exceedingly. As in Joseph's case, the virtue which vice cannot conquer it is almost certain to malign. J. S. V. 20. The incident is related because it formed a necessary link in the chain of circumstances that brought him before Pharaoh. And however strong his temptation may have been, more men would be found who could thus have spoken to Potiphar's wife, than who could have kept silence when accused by Potiphar. For his purity you will find his equal, one among a thousand; for his mercy scarcely one. The word is on his tongue that can put a very different face on the matter, but rather than utter that word, Joseph will suffer the stroke that otherwise must fall on his master's honor. He is content to lie under the cruel suspicion that he had in the foulest way wronged the man whom most he should have regarded, and whom in point of fact he did enthusiastically serve. There was one man in Egypt whose good will he prized, and this man now scorned and condemned him, and this for the very act by which Joseph had proved most faithful and deserving. Dods. 21-23. The contrast could scarcely be greater than between his former prophetic dreams and his present condition. But even so Joseph remained steadfast. And, as if to set before us the other contrast between sight and faith, the sacred text expressly states it: "But"—a word on which our faith should often lay emphasis—"Jehovah was with Joseph, and showed him mercy, and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison." By and by, as his integrity more and more appeared, the charge of the prisoners was committed unto him; and as "what he did Jehovah made to prosper," the whole management of the prison ultimately passed into Joseph's hands. Thus, here also Jehovah proved Himself a faithful covenant. God. A silver streak was lining the dark cloud. But still must "patience have her perfect work." A. E. In the account of Joseph's imprisonment is given to us an explanation of one of the mysteries of this our human life. It is a mystery that often sinfulness and selfishness reap the prizes here, while goodness and integrity have to endure the ills of this life. It is as if we thought that the Everlasting rewarded the goodness of his servants as a foolish mother giving her child that which is pleasant to the taste. We do well, and suffer for it; and then we complain that we have not our reward in material prosperity. Shortly after his imprisonment, Joseph was released, his merit acknowledged, and almost regal dignity conferred upon him. Whereupon we say, "Now all is right, merit has its reward;" and with this poetical justice we are satisfied. But this is not the justice of God's world. Are these, then, the rewards of well-doing,—horses and carriages, the royal robe, and the knee bowed before him? Is it with these things, quite earthly, that the Everlasting rewards celestial qualities? Neither in this world nor in the world to come are these the rewards of goodness. What was Joseph's reward? Not the rank conferred upon him; but this—to be pure, to be haunted by no principle of remorse; to see God, to have the vision of the King in his beauty, to know and to feel that he is near. Think you that from this the dungeon could take much, and that to this his earthly honors could add anything? The reward of well-doing is God. Robertson. The case of Joseph proves that all the suffering in this world cannot be retrobatified for sin. There may be great suffering which cannot in any true sense be the punishment of crime. Further, this case illustrates some of the ends which God aims to secure by permitting the sufferings of the good; e.g. to discipline them to patience under suffering, and to trust in God in the midst of darkness and in spite of it. Joseph's slavery and prison life in Egypt would have been simply miserable without this patience and this trust in the Lord his God. Everything in the future as before his eye was dark enough; but he knew there was a God of loving kindness above—a God who made no mistakes, yet whose purposes were often too deep for afflicted man to fathom; and therefore a God whom his children should learn to trust as certainly doing all things well. Again; the case serves to reveal God's pity and his love in that he goes with his children into their slave-life and into their prison-life with such smiles of favor, such tokens of his presence, as may well make them joyful in the most terrible affliction. As Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises within the cold, desolate walls of a prison while yet smarting under the Roman scourge, and with perhaps some prospect of sufferings more severe when another day should dawn; so Joseph found the Lord with him when he reached Egypt a slave; with him when cast into prison because he virtuously repelled a temptation to crime. God was there, proving to his servant Joseph that no surroundings are so dark that God's manifested presence will not make them light—that no sufferings and no bereavements are so severe that God cannot throw his smile upon the sufferer and fill his soul with overflowing joy! Yet again; this lesson teaches that God uses means apparently rough and stern to prepare his servants for higher responsibilities and more signal blessings. We cannot say what Joseph would have been if he had remained in the bosom of his father's home through all those years from seventeen to thirty, instead of being in God's school of suffering and trial; but it is safe to say that he made rapid strides forward in this school of God—in his knowledge of human nature; in his quick and manifest sympathy with every one in trouble; in his skill to gain the confidence of those about and above him; in his capacity for business; and not least in his living piety and his humble walk with God. His surroundings threw him roughly upon his own resources, and at the same time sweetly upon God's resources; in consequence he rose, as few men have even been fit to rise, from slave-life and prison-life, to be the actuary of a great kingdom—the almour of bread and of life to the nations of the then civilized world; and also to become one of the most exalted and spotless characters of all history. Are not the ways of God truly wonderful? H. C. 1. And it came to pass after these things, that the butler of the king of Egypt and his baker 2 offended their lord the king of Egypt. And Pharaoh was wroth against his two officers, 3 against the chief of the butlers, and against the chief of the bakers. And he put them in ward in the house of the captain of the guard, into the prison, the place where Joseph was bound. 4. And the captain of the guard charged Joseph with them, and he ministered unto them : and 5 they continued a season in ward. And they dreamed a dream both of them, each man his dream, in one night, each man according to the interpretation of his dream, the butler and the 6 baker of the king of Egypt, which were bound in the prison. And Joseph came in unto them 7 in the morning and saw them, and, behold, they were sad. And he asked Pharaoh's officers that were with him in ward in his master's house, saying, Wherefore look ye so sadly to-day? 8 And they said unto him, We have dreamed a dream, and there is none that can interpret it. And Joseph said unto them, Do not interpretations belong to God? tell it me, I pray you. 9 And the chief butler told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, In my dream, behold, a vine 10 was before me ; and in the vine were three branches : and it was as though it bedded, and its 11 blossoms shot forth ; and the clusters thereof brought forth ripe grapes : and Pharaoh's cup was in my hand ; and I took the grapes, and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and I gave the 12 cup into Pharaoh's hand. And Joseph said unto him, This is the interpretation of it : the 13 three branches are three days ; within yet three days shall Pharaoh lift up thine head, and restore thee unto thine office ; and thou shalt give Pharaoh's cup into his hand, after the 14 former manner when thou wast his butler. But have me in thy remembrance when it shall be well with thee, and shew kindness, I pray thee, unto me, and make mention of me unto Pha- 15 rooh, and bring me out of this house : for indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews : and here also have I done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon. 16 When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was good, he said unto Joseph, I also was in 17 my dream, and, behold, three baskets of white bread were on my head : and in the uppermost basket there was of all manner of bakemeats for Pharaoh ; and the birds did eat them out of 18 the basket upon my head. And Joseph answered and said, This is the interpretation thereof : 19 the three baskets are three days ; within yet three days shall Pharaoh lift up thy head from off 20 thee, and shall hang thee on a tree ; and the birds shall eat thy flesh from off thee. And it came to pass the third day, which was Pharaoh's birthday, that he made a feast unto all his servants : and he lifted up the head of the chief butler and the head of the chief baker among 21 his servants. And he restored the chief butler unto his butlership again ; and he gave the 22 cup into Pharaoh's hand : but he hanged the chief baker : as Joseph had interpreted to them. 23 Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgot him. View this interesting life as you may, study it at any point, and the truth uttered by David must appear to your mind : "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he de- lighteth in his way." In no life could the hand of God be more visible, for it leads him through some of the most trying experiences that ever befell a mortal ; and yet every experience, how- ever bitter, seems only a rugged path to greater heights and grander associations. Nor was all this mere chance. Look at his life closely and you will see, from beginning to end, that it was one of conformity to the ways of God—that the rule of right was that by which it was governed. S. T. Graham. There was nothing beyond the ordinary pro- cesses of nature, as far as human observation can extend, in the circumstances which led to the imprisonment of Joseph, and to that of Pharaoh's butler and baker. And there is as little of the sensibly marvellous in the restora- tive process which took the butler and baker out of prison, as in the former process which carried them there—though it was a determin- ing Providence which fixed every footstep of both. There was nothing beyond the ordinary play of interests and passions in a court that any common observer could have discerned— in the birthday feast, or in the restoration of the butler, or in the execution of the baker, or badly, in the forgetful ingratitude of the butler. T. C.—At many critical points Joseph's life touches the lives of others, and is thereby car- ried so much the further forward toward the attainment by him of the place which God was preparing for him. Yet Joseph, if he had chosen to act otherwise than he did, might have thrown away all the opportunities which these places of junction in his life afforded him. But he fell in with God's plan. He could see the chance—speaking after the manner of men —when it came, and could use it to the highest advantage. And by all this he was steadily preparing himself for the place which God in his plan was preparing for him. Then Provi- dence is not fatalism, and if you would avail yourself of the opportunities which God fur- nishes at the critical turnings of your history, watch your character, and seek so to meet everything as from him, and so to serve him in everything, that when the important time ar- rives you can recognize its value, and improve it for his glory in your own advancement. The men that fail in life do not fail for want of such opportunities as Joseph had, but for want of the character to see these opportunities, and the ability to see them. Keep near to God, form your character according to his principles, and then you will find a way to serve him, and will feel that somehow you are on the road to your success, and in training for your sphere. W. M. T. If the special intentions of Providence toward individuals were effected by the aid of super- natural interpositions, the power and presence of the Supreme Disposer might indeed be more strikingly displayed ; but his skill much less. And herein especially is manifested the perfec- tion of the Divine wisdom, that the most sur- prising conjunctions of events are brought about by the simplest means, and in a manner that is perfectly in harmony with the ordinary course of human affairs. This is in fact the great miracle of providence—that no miracles are needed to accomplish its purposes. Countless series of events are travelling on from remote quarters toward the same point ; and each series moves in the beaten track of ordinary occurrences ; but their intersection, at the very moment in which they meet, shall serve, perhaps, to give a new direction to the affairs of an empire. The materials of the machinery of providence are all of ordinary quality; but their combination displays nothing less than infinite skill. I. T. 1-4. We should not have had this story of Pharaoh's butler and baker recorded in Scripture, if it had not been serviceable to Joseph's preferment. The world stands for the sake of the church, and is governed for its good. H. 4. These high officers of state (for such they were, in accordance with Oriental usage; compare the case of Nehemiah, Neh. 2: 1-9) were treated with the consideration due to their rank, while the issue of their arrest was pending. The captain of the life-guard himself assigned Joseph as their personal attendant. T. J. C.—Joseph had now ample opportunity for acquiring information which afterward stood him in good stead for apprehending the character of Pharaoh, and for making himself acquainted with many details of his government, and with the general condition of the people. Officials in disgrace would be found much more accessible and much more communicative of important information than officials in court favor could have been to one in Joseph's position. Dols. 5. It is easy to ascertain the point of connection for the dreams of these two captives. They knew that Pharaoh's birthday was to be in three days, and from the analogy of former experiences, they would anticipate that their fate would then probably be decided. Falling asleep with such thoughts, wishes, hopes, and fears, their dreams were only a continuation of their waking thinking, when the power of anticipation, awakened while the external senses were asleep, descended into their thoughts. Conscience may also have had a part in giving its peculiar cast to each of the dreams. K. 8. Tell it me, I pray you.** Joseph was conscious of an extraordinary prophetic impulse upon his spirit, enabling him to act the part of an interpreter. Yet he required that the dreams should first be made known to him. God could easily have saved him the trouble of learning from the men what they had dreamed. The same Spirit that taught him to interpret could have made known to him the dreams, as we know was the case with Daniel in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. But in this instance the dreams had not been forgotten by the dreamers, and God does not impart that knowledge supernaturally which can be acquired by the ordinary methods. It was sufficient for Joseph to be enabled to show the meaning of the dreams when informed what they were. Bush. Joseph in becoming the interpreter of the dreams of other men became the fulfiller of his own. Had he made light of the dreams of his fellow prisoners because he had already made light of his own, he would, for aught we can see, have died in the dungeon. And, indeed, what hope is left for a man, and what deliverance is possible, when he makes light of his own most sacred experience, and doubts whether after all there was any Divine voice in that part of his life which once he felt to be full of significance? We cannot but leave behind us many "childish things," beliefs that we now recognize as mere superstitions, hopes and fears which do not move the maturer mind. But when a supposed advance in the knowledge of things spiritual robs us of all that sustains true spiritual life in us, and begets contempt of our own past experience; when it ministers not at all to the growth in us of what is tender and pure and loving and progressive, we cannot but question whether it is not a delusion rather than a truth that has taken possession of us. Dols. 9-17. When they heard his words of sympathy, the dreamers told him their visions. The dream of each rooted itself in and grew out of his former occupation, and they are illustrated in almost every particular by the representations found in these later years on the Egyptian monuments. 14,15. The dream of the cup-bearer was interpreted by Joseph to mean that within three days he would be restored to his office; and, showing the implicitness of his faith in the truth of the revelation, he accompanied his explanation with this pathetic statement and wistful request—"But think on me when it shall be well with thee, and show kindness, I pray thee, unto me, and make mention of me unto Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house; for indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews, and here also have I done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon." Ah! yes, captivity is still captivity, though the slave be set over other slaves; a prison is still a prison, though the prisoner be intrusted in it with the charge of others; and this plaintive appeal lets us see deep down in Joseph's heart to the very quick of his distress. W. M. T.—He does not reflect upon his brethren that sold him, he only says, I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews, that is, unjustly sent away thence, no matter where the fault was. Nor does he reflect on the wrong done him in this imprisonment by his mistress that was his prosecutrix, and his master that was his judge; but mildly avers his own innocence: Here have I done nothing, that they should put me into the dungeon. H. In Psalm 105, ver. 17-19, we read: "He sent a man before them: Joseph was sold for a slave. They tormented his feet with fetters; his soul came into iron, until the time when his word came; the word of the Lord cleared him." The road to the throne lay through the prison; and but for the hateful fetters which tormented Joseph, he would never have worn the signet from Pharaoh's hand, nor the golden chain which Pharaoh flung round his neck. From ruling the state prison, he was called to rule the state. "The word of the Lord cleared him," and all the bright dreams of his youth were outdone. He learned by happy experience, that the great Ruler of men is no austere capricious tyrant, but a most just and gracious Lord. With his good he overcame the evil that was in his brethren, turning their hatred to love and self-reproach. The night in which he sat ushered in a long and brilliant day. If his fetters tormented him, it was only that he might grow perfect through suffering: if the iron entered into his soul, it was only that it might make him strong. It would seem, indeed, to be a law of the Divine government, that in proportion as men are great in capacities for service, they should have their capacities developed by bitter and long-sattained afflictions. "The poets learn in suffering what they teach in song." It is almost impossible to recall a teacher or saint of ancient times whose earlier years were not familiar with sorrow and defeat, who was not hampered and obstructed on every side from the very moment in which he set himself to teach a new truth, or to enforce a purer morality. Patriarchs, prophets, podanists, apostles were all tormented with these fetters, and felt the iron of them in their very souls. It is a good thing to have iron in the soul, although to get it there involves so great a pain. Iron in the soul is as requisite as iron in the blood, as indispensable to spiritual strength as to physical health, if by "iron" we understand, as we may, the manly hardness which can endure the blows of adverse circumstance, the shocks of change. We can be patient and hopeful when once we are assured that all our defeats and disappointments, our failures and reverses and broken illusions, are parts of the discipline by which God is training us for the work we long to do, and are qualifying us to enjoy the freedom we crave. If only our character is being moulded and hardened, and its capacities brought out by suffering, then it is not unjust of God to inflict suffering upon us. It is not unjust, although we have not deserved the suffering, nor can ever deserve it: it is most tender and gracious, since He who is afflicted in all our afflictions will be very sure not to lay upon us more than we are able to bear, and is thus preparing us to be and do all that we most desire to do and be. If we can become perfect only through suffering, shall we not thank Him for the suffering which perfects us? If only as we learn to rule in the prison of deferred opportunities and defeated hopes, we can become fit to rule over the "many cities" of the heavenly kingdom, shall we shrink from the prison which leads to the throne? If the iron must enter our souls that we may be strong amid the flatteries and the adversities of fortune, shall even the fetters which torment us be unwelcome to us? If the world wants iron dukes and iron men, God wants iron saints, and therefore he suffers the iron to enter into their souls. Col. Egyptian history is divided into three grand epochs. The old empire, from Menes till the invasion of the Shepherd kings; the middle empire, continuing while the Hyksos held possession of Lower Egypt; and the new empire, dating from the expulsion of the Shepherds, when all Egypt was reunited under the resplendent eighteenth dynasty of Thebes. Egypt, so long enveloped in a mystery as deep as that which surrounds the sphinx, has at length a history; and her stone-engraved monuments are the living chroniclers of her mighty Past. In Thebes are the yet fresh and legible monuments of a city that had stood for sixteen centuries, when Rome was founded; that for thirteen hundred years before David ascended the throne of Israel in Jerusalem, had furnished the major part of the sovereigns of one of the greatest empires of the world; that was at least eight centuries old when Cecrops founded Athens; that had existed full four hundred years when Abraham pitched his tent upon the mountain of Bethel. If not the oldest ruin in the world—for it disputes with Nineveh the palm of antiquity—it is the grandest and the best preserved memorial of ancient times. But Thebes is not merely a mighty run of the past. It is also a history, and from the hieroglyphics of its temples and the sculptured chambers of its royal sepulchres, it proclaims the great events of that dim antiquity concerning which we have no written record, but the fragmentary memorials of the book of Genesis. This rude history, carved in granite to commemorate the exploits of kings, and to transmit their names and deeds with the imperishable sarcophagi of their embalmed dust, now interpreted by the skill of learned men, brings incidental confirmation to the history of the Old Testament, and nowhere contradicts that history. Each temple, each palace, each obelisk, each tomb in Egypt, is not only a monument, but a history of an individual and his times, or of the nation at large. Deep in the face of the imperishable granite or of the firm sandstone that enters into the structure of nearly every building and monument, are graven the names or titles of kings, their own full-length portraits, and the leading events of their reigns, in battle scenes, coronation ceremonies, religious and civil processions,—a pictorial history of each monarch, with the manners and customs of the people. These sculptures, unimpaired by moisture or by the growth of lichens, in a climate of almost perpetual drought, and in some instances protected by the fine sand that has drifted in upon them from the desert, retain much of their original freshness, and are far more clean, legible, and sharply defined, than sculptures of a few hundred years ago upon the ruined abbeys, monasteries, and cathedrals of England and Scotland. The sculptures and pictures upon the walls of tombs hewn from limestone rock, and protected from dampness by the absence of rain and of vegetable growth, likewise retain in form and in coloring a distinctness that makes them the speaking witnesses of buried generations. From these records of stone must we learn the history of Egypt, unwritten in books. J. P. T. The key to the ancient Egyptian language is the celebrated Rosetta stone, a slab of black marble, found by the French in 1799 near the mouth of the Rosetta branch of the Nile, and now in the British Museum. It contains a decree, written in sacred, enchorial, and Greek characters, respecting the coronation of PROLEMY V. EPIPHANES. Dic. B. About two hundred years after the time of Abraham, the history of Joseph brings Egypt under review, with a pictorial vividness which has its parallel in no other record for at least more than a thousand years. When we combine the scattered references in the later chapters of Genesis, they represent a remarkably compact organization. The light falls on no strictly primitive people, nor barbarous customs, but on a very highly civilized community, skilled in agriculture, social in habit, and accomplished in various branches of art. The monarchy which we noted in Abraham's time continues, and the king still bears the title of Pharaoh. He is absolute, or nearly so, committing men to prison, and releasing them; or, if he please, ordering their executions, appointing officers over the whole land, and taxing it apparently at his pleasure; raising a foreigner suddenly to the second position in the kingdom, and requiring all, without exception, to render him obedience. "At the same time, the king has counsellors, or ministers, elders of his house, and others whose advice he asks, and without whose sanction he does not seem to act in important matters." He had a bodyguard under "a captain" a "chief confectioner," a "chief cap-bearer." He rides in a chariot, and all pay him homage. There are distinct classes of soldiers, priests, physicians, secret scribes, magicians, and herdsmen. As betokening the stage of civilization which had been reached, there is mention made of fine linen, golden chains, silver drinking-cups, wagons, chariots, embalming, and coffins. In addition to these glimpses, we have it stated that they carried burdens on the head; that they sat at meat, and did not recline, as was the common custom in the East; and that "every shepherd was an abomination unto the Egyptians." All these peculiarities are fully represented in the monuments but especially is the last made prominent. Sir J. G. Wilkinson tells us that the artists delighted on all occasions in representing the shepherds as "dirty and unshaven;" and that, on the tombs near the Pyramids of Geezeh, they are "caricatured as a deformed and unseemly race." W. Fraser.—It may be broadly stated that, in this entire description, there is not a single fraction which is not in harmony with what we know of the Egypt of this remote period from other sources. Nay, more, almost every point in it is confirmed, either by the classical writers, by the monuments, or by both. G. R. All agree in considering that one great landmark in Egyptian history is the invasion and dominion of the Hykos or Shepherd kings, and that another is the overthrow and expulsion of these usurpers. The most eminent authorities designate the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth dynasties as those of the Shepherds. With the eighteenth a new epoch was inaugurated; and as the Pharaoh of the time of the Exodus is now by most identified with Menephtah, son of Runeses II., of the nineteenth dynasty, the Pharaoh of Joseph is supposed to be one of the kings of the seventeenth dynasty, whose date is in the later part of the Shepherd dominion. Joseph would thus be raised to his position as governor of Egypt by a king who, though himself a foreigner, and able to appreciate foreign merit, was one of those who had, as the result of the long sojourn of his people in the land, adopted Egyptian titles and usages, and the king, "who knew not Joseph," may have belonged to the new dynasty by whom the Shepherds were expelled. W. M. T. The Pharaoh of Joseph was a despotic monarch, ruling all Egypt, who followed Egyptian customs, but did not hesitate to set them aside when he thought fit; who seems to have desired to gain complete power over the Egyptians; and who favored strangers. These particulars support the idea that he was an Egyptianized foreigner rather than an Egyptian. If we turn to the old view that Joseph's Pharaoh was one of the Shepherd kings, we are struck with the fitness of all the circumstances of the Biblical narrative. It is stated by Eusebius that the Pharaoh to whom Jacob came was the Shepherd Apophis. Apophis belonged to the fifteenth dynasty, which was certainly of Shepherds, and the most powerful foreign line. This dynasty, according to Mr. Poole's view of Egyptian chronology, ruled for either 284 years (Africanus), or 259 years 10 months (Josephus), from about n.c. 2080. According to Hales's chronology, which Mr. Poole would slightly modify, Joseph's government fell under this dynasty, commencing about n.c. 1876, during the reign of the last but one or perhaps the last king of the dynasty, possibly in the time of Apophis, who ended the line according to Africanus. This dynasty is said to have been of Phoenicians. This king Mr. Poole regards as having reigned from Joseph's appointment (or, perhaps, somewhat earlier) until Jacob's death, at least twenty six years, from n.c. about 1876 to 1850, and as having been the fifth or sixth king of the fifteenth dynasty. Dic. B. Apepi (Apophis) was the last monarch of the Hykos line (or Shepherds) probably Hittites. The best modern authorities think it in the highest degree probable that it was Apepi who made the gifted Hebrew (Joseph) his prime minister, and who invited Jacob and his sons to settle in Egypt. . . . The Hykos monarchs fixed their residence in the Delta itself; they selected Tanis—an ancient Egyptian town of considerable importance—for the main seat of their court. While maintaining a great fortified camp at Avaris, on their eastern frontier, where they lived sometimes, they still more favored the quiet Egyptian city on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, where they could pass their time away from the sound of arms, amid ancient temples and sanctuaries dedicated to various Egyptian gods, which they allowed to stand, if they did not even use them for their own worship. The Delta had never previously been the residence of Egyptian kings, and it did not again become their residence until the time of the nineteenth dynasty, shortly before the Exodus. Another peculiarity of the Hykos period, belonging especially to its later portion, is to be found in the religious views professed, proclaimed, and enjoined upon subject princes. Apepi, according to the ms. known as "the First Sallier papyrus," made a great movement in Lower Egypt in favor of monotheism. Whereas previously the shepherd kings had allowed among their subjects, if they had not even practised themselves, the worship of a multitude of gods, Apepi "took to himself" a single god "for lord, refusing to serve any other god in the whole land." According to the Egyptian writer of the ms. the name under which he worshipped his god was "Sutech," who among the Hittites seems to have been equivalent to Baal, and was certainly a sun-god, probably identified with the material sun itself, but viewed as having also a spiritual nature, and as the creator and sustainer of the universe. Apepi's great temple of Sutech at Tanis was the natural outcome of his exclusive worship of this god, and showed forth in a tangible and conspicuous form the earnestness of his piety. G. R. It is now certain that the narrative of the history of Joseph and the sojourn and exodus of the Israelites—that is to say, the portion from Genesis 39 to Exodus 15—so far as it relates to Egypt, is substantially not much later than M.C. 1300; in other words, was written while the memory of the events was fresh. The minute accuracy of the text is inconsistent with any later date. It is not merely that it shows knowledge of Egypt, but knowledge of Egypt under the Ramessides and yet earlier. The condition of the country, the chief cities of the frontier, the composition of the army, are true of the age of the Ramessides, and not true of the age of the Pharaohs, contemporary with Solomon and his successors. If the Hebrew documents are of the close of the period of the kings of Judah, how is it that they are true of the earlier condition, not of that which was contemporary with those kings? Why is the Egypt of the law markedly different from the Egypt of the prophets, each condition being described consistently with its Egyptian records, themselves contemporary with the events? Why is Egypt described in the Law as one kingdom, and no hint given of the break-up of the Empire into the small principalities mentioned by Isaiah (19:2)? Why do the proper names belong to the Ramesside and earlier age, without a single instance of those Semitic names which came into fashion with the Bubastic line in Solomon's time? Why do Zoan-Rameses and Zoar take the places of Migdol and Tahpanhes? Why are the foreign mercenaries, such as the Lubrin, spoken of in the constitution of Egyptian armies in the time of the kingdom of Judah, wholly unmentioned? The relations of Egypt with foreign countries are not less characteristic. The kingdom of Ethiopia, which overshadowed Egypt from before Hezekiah's time and throughout his reign, is unmentioned in the earlier documents. The earlier Asyrian Empire, which rose for a time on the fall of the Egyptian, nowhere appears. These agreements have not failed to strike foreign Egyptologists who have no theological bias. These independent scholars, without actually formulating any view of the date of the greater part of the Pentateuch, appear uniformly to treat its text as an authority to be cited side by side with the Egyptian monuments. So Lepsius, in his researches on the date of the Exodus, and Brugsch, in his discussion of the route, and Chabas, in his paper on Rameses and Pithan. Of course it would be unfair to implicate any one of these scholars in the inferences expressed above; but, at the same time, it is impossible that they can, for instance, hold Kuenen's theories of the date of the Pentateuch, so far as the part relating to Egypt is concerned. They have taken the two sets of documents—Hebrew and Egyptian—side by side, and in the working of elaborate problems found everything consistent with accuracy on both sides; and of course accuracy would not be maintained in a tradition handed down through several centuries. If the large portion of the Pentateuch relating to the Egyptian period of Hebrew history, including as it does Elohistic as well as Jehovistic sections, is of the remote antiquity here claimed for it, no one can doubt that the first four books of Moses are substantially of the same age. R. S. Poole. 1. And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he 2 stood by the river. And, behold, there came up out of the river seven kine, well favoured and 3 fatfleshed; and they fed in the reed-grass. And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill favoured and leanfleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink 4 of the river. And the ill favoured and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven well favoured and 5 fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke. And he slept and dreamed a second time: and, behold, seven 6 ears of corn came up upon one stalk, rank and good. And, behold, seven ears, thin and 7 blasted with the east wind, sprung up after them. And the thin ears swallowed up the seven 8 rank and full ears. And Pharaoh awoke, and, behold, it was a dream. And it came to pass in the morning that his spirit was troubled; and he sent and called for all the magicans of Egypt, and all the wise men thereof: and Pharaoh told them his dream; but there was none 9 that could interpret them unto Pharaoh. Then spake the chief butler unto Pharaoh, saying, 10 I do remember my faults this day: Pharaoh was wroth with his servants, and put me in ward 11 in the house of the captain of the guard, me and the chief baker; and we dreamed a dream in one night, and he; we dreamed each man according to the interpretation of his dream. 12. And there was with us there a young man, an Hebrew, servant to the captain of the guard; and we told him, and he interpreted to us our dreams; to each man according to his dream 13 he did interpret. And it came to pass, as he interpreted to us, so it was; me he restored 14 unto mine office, and him he hanged. Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they brought him hastily out of the dungeon: and he shaved himself, and changed his raiment, and came 15 in unto Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and there is none that can interpret it; and I have heard say of thee, that when thou hearest a dream 16 thou canst interpret it. And Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, It is not in me: God shall 17 give Pharaoh an answer of peace. And Pharaoh spake unto Joseph, In my dream, behold, I 18 stood upon the brink of the river: and, behold, there came up out of the river seven kine, 19 fatfleshed and well favoured; and they fed in the reed grass: and, behold, seven other kine came up after them, poor and very ill favoured and leanfleshed, such as I never saw in all the 20 land of Egypt for badness: and the lean and ill favoured kine did eat up the first seven fat 21 kine: and when they had eaten them up, it could not be known that they had eaten them; 22 but they were still ill favoured, as at the beginning. So I awoke. And I saw in my dream, 23 and, behold, seven ears came up upon one stalk, full and good: and, behold, seven ears, 24 withered, thin, and blasted with the east wind, sprung up after them: and the thin ears swallowed up the seven good ears: and I told it unto the magicians; but there was none that 25 could declare it to me. And Joseph said unto Pharaoh, The dream of Pharaoh is one: what 26 God is about to do he hath declared unto Pharaoh. The seven good kine are seven years; 27 and the seven good ears are seven years; the dream is one. And the seven lean and ill favoured kine that came up after them are seven years, and also the seven empty ears blasted 28 with the east wind; they shall be seven years of famine. That is the thing which I spake 29 unto Pharaoh: what God is about to do he hath shewed unto Pharaoh. Behold, there come 30 seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: and there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt; and the 31 famine shall consume the land; and the plenty shall not be known in the land by reason of 32 that famine which followeth; for it shall be very grievous. And for that the dream was doubled unto Pharaoh twice, it is because the thing is established by God, and God will 33 shortly bring it to pass. Now therefore let Pharaoh lock out a man discreet and wise, and set 34 him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint overseers over the 35 land, and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenteous years. And let them gather all the food of these good years that come, and lay up corn under the hand of 36 Pharaoh for food in the cities, and let them keep it. And the food shall be for a store to the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt; that the land 37 perish not through the famine. And the thing was good in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the 38 eyes of all his servants. And Pharaoh said unto his servants, Can we find such a one as this, 39 a man in whom the spirit of God is? And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Forasmuch as God 40 hath shewed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou: thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled: only in the throne will I be 41 greater than thou. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the land of 42 Egypt. And Pharaoh took off his signet ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph's hand, 43 and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck; and he made him to ride in the second chariot which he had; and they cried before him, Bow the knee: 44 and he set him over all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I am Pharaoh, 45 and without thee shall no man lift up his hand or his foot in all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh called Joseph's name Zaphenath-paneah; and he gave him to wife Asenath the 46 daughter of Poti-phera priest of On. And Joseph went out over the land of Egypt. And Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went 47 out from the presence of Pharaoh, and went throughout all the land of Egypt. And in the 48 seven plenteous years the earth brought forth by handfuls. And he gathered up all the food of the seven years which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities: the 49 food of the field, which was round about every city, laid he up in the same. And Joseph laid up corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left numbering; for it was without num- 50 ber. And unto Joseph were born two sons before the year of famine came, which Asenath 51 the daughter of Poti-phera priest of On bare unto him. And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For, said he, God hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father's 52 house. And the name of the second called he Ephraim : For God hath made me fruitful in 53 the land of my affliction. And the seven years of plenty, that was in the land of Egypt, came 54 to an end. And the seven years of famine began to come, according as Joseph had said ; and 55 there was famine in all lands ; but in all the land of Egypt there was bread. And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread ; and Pharaoh said 56 unto all the Egyptians, Go unto Joseph ; what he saith to you, do. And the famine was over all the face of the earth ; and Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians ; and the famine was sore in the land of Egypt. And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn ; because the famine was sore in all the earth. 1-36. Joseph remained in prison two years longer, forgotten by the released cup-bearer, when Pharaoh was disturbed by dreams which none of the scribes or wise men of Egypt could interpret. Then the chief cup-bearer remem- bered his fault, and told Pharaoh of Joseph, who was brought out of prison, and set before the king. After bearing witness to the true God, as in the former case, by ascribing all the power of interpretation to him who had sent the dreams, he explained to Pharaoh their sig- nificance, which to an Egyptian was most strik- ing. The dream had been twofold, to mark its certain and speedy fulfilment. Seven years of an abundance extraordinary even for fruitful Egypt were to be followed by seven years of still more extraordinary dearth. In the first dream, the seven years of plenty were denoted by seven heifers, the sacred symbols of Isis, the goddess of production, which came up out of the river, the great fertilizer of Egypt, whose very soil is well called by Herodotus "the gift of the Nile." These were beautiful and fat, as they fed on the luxuriant marsh-grass by the river's bank ; but after them came up seven others, so ill looking and lean that Pharaoh had never seen the like for badness, which devoured the seven fat kine, and remained as lean as they were before. The second dream was still plainer. There sprang up a stalk of that branch- ing Egyptian wheat which now grows in our own fields from seed found in mummy-cases. That seen by Pharaoh had the unusual number of seven ears, full and good, denoting the seven years of plenty. Then there sprang up another stalk, also bearing seven ears, thin and blasted with the east wind, and so mildewed that they infected and consumed the seven good ears. Joseph went further, and counselled Pharaoh to give some discreet person authority over all the land, that he might store up the surplus corn of the seven years of plenty against the seven years of famine. P. S. 1-45. God cannot neglect his own, least of all in their sorrows. After two years more of Joseph's patience, that God who caused him to be lifted out of the former pit to be sold now calls him out of the dungeon to honor. He now puts a dream into the head of Pharaoh : he puts the remembrance of Joseph's skill into the head of the cup-bearer ; who to pleasure Pharaoh, not to requite Joseph, commends the prisoner for an interpreter ; he puts an interpretation in the mouth of Joseph : he puts into the heart of Pharaoh this choice of a miserable prisoner, to make him the ruler of Egypt. Behold : one hour hath changed his fetters into a chain of gold, his jail into a palace, Potiphar's captive into his master's lord, the noise of his chains into "Bow the knee." He who refused the allurements of the wife of Potiphar had now given him to his wife the daughter of Potipherah. Humility goes before honor ; serving and suffer- ing are the best tutors to government. How well are God's children paid for their patience ! How happy are the issues of the faithful ! Bp. H. 1. At the end of two full years. For two full years after the restoration of the cup- bearer to his office Joseph remained in the prison, occupying the position to which, for his trustworthiness and integrity, he had been raised. Although this delay was due to the un- grateful forgetfulness of the man to whom he had shown so much kindness, and for whose in- tercession with the monarch he had so touch- ingly made request ; yet the overruling provi- dence of God is clearly seen in the occasion and the time at which Joseph's services were recalled to the remembrance of the butler, and brought by him to the notice of the king. W. M. T. We have need of patience, not only bearing, but waiting patience. Joseph lay in prison until the time that his word came (Ps. 105 : 19). There is a time set for the deliverance of God's people ; that time will come, though it seem to tarry ; and when it comes, it will appear to have been the best time, and therefore we ought to wait for it. H.—By those years of prison life, as well as by the privations which preceded, Joseph's character was steadied into strength and ripened into maturity, so that when his op- portunity came he used it with effect. They did for him what his forty years in Midian did for Moses, and his eighteen months in Arabia did for Paul. They threw him in upon himself, and back upon God. They disciplined him into calm self-possession, because they gave him a strong hold upon Jehovah. W. M. T.—As things turned out, it was well for Joseph that his friend did forget him. For, supposing the chief butler had overcome his natural reluctance to increase his own indebtedness to Pharaoh by interceding for a friend, and supposing Pharaoh had been willing to listen to him, what would have been the result? Probably that Joseph might have received his liberty, and a free pass out of Egypt. In any probable case his career would have tended rather toward obscurity than toward the fulfilment of his dreams. Dods. 2-7. The particulars of the dreams are all singularly appropriate. The scene is by the Nile, on which depends all the plenty of Egypt. The kine and the corn respectively denote the animal and the vegetable products of the country. The cattle feeding in the reed-grass showed that the Nile was fertilizing the land and supporting the life of the beasts. The lean cattle and the scorched-up corn foreshadowed a time when the Nile, for some reason, ceased to irrigate the land. The swallowing up of the fat by the lean signified that the produce of the seven years of plenty would be all consumed in the seven years of scarcity. E. H. B. The first dream is clothed in striking Egyptian emblematic figures. Egypt is the offspring of the Nile. The fertility of the land is yearly renewed by its overflowings. The cow is a very ancient emblem of the land, and of the earth generally, and was worshipped among the Egyptians as the goddess Isis. The Nile, Osiris, is honored under the form of a bull. Geri. That the number of the cows should have been seven is a singular touch of true local coloring, recognized only within a few years, but affording a striking proof of the exactness of the whole incident in its illustration of Egyptian modes of thought and life. Isis is often seen associated with seven cows; a mystical number represented by the same word in Egyptian, Hebrew, and Sanscrit. So, also, Osiris is at times represented as attended by seven cows, his wives. At the summer solstice a cow was led seven times round his temple. That those in the dream should have been bathing in the Nile is, moreover, only a reproduction of paintings often seen on the monuments. Geikie. 8. Magicians.** There is a wide region, a borderland between the two worlds of spirit and of matter, in which are found a great many mysterious phenomena which cannot be explained by any known laws of nature, and through which men fancy they get nearer to the spiritual world. There are many singular appearances, coincidences, forebodings, premonitions, toward which men have always been attracted. When men have no word from God to depend upon, no knowledge at all of where either the race or individuals are going to, they will eagerly grasp at anything that even seems to shed a ray of light on their future. We make light of that whole category of phenomena, because we have a more sure word of prophecy by which, as with a light in a dark place, we can tell where our next step should be, and what the end shall be. But invariably in heathen countries, where no guiding spirit of God was believed in, there existed a class of persons who undertook to satisfy the craving of men to see into the future. Dods. 14. The fact of Joseph having shaved himself is in striking accord with the Egyptian custom, which was to let the beard and hair grow in mourning only—otherwise most scrupulously shaving: whereas the Hebrews cultivated the hair and beard and shaved in token of mourning. He changed his raiment, from the ordinary habit of the prison to that of ordinary life or even of festal rejoicing. The fact of his having it in his power to do so shows that he was not treated as an ordinary prisoner. Aif.—The extreme personal cleanliness of the ancient Egyptians is indicated, not only in this shaving of Joseph, but in his change of raiment. The attention which the priests, in particular, paid to this matter, is mentioned by divers ancient authors. But it was not confined to their order. “Every Egyptian prided himself,” says Wilkinson, “on the encouragement of habits which it was considered a disgrace to neglect.” Kit. 16. God shall give Pharaoh an answer.** When Joseph professes to declare from God himself what he was about to do, and when everything happened according to his predictions, it was undeniably evident that the God whom Joseph worshipped was the Ruler of the universe, and that Joseph received from him that wisdom in which he so far excelled all the magicians and wise men of Egypt. Thus the true God left not himself without a witness in the most famous kingdom of the world, at a time when the grossest darkness enveloped most of the Gentile nations. Bush. 26,27. The fertility of a year depended upon the due proportion of the Nile inundation. Too much or too little of it would necessarily bring dearth and famine. Hence both the fat and the lean kine which were seen to ascend from the Nile were symbols either of years of fruitfulness or of death. K.—The explanation of the inundation is as follows: The White Nile, fed by the immense equatorial lakes, which are themselves supported by a rainfall lasting for more than nine months out of the twelve, and which constitute great natural reservoirs, sends down a constant, vast, and only slightly varying stream of water to the sea. Unlike it, however, the Blue and the Black tributaries are largely intermittent, and in the dry season would fail, without the White River, to reach the Mediterranean at all. On the other hand, without these two affluents the Nile would have no flood, and, even if it had, would leave little or no alluvial deposit. But the heavy summer rains in Abyssinia, which fall between May and September, wash down the rich lands of that country by the Blue Nile and the Atbara, and these, added to the ordinary current of the White Nile, increase its volume so as to cause the periodical overflow, and at the same time to charge its waters with red argillaceous mud to such an extent that when spread over a wide surface, and allowed sufficient slackness of current for the purpose, they precipitate over the land that rich alluvial dressing which enables it to produce a constant series of the most abundant harvests. Thus, roughly speaking, the White Nile supplies the unfailing volume of water, and the Abyssinian tributaries give the annual inundation. The river begins to rise at Cairo about the end of June, and goes on increasing until the end of September, then, after remaining at the same level for a few days, it commences to fall, and continues to do so until about the middle of the following May. If the rise be less than twenty-four feet there will be a scanty harvest, and if less than twenty there will be a famine; but if it exceed thirty, the villages will be flooded, and great damage will be the result. W. M. T. 30-36. When there was famine in Canaan in the days of Abraham, there was plenty in Egypt; and so established was its character in this respect, that it was frequently called the grxnary of the world. Yet Joseph here foretells that there should not only be a grievous famine in Egypt, but a famine so terrible that all the luxuriant plenty of the former fruitful years should be forgotten as if it never were; and it was to continue, not for one or two, but for seven years! The good counsel which Joseph adds to the interpretation of the dream makes the answer of God an answer of peace and not of evil. The purpose of God in Pharaoh's dreams was to procure deliverance and honor to Joseph, and to preserve Egypt, and the family of Jacob, and the countries around from destruction. Joseph's advice tended to secure this result. Bush. 37-39. Pharaoh and his court are at once struck with the appositness of the interpretation, and unhesitatingly adopt it as the true one. The Spirit of God was shown to be in him, both by the interpretation, and by the wisdom of words with which he had followed it up. Alf.—This is paralleled by an expression in the similar history of Daniel (ch. 5 : 11, 14). It is not necessary for us to know what idea Pharaoh attached to his own words in this expression. It was plain to him that Joseph could not have discovered the import of the dreams by his own sagacity. He was sensible that a divine person or a divine influence had enlightened his mind and given him this extraordinary knowledge. His proposal therefore to honor Joseph was a virtual honoring of the God whom he served. Bush.—It would seem that the Pharaoh of the time was a monotheist. Not only does he make no protest against the pronounced monotheism of Joseph (vs. 16, 25, 32), but he uses himself the most decidedly monotheistic language when he says to his nobles, "Can we find such a one as this is—a man in whom the Spirit of God is?" and again when he addresses Joseph as follows: "Forasmuch as God hath showed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art." No such distinct recognition of the unity of God is ascribed either to the Pharaoh of the Old Empire who received Abraham, or to those of the New Empire who came into contact with Moses. G. R. 41. We now know the exact period of Egyptian history at which the Exodus must have taken place; and if we count 430 years, "the sojourning of the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt" (Exod. 12 : 40), back from this, we shall be brought to the reign of the Hyksos king Apophis or Apepi, the very king, in fact, under whom, according to ancient authors, Joseph was raised to be the adom, or second ruler of the state. It was not until the Hyksos were driven out of the country, and Aahmes, the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, was pursuing with bitter hatred both them and their friends, that "there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph." Sayce. 41-45. Every trait in the description is purely Egyptian. Pharaoh gives him his signet, which "was of so much importance with the ancient Egyptian kings, that their names were always enclosed in an oval which represented an elongated signet." He arrays him "in vestures of byssus," the noble and also the priestly dress; he puts the chain, or "the collar of gold" "about his neck," which was always the mode of investiture of high Egyptian officials; he makes him ride "in the second chariot which he had," and he has it proclaimed before him: "Acreek," that is, "fall down," "bend the knee," or "do obeisance." To complete all, on his naturalization Joseph's name is changed to Zaphnath-praanesh, which most probably means "the supporter of life," or else "the food of the living," although others have rendered it "the saviour of the world," and the Rabbis, but without sufficient reason, "the revealer of secrets." Finally, in order to give him a position among the highest nobles of the land, Pharaoh "gave him to wife Asnath," daughter of Potiphera, priest or prince of On (Heliopolis). A. E. On, the "Aven" of Ezek. 30:17, the "Bethshemesh" of Jer. 43:13, and "Heliopolis" of the Septuagint, was a place of great celebrity, and the principal seat of learning in Egypt before the accession of the Ptolemy, when the schools were transferred to Alexandria; the ruins are not far from Cairo, and are marked by an obelisk sixty-eight feet high, which is considered one of the oldest monuments of its kind in Egypt. Mounds and crude brick walls are all that remain of Bethshemesh; for its "images" have been broken, and "the houses of the gods of the Egyptians" have been burned with fire (Jer. 43:13). At On Moses is said to have studied, and to have become "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." Wilson. The people of Egypt were divided into castes, like those of India, as they exist to the present day, and as they formerly prevailed among many other oriental nations. At the head of these castes stood that of the priesthood. From this order the king was usually selected; if one of the warriors, the next class in rank, should attain to that eminence, he was always installed and enrolled in the superior order. The priestly caste, in rank and power, stood far above the rest of the people. In each name or district (if indeed these divisions were of so early a date) stood a temple and a sacerdotal college. In them one third of the whole land of the country was inalienably vested. The priests were not merely the ministers of religion, they were the hereditary conservators of knowledge. They were the public astronomers, by whom all the agricultural labors of the people were regulated; the public geometricians, whose service was indispensable, since the Nile annually obliterated the landmarks of the country; in their hieroglyphical characters the public events were recorded; they were the physicians; in short, to them belonged the whole patrimony of science, which was inseparably bound up with their religion. The political powers of this hereditary aristocracy were unbounded; they engrossed apparently both the legislative and judicial functions; they were the framers, the conservators, the interpreters of the laws. As interpreter of dreams, Joseph, no doubt, intruded into the province of this all powerful caste, and the king, not improbably with a view to disarm their jealousy, married his new vizier to the daughter of the Priest of the Sun, who dwelled in On, called afterward by the Greeks Heliopolis (the City of the Sun). Moreover, in the great political measure of Joseph, the resumption of all the lands into the hands of the crown, the sacred property of the priests was exempted from the operation of the law, and the whole class supported, during the famine, at the royal charge. The next caste in dignity was that of the warriors, called by Herodotus, Hermotybies or Kalasyries. The lower classes of the people constituted the rest of the orders; according to Herodotus five, to Diodorus three more. The latter reckons husbandmen, artisans, and shepherds; Herodotus, shepherds, swineherds, manufacturers and shopkeepers, interpreters, and mariners, that is, the boatmen of the Nile. The boundaries of these castes were unalterably fixed, the son held forever the same rank, and pursued the same occupation with his father. Mithuan. The ministers of the court were in Egypt the priests, just as the state was a Theocracy, and the king was considered as the representative and incarnation of the Godhead. Hengs.—The reader will perhaps recall the striking analogy between the Egyptian system and the Hebrew Theocracy, particularly in the point that the ministers of religion were also ministers of civil law and prominent in its administration. The judges in the civil courts were taken chiefly from the tribe of Levi. H. C. 46,47. Joseph knew that his advancement was intended for the public good; to enable him to do some general service; and to preserve life. This is the design of Providence, whenever a person is advanced to any station of figure and fortune. And men should consider that the more they enjoy, they are accountable for so much more; and as they are capable of doing the more good, by neglecting these opportunities they expose themselves to the greater punishments. Bp. Conybeare.—He who enabled Joseph to repel temptation and to endure affliction, enabled him also to bear the glory that was conferred upon him with humility. He was, and he felt himself to be, exalted to power for the good and the safety of the people, and he entered at once upon the active discharge of the duties of his station. He went through all the land of Egypt, not to show his greatness, but to see with his own eyes what was to be done, to issue the proper orders, and to see their execution Bush. Those who take God's discipline kindly here and turn it to best account according to his thought and will, have their reward above. It is not needful that we know in their details what the heavenly responsibilities are, and what the dignities and the honors of those who have been faithful over a few things here; but we are safe in the belief that earthly discipline and culture are not lost attainments as to the after life. As one short day transferred Joseph from the prison-house of the kingdom to the lordship of that kingdom, so one day is long enough for the transfer of many a humble, suffering saint of God from dungeons of darkness and pain to palaces of royalty and bliss. In the story of Joseph these great truths of God's administration with his people were breaking forth upon the minds of men by most interesting stages of progress. H. C. 47-49. During the seven plenteous years Joseph seems to have travelled as commissioner from city to city, establishing royal granaries in each, and storing therein the one fifth of the produce which he claimed in the king's name, and in the public interest. So superabundant were the harvests that the impost does not seem to have been felt. Though only a fifth part of the whole, the quantity was "as the sand of the sea." We know from the sculptures how carefully the Egyptian scribes registered each spring the produce of the fields. But during these years they "left numbering, for it was without number." J. P. Norris.—The Pentateuch describes the labors of Joseph in building storehouses, and storing up corn against the famine. The paintings on the monuments give a vivid representation of the whole scene, showing how very common the storehouse was in Egypt. It appears from the paintings, that they kept an account of the amount of grain stored in the magazines, for at the side of the windows of one of them there are characters indicating the quantity deposited therein. This throws light on the statement, that Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, "until he left numbering." E. C. W.—The corn was stored up in each of the cities from the lands of which it was collected; and it was thus secured for orderly distribution in the years of famine. When that season arrived, its consumption was guarded by the same wise policy that had preserved it from being wasted in the years of plenty. The demand was not only from Egypt, but from the neighboring countries, Canaan, and probably parts of Syria, Arabia, and Africa, to which the famine extended, and whose corn was soon exhausted. P. S. 50-52. Two things here stand out in the history of Joseph. The same gracious Hand of the Lord, which, during his humiliation, had kept him from sin, disbelief, and despair, now preserved him in his exaltation from pride, and from lapsing into heathenism, to which his close connection with the chief priest of Egypt might easily have led him. More than that, he considered himself "a stranger and a pilgrim" in Egypt. His heart was in his father's home, with his father's God, and on his father's promises. Of both these facts there is abundant evidence. His Egyptian wife bore him two sons "before the years of famine came." He gave to both of them Hebrew, not Egyptian names. By the first, Manasseh, or "he that maketh forget," he wished to own the goodness of God, who had made him forget his past sorrow and toil. By the second, Ephraim, or "double fruitfulness," he distinctly recognized that, although Egypt was the land in which God had caused him "to be fruitful," it was still, and must ever be, not the land of his joy but that of his "affliction"! If it be asked why, in his prosperity, Joseph had not informed his father of his life and success, we answer, that in such a history safety lay in quiet waiting upon God. If Joseph had learned the great lesson of his life, it was this, that all in the past had been of God. Nor would he now interfere with further guidance on his part. The Lord would show the way, and lead to the end. But as for him, he believed, and therefore made no haste. Thus would God be glorified, and thus also would Joseph be kept in perfect peace, because he trusted in him. A. E. But why does no message go from Joseph to his mourning father? For many reasons. He does not know the state of things at home. He may not wish to open up the dark and bloody treachery of his brothers to his aged parent. He bears in mind those early dreams of his childhood. All his subsequent experience has confirmed him in the belief that they will one day be fulfilled. He will leave it entirely to the all-wise providence of his God to bring about that strange issue. Joseph, therefore, is true to his life-long character. He leaves all in the hand of God, and awaits in silent hope the days when he will see his father and his brethren. M.—Joseph was kept tender and humble and domestic and patriotic because he had the faith to know and live with his father's God. This conscious relation to God controlled his whole heart. Having become almost an Egyptian, yet he kept himself as a sacred thing, and behaved himself as a child of the Highest, through the most seducing temptations. Mercer. For God hath made me to forget all my toil. It is a beautiful circumstance in the history of Joseph, that he has God ever before his eyes. When tempted to sin, his cry is, "How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" When the court officers in prison were troubled by their dreams, he said, "Do not interpretations belong to God?" When the king tells him that he had heard of his skill in the interpretation of dreams, he is anxious to turn the credit from himself to God—"It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace." When the purport of the royal dreams becomes clear to him, he again sees God in them—"God hath showed Pharaoh what he is about to do." "The thing is established by God; and God will shortly bring it to pass." So, when he discloses himself to his brethren, he says, "God sent me before you, to save your lives by a great deliverance. So it was not you that sent me hither, but God." Again, in the message sent to his father, "God hath made me lord of all Egypt." Also, in the address to his brethren after the death of his father, "Ye thought evil against me, but God meant it for good." At last, he dies in the conviction that "God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land;" and so assured is he of this, that he takes an oath of them that they will carry his bones with them to the land of their future possession. It was this constant reference to God in all things, before all things, and for all things, that forms the real characteristic of Joseph's history, and is the true secret to all his glory and success. Kit. 54-57. Famines in Egypt are caused by the failure of those periodic rains of the Abyssinian highlands which swell the waters of the Blue Nile, and cause the Lower Nile to overflow and fertilize the plains of the Egyptian Delta. The rise of the water commences at midsummer, and continues for three or four months. When the water subsides they sow their corn, and reap the crop in the following spring. So it is in our day, as it was in Joseph's. And so rarely did a drought in the Levant extend to Abyssinia, that the Levantine peoples made sure of finding corn in Egypt when their own harvests failed. This explains the concourse of foreign traders of whom we here read: "All countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn; because that the famine was so sore in all lands." During the first year of the famine, the native Egyptians had the abundant stores of their previous harvest: "in all the land of Egypt there was bread." But they seem to have made no private provision for more than one year in advance as usual—either disbelieving Joseph's prediction, or tempted to part with their surplus by the high prices which it commanded. So "when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread." J. P. N. Well may the Hebrew race be proud of these men like Joseph and Daniel, who stood in the presence of foreign monarchs in a spirit of perfect fidelity to God, commanding the respect of all, and clothed with the dignity and simplicity which that fidelity imparted. It matters not to Joseph that there may perhaps be none in that land who can appreciate his fidelity to God or understand his motive. There is something particularly noble and worthy of admiration in a man thus standing alone and maintaining the fullest allegiance to God, without ostentation, and with a quiet dignity and naturalness that shows he has a great fund of strength behind. Influence in the long run belongs to those who rid their minds of all private aims, and get close to the great centre in which all the race meets and is cared for. Men feel themselves safe with the unselfish, with persons in whom they meet principle, justice, truth, love, God. We are unattractive, useless, uninfluential, just because we are still childishly craving a private and selfish good. We know that a life which does not pour itself freely into the common stream of public good is lost in dry and sterile sands. We know that a life spent upon self is contemptible, barren, empty, yet how slowly do we come to the attitude of Joseph, who watched for the fulfilment of God's purposes and found his happiness in forwarding what God designed for the people. Dods. What a life-like romance is the story of Joseph! In what other narrative have the good and evil of the human soul been ever blended in such truthful consistency of thought and emotion? been ever painted in such perfect harmony with the universal human conscious- ness? Take away the dreams, and what has more the air of veritable history, more of that minute detail and circumstantial coloring which the geography and chronology of Egypt could alone impart to it, than the story of the plenty and the famine! T. L. 1. Now Jacob saw that there was corn in Egypt, and Jacob said unto his sons, Why do ye look 2 one upon another? And he said, Behold, I have heard that there is corn in Egypt: get you 3 down thither, and buy for us from thence; that we may live, and not die. And Joseph's ten 4 brethren went down to buy corn from Egypt. But Benjamin, Joseph's brother, Jacob sent 5 not with his brethren; for he said, Lest peradventure mischief befall him. And the sons of 6 Israel came to buy among those that came: for the famine was in the land of Canaan. And Joseph was the governor over the land; he it was that sold to all the people of the land: and Joseph's brethren came, and bowed down themselves to him with their faces to the earth. 7 And Joseph saw his brethren, and he knew them, but made himself strange unto them, and spake roughly with them; and he said unto them, Whence come ye? And they said, From 8 the land of Canaan to buy food. And Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him. 9 And Joseph remembered the dreams which he dreamed of them, and said unto them, Ye are 10 spies; to see the nakedness of the land ye are come. And they said unto him, Nay, my 11 lord, but to buy food are thy servants come. We are all one man's sons; we are true men, 12 thy servants are no spies. And he said unto them, Nay, but to see the nakedness of the land 13 ye are come. And they said, We thy servants are twelve brethren, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan; and, behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and one is not. 14 And Joseph said unto them, That is it that I spake unto you, saying, Ye are spies: hereby ye 15 shall be proved: by the life of Pharaoh ye shall not go forth hence, except your youngest 16 brother come hither. Send one of you, and let him fetch your brother, and ye shall be bound, that your words may be proved, whether there be truth in you: or else by the life of 17 Pharaoh surely ye are spies. And he put them all together into ward three days. And 18 Joseph said unto them the third day, This do, and live; for I fear God: if ye be true men, 19 let one of your brethren be bound in your prison house; but go ye, carry corn for the famine 20 of your houses: and bring your youngest brother unto me; so shall your words be verified, 21 and ye shall not die. And they did so. And they said one to another, We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he besought us, and we 22 would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us. And Reuben answered them, say- ing, Spake I not unto you, saying, Do not sin against the child; and ye would not hear? 23 therefore also, behold, his blood is required. And they knew not that Joseph understood 24 them; for there was an interpreter between them. And he turned himself about from them, and wept; and he returned to them, and spake to them, and took Simeon from among them, 25 and bound him before their eyes. Then Joseph commanded to fill their vessels with corn, and to restore every man's money into his sack, and to give them provision for the way: and 26 thus was it done unto them. And they laded their asses with their corn, and departed 27 thence. And as one of them opened his sack to give his ass provender in the lodging place, 28 he espied his money; and, behold, it was in the mouth of his sack. And he said unto his brethren, My money is restored; and, lo, it is even in my sack: and their heart failed them, and they turned trembling one to another, saying, What is this that God hath done unto us? 29 And they came unto Jacob their father unto the land of Canaan, and told him all that had 30 befallen them; saying, The man, the lord of the land, spake roughly with us, and took us for 31 spies of the country. And we said unto him, We are true men; we are no spies: we be 32 twelve brethren, sons of our father; one is not, and the youngest is this day with our father 33 in the land of Canaan. And the man, the lord of the land, said unto us, Hereby shall I know that ye are true men; leave one of your brethren with me, and take corn for the famine of your houses, and go your way; and bring your youngest brother unto me, then shall I know that ye are no spies, but that ye are true men: so will I deliver you your brother, and ye shall traffic in the land. And it came to pass as they emptied their sacks, that, behold, every man's bundle of money was in his sack: and when they and their father saw their bundles of money, they were afraid. And Jacob their father said unto them, Me have ye bereaved of my children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away: all these things are against me. And Reuben spake unto his father, saying, Slay my two sons, if I bring him not to thee: deliver him into my hand, and I will bring him to thee again. And he said, My son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he only is left: if mischief befall him by the way in the which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. The use which God made of the sin of Joseph's brethren exemplifies his consummate, far-reaching wisdom. He knew all the future. He saw the coming famine; knew how to advance Joseph to the lordship of all Egypt, and to put him there just in time to garner up the surplus of seven years of overflowing abundance, and then dispense these stores of corn for the sustenance of thousands less provident throughout Egypt and all adjacent countries. The resources of God's providence, guided by such wisdom, are simply boundless. The case is equally demonstrative of his love. Mark how he bends the great powers of his infinite being to the production of good, to multiply the means of happiness. This view of his character is infinitely precious when studied in its developments in a world, or rather a universe, with sin in it. If the Lord were obliged to say—I must content myself with the co-operation of the good; as to the wicked, the evil they do must be endured as so much dead loss to the universe, never to be of any service toward virtue and happiness—the case would be, so far, one of unrelieved sadness. We may bless the name of our God that his resources of wisdom and power and the outgoings of his love are not thus limited. Good results will be extorted from even those horrible crimes of Joseph's brethren. This story of God's overruling hand in their case was shedding some rays of light on previously dark problems, and therefore was indicating progress in the revelations of God and of his ways with sinful men. H. C. It was the will of God that Jacob should go down with his whole family to the land of Egypt, where his seed were to be oppressed till the time of their glorious deliverance; and considering the patriarch's great age and his hereditary attachment to the land of promise, we can see that under the influence of ordinary motives he would not have been induced to leave it. But it did not come within the plan of the divine proceedings to exercise any force upon Jacob's will. Whatever he did, he was to do it freely and rationally. Precisely such a train of events as that here related was adapted, as every one can see, with infinite wisdom to bring about the designed result. Bush.—Through our own free agency, we are all the time unconsciously working out his purposes; for, as Isaac Taylor remarks, "This is the very miracle of Providence, that no miracles are needed for the carrying out of its designs." Every actor in this life-drama is seen working according to his own character, and acting according to his own unfettered will. No violence is done to the free agency of any one of them, and yet, in some inscrutable way, they all carry forward one great purpose, and the word of God is fulfilled. Thus God was in and over this history from first to last. But he is as really in each of our lives, and we shall miss the great moral of the story if we do not come to a clear recognition of that fact. W. M. T. 1,2. The notices we get of Jacob in the latter part of his history are very characteristic. He was one of those old men who maintain their vigor to the end, the energy of whose age seems to shame and overtax the prime of common men; whose minds are still the clearest, their advice the safest, their word waited for, their perception of the actual state of affairs always in advance of their juniors, more modern and fully abreast of the times in their ideas than the latest born of their children. Such an old age we recognize in Jacob's half-scornful chiding of the helplessness of his sons even after they had heard that there was corn in Egypt. "Why look ye one upon another? Behold! I have heard that there is corn in Egypt: get ye down thither and buy for us from thence." Jacob, the man who had wrestled through life and bent all things to his will, cannot put up with the helpless dejection of this troop of strong men, who have no wit to devise an escape for themselves, and no resolution to enforce upon the others any device that may occur to them. It is the old Jacob, full of resources, equal to every turn of fortune, and never knowing how to yield. Dods. 3. 4. And Joseph's ten brethren went. They are called "Joseph's brethren" and not Jacob's sons, because Joseph is at present the principal character in the story. But Benjamin is called Joseph's brother in a stricter sense. One mother brought them both into the world, and Jacob's fond attachment to Benjamin was in part the effect of his grief for the loss of Joseph. Bush. 5-7. And now Joseph's brethren go to buy of him whom they had sold; and bow their knees to him for relief, who had bowed to them before for his own life. His age, his habit, the place, the language, kept Joseph from their knowledge; neither had they called off their minds from their folds, to inquire of matters of foreign state, or to hear that a Hebrew was advanced to the highest honor of Egypt. But he cannot but know them, whom he left at their full growth, whose tongue, and habit, and number were all one; whose faces had left so deep an impression in his mind, at their unkind parting; it is wisdom sometimes to conceal our knowledge, that we may not prejudice truth. Bp. H. Joseph was seventeen years old at his departure from Canaan, and had now reached the age of at least thirty-seven. His dress of Egyptian fashion, and which betokened his distinguished rank,—his conversing with them by an interpreter,—his high position and dignity in Egypt, of which, in spite of his dreams, none of his brethren seem ever to have had the least idea,—all serve to account for their not recognizing him; whereas they, arriving from Canaan, speaking their mother tongue, and having all reached to man's estate before his departure, were easily recognized by Joseph. C. G. B. —6. Bowed down themselves. Joseph's dreams were not literally fulfilled, his father being absent; but in spirit they were. Alf.—Spake roughly. It is evident from the whole narrative, that there was no harshness or revenge on the part of Joseph; but knowing as he did from personal experience what sort of persons his brethren were, and the just grounds their former conduct afforded far fearing what they might do to Benjamin and their old father, his intention was to put them effectually to the proof, to bring them to repentance and the confession of their offence, and, as the instrument of Divine Providence, to work out the good of his family, by making them feel in a very sensible way the wrong they had committed. C. G. B. 9. Ye are spies. It might well be suspected that they were spies, especially if the time usually assumed for their visit, that of the dynasty of the shepherd kings, be correct. For this dynasty, we are told by Manetho, was ever in fear of invasion from the then powerful Assyrians; and Josephus says that on that account they fortified the Eastern side of Egypt. Hence men arriving from Asia, and especially Jacob's sons, who from their Chaldaic origin were more like the Eastern Semitic peoples than Canaanites, might well arouse suspicion as to their being Assyrian spies. The nakedness of the land may well refer to its being easily accessible, having fewer strong places than other countries. Alf. 11. We are all one man's sons. We do not belong to different tribes, and it is not likely that one family would make a hostile attempt upon a kingdom. It is on the proof of this that Joseph puts them (ver. 15) in obliging them to leave one as a hostage, and insisting on their bringing their remaining brother; so that he took exactly the precautions to detect them, as if he had had no acquaintance with them and had every reason to be suspicious. A. C.—No man would send all his sons on so dangerous an enterprise. Nor was it probable that one man could have a design on Egypt but all the great men of Canaan must have joined in it; and then they would have sent men of different families. Patrick. 13. "One is not," so they spoke of Joseph. It is simpler to take it not as the repetition of their old lie, but as the natural expression of what had come to be their belief. For twenty years they had heard nothing of him, and concluded that he was dead. Reuben, further on, speaking in all soberness, implies that they really thought him dead: "Therefore, behold, also his blood is required." J. P. N.—Joseph has the satisfaction of learning that his father is yet alive, and that Benjamin is his favorite, as he himself had been. Moreover, that his brethren treated their father with the respect which he so well deserved, might be inferred from the manner in which they spoke of him, and from their leaving Benjamin to comfort him in their absence. Bush. 15. By the life of Pharaoh. As if he had said, as surely as the king of Egypt lives, so surely shall ye not go hence unless your brother come hither—here therefore is no oath; it is just what they themselves make it in their report to their father (chap. 43:3), the man did solemnly protest unto us. A. C.—Through all the details of his conduct here, in the work of securing the preservation of his family, Joseph has a part to play and must play it out consistently. If it is lawful for him to enact the part of an Egyptian prince at all, it is frivolous to raise questions about the details of his conduct—such as his affection of rudeness toward them as suspected spies, his asseverating “by the life of Pharaoh” in the current formula, and his putting on the air of an Egyptian sage familiar with magic. Admitting that he has the right for a time to keep up the disguise in personating Pharaoh’s viceroy, as seen from an Egyptian standpoint, then this admission carries with it all the details. S. R. 17. Put them.** Hebrew, collected or gathered them. It seems they did not consent to the terms proposed. None of them would consent to go and bring down Benjamin if all the rest, as Joseph proposed, were to be kept imprisoned till their return. He therefore, with great apparent severity, puts them all into custody for three days. All this was with a view to the end which he wished to have accomplished. Bush.—The severity of God only endures till the sinner is brought to recognize his guilt; it is indeed, like Joseph’s harshness with his brethren, nothing more than love in disguise; and having done its work, having brought him to the acknowledgment of his guilt and misery, reappears as grace again, granting him more than even he had dared to ask or hope, loosing the bands of his sins, and letting him go free. Trench. All these arrangements and tests on the part of Joseph tended toward the humiliation and the penitence of his brethren. He might instantly have said, “I am Joseph!” They could not have borne it. At once he might have said, “Brethren, I forgive you all.” He might thus have done more harm than good. The men required to be tested. They had no right to any consideration before they were put to scrutiny and criticism. God has a long process with some of us. He has to take away the firstborn child, and the lastborn, and all between. He has to smite us with disease, foil our purposes, break up our schemes, and confound us at every point, until we begin to say, What does all this mean? J. P. 18. I fear God.** The declaration expresses nothing less than the ruling principle of his life. His unfeigned fear of God protects him in the hour of severest temptation; it adorns him in the dungeon as well as in the seat of the governor in Egypt; it becomes the source of that true wisdom which extends its blessing to thousands; it enables him to show that rare magnanimity and spirit of forgiveness, the glorious picture of which, after so many ages, we never behold without admiration; it heightens the enjoyment, lightens the pressure, brightens the evening of his life, and causes him at last, in the firm belief of God’s promises, to fall asleep in peace. “God was with him;” this conclusive sentence was spoken only of Joseph, but not of his brethren (Acts 7:9). Van O. 19. Carry grain for your houses.** The governor is touched with feeling for their famishing households. The brothers had now their separate establishments. Twelve households had to be supplied with bread. The journey to Egypt was not to be undertaken more than once a year if possible, as the distance from Hebron was upward of two hundred miles. Hence the ten brothers had with them all their available beasts of burden, with the needful retinue of servants. We need not be surprised that these are not specially mentioned. M.—If ye be true men. In the first instance he proposed that one of their number should be sent for Benjamin, and all the rest confined till his return. Here he proposes that one should be confined, and all the rest dispatched to their father’s house. This would naturally give them a little further reviving in their bondage. And they did so. That is, agreed to do so. Bush. 21. And they said one to another, We are verily guilty.** While Joseph, the better to conceal himself, speaks and acts like a real Egyptian, God employs his affected sternness and severity to awaken their slumbering consciences. Though they were chargeable with many other sins, particularly Simeon and Levi, yet the treatment to which they were subjected brought to remembrance in a special manner their sin against their brother. This was an atrocious iniquity of which they were the most of them equally guilty. Conscience with unerring certainty refers their punishment to their crime, and charges it upon them with fearful distinctness. Their full hearts now begin to utter themselves, and as if they read in each other’s looks that the same thoughts were in all their minds at the same time, no sooner does one break silence than they all immediately join in ascribing the evil which had befallen them to its true source. Bush. Conscience is a remembrancer, to bring to mind things long since said and done, to show us wherein we have erred though it was long ago, as this reflection here was above twenty years after the sun was committed. As time will not wear out the guilt of sin, so it will not blot out the records of conscience; when the guilt of this sin of Joseph's brethren was fresh they made light of it, and sat down to eat bread; but now, long afterward, their consciences reminded them of it. H.—The human soul itself contains within itself all the necessary elements of retributive penalty. Here is nothing but memory, conscience, and reason, yet what an exhibition and illustration of the self-retributive power of sin! Memory: "We saw the anguish." Conscience: "We are verily guilty." Reason: "Therefore is this distress come upon us." Let a soul go into the future state with a memory to recall, a conscience to accuse, and a reason to justify penalty as deserved, and what more is necessary to hell! Hence Milton: "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven!" Pierson. It is very manifest that, for creatures so constituted, there may be no need of any direct interference of God to punish the evil-doer. The life of sin becomes its own punishment as soon as the twenty-two years of prosperity and thoughtlessness are over, and death leads to the prison-houses. You need only be let alone throughout the endless existence that follows—left to the scorpion sting of remorse at the recollection of sins past, and to all the inborn agonies of vice. There is no need of supposing that God will take the punishment of sinners directly into his own hands, or commission and send forth an avenging train to torment and lacerate the wicked. Without any such direct and positive infliction, all that the Scriptures sketch for us by those terrible and ghastly images of the unquenched fire and the clank of the everlasting chains, may be fulfilled in leaving each sinner to be his own tormentor. S. R. 23,24. All this, too, was in the hearing of Joseph. Joseph heard them say that he was their brother. They used to call him "dreamer." He heard them say "the child,"—tenderly. Once they mocked him. He heard them speak in subdued, gentle tones. J. P.—He is deeply moved, and his eyes fill with tears as he witnesses their emotion and grief on his account. Fain would he relieve them from their remorse and apprehension—why, then, does he forbear? Why does he not at this juncture disclose himself? It has been satisfactorily proved that his brethren counted their sale of him the great crime of their life. But evidence that a man is conscious of his sin, and, while suffering from its consequences, feels deeply its guilt, is not evidence that his character is altered. And because we believe men so much more readily than God, and think that they do not require, for form's sake, such needless pledges of a changed character as God seems to demand, it is worth observing that Joseph, moved as he was even to tears, felt that common prudence forbade him to commit himself to his brethren without further evidence of their disposition. These men had to give evidence not only that they saw and in some sense repented of their sin, but that they had got rid of the evil passion that led to it. Dols.—The work is not yet complete; so he brushed away the tears and "returned to them and took from them Simeon and bound him before their eyes." Why he chose Simeon is not indicated. Perhaps—not to say probably—he was the leading spirit in the cruel scenes thirteen years before. We remember that Simeon and Levi led off in that bloody affray with the men of Shechem. However this may be, he was the eldest after Reuben; and Reuben, though a coarse, rough nature, was on the side of mercy toward the abused Joseph. Simeon, therefore, is chosen for the hostage, to be kept in close confinement while the rest are dismissed to go home. Simeon will have abundant time to think over the guilty deeds of that dreadful past! H. C.—Reuben, who was the eldest, had resolved to save Joseph; and Judah also was inclined to favor him; had Simeon joined with them, their authority might have prevailed for his deliverance. Simeon was the eldest of those who had proposed to murder him, and was, therefore, a fit proxy for the rest: the man, as the Hebrews say, who put Joseph into the pit and was now very justly served in his kind. Stackhouse. 28. Their heart failed them. Their guilt made them afraid; otherwise they would have rejoiced. But all things terrify an evil conscience. Patrick.—What is this that God hath done unto us? Overlooking second causes, they attribute directly to the judgments of God what had now befallen them. It seemed to them that he was still pursuing them in a mysterious way, and with a design to require their brother's blood at their hand. Bush. The whole narrative shows that, so far from being void of fraternal feeling and hard-hearted, in fact it tasked his firmness of character to the utmost to suppress his emotions sufficiently to carry out his purpose. His main purpose was to bring them to thorough repentance. For this end he must needs throw their thought back upon their great sin and bring the heavy pressure of present calamity upon them with all its suggestive power to show them that God was taking them in hand for that wickedness. He also wished to see how they felt toward their father and toward Benjamin. Their feeling toward both the father and his youngest son would be an index of their penitence for their great sin toward himself. Joseph was a man of consummate wisdom. Few men have ever lived who understood human nature better than he, or could plan better for a given effect. Consequently we shall not miss greatly if we infer his design from the actual effect. When we see what he accomplished, we are reasonably safe in saying—This is what he aimed to do. H. C. 36. All these things are against me.** These things were not against him. They were really working for his after good. They were onward steps in that process by which he was to recover his long-lost son, and was to have conferred upon him those years of happiness which, as we read the story, we are apt to call the Sabbath of his life, with its rest, its thankfulness, and its joy. W. M. T.—Instead of being against him, all these things were for him; and by all these means, was the merciful God working for the preservation of himself and his family, and the fulfilment of his ancient promise, that the posterity of Abraham should be as the stars of heaven for multitude. A. C.—Notwithstanding all the promises he had received from the God of Bethel, Jacob's heart sunk under the weight of this complicated distress; and in his infirmity he pronounced against himself and against the faithfulness of God, "All these things are against me." How could any circumstance be against a good man to whom it was secured by covenant that all things should work together for his good? Poor man, how weak is thy faith! Is it so much against thee that Joseph is taken from thee to be the lord of Egypt and the nourisher of thine old age? But how glorious did the providence of God appear to Jacob when he lay infolded in the arms of his Joseph! What a sufficient explanation was that of the mysterious dealings of his heavenly Father! We shall not all see such full explanations in this life, but we shall all see them. When the whole skein of providence is unfolded, all will appear as those mysterious events did to Jacob when he met with his long-lost son. Love,—the love of God,—the love of Jesus, will appear to have animated the whole machine of government and to have moved every wheel. And ten thousand voices, which once pronounced, "All these things are against me," will shout and sing, Hosanna to Him who made my tears to flow. Everlasting thanks to a Father's care for the furnace in which I was purified for glory. Alleluia. Blessing and honor and glory to Him who made my tears to flow. Griffin. 1. And the famine was sore in the land. And it came to pass, when they had eaten up the 2 corn which they had brought out of Egypt, their father said unto them, Go again, buy us a 3 little food. And Judah spake unto him, saying, The man did solemnly protest unto us, 4 saying, Ye shall not see my face, except your brother be with you. If thou wilt send our 5 brother with us, we will go down and buy thee food: but if thou wilt not send him, we will not go down: for the man said unto us, Ye shall not see my face, except your brother be with 6 you. And Israel said, Wherefore dealt ye so ill with me, as to tell the man whether ye had 7 yet a brother? And they said, The man asked straitly concerning ourselves, and concerning our kindred, saying, Is your father yet alive? have ye another brother? and we told him ac- cording to the tenor of these words: could we in any wise know that he would say, Bring 8 your brother down? And Judah said unto Israel his father, Send the lad with me, and we will arise and go; that we may live, and not die, both we, and thou, and also our little ones. 9. I will be surety for him; of my hand shalt thou require him: if I bring him not unto thee, 10 and set him before thee, then let me bear the blame for ever: for except we had lingered, 11 surely we had now returned a second time. And their father Israel said unto them, If it be so now, do this; take of the choice fruits of the land in your vessels, and carry down the man 12 a present, a little balm, and a little honey, spicery and myrrh, nuts, and almonds: and take double money in your hand; and the money that was returned in the mouth of your sacks 13 carry again in your hand; peradventure it was an oversight: take also your brother, and 14 arise, go again unto the man: and God Almighty give you mercy before the man, that he may release unto you your other brother and Benjamin. And if I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved. 15 And the men took that present, and they took double money in their hand, and Benjamin: 16 and rose up, and went down to Egypt, and stood before Joseph. And when Joseph saw Ben- jamin with them, he said to the steward of his house, Bring the men into the house, and slay, 17 and make ready; for the men shall dine with me at noon. And the man did as Joseph bade; 18 and the man brought the men into Joseph's house. And the men were afraid, because they were brought into Joseph's house; and they said, Because of the money that was returned in our sacks at the first time are we brought in; that he may seek occasion against us, and fall 19 upon us, and take us for bondmen, and our asses. And they came near to the steward of 20 Joseph's house, and they spake unto him at the door of the house, and said, Oh my lord, we 21 came indeed down at the first time to buy food; and it came to pass, when we came to the lodging place, that we opened our sacks, and, behold, every man's money was in the mouth of 22 his sack, our money in full weight: and we have brought it again in our hand. And other money have we brought down in our hand to buy food: we know not who put our money in 23 our sacks. And he said, Peace be to you, fear not: your God, and the God of your father, hath given you treasure in your sacks: I had your money. And he brought Simeon out unto 24 them. And the man brought the men into Joseph's house, and gave them water, and they 25 washed their feet; and he gave their asses provender. And they made ready the present 26 against Joseph came at noon: for they heard that they should eat bread there. And when Joseph came home, they brought him the present which was in their hand into the house, 27 and bowed down themselves to him to the earth. And he asked them of their welfare, and 28 said, Is your father well, the old man of whom ye spake? Is he yet alive? And they said, Thy servant our father is well, he is yet alive. And they bowed the head, and made obei- 29 sance. And he lifted up his eyes, and saw Benjamin his brother, his mother's son, and said, Is this your youngest brother, of whom ye spake unto me? And he said, God be gracious 30 unto thee, my son. And Joseph made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his brother: 31 and he sought where to weep; and he entered into his chamber, and wept there. And he 32 washed his face, and came out; and he refrained himself, and said, Set on bread. And they set on for him by himself, and for them by themselves, and for the Egyptians, which did eat with him, by themselves: because the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews; for 33 that is an abomination unto the Egyptians. And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright, and the youngest according to his youth: and the men marvelled one with 34 another. And he took and sent messes unto them from before him: but Benjamin's mess was five times so much as any of theirs. And they drank, and were merry with him. The careful student of Stephen's speech can hardly fail to see that he had One greater than Joseph in his mind, when he reminded his hearers how their fathers, "moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt; but God was with him, and delivered him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favor and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he made him gov- ernor over Egypt, and all his house." Even so had they, too, moved with envy, delivered Jesus into the hands of Gentiles; even so had God been with Him, and highly exalted Him, and given Him a name that was above every name; and even so, though His own nation might re- ject Him, yet in Him should the Gentiles trust. J. P. N.—When the chosen family were in the process of assuming the rudimentary form of that people through whom salvation and bless- ing were to come to other kindreds of the earth, the beginning was rendered prophetic of the end; the operations both of the evil and the good in the infancy of the nation were made to image the prospective manifestation that was to be given of them when the things of the divine kingdom should rise to their destined maturity. Especially in the history of Joseph, the representative of the covenant in its earlier stage, was there given a wonderful similitude of Him in whom its powers and blessings were to be concentrated in their entire fulness, and who was therefore in all things to obtain the pre-eminence among His brethren. Like Joseph, the Son of Mary, though born among brethren after the flesh, was treated as an alien; envied and persecuted even from His infancy, and obliged to find a temporary refuge in the very land that shielded Joseph from the fury of his kindred. His supernatural and unblemished righteousness continually provoked the malice of the world, and at the same time received the most unequivocal tokens of the divine favor and blessing. It was that righteousness, exhibited amid the greatest trials and indignities, in the deepest debasement, and in worse than prison-house affliction, which procured His elevation to the right hand of power and glory, from which He was thenceforth to dispense the means of salvation to the world. In the dispensation, too, of these blessings, it was the hardened and cruel enmity of His immediate kindred which opened the door of grace and blessing to the heathen; and the sold, hated, and crucified One becomes a Prince and Saviour to the nations of the earth, while His famishing brethren reap in bitterness of soul the fruit of their inexcusable hatred and malice. Nor is there a door of escape to be found for them until they come to acknowledge, in contrition of heart, that they are verily guilty concerning their brother. Then, however, looking unto Him whom they have pierced, and owning Him as, by God's appointment, the one channel of life and blessing, their hatred shall be repaid with love, and they shall be admitted to share in the inexhaustible fulness that is treasured up in Christ. P. F. 1-10. The pressure of famine is again upon the encampment in Hebron; and Jacob says to his sons, "Go again, buy us a little food." This is what his sons have waited for. Judah comes now to the front, and manifests the highest wisdom and the greatest consideration for all parties concerned. He reminded his father that it would be only making matters worse for them if they should return to Egypt without Benjamin, since that would be interpreted by the Egyptian lord as an evidence that they had spoken untruly on their former visit, and would probably end in the imprisonment of them all along with Simeon; so that, as the result, he would have neither food nor sons, save Benjamin only. And when his father asked why they had told the great man that they had ananother brother, he defended their conduct by describing how the information had been forced out of them by the accusation that they were spies, and by the repeated interrogations of their questioner, consequent upon their statement that they were all sons of one man. There was no resisting the force of his words when he asked, "Could we certainly know that he would say, Bring your brother down?" But the power of his appeal was strengthened when with a noble spirit of self-sacrifice he offered himself as surety for the safety of Benjamin. W. M. T. 8. The lad.** The peculiar usage of the Hebrew in regard to "lad" is here to be borne in mind. Benjamin was now at least thirty years of age; and had children of his own yet he is here called "a lad," because he was the youngest of all the sons of Jacob, and, in the lack of Joseph, the favorite of his aged father. Bush. 14. God Almighty.** El Shaddai Jacob here uses that name of the Most High, by which He made Himself known to Abraham, and afterward renewed His covenant with Jacob himself. Hereby he calls to mind the promise of protection to himself and his house, as well as the power of Him who had promised. E. H. B.—God Almighty give you mercy before the man, that he may send away your other brother, and Benjamin. Yet, if God had otherwise appointed,—if He saw fit to take from him his children, his faith would rise to this also: "And I, if I am bereaved, I am bereaved?"—good is the will of the Lord, and he would bow before it. It is touching (vs. 11, 12) to watch his feeble attempts to ward off the wrath of the dreaded Egyptian. It was a famine-year, and there would be scarcity of the luxuries which were usually exported from the East to Egypt. Let them, then, take a present of such dainties to the Egyptian—"a little balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh, nuts, and almonds." As for the money which had been put back into their sacks, it might have been an oversight. Let them take it again with them, along with the price of what corn they were now to purchase. And so let them go forth in the name of the God of Israel—Benjamin, and all the rest. He would remain behind alone, as at the fords of Jabbok,—no, not alone; but in faith and patience awaiting the issue. A. E. 18. They were afraid, because they were brought into Joseph's house. The just challenges of their own consciences and Joseph's suspicions of them forbade them to expect any favor, and suggested to them that this was done with a bad design upon them. Those that are guilty and timorous are apt to make the worst of everything. H.—Their accusing consciences represented everything to them through a disheartening medium. Yet according to the prevailing custom of the East, the very fact that they had been invited to Joseph's table was in itself an encouraging circumstance. 18-26. They imagined that they were to be called in question about the money which they had found in their sacks on their return from their former visit; therefore they took the opportunity, as they were approaching the palace, to make the steward acquainted with the true state of the case. But he reassured them by telling them that he had received their money, and by bringing Simeon out to them that they might be all united once again. One cannot but marvel at the spirit manifested by this servant. He seems, indeed, to have been taken by his master into his confidence for the occasion, and the words which he uses would indicate either that Joseph had told him precisely what to say, or that he was himself, under the influence and example of Joseph, a believer in Jehovah; for thus he speaks: "Peace be to you, fear not: your God, and the God of your father, hath given you treasure in your sacks; I had your money." Surely now, therefore, they would be set at rest, for was not this an answer to their father's prayer, "God Almighty give you mercy before the man"? That impression would be deepened when they saw that the steward treated them as his master's guests, and gave them water for their feet and provender for their asses, telling them at the same time that they should eat bread there. So they got their present ready, and when Joseph came they put it into his hands and bowed themselves to the earth, thus once again fulfilling the dream of his youth. W. M. T. 26. Present.** There was still more in the incident than a proof of Jacob's wish to conciliate the lord of Egypt. The giving of costly presents was and ever has been in that quarter of the world, the usual token of homage to superiors. As this present came from Jacob by the hand of his sons, Joseph's dream might now be considered as verified, that the sun, moon, and eleven stars did obeisance to him. When his brethren bowed down themselves to the earth before him, they humbly solicited his favor for their father as well as for themselves. Bush. 27-30. Little could they imagine what thoughts passed through his mind, as in true Oriental fashion they laid out the humble presents his father had sent, and lowly "bowed themselves to him to the earth." His language ill concealed his feelings. Again and again he inquired for his father, and as they replied: "Thy servant our father is in good health; he is yet alive," they again "bowed down their heads, and made obeisance." But when he fastened his eyes on Benjamin, his own mother's son, and had faltered it out, so unlike an Egyptian: "God be gracious unto thee, my son," he was obliged hastily to withdraw, "for his bowels did yearn upon his brother." Twenty-two years had passed since he had been parted from his brother. Would they who had once sacrificed him on account of jealousy, be ready again to abandon his brother for the sake of selfishness? A. E. 29. My son.** Benjamin was only seven years younger than Joseph—therefore thirty-two years old. This term is rather the kind expression of a superior, than any allusion to Benjamin's youth. The words contain not so much a particular blessing, but an usual form of friendly salutation in the East. Geri. 33. The brothers of Joseph sat before him at the table, while according to patriarchal practice they were accustomed to recline. It appears from the sculptures that the Egyptians also were in the habit of sitting at table, although they had couches. Sofas were used for sleeping. In a painting in Rosellini each one of the guests sits upon a stool, which, in accordance with the custom, took the place of the couch. Hengs.—That the brethren of Joseph were seated according to their age must have increased the mystery which they felt hanging about their relation to him. It must have made the impression on them that the man on whom their life and happiness depended had more than human knowledge; that he could penetrate into the most intimate relations and circumstances of their family-life. 34. But the remarkable distinction bestowed on Benjamin must have appeared to them even more strange and important. In the family of his father Benjamin occupied the position of Joseph, and it was soon to appear whether the want of affection which had characterized their conduct toward Joseph would also characterize that toward Benjamin. For the circumstance that Benjamin received a fivefold portion forms quite a parallel to the peculiar dress by which the affection of his father had distinguished Joseph. At that time only envy, hatred, and vengeance had been the consequences of this distinction; it was now to appear whether the same would result in the case of Benjamin. K. The host appears to become satisfied of one thing, that his guests are no longer envious one of another. They do not murmur, though the representative of Egypt's monarchy confers especial favors upon the youngest. Ambition no longer sways their hearts as once it did. Malice has given place to kindly feelings; hatred, to love. J. S. V.—We may be sure that if they had been envious of Benjamin they would have revealed it by their remarks upon his procedure. But no such manifestation was made by them, and the feast was one of harmonious gladness, "for they drank and were merry with him." W. M. T. 1. AND he commanded the steward of his house, saying, Fill the men's sacks with food, as 2 much as they can carry, and put every man's money in his sack's mouth. And put my cup, the silver cup, in the sack's mouth of the youngest, and his corn money. And he did accord- 3 ing to the word that Joseph had spoken. As soon as the morning was light, the men were 4 sent away, they and their asses. And when they were gone out of the city, and were not yet far off, Joseph said unto his steward, Up, follow after the men; and when thou dost overtake 5 them, say unto them, Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good? Is not this it in which my 6 lord drinketh, and whereby he indeed divineth? ye have done evil in so doing. And he over- 7 took them, and he spake unto them these words. And they said unto him, Wherefore speak- 8 eth my lord such words as these? God forbid that thy servants should do such a thing. Be- hold, the money, which we found in our sacks' mouths, we brought again unto thee out of the 9 land of Canaan: how then should we steal out of thy lord's house silver or gold? With whomsoever of thy servants it be found, let him die, and we also will be my lord's bondmen. 10 And he said, Now also let it be according unto your words: he with whom it is found shall 11 be my bondman; and ye shall be blameless. Then they hastened, and took down every man 12 his sack to the ground, and opened every man his sack. And he searched, and began at the 13 eldest, and left at the youngest: and the cup was found in Benjamin's sack. Then they rent 14 their clothes, and laded every man his ass, and returned to the city. And Judah and his brethren came to Joseph's house; and he was yet there: and they fell before him on the 15 ground. And Joseph said unto them, What deed is this that ye have done? know ye not that 16 such a man as I can indeed divine? And Judah said, What shall we say unto my lord? what shall we speak? or how shall we clear ourselves? God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants: behold, we are my lord's bondmen, both we, and he also in whose hand the cup is 17 found. And he said, God forbid that I should do so: the man in whose hand the cup is found, he shall be my bondman; but as for you, get you up in peace unto your father. 18 Then Judah came near unto him, and said, Oh my lord, let thy servant, I pray thee, speak a word in my lord's ears, and let not thine anger burn against thy servant: for thou art even 19 as Pharaoh. My lord asked his servants, saying, Have ye a father, or a brother? And we 20 said unto my lord, We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one; and 21 his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother, and his father loveth him. And thou 22 saidst unto thy servants, Bring him down unto me, that I may set mine eyes upon him. And we said unto my lord, The lad cannot leave his father: for if he should leave his father, his 23 father would die. And thou saidst unto thy servants, Except your youngest brother come 24 down with you, ye shall see my face no more. And it came to pass when we came up unto 25 thy servant my father, we told him the words of my lord. And our father said, Go again, buy 26 us a little food. And we said, We cannot go down: if our youngest brother be with us, then will we go down: for we may not see the man's face, except our youngest brother be with us, 27 And thy servant my father said unto us, Ye know that my wife bare me two sons: and the 28 one went out from me, and I said, Surely he is torn in pieces; and I have not seen him 29 since : and if ye take this one also from me, and mischief befall him, ye shall bring down my 30 gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. Now therefore when I come to thy servant my father, 31 and the lad be not with us ; seeing that his life is bound up in the lad's life ; it shall come to pass, when he seeth that the lad is not with us, that he will die : and thy servants shall bring 32 down the gray hairs of thy servant our father with sorrow to the grave. For thy servant be- came surety for the lad unto my father, saying, If I bring him not unto thee, then shall I bear 33 the blame to my father for ever. Now therefore, let thy servant, I pray thee, abide instead of 34 the lad a bondman to my lord ; and let the lad go up with his brethren. For how shall I go up to my father, and the lad be not with me ? lest I see the evil that shall come on my father. 1-5. Joseph has had the satisfaction of seeing his brother Benjamin safe and well. He has heard his brothers acknowledging their guilt concerning himself. He resolves to put their attachment to Benjamin, and the genuineness of their change of disposition, to a test that will at the same time expose Benjamin to no hazard. M.—It is evidently his purpose to test the disposition of the ten toward his youngest brother and toward his father. At former interviews he had sought to awaken conscience ; now he seeks to ascertain the feelings of their hearts. Is their affection for Benjamin above the reach of envy ? their love for a father such that partiality shown to Rachel's son will no longer excite malice ? Will they cling to a brother in adversity ? Will they make sacrifices to secure his return to a doting father ? J. S. V. 5. Whereby he divineth.** Divining by cups, we learn from this, was a common custom in Egypt. It is here mentioned to enhance the value of the cup. M.—The word rendered divineth (nichesh) means to hiss like a serpent (nichash), and hence to murmur incantations. There is no proof that Joseph himself really practised this divination : the whole intent is to inspire terror into his brethren, and impress them with his supernatural character. Alf. 7-14. The charge of treachery and of theft so took the brothers by surprise, that, in their conscious innocence, they offered to surrender the life of the guilty and the liberty of all the others, if the cup were found with any of them. But the steward had been otherwise instructed. He was to isolate Benjamin from the rest. With feigned generosity he now refused their proposal, and declared his purpose only to retain the guilty as bondsman. The search was made, and the cup found in the sack of Benjamin. Now the first great trial of their feelings ensued. They were all free to go home to their own wives and children ; Benjamin alone was to be a bondsman : the cup had been found in his sack ! Granting that, despite appearances, they knew him to be innocent, why should they stand by him ? They had formerly got rid of one favorite, why hesitate now, when Providence itself seemed to rid them of another ? What need, nay, what business had they to identify themselves with him ? Was it not enough that he had been put before them everywhere ; must they now destroy their whole family, and suffer their little ones to perish for the sake of one who, to say the best, seemed fated to involve them in misery and ruin ? So they might have reasoned. But so they did not reason, nor, indeed, did they reason at all ; for in all matters of duty reasoning is ever dangerous, and only absolute, immediate obedience to what is right, is safe. "They rent their clothes, and laded every man his ass, and returned to the city." In the presence of Joseph, "they fell before him on the ground" in mute grief. A. E. The brothers, recognizing now their brotherhood, circled round Benjamin, and, to a man, resolved to go back with him to Egypt. Thus Joseph in seeking to gain one brother found eleven—for now there could be no doubt that they were very different men from those brethren who had so heartlessly sold into slavery their father's favorite—men now with really brotherly feelings, by penitence and regard for their father so wrought together into one family, that this calamity, intended to fall only on one of their number, did in falling on him fall on them all. So far from wishing now to rid themselves of Rachel's son and their father's favorite, who had been put by their father in so prominent a place in his affection, they will not even give him up to suffer what seemed the just punishment of his theft, do not even reproach him with having brought them all into disgrace and difficulty, but, as humbled men who knew they had greater sins of their own to answer for, went quietly back to Egypt, determined to see their younger brother through his misfortune or to share his bondage with him. Had these men not been thoroughly changed, thoroughly convinced that at all costs upright dealing and brotherly love should continue ; had they not possessed that first and last of Christian virtues, love to their brother, then nothing could so certainly have revealed their want of it as this apparent theft of Benjamin's. Dods. 15. Know ye not that I can divine?** This pretence of practising divination is in keeping with the whole transaction, which was a feint throughout. Joseph was supporting the character of an Egyptian of rank, and as it was known that such a person would daily consult his divining cup for the good or evil auguries of the day, the prompt detection of the alleged theft would be the more readily accounted for. Kit.—It is plain that he is merely carrying on to its final development the trial which he was making of the temper of his brethren. He put on a stern aspect, and upbraided them with a pretended crime, but it was to give them occasion to show their innocency and their repentance. Bush. 16. Judah comes to the front here; it is "Judah and his brethren" who come to Joseph's house, and Judah who makes the plea in behalf of Benjamin. The historian is careful to say again that when they met Joseph "they fell before him on the ground." He also remarks that Joseph was yet in his house, having remained there ever since the caravan left in the early morning, too full of thought on this subject to turn to any other business. Now he expects to learn how they feel toward Benjamin and toward their aged father. He must be sure they are all right on these points before he lifts the vail and shows them himself. They are brought as criminals before him. With a sternness that is not at all in his heart but in his assumed manner only, he says—What deed is this that ye have done? Were ye not aware that I have the power of positive and certain divination? Judah is in deep perplexity, but he speaks frankly. H. C.—In saying "God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants," he does not mean to plead guilty to the present charge, nor make a definite acknowledgment of any particular offence, but to say in general, that it was in consequence of former misdeeds that God had suffered them to fall into this unhappy predicament, and to express a willingness that he should punish them in this way, if he saw fit. They well knew that they had sold Joseph for a slave, and filled up many of the years of their father's life with bitter anguish, and they admit that it were a righteous thing with God to make them all slaves for crimes which their consciences charged upon them, but of which they supposed Joseph to be profoundly ignorant. Bush. 18-34. In mute despair all the brothers remain prostrate on the ground; only Judah, equally bold and humble, ventures to come near to the severe ruler of Egypt. His heart, full of love and sorrow, of repentance and grief, finds vent in speech, which, like a pent-up stream, breaks through the dam—artless and simple, but impressive and convincing, eloquent and irresistible, as scarce speech had ever flowed from man's lips. The vividness of his description is inimitable. Rapidly he relates the state of matters; he describes the attachment with which his father cleaves to the youth, the anxious care with which he had dismissed him, and the wretchedness through which, in consequence of his loss, his gray hairs would go down to the grave with sorrow. Then he adds that himself had become surety for the lad, and entreats to allow him to remain as slave in his room. Kit. We can imagine nothing more perfect than this address of Judah for the object of overpowering the sensibilities of him to whom it was spoken. In simplicity and touching pathos it excels every composition I ever met; nor can I figure a combination of traits and circumstances more fitted to tell on the heart of Joseph, and to operate as a fit precursor for the emotions which he could no longer repress. The most effective of these references were to his father, an old man; and the child of his old age; and the death of the brother, and the love borne by Jacob to the only surviving child of his mother, now taken from them. Then there was Jacob's conjecture of him who was torn in pieces, and his saying, that if the other should be taken from him, his gray hairs would be brought with sorrow to the grave. The expression of these things is varied in the course of the address, but so as to give additional intensity and power to the representation: such as Jacob's life being bound up in the lad's life; and Judah's entreaty to be detained instead of Benjamin—for he could not look on the evil that was to come upon his father. No wonder that Joseph, unable longer to contain himself, should burst forth into a flood of tenderness at the time he did. Estimated as a mere literary composition, we can see nothing to equal this in any of the greatest masters of eloquence and poetry. Chalmers. Kalisch justly calls this pleading speech of Judah's "one of the masterpieces of Hebrew composition." Its beauty mainly consists in the simple and pathetic statement of facts. Luther says, "I would that I could pray so well to our Lord God, as Judah prays here to Joseph, for it is a perfect example of prayer and of the earnestness which should be in prayer." Aif. had taken place, and without a strong guard both on their hearts and their lips they would be in danger of conceiving mutual resentments, hurtful to their comfort and their peace. If he had forgiven them all, it was highly rea- sonable that they should forgive one another. Joseph therefore was a peacemaker both by pre- cept and example. Bush. When one sees such passages related by men who affect no art, and who lived long after the parties who first uttered them, we cannot conceive how all particulars could be so naturally and fully recorded unless they had been suggested by his Spirit who gives mouths and speech unto men; who, being alike present to all successions, is able to communicate the secret thoughts of forefathers to their children, and put the very words, never registered before, into the mouths or pens of their successors for many ages after, and that exactly, and distinctly. For it is plain, that every circumstance is here related with such natural specifications as if Moses heard them talk. Jackson. 32. Judah, in honor to the justice of Joseph's sentence, and to show his sincerity in this plea, offers himself to become a bondman instead of Benjamin. Thus the law would be satisfied: Joseph would be no loser; and Jacob would better bear the loss of him than of Benjamin. Now, so far was he from grieving at his father's particular fondness for Benjamin, that he is himself willing to be a bondman, to indulge it. Judah's faithful adherence to Benjamin, now in his distress, was recompensed long after by the constant adherence of the tribe of Benjamin to the tribe of Judah, when all the other ten tribes had deserted it. H.—As Judah spoke, so the rest felt. They could not bring themselves to inflict a new sorrow on their aged father: neither could they bear to leave their young brother in the hands of strangers. There is now discernible a common feeling that binds them together, and a common object for which they willingly sacrifice themselves. They are, therefore, now prepared to pass into that higher school to which God called them in Egypt. Dods. 1. THEN Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. And he wept aloud: and the Egyptians heard, and the house of Pharaoh heard. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence. And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. And now be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life. For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and there are yet five years, in the which there shall be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve you a remnant in the earth, and to save you alive by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not; and thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy children's children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast: and there will I nourish thee; for there are yet five years of famine; lest thou come to poverty, thou, and thy household, and all that thou hast. And, behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin, that it is my mouth that speaketh unto you. And ye shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that ye have seen; and ye shall haste and bring down my father hither. And he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck, and wept; and Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them: and after that his brethren talked with him. 16. And the fame thereof was heard in Pharaoh's house, saying, Joseph's brethren are come: 17 and it pleased Pharaoh well, and his servants. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say unto thy 18 brethren, This do ye; lade your beasts, and go, get you unto the land of Canaan; and take your father and your households, and come unto me: and I will give you the good of the land 19 of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land. Now thou art commanded, this do ye; take you wagons out of the land of Egypt for your little ones, and for your wives, and bring your 20 father, and come. Also regard not your stuff; for the good of all the land of Egypt is yours. 21 And the sons of Israel did so: and Joseph gave them wagons, according to the commandment 22 of Pharaoh, and gave them provision for the way. To all of them he gave each man changes of raiment; but to Benjamin he gave three hundred pieces of silver, and five changes of rai- 23 ment. And to his father he sent after this manner; ten asses laden with the good things of 24 Egypt, and ten she-asses laden with corn and bread and victual for his father by the way. So he sent his brethren away, and they departed: and he said unto them, See that ye fall not out by the way. 1. The pleading of Judah has conquered, not the determination of Joseph, which had no real existence, but his power of repressing his feelings. But he will not have the Egyptians know the details of his brethren's crime and his own secret history. Alf. Joseph could not refrain himself. The repentance of his brothers and their attachment to Benjamin have been demonstrated in the most satisfactory manner. This is all that Joseph sought. It is evident throughout the whole narrative, that he never aimed at exercising any supremacy over his brothers. As soon as he has obtained an affecting proof of the right disposition of his brothers, he conceals himself no longer. Judah has painted the scene at home to the life; and Joseph can hold out no longer. M.—Joseph could no longer constrain himself to act a feigned part—all the brother and the son rose up in him at once; he felt for his father—he realized his disappointment and agony, and he felt for his brethren; and, that he might give free and full scope to his feelings, he ordered all his attendants to go out, while he made himself known to his brethren. 3-8. The speech of Joseph to his brethren is inferior only to that of Judah, in the preceding chapter. He saw that his brethren were confounded at his presence—that they were struck with his present power—and that they keenly remembered, and deeply deplored, their own guilt. How delicate and finely wrought is the apology he makes for them! the whole heart of the pious and affectionate brother is at once seen in it—art is confounded, and swallowed up by nature—“Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves—it was not you that sent me hither, but God.” What he says also concerning his father, shows the warmest feelings of a filial heart. Indeed, the whole chapter is a masterpiece of composition; and it is the more imimpressive, because it is evidently a simp'e relation of facts just as they occurred: for no attempt is made to heighten the effect, by rhetorical coloring, or philosophical reflections; it is all simple, sheer nature from beginning to end. It is a history that has no fellow, crowded with incidents as probable as they are true; where every passion is called into action, and where every one acts up to its own character. A. C. The proof of their love to their aged father and to Benjamin is unmistakable; Joseph is satisfied. They are penitent for their long past crime against him, and he can therefore at length break the secret and show himself their long-lost brother! How do their ears tingle as they hear him say—“I am Joseph: Doth my father yet live?” The first shock is almost stunning: they cannot answer him, for they are troubled at his presence. More kind words and the kindest possible manner are now in place. “Joseph said to his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you; and they came near.” Again he says—“I am Joseph, your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt.” Then with a turn which evinces the exquisite tenderness of his heart, he begs them “not to be grieved nor angry with themselves;” but to think rather of the design of God in permitting and providentially shaping this wonderful series of events. “God did send me before you to preserve life. There are five more years of famine yet to come; God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God.” The best thing he could say under just those circumstances to soothe their minds and assure them of his full forgiveness. H. C. Never any word sounded so strangely as this in the ears of the patriarchs. Wonder, doubt, reverence, joy, fear, hope, guiltiness, struck them at once. It was time for Joseph to say, "Fear not :" no marvel if they stood with paleness and silence before him ; looking on him, and on each other : the more they considered, they wondered more ; and the more they believed, the more they feared : for those words, "I am Joseph," seemed to sound thus much to their guilty thoughts ; "You are murderers, and I am a prince in spite of you : my power and this place give me all opportunities of revenge ; my glory is your shame, my life your danger ; your sin lives together with me." But now the tears and gracious words of Joseph assure them of pardon and love. Bp. II. A less delicate mind would have talked of forgiving them ; but he entreats them to forgive themselves, as though his forgiveness was not in question. They were not to consider their crime too great to be forgiven, either by that God or that brother whom they had offended. Indeed his main object seems now to be to bring them to eye the hand of an overruling providence in all that had happened, so as to be reconciled to the event, though they might weep in secret for the part which they had acted. Bush. 5-8. It might have been an injudicious speech to impenitent men ; but no further view of sin can lighten its heinousness to a really penitent sinner. Prove to him that his sin has become the means of untold good, and you only humble him the more, and more deeply convince him that while he was recklessly gratifying himself and sacrificing others for his own pleasure, God has been mindful of others, and, pardoning him, has blessed them. God does not need our sins to work out His good intentions, but we give Him little other material ; and the discovery that through our evil purposes and injurious deeds God has worked out His beneficent will, is certainly not calculated to make us think more lightly of our sin or more highly of ourselves. Joseph in thus addressing his brethren did, in fact, but add to their feelings the tenderness that is in all religious conviction, and that springs out of the consciousness that in all our sin there has been with us a holy and loving Father, mindful of His children. This is the final stage of penitence. The knowledge that God has prevented our sin from doing the harm it might have done, does relieve the bitterness and despair with which we view our life, but at the same time it strengthens the most effectual bulwark between us and sin—love to a holy, overruling God. Dods. When a man is truly penitent, and seems almost paralyzed by the perception of his guilt, to show him that God has brought good out of his evil will exalt God's grace and wisdom in his eyes, and lead him more implicitly to cling to him. It is a comforting thought, that while we cannot undo the sin, God has kept it from undoing us, and has overruled it for greater good to ourselves and greater blessing to others than, perhaps, might otherwise have been attained. We can never be as we were before we committed it. Always there will be some sadness in our hearts and lives connected with it, and springing out of it. But still, if we really repent of it and return to God, there may come to us "meat out of the eater, and sweet out of the bitter." It may give us sympathy with others, and fit us for being helpful to others, so that, though we may be sadly conscious of the evil of our course, we may yet see that through it all God was preparing us for the saving of those who, humanly speaking, but for our instrumentality would have gone down to perdition. But mark the condition—if we truly repent. There is no comfort otherwise. W. M. T. 7. On every word here a strong emphasis may be laid. It is not you, but God—it is not you that sold me, but God who sent me—Egypt and Canaan must both have perished, had not a merciful provision been made—you were come down hither, and God sent me before you—sent me here to preserve life. A. C.—To save you alive. God's Israel is the particular care of God's providence. Joseph reckoned that his advancement was designed, not so much to save a whole kingdom of Egyptians, as to preserve a small family of Israelites : for the Lord's portion is his people ; whatever goes with others, they shall be secured. Providence looks a great way forward, and has a long reach ; even long before the years of plenty, Providence was preparing for the supply of Jacob's house in the years of famine. The psalmist praises God for this (105 : 17), He sent a man before them, even Joseph. God sees his work from the beginning to the end, but we do not. H. So far as his brethren were concerned, their machinations were malignant ; yet were they all threads in that wonderful web of Providence which was partially unfolded in the four hundred years' captivity, and more fully in the fortunes of the Jewish nation, and the plan of redemption. J. W. A.—Joseph's career is just predestination made familiar, and the Providence of God made palpable. It burns and shines with present Deity, and while it says to the sinner, Be sure your sins will find you out, and tells that what man means for evil God manages for good, it also proclaims—"The counsel of the Lord standeth forever." Hamilton. 8. He hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord and ruler.** You might have fancied that these words would have been uttered first. The dignity seemed so much the greater to be lord over a great kingdom, than to preserve a little Palestine family. But it could not be greater in the mind of Joseph; his human affections made the support of that little family a dearer object to him than Pharaoh and all Egypt. And his affections did not give out a false note, they responded to God's own teaching and inspiration; the support of that family was not only a higher and nearer duty to himself, it was a mightier service to mankind. He was maintaining, so he believed, a seed in which all families of the earth were to be blessed; a witness for the divine order upon earth; a witness against all contradictions and subversions of that order. But though this obligation was first, it did not exclude the other. His glory in Egypt had not been sought for by himself, it had been thrust upon him. God, who had sent him to save his own family by a great deliverance, had surely just as much proposed that he should be a father to Pharaoh and a lord of his land. So Joseph judged; on that faith he acted. Maurice.—It was God that brought him to the knowledge of Pharaoh, and gave him favor in his sight. It was God that exalted him, and endowed him with knowledge, and wisdom, and authority, to be an eminent benefactor to Pharaoh and his kingdom. He looked beyond his brethren to God when he thought upon his affections, and beyond Pharaoh to God when he thought of his exaltation. Thus he bears his affliction with meekness and his elevation with humility. Bush. 9. There is one quality which runs like a thread through Joseph's whole history, his affection for his father. When his brethren first came before him, his question was, "Is your father yet alive?" Again the question was, "Is your father well, the old man of whom ye spake, is he yet alive?" Afterward Judah came near unto him, and entreated him for his brother, telling him how that he had been "surety to his father" to bring him back, how that "his father was an old man," and that this was the "child of his old age, and that he loved him,"—how it would come to pass that if he should not see the lad with him he would die, and his gray hairs be brought with sorrow to the grave; for "how shall I go to my father, and the lad be not with me?—lest, peradventure, I see the evil that shall come on my father." Then Joseph's firmness forsook him—he could not refrain himself any longer, and made himself known to his brethren. Then, even in the paroxysm which came on him (for he wept aloud so that the Egyptians heard), still his first words uttered from the fulness of his heart were, "Doth my father yet live?" He now bids them hasten and bring the old man down, bearing to him tokens of his love and tidings of his glory. He goes to meet him—he presents himself unto him, and falls on his neck and weeps on his neck a good while—he provides for him and his household out of the fat of the land—he sets him before Pharaoh. By and by he hears that he is sick, and hastens to visit him—he receives his blessing—watches his death-bed. And afterward it is the father's memory which his brethren count upon and appeal to, in, their fear lest Joseph should requite to them the evil they had done. Brunt. 14,15. After sending a warm request to Jacob to come and see all his glory in Egypt, he turned to Benjamin, and fell upon his neck and wept. "Moreover, he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them, and after that his brethren talked with him." How natural it all is! How exquisitely told! and how remarkable that there should be no effort on the part of the narrator to describe the surprise of the brothers at the unexpected revelation, or to recount the conversation which followed on the reconciliation! W. M. T.—The narrative contains no evidence that there was any recital of past wrongs. They had been many, and had left arrows of anguish within the soul. But they are left unrecounted. Their rehearsal could effect no good. The past is irreparable. Let the waters of oblivion bury the crimes and their consequences; conscience has done its work, and now human intermeddling may do more injury than good. J. S. V. 24. See that ye fall not out by the way.** Chaldee: Do not contend. The brothers were in effect forbidden to accuse each other with respect to the past. Joseph had seen the violent agitation of their minds, both when they were put in prison, and when he made himself known to them. He had already heard from Reuben some severe reflections on his brethren, and he was afraid lest they should either feel more uneasiness than he wished them to do, or exasperate one another by reflections on their former conduct. In the course of their long journey their conversation would turn naturally on the remarkable events that 45 : 25 And they went up out of Egypt, and came into the land of Canaan unto Jacob their 26 father. And they told him, saying, Joseph is yet alive, and he is ruler over all the land 27 of Egypt. And his heart fainted, for he believed them not. And they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said unto them : and when he saw the wagons which 28 Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived : and Israel said, It is enough ; Joseph my son is yet alive : I will go and see him before I die. 46 : 1 And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beer-sheba, and offered 2 sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac. And God spake unto Israel in the visions of 3 the night, and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here am I. And he said, I am God, the God of thy father : fear not to go down into Egypt ; for I will there make of thee a great 4 nation : I will go down with thee into Egypt ; and I will also surely bring thee up again : 5 and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes. And Jacob rose up from Beer sheba : and the sons of Israel carried Jacob their father, and their little ones, and their wives, 6 in the wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him. And they took their cattle, and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob, 7 and all his seed with him : his sons, and his sons' sons with him, his daughters, and his sons' daughters, and all his seed brought he with him into Egypt. 8. And these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt, Jacob and 9 his sons : Reuben, Jacob's firstborn. And the sons of Reuben : Hanoch, and Pallu, and 10 Hezron, and Carmi. And the sons of Simeon ; Jemuel, and Jamin, and Ohad, and 11 Jachin, and Zohar, and Shaul the son of a Canaanitish woman. And the sons of Levi ; 12 Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. And the sons of Judah ; Er, and Onan, and Shelah, and Perez, and Zerah : but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. And the sons of Perez 13 were Hezron and Hamul. And the sons of Issachar ; Tola, and Puvah, and Iob, and 14 Shimron. And the sons of Zebulun ; Sered, and Elon, and Jahleel. These are the sons 15 of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob in Paddan-aram, with his daughter Dinah : all the 16 souls of his sons and his daughters were thirty and three. And the sons of Gad ; Ziphion, 17 and Haggi, Shuni, and Ezbon, Eri, and Arodi, and Arel. And the sons of Asher ; Imnah, and Ishvah, and Ishvi, and Beriah, and Serah their sister : and the sons of 18 Beriah ; Heber, and Malchiel. These are the sons of Zilpah, which Laban gave to Leah 19 his daughter, and these she bare unto Jacob, even sixteen souls. The sons of Rachel 20 Jacob's wife ; Joseph and Benjamin. And unto Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim, which Asenath the daughter of Poti-phera priest of On bare unto 21 him. And the sons of Benjamin ; Bela, and Becher, and Ashbel, Gera, and Naaman, 22 Ehi, and Rosh, Muppim, and Huppim, and Ard. These are the sons of Rachel, which 23 were born to Jacob : all the souls were fourteen. And the sons of Dan ; Hushim. And 24 the sons of Naphtali ; Jahzeel, and Guni, and Jezer, and Shillem. These are the sons of 25 Bilhah, which Laban gave unto Rachel his daughter, and these she bare unto Jacob : all 26 the souls were seven. All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of 27 his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the souls were threescore and six; and the sons of Joseph, which were born to him in Egypt, were two souls: all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten. 45 : 25-28. Two things his sons told him; that Joseph was alive, and that he was governor of Egypt. But for Joseph's glory and dominion Jacob does not rejoice as one greatly affected with it. It was his life that gave him the joy: he said, "It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive." Bp. Kidder. Ch. 43. The removal of the chosen family to Egypt was an essential part of the great plan which God had traced out to their father Abraham. The promise had now been given two hundred years, and they had neither possessions nor family alliances in the promised land. But they would soon have sought for both; and the character already manifested by Jacob's sons augured ill for their preserving either purity or piety amid the Canaanites. Their present relation to Canaan must be broken off, that it might be formed anew in due time. They must be placed among a people with whom they could not mix, but from whom they might learn the arts of civilization and industry; and there, under the discipline of affliction, the family must be consolidated into a nation. P. 8.—The promise God made to Abraham, to give his posterity the land of Canaan, could not be performed till that family was grown strong enough to take and keep possession of it. In the mean time they were necessitated to reside among idolaters, and to reside unmixed; but whoever examines their history will see that the Israelites had ever a violent propensity to join themselves to Gentile nations, and practise their manners. God, therefore, in his infinite wisdom, brought them into Egypt, and kept them there during this period, the only place where they could remain for so long a time safe and unconfounded with the natives, the ancient Egyptians being by numerous institutions forbidden all fellowship with strangers; and bearing a particular aversion to the profession of the Israelites, who were shepherds. Thus the natural dispositions of the Israelites, which in Egypt occasioned their superstitions and in consequence the necessity of a burdensome ritual, would in any other country have absorbed them into gentilism, and confounded them with idolaters. From the Israelites going into Egypt arises a new occasion to adore the footsteps of Eternal Wisdom, in his dispensations to his chosen people. Warburton.—In Egypt they could become a great nation without any difficulties or obstructions, and without the least interference with their national and religious peculiarities. Such was the fertility and extent of Goshen that there was no occasion for them to be scattered, and no inducement to the members of particular tribes to separate from the general body. There was no fear of their mixing with the Egyptians and giving up their national and religious integrity. As Goshen was just as well fitted for agriculture as it was for grazing, it naturally induced them to combine the pursuits of farming, gardening, and vine-growing with those of their earlier nomad life, and thus fostered a taste for that mode of life, which was afterward to form an essential part of their national existence. In the midst of the science, civilization, and industry of Egypt, Israel was in the best school for that general culture, which they would afterward require. K.—Egypt was the seat of the strongest worldly power, and therefore furnished the best instrumentality for the infliction of such severe sufferings as would awaken in the minds of the Israelites a longing for deliverance and a readiness to submit to their God; while, at the same time, it offered a splendid field for the manifestation of the power and justice and mercy of the God of Israel in the rescue of his people and the judgment of their enemies. Henga.—These two elements are expressly mentioned in the revelation which was made by God to Abraham (ch. 15 : 13-16). Thus Israel obtained the character of a redeemed people, which was of such great importance in its future destiny, and Jehovah then showed himself to be, what he was to continue to be in a constantly increasing degree, the Redeemer in Israel. K. 46 : 1. Jacob journeys from Hebron 25 miles south-west to Beersheba. This place had become memorable by the sojournings there of Abraham and Isaac, and himself also, and by the many testimonies there received of the favor and protection of their covenant God. This therefore he selects as the place for the offering up of his solemn sacrifices, a place lying on the borders of that land of promise which he was now leaving forever, and where so many familiar objects and sacred recollections would aid the devout sentiments of his heart. In his approaches to God he did not forget to avail himself of the covenant made with his fathers and of the promises already on record. 3. I am God, the God of thy father.** As such the patriarch sought Jehovah, and as such he found him. He well knew that Isaac had ever found God faithful to all his gracious engagements, and nothing would yield him stronger consolation than to be assured that the same loving-kin-ness and truth would be extended to him also. This language, accordingly, was a virtual renewal of the covenant of Abraham, and would leave nothing to be desired on the score of assurance. Bush. Fear not to go down into Egypt. On several accounts Jacob might fear to go, with his whole family especially, into Egypt. Abraham had been injured there; it had been foretold that his seed should be afflicted by the Egyptians: Isaac had been warned not to go into Egypt; the Egyptians were men of very different usages and manners from the Hebrews: they were also of a different religion, and Jacob besides might fear lest by this means his posterity should be deprived of the land of Canaan. Bp. Kibler.—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob had all been placed and settled in Canaan with a promise that they should in future possess the land. Moreover, Egypt was, not only a heathen land, but one in which heathenism was specially developed and systematized. Jacob might therefore naturally fear to find in it dangers both worldly and spiritual. Hence the promise of God's presence and protection was signally needed. E. H. B. 3,4. Every doubt is dispelled by this divine manifestation. He may go down confidently, no evil shall befall him. Even in Egypt the covenant shall be fulfilled—God will make of him there a great nation. God himself will accompany him on his journey, be with him in the strange land, and even bring back his bones to rest with those of his fathers. He shall see Joseph, and this same beloved son shall be with him in his last hours, and do the last kind office for him: Joseph shall put his hands upon thy eyes. A. C.—Such a promise was not only an assurance, that God in love to him would order the circumstances of his latter end to his own satisfaction, but that he and Joseph should not be again separated. Long had this dear son been lost to him, though still alive, but now he learns that Joseph is to survive him, and that he should enjoy his society till death. Bush. In Beersheba the patriarch offered "sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac," and there the faithful Lord spake to him "in the visions of the night." His words gave Jacob this fourfold assurance, that God was the covenant-God, and that Jacob need not fear to go down into Egypt; that God would there make of him a great nation, in other words, that the transformation from the family to the nation should take place in Egypt; that God would go down with him; and, lastly, that he would surely bring him up again. And each of these four assurances was introduced by an emphatic I, to indicate the personal and direct source of all these blessings. Thus strengthened, Israel pursued his journey in confidence of spirit. A. E. 8-25. This document is one that would be of the highest importance to the Israelites when taking possession of Canaan, being, as it were, their title-deed to the land. Accordingly we find that it is drawn up in legal manner, representing as sons some who were really grandsons, but who took as heads of families the place usually held by sons. We next find that it represents them all as born in Canaan, not in a natural sense, but as the rightful heirs of the country. Technically every head of a family was born in Canaan, and thus the danger was obviated of an objection to the possession of this rank being accorded to one born in Egypt. R. P. S. 27. All the souls which came into Egypt were threescore and ten.** There is a remarkable difference between this verse and the foregoing; there those only are numbered who came with Jacob into Egypt, amounting to no more than threescore and six; but here are numbered all that came into Egypt, first and last, comprehending Jacob, Joseph, and his two sons, and making up threescore and ten. Bp. Patrick.—The whole account of Jacob's sons and grandsons, who went along with him into Egypt, stands thus: by Leah, thirty-two; by Zilpah, sixteen; by Rachel, eleven; by Bilhah, seven; in all sixty-six, exclusive of Jacob himself, and of Joseph and his two sons, which make up the seventy; and it was necessary that these genealogies should be exactly registered, not only to distinguish each tribe, and thereby discover the Messiah, when he came; but (as it is in the case before us) to make it apparent, that the increase of Israel, even under oppression, should bear a fair proportion to the promise made to Abraham, concerning the multiplication of his seed. Sackhouse. At Acts 7:14, they are said by Stephen, following the Septuagint, to have been in number seventy-five souls, because there, from 1 Chron. 7:14, the five sons of Manasseh and Ephraim are comprehended. The great Old Testament people sprang from twelve sons and seventy souls; the New Testament people from twelve apostles and seventy disciples. C. G. B. [Yet another solution.] In this statement the wives of Jacob's sons, who formed part of the household, are omitted; but they amounted to nine; for of the twelve wives of the twelve sons of Jacob, Judah's wife was dead, and Simeon's also, as we may collect from his youngest son Shaul by a Canaanites (ver. 10), and Joseph's wife was already in Egypt. These nine wives therefore, added to the sixty-six, give seventy-five souls, the whole amount of Jacob's household that went down with him into Egypt; critically corresponding with the statement in the New Testament, that "Joseph sent for his father Jacob and all his kindred, amounting to seventy-five souls." Hales. God's special revelations in the three successive dispensations through which He has guided His Church. First was the Period of Patriarchs, of which we have the description and history in the Book of Genesis. It was adapted to the childhood of the race; but when the time came for it to give place to a written Law, and an established Ritual, not everything in it was abolished. The grand central doctrine of one God, the duty of religious obedience, the paternal Providence that leads men out and in all their days, the prophetic appointment of sacrifices pointing forward to the Cross of Christ, the promise of the Messiah at the Garden of Eden, the institution of the Sabbath when God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, the justifying faith of Abraham who believed and trusted God so that it was counted to him for righteousness, the covenant by which children are bound up in the same family blessing of Faith with their parents,—all these you find in that Book of Genesis, and in that first Biblical dispensation. Were they abolished when Moses came, with the Tables of the Law in his hands at Mount Sinai? Not one of them. Very much in that Mosaic age was new,—statutes, tabernacles, ordinances, and one national seat of the national worship. But much more was old than new,—and of every one of those "old things" just mentioned there remains some memorial and some hereditary power even now in our third and Christian age,—Christ promising, even of its final consummation, that His spiritual followers shall be privileged to sit down in the new kingdom above with the old believers and patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There is a sublime and majestic unity in these revelations. Moses is, in turn, superseded by Christ; the Law by grace and truth; Jerusalem by the Church universal. The three dispensations of Holy Scripture are one, because within them all is the everlasting Christ, "the same yesterday, to-day and forever." F. D. H. We certainly possess among the recovered tablets of Chaldea, original inscriptions as old as the presumed date of Abram's migration (somewhere about R.C. 2000), as well as later Assyrian translations made from Chaldean originals which must once have existed. There is, therefore, no inherent improbability in the conjecture that the emigrant carried with him from Ur, if not written documents in the shape of clay tablets, at least a knowledge of letters and the power to use them for literary purposes. So that the use of letters may have been imported into Canaan by the family of Abraham, although in his negotiations with the native tribes, under and more primitive methods had to be resorted to for recording transactions. Assuming, however, that the incidents of patriarchal life, which have been preserved to us in the Book of Genesis, had to be, in the first place, handed down by oral tradition alone, it is still possible to see how they might descend to a more literary age with no material change even in their form, and no change at all in their substance. Such a natural transmission of family narratives is, of course, by no means necessary to sustain the faith of those who, on quite other evidence, have received the book as part of a divine revelation. It is, however, of great value to the scientific student of Scripture; while even the uninquiring believer, who knows how sparing of needless miracle the divine procedure has always been, may find satisfaction in seeing that the history of the patriarchs might easily come into the hands of Moses in the shape of written memoirs pour servir, without calling for any supernatural communication of them to his mind. The total period covered by three lives from the birth of Abraham to the death of Jacob is 315 years. But the three lives overlap each other very thoroughly. Isaac was seventy-five when he lost his father—the sole original witness to all the events which preceded (let us say) his own offering up on Mount Moriah. During these seventy-five years the son had been without interruption his father's companion; so that long before the elder passed away, all that he had to tell of his memorable life experiences became, past all risk of being forgotten, the possession of the younger man. The events actually recorded are precisely those which it is most certain Abraham would repeat over and over again to his son. His call and emigration; his successive revelations from heaven; the raid of the Elamites and the fall of Sodom; the covenant with God and the rite of circumcision; these were things on which both the instincts of an old man and the duty he owed posterity would lead him to dwell with unwearied repetition. Oft-repeated tales tend to become fixed even in their details and modes of expression; and there is no reason to doubt that when Abraham died, Isaac remained as accurate and safe a repository for the sacred history as even the original actor and spectator in it all had been. Isaac's son only outlived him by some five-and-twenty years. For the first fifteen years of his life, Jacob was brought up on Abraham's knees. For the first seventy-eight years he kept his father company; so that he carried with him into exile in Haran a middle-aged man's full knowledge of all that his father knew. Besides that, he returned again to reside with his aged father, some twenty years or so before the death of the latter. Again, therefore, in the ripeness of age, with his interest in the revelations of his house quickened now through his own personal experience and acknowledged position as the heir of promise, Jacob enjoyed the amplest opportunity for thoroughly mastering the story as Abraham had taught it to Isaac. Of his own personal adventures, Jacob was of course a witness at first hand; and it is noticeable that after he enters on the scene as an actor (at the opening of chapter 27), the narrative becomes very much more ample and discursive. No longer confined to the most essential and memorable incidents, it ranges over a wider area, and enters into a crowd of subordinate details. At the age of one hundred and thirty, therefore, when Jacob entered Egypt, he carried down to that land of literature the entire stock of tradition which had come to him from grandfather and from father, augmented by those fresh reminiscences which he himself had gathered. In Egypt he spent seventeen more years, in close and affectionate intercourse with a son whose devout intelligence was very capable of measuring the importance to future generations of his tribe of all this sacred lore now treasured up in one old man's memory; and very well qualified, had he so pleased, to find for it a secure literary record. It is impossible, of course, to prove that Joseph or any other of his family caused to be committed to written documents the traditions of his house, as it is impossible to prove that such documents came into the hands of Moses. But we are now, at any rate, on the firm ground of a literary land, where such a preservation of the narrative was, to say the least, possible. Joseph was a member of the priestly college at On, the most famous seat of Egyptian learning. He possessed every facility, not only for having the story written, but even for securing it a place in the government archives; where Moses, centuries after, had by an equally singular providence no less facility and motive for disintering it. Or, for aught we know, some written form of the family tradition may even have been current among the Beni-Israel from the days of the Hebrew Vizier to the days of the Hebrew Foundling-Prince. It is sufficient to indicate by what a natural succession of circumstances the most minute facts recorded of Abraham might find a written record after an interval of only one hundred and fifteen years (from his death till the removal to Egypt), that interval being bridged by the single life of Jacob. Dykes. 46 : 28 And he sent Judah before him unto Joseph, to shew the way before him unto Goshen; 29 and they came into the land of Goshen. And Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen; and he presented himself unto him, and fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. And Israel said unto Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, that thou art yet alive. And Joseph said unto his brethren, and unto his father's house, I will go up, and tell Pharaoh, and will say unto him, My brethren, and my father's house, which were in the land of Canaan, are come unto me; 32 and the men are shepherds, for they have been keepers of cattle; and they have brought their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have. And it shall come to pass, when Pharaoh shall call you, and shall say, What is your occupation? that ye shall say, Thy servants have been keepers of cattle from our youth even until now, both we, and our fathers: that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.47 : 1 Then Joseph went in and told Pharaoh, and said, My father and my brethren, and their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have, are come out of the land of Canaan; and, 2 behold, they are in the land of Goshen. And from among his brethren he took five men, 3 and presented them unto Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto his brethren, What is your occupation? And they said unto Pharaoh, Thy servants are shepherds, both we, and our 4 fathers. And they said unto Pharaoh, To sojourn in the land are we come; for there is no pasture for thy servants' flocks; for the famine is sore in the land of Canaan: now 5 therefore, we pray thee, let thy servants dwell in the land of Goshen. And Pharaoh 6 spake unto Joseph, saying, Thy father and thy brethren are come unto thee: the land of Egypt is before thee; in the best of the land make thy father and thy brethren to dwell; in the land of Goshen let them dwell; and if thou knowest any able men among 7 them, then make them rulers over my cattle. And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, 8 and set him before Pharaoh: and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, 9 How many are the days of the years of thy life? And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained unto the days of the years of 10 the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and 11 went out from the presence of Pharaoh. And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of 12 Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded. And Joseph nourished his father, and his brethren, and all his father's household, with bread, according to their families. The connection of Egypt with Scripture history is long and intimate. Abraham and Sarah visited it in a time of famine about two hundred years before Jacob came into it; and even then it was evidently in a state of high civilization. The long residence of the Israelites in it, after Joseph brought them to its fertile plains, made it in a sense their native land. Their intercourse with Egypt was suspended for a long time after the Exodus, but was resumed under Solomon and Jeroboam. In after years, the kings of Egypt frequently attacked or passed through Palestine: on one of these occasions king Josiah was slain. During the struggles of Nebuchadnezzar, a body of Jews courted the favor of the king of Egypt, and, in spite of all the efforts of Jeremiah, went to dwell in it when Jerusalem was destroyed. W. G. B. From the same valley of the Nile, whence flowed the culture of Greece, was to flow also the religion of Palestine. That same land of ancient learning, which in the schools of Alexandria was, ages afterward, the first settled home and shelter of the wandering Christian Church, was also the first settled home and shelter of the wandering Jewish nation. Egypt was the meeting-point, geographically and historically, of the three continents of the ancient world. It could not but bear its part in the nurture of that people which was itself to influence and guide them all. A. P. S. 28. Into the land of Goshen.** The "land of Goshen," also called Goshen simply, appears to have borne another name, "the land of Rameses" (47: 11). It was between Joseph's residence at the time and the frontier of Palestine, and apparently the extreme province toward that frontier. Gen. 46: 33, 34, shows that Goshen was scarcely regarded as a part of Egypt Proper, and was not peopled by Egyptians, — characteristics that would positively indicate a frontier province. Goshen was a pastoral country, where some of Pharaoh's cattle were kept. From Ex 13: 17, 18, we infer that the land of Goshen must have in part been near the eastern side of the ancient Delta, Rameses lying within the valley now called the Wádiá-Tamykát, about 30 miles in a direct course from the ancient western shore of the Arabian Gulf. P. S. We gather from the Bible that the "land of Goshen," or, as it is sometimes called, "the land of Rameses," was in the eastern portion of the Delta, as it is nowhere stated that the Israelites crossed the Nile at the time of the exodus; that it was a frontier province not far from the residence of the Pharaoh of Joseph, either Memphis or Zoan; that it was between that place and Palestine; and that it was a pastoral country, in which Pharaoh's own cattle were pastured, in "the best of the land." Wilson. —The land of Goshen, in which, or which was, "the land of Rameses" (47: 11), is fairly well identified. The various references to it in the Bible text and on the Egyptian monuments, as well as later historical data, all go to fix it as including the Wady Toomilát (which sweeps from above Cairo, northerly and easterly toward Lakes Timsáh and Ballah), together with more or less of the country on either side of that Wady. Ebers outlines this region graphically, when he says: "As far as it is possible to fix its ancient limitations, it exhibits the form of a cornucopia, bounded toward the east, at the widest end or opening of the cornucopia, by the water-way [the series of lakes through which runs the Suez Canal] that divides Africa from Asia. The fresh-water canal which already existed at the time of the sojourn of the Jews in Egypt, and which was reopened by M de Les-seps, washes its southern frontier; the lake of Mensaleh lies to the north of it, and to the west the Tanitic arm of the Nile—which has now dwindled to a narrow water-course.” There are many who would not carry the Goshen district west of the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, but who would extend it southward somewhat below the fresh-water canal. Apart from these differences the boundaries indicated by Ebers would be generally accepted among scholars. Trambull. The ancients knew and made mention of seven branches and mouths of the Nile along the Southern Mediterranean coast, between the present Alexandria on the west and Port Said at the mouth of the Suez Canal on the east. Thus, beginning at Alexandria and travelling eastward toward Southern Palestine, the traveller would pass, in the time of Moses, seven bayous (as we would call them) and seven mouths of the Nile. First—The Caosopic arm or bayou, which is now partly merged into the canal of Alexandria, and partly is lost in the Lake Elko. Second—The Bolbatine, or R-setta. Third—The Schennytic probably running into Lake Burlos. Fourth—The Bucolic or Phatnitic, at Damietta. Fifth—The Mendesian, emptying into Lake Mensaleh. Sixth—The Tanitic, running into the eastern portion of Lake Mensaleh. Seventh—The Pelusiac, emptying at the Eastern mouth of Lake Mensaleh, and not far west of the present Port Said and Suez Canal. This last arm of the Nile, now choked up with sand, was even in the time of Alexander, a thousand years later than Moses, so large and deep as to be navigable for Alexander’s war fleet; and through it he actually ascended to Memphis and the main trunk of the Nile. We may assume then that the eastern border of Egypt at the time of Joseph extended nearly or quite to the present line of the Suez Canal. S. R. 29,30. What a beautiful picture of reunion is this! “He fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while.” See them there! The old man not speaking, because he cannot speak,—speaking most because saying nothing. Joseph not speaking for some time. Only weeping upon one another! Then Jacob says, “Now let me die!” It was as old Simeon spake when he saw the Child of God, “Now let thy servant depart in peace.” J. P. 33,34. Joseph directed his brethren to introduce themselves as shepherds, not only in spite of the fact that shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians, but on that very account. His reason for doing so is apparent. In the occupation of his brethren there was the surett guarantee that their national and religious peculiarities would not be endangered or destroyed, and that they would not be absorbed by the Egyptians. The hatred and contempt which the Egyptians cherished toward the shepherd caste, as existing monuments attest by many a characteristic sign, may be traced to the fact that agriculture, with its regular and methodical habits, was the sole support of the Egyptian state, and that the irregularities of a nomad life must have appeared to a pedantic Egyptian to be rude and barbarous in the extreme. K. Joseph’s anxiety now was to secure to his people a separate settlement in Egypt, where they would not be mingled with the idolatrous Egyptians. But for his paramount influence with the king this would have been impossible; and at any other epoch of Egypt’s history not even Joseph could have effected it. One may say with much confidence that, with their strong natural antipathy to foreigners, no native king could have been easily persuaded to grant the concession of territory that Joseph asked for. But the reigning Pharaoh was not of Egyptian but of Shepherd race. It will be seen at once how singularly this favored Joseph’s purpose. Not only was the king free from the national prejudice, but in this national prejudice Joseph found his best argument for a separate allotment of land to his people. Hence the care with which he instructed his brethren to describe themselves as shepherds when introduced to Pharaoh: “When Pharaoh shall call you, and shall say, What is your occupation? ye shall say, Thy servants’ trade hath been about cattle from our youth even until now, both we and also our fathers; that ye may dwell [apart] in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.” These last words—otherwise so difficult—become clear at once on the supposition that Pharaoh was himself of shepherd race. J. P. N. 47 : 5, 6. The number of those who entered Egypt with Jacob has been reasonably calculated at “several thousands.” To place such a body of foreigners “in the best of the land,” on the eastern frontier, where they could readily give admission to others, is what no king of either the Old or the New Empire would have been likely to have done; but it is exactly what might have been expected of one of the Hyksos. G. R. It is to secure that Israel grow without let or hindrance, that Jacob’s household is removed to a land where protection and seclusion would at once be secured to them. In the land of Goshen, secured from molestation partly by the influence of Joseph, but much more by the caste-prejudices of the Egyptians, and their hatred of all foreigners and shepherds in particular, they enjoyed such prosperity and attained so rapidly the magnitude of a nation that some, forgetful alike of the promise of God and of the natural advantages of Israel's position, have refused to credit the accounts given us of the increase in their population. In a land so roomy, so fertile, and so secluded as that in which they were now settled, they had every advantage for making the transition from a family to a nation. Here they were preserved from all temptation to mingle with neighbors of a different race, and so lose their special place as a people called out by God to stand alone. Dods. 7. Brought in Jacob his father. What a picture of life and reality have we here! The feeble patriarch, leaning upon the arm of his recovered son, is led into the presence of the courteous monarch, who receives him not as an inferior, nor as a dependent even, but with all the respect due to his great age, and with a reverent feeling that in this very old man, the representative of another age, or of another world, there was something of a sacred and prophetic character. Lange.—Jacob blessed Pharaoh.** We see here the type of the true relation in which Israel was to stand to heathenism in all their future intercourse. K.—“Beyond contradiction, the less is blessed of the better” (Heb. 7: 7), or greater. In one respect Pharaoh was greater than Jacob; but in another Jacob was far greater than he. He was a son of Abraham, whose peculiar honor and prerogative it was, that he and his posterity should be blessings to mankind. He was also himself a man who “as a prince had power with God and men, and prevailed.” The blessing of such a man was of no small account, for God would not suffer his words to fall to the ground. Bush.—When Abraham went down to Egypt, unsent of the Lord, he brought trouble on Pharaoh and all his house. But when Jacob, guided and instructed by the Lord, goes down into Egypt, he carries a blessing with him. So when we are in the line of duty, in the path that God marks out for us, we are sure to carry blessings wherever we go. Gibson. Throughout this narrative of Joseph, there is a life-likeness in the character of Pharaoh that shows him to us as one of the most veritable objects presented in history. And what an air of reality in all these scenes here so exquisitely portrayed! It is no invented tale. The picture stands out vividly before us; age has not dimmed its colors; remoteness of scene, and wide diversity of life and manners, cannot weaken its effect. We see the figures distinctly moving on that far-off ancient shore. It is brought nigh to us in such a way that we could almost as well doubt our senses as think of calling it in question. At all events, no mythical theory can explain it. No “higher criticism,” as it is called, can ever make satisfactory to a truly thoughtful mind the comparison sometimes drawn between these “Bible stories” and the cloudy fables that characterize the early annals of other ancient nations. We may as well doubt of Cæsar and Alexander, yea, of Napoleon and of Washington, as of Jacob, Joseph, and Pharaoh. Lange. 8. How many are the days of the years of thy life? 9. My pilgrimage.** Pharaoh asked of “the days of the years of his life.” He replies by speaking of the days of the years of his pilgrimage. The patriarchs spoke of life as a pilgrimage or sojourning, because they sought another country, that is a heavenly (Heb. 11: 9, 13). Earth was not their home, but their journey homeward. E. H. B.—If we look into the story of those friends of heaven, the ancestors of the Israelitish nation, we find them sojourning in a land that was not theirs; dwelling only in tents, soon pitched and as soon removed again; having no ground of their own to set their foot on save only a possession of a burying-place, and that purchased of the inhabitants; where they might rest from their travels, till they shall pass at the resurrection of the just to their durable inheritance in the kingdom of God. Such was Jacob's notion of human life, expressed in his answer to the Egyptian monarch who had inquired his age. Bp. Horne. Few and evil have been the days. In the verse days and years are repeated and repeated, sounding in the ear like the tolling of a time-bell. Life, in Jacob's e-timate—a pilgrimage, no stoppage by the way, no home along the passage, rough the road often and weary the traveller; but beyond death and the grave another and better country, even a heavenly. The length of his own life Jacob compares with that of his immediate ancestors. Isaac had lived one hundred and eighty years; Abraham one hundred and seventy-five. He had reached but one hundred and thirty; and evil as well as few had the days of the years of his pilgrimage been. Few men have had such a series of domestic trials and sufferings to look back upon as he had, from the day of that dark deed which drove him from Hebron. Exile from home; separation from a mother he was never to see again; seven years of labor for the object of his love, and then humiliatingly deceived; twenty years of toil in the house of a selfish uncle, the drought consuming him by day, the frost by night, sleep departing from his eyes, his wages changed ten times; sons multiplying rapidly around him, the crowded household bringing but little comfort; a daughter's dishonor, her brothers' deliberate fraud and desperate cruelty; Rachel's premature and melancholy death; Reuben's incest; Judah's disgrace; the falsehood and malignity of the sale of Joseph, the presentation of the bloody coat of many colors—a long line of sorrows. How often and how strangely the specific form of his own early offence repeated itself and was reflected back upon him; his uncle cheating him as he had cheated Isaac; the very kind of sins that he had committed against his father and brother, committed in an aggravated form by his own children against himself and toward one another. But if the discipline was singularly adapted to the subject, and singularly protracted and severe, it was as singularly successful. He fancied, as he stood before Pharaoh, looking back upon the past, that he was standing on the very border of eternity. He spake as one who thought that his days were numbered. He was mistaken. There were seventeen years still in store for him. These closing years in Egypt offer a striking contrast to those which preceded them. They were years of unruffled rest, of unshadowed prosperity. Not a single disturbing or distressing incident—no difficulty, no sorrow, no death; things ran on so evenly, so calmly, so brightly, there is nothing to record. The first five were years of famine in Egypt, but the Israelites were not neglected in the distribution of the hoarded stores. The other twelve were years of plenty, during which "Israel dwelt in the land of Goshen, and they had possessions therein, and grew and multiplied exceedingly." The quiet evening of a long, dark, troubled day, it was a period of perfect outward rest and enjoyment; and over its close there shines a light which tells us that there was an inward peace, and trust, and hope of which the outward was an image. W. H. All the points in which men differ, health and strength, high or low estate, happiness or misery, vanish before this common lot, mortality. Pass a few years, and the longest-lived will be gone; nor will what is passed profit him then, except in its consequences. And this sense of the nothingness of life, impressed on us by the very fact that it comes to an end, is much deepened, when we contrast it with the capabilities of us who live it. Had Jacob lived Methuselah's age, he would have called it short. This is what we all feel, though at first sight it seems a contradiction, that even though the days as they go below, and be laden with many events, or with sorrows or dreariness lengthening them out and making them tedious, yet the year passes quick though the hours tarry, and time bygone is as a dream, though we thought it would never go while it was going. And the reason seems to be this; that, when we contemplate human life in itself, in however small a portion of it, we see implied in it the presence of a soul, the energy of a spiritual existence, of an accountable being; consciousness tells us this concerning it every moment. But when we look back on it in memory, we view it but externally, as a mere lapse of time, as a mere earthly history. And the longest duration of this external world is as dust and weighs nothing against one moment's life of the world within. Thus we are ever expecting great things from life, from our internal consciousness every moment of our having souls; and we are ever being disappointed, on considering what we have gained from time past, or can hope from time to come. And life is ever promising and never fulfilling; and hence, however long it be, our days are few and evil. Newsman. The holy patriarch who had the name of Israel had a life made up largely of sorrows. His posterity have afflictions left them for their legacy. Egypt, the wilderness, Canaan, Babylon, were the stages of Israel's tragedies. The spiritual Israel is in all the parts and ages of the world a distressed member. Witness that "book of martyrs" epitomized (Heb. 11). Of all people God would have his Israel holiest, and he corrects them to make them partakers of his holiness. If he suffers weeds in the forest, he endures them not in the garden. Affliction is appointed for the consumption of sin. It is poison to lust and food to graces. The sheep of Christ thrive best in shortest pasture. Affliction is God's touchstone, to difference between the precious and the vile; his fan, to sever between the wheat and the chaff; his furnace, to separate between the metal and the dross. God sees it best for his people (like waters) to be in motion: should they stand still they would soon putrefy. The rest of the people of God remains. It is too much to have two heavens. He who said he should never be removed, like Peter in the mount, knew not what he said. That saints may be always safe; they must never be secure. Of all people those should be least censured who are most corrected: they may be, nay are most like to be, Israelites. The happiness of Israel is not to be judged by outward appearances. The Israels, the princes of God, are in this world but princes under a disguise. This life is but the obscurity of their adoption. We see their combats, we see not their crowns: we view them in the tents of Kedar, not within the curtains of Solomon. Jenkyn. 13. And there was no bread in all the land; for the famine was very sore, so that the land of 14 Egypt and the land of Canaan fainted by reason of the famine. And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, for the corn which 15 they bought; and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh's house. And when the money was all spent in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph, and said, Give us bread; for why should we die in thy presence? for our money fail- 16 eth. And Joseph said, Give your cattle; and I will give you for your cattle, if money fail. 17 And they brought their cattle unto Joseph; and Joseph gave them bread in exchange for the horses, and for the flocks, and for the herds, and for the asses: and he fed them with bread 18 in exchange for all their cattle for that year. And when that year was ended, they came unto him the second year, and said unto him, We will not hide from my lord, how that our money is all spent; and the herds of cattle are my lord's; there is nought left in the sight of my 19 lord, but our bodies, and our lands: wherefore should we die before thine eyes, both we and our land? buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants unto Pharaoh: 20 and give us seed, that we may live, and not die, and that the land be not desolate. So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because 21 the famine was sore upon them: and the land became Pharaoh's. And as for the people, he removed them to the cities from one end of the border of Egypt even to the other end thereof. 22 Only the land of the priests bought he not: for the priests had a portion from Pharaoh, and 23 did eat their portion which Pharaoh gave them; wherefore they sold not their land. Then Joseph said unto the people, Behold, I have bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh: 24 lo, here is seed for you, and ye shall sow the land. And it shall come to pass at the ingather- ings, that ye shall give a fifth unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own, for seed of the field, and for your food, and for them of your households, and for food for your little ones. 25 And they said, Thou hast saved our lives: let us find grace in the sight of my lord, and we 26 will be Pharaoh's servants. And Joseph made it a statute concerning the land of Egypt unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth; only the land of the priests' alone became not Pharaoh's. 13-26. In the years of scarcity Joseph sold corn to the people, first for their money, then for their cattle, and, when both were done, for their land, which they spontaneously offered. Having thus gained possession of the whole country, he again disposed of it to the people on definite principles, making them the king's vassals, and obliging them to pay annually the fifth part of the produce in lieu of ground-rent. Only the lands of the priesthood remained untouched, since their revenues from the royal treasury had protected them from the consequences of the famine. Profane writers and the monuments confirm the Biblical account, in so far as they distinctly state that the peasantry were not the landed proprietors, and that the priests possessed real property free of taxation. K. The policy of Joseph was simply to economize during the seven years of abundance to such an extent that provision might be made against the seven years of famine. He calculated that one fifth of the produce of years so extraordinarily plenteous would serve for the seven scarce years. This fifth he bought in the king's name from the people. When the years of famine came, the people were referred to Joseph; and, till their money was gone, he sold corn to them, probably not at famine prices. Next he acquired their cattle, and finally, in exchange for food, they yielded to him both their lands and their persons. So that the result of the whole was, that the people who would otherwise have perished were preserved, and in return for this preservation they paid a tax or rent on their farm-lands to the amount of one fifth of their produce. The people ceased to be proprietors of their own farms, but they were not slaves with no interest in the soil, but tenants sitting at easy rents—a fair enough exchange for being preserved in life. This kind of taxation is eminently fair in principle, securing, as it does, that the wealth of the king and government shall vary with the prosperity of the whole land. Dods. It is somewhat remarkable, that amid the vicissitudes to which that country has been subject, the compact between the ruler and his subjects, entered into by Joseph, has always subsisted there in principle. To this day the fellah, or peasant, in Egypt, cultivates the land for his sovereign, and receives a portion of the produce for his own wants. But, amid the grasping exactions of our own age, and the harsh oppressions to which he is subject by the government and its officers, he has much reason to regret that the moderation of Joseph does not actuate its present rulers. Kit. This whole transaction, which did not affect the Israelites themselves, is here mentioned so circumstantially, because afterward among them a similar right was introduced in reference to their highest King—God Himself. He had given and divided the land of Canaan to them. They were all His servants. They must pay to Him a double tithe. Of this God gave one part to the priests and Levites for their maintenance (as Pharaoh to the Egyptian priests), the other was consumed in high feasts at sacrificial meals, which were given to the Levites, the widows, orphans, and the poor. Those relations of dependence of person and property on the king, and of acknowledgment of his supreme right over all by the payment of the fifths, was Israel to transfer to its invisible King. The main principle of the whole outer life of the Israelites was always to be in subjection to Him. Gerl. 16. Give me your cattle. This was the wisest measure that could be adopted, both for the preservation of the people, and of the cattle also. As the people had not grain for their own sustenance, consequently they could have none for their cattle. The cattle being bought by Joseph, were supported at the royal expense, and very likely returned to the people at the end of the famine; for how else could they cultivate their ground, transport their merchandise? etc. 21. As for the people, he removed them to cities. Joseph was influenced merely by humanity and prudence. As the corn was laid up in the cities, it was more convenient to bring them to places where they might be within reach of an easy distribution. Thus the country, which could afford no sustenance, was abandoned for the time being that the people might be fed in places where the provision was deposited. A. C. 22. Only the land of the priests bought he not. The Egyptian priests were obliged to provide all sacrifices and to bear all the charges of the national religion; and religion was in those days a matter of very great expense to them. The numerous sacrifices that were offered in these times could not be provided, nor the preparations and ceremonies in offering them performed except at a very great charge. The priests of Egypt were the king's counsellors and assistants: they were the professors and cultivators of astronomy, without which even agriculture itself could not have proceeded: they were the keepers of the public registers, memoirs, and chronicles of the kingdom: in a word, under the king, they were the magistrates, and filled all the prime offices. So that Pharaoh might well think that they had not too much to support the stations they were to act in; and for that reason he ordered that no tax should be laid upon them. Shackford. 23. Behold, I have bought you this day. The bargain could not be denied; but he would not insist upon it strictly. He requires only a fifth part of the increase of their ground for the king; and tells them the rest shall be their own. Herein he showed himself both a good man and a wise statesman, in taking away all matter of complaint from the people. Bp. Patrick. It fully appears that the kingdom of Egypt was, previous to the time of Joseph, a limited monarchy. The king had his estates; the priests had their lands; and the common people their patrimony, independently of both. We may conclude from those purchases, that Pharaoh had no power to levy taxes upon his subjects to increase his own revenue, until he had bought the original right which each individual had in his possessions. 24. And when Joseph bought this for the king, he raised the crown an ample revenue (though he restored the lands), by obliging each to pay one fifth of the product to the king. A. C.—Long after this it was observed by an ancient writer and traveller in Egypt (Diodorus), that the kings were enabled, by the abundant revenues derived from the crown lands, to defray the expenses of wars and of their own regal state, and to reward those who distinguished themselves in the public service, without overwhelming the common people with taxes. T. J. C.—Joseph certainly had in view no less the good of the country than the interest of the king; inasmuch as he converted the disproportionate division of the landed property into an equable leasing of it in small portions, for an annual rent. Delit. In all these respects, his political measures have been strongly vindicated, not only as being directed by God, but as being obviously the best, everything considered, for the safety, honor, and welfare of his sovereign and the kingdom. It is true, he bought the lands of the people for the king; but he farmed them to the original occupiers again, at the moderate and fixed crown rent of one-fifth part of the produce. A. C.—Thus did he provide for the liberty and independence of the people, while he strengthened the authority of the king by making him sole proprietor of the lands. And to secure the people from further exaction, Joseph made it a law over all the land of Egypt, that Pharaoh (the king) should have only the fifth part: which law subsisted to the time of Moses. By this wise regulation the people had four fifths of the produce of the lands for their own use, and were exempted from any further taxes, the king being bound to support his civil and military establishment out of the crown rents. Hales. 25. The peculiar nature of the land, its dependence on the overflow of the Nile, and the unthrifty habits of the cultivators, made it desirable to establish a system of centralization, perhaps to introduce some general principle of irrigation; in modern phraseology, to promote the prosperity of the country by great government works, in preference to leaving all to the uncertainty of individual enterprise. If this were so, then the saying "Thou hast saved our lives" was no language of Eastern adulation, but the verdict of a grateful people. E. H. B.—Besides being indebted to Joseph for their preservation, the Egyptians owed to him an extension of their influence; for, as all the lands round about became dependent on Egypt for provision, they must have contracted a respect for the Egyptian administration. They must also have added greatly to Egypt's wealth, and during these years of constant traffic many commercial connections must have been formed which in future years would be of untold value to Egypt. But above all, from the confidence Joseph won with the people, there seems every reason to believe that the permanent alterations he made on their tenure of land were considered as competent as certainly they were bold. Dods. 25,26. The result of all this was that at the close of the seven years the people and all that belonged to them were the property of the king. Egypt under its Shepherd Pharaoh was precisely in the condition England would have been in under her Norman conquerors, if we suppose the barons swept away, and no middle class left between the Norman king and the Saxon serfs, except the priests. But Joseph was far too enlightened, and too humane, to intend to leave the whole population in a state of villenage or serfdom. From the vantage-ground of the position in which the famine had left him he proposed to restore to the people their freedom, and restore to them their lands, only on a new tenure. They were not to have them as freeholders, but as tenants of the crown, paying one-fifth portion to the king as rent forever. Thus Joseph had effected two things: first, he had saved the people from starvation; and, secondly, he had consolidated the power of the Pharaohs, and secured to them an ample revenue wherewith they might effect important improvements in the agriculture of the country. For it seems that the system of artificial irrigation described upon the monuments, supplementing most beneficially the natural action of the river, dated from this epoch. That the people thankfully accepted these changes, and fully understood that but for Joseph's measures they would have perished, is clear from their own words: "Thou hast saved our lives: let us find grace in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh's servants." This willing acceptance of the Pharaoh as their king seems to imply a disaffection in previous years that must have been a source of continual danger to the country's peace. All this Joseph's wisdom effected; and it had a yet further result, far more important to the world's destiny—it enabled him, under God's providence, to preserve the Chosen Family, in whose promised seed all the nations of the earth were to be blessed. J. P. N. According to Herodotus, an ancient king had divided the whole land among the Egyptians, giving to each a square portion of equal excellence, and receiving from each a yearly rent in return. According to Diodorus, all the land in Egypt belonged either to the kings, or the priests, or the military caste. According to Strabo, the Egyptians, who were engaged in agriculture, held their land of the sovereign, and paid rent. According to the monuments, as we learn from Wilkinson, only kings, priests, and the military order were land-owners. All these profane authorities concur with holy writ in the main fact, viz. : that the cultivators were not the owners of the soil. On one point, indeed, there is an apparent disagreement. The Pentateuch limits the ownership of land to the kings and the priests ; Strabo extends it to the military order as well ; and herein his authority is confirmed by the sculptures. But Herodotus furnishes a key, whereby this apparent discrepancy can be reconciled. It is in the statement made by him, that the land of the soldiers differed from that of the peasants in being free of rent ; otherwise, he says, it belonged to the kings, and was given by them in fee to the soldiery. But there is still another point of disagreement between the Pentateuch and these profane authors. Moses asserts an original possession of the soil of Egypt by the cultivators, and a transfer of the title to the king under extraordinary circumstances ; Herodotus knows nothing of this, but represents the king as the original proprietor. Now this contradiction, so far from invalidating the credibility of the Pentateuch, serves rather to confirm it, since it presents in a strong light the superior knowledge of the author, which extends back to a period not even approached by the knowledge of profane writers. Here is an historical fact, stated by the Pentateuch, and vouched in the most ample manner by these writers, viz. : the possession by the king of all the land of Egypt not owned by the priests. E. C. W. If a man only wishes that his own conceptions of prosperity be realized, then let him keep his land in his own hand and work his material irrespective of God's demands ; for certainly if he yields himself to God, his own ideas of prosperity will not be realized. But if he suspects that God may have a more liberal conception of prosperity and may understand better than he what is eternally beneficial, let him commit himself and all his material of prosperity without doubting into God's hand, and let him greedily obey all God's precepts ; for in neglecting one of these, he so far neglects and misses what God would have him enter into. Dods.—Joseph showed the Egyptians that plenty and famine were themselves sent to cultivate self-discipline and providence in men. He used the experience of their wants and sufferings as a means of leading them to acquiesce in an arrangement which made them for the first time conscious that they were under a government which was caring for them, and watching over them ; a government not arbitrary, not seeking its own ends, but confessing obligations to its subjects, while it demanded obedience from them. He organized a community,—he made the king feel that he stood in an actual living relation to his subjects, and his subjects in an actual relation to him and to each other. Scripture represents this as a divine work, for which a man must have a divine vocation. Maurice. 47 : 27 And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen ; and they gat them possessions therein, and were fruitful, and multiplied exceedingly. And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years : so the days of Jacob, the years of his life, were an hundred forty and seven years. And the time drew near that Israel must die : and he called his son Joseph, and said unto him, If now I have found grace in thy sight, put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me ; bury me not, I pray 30 thee, in Egypt : but when I sleep with my fathers, thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and 31 bury me in their buryingplace. And he said, I will do as thou hast said. And he said, Swear unto me : and he sware unto him. And Israel bowed himself upon the bed's head. 48 : 1 And it came to pass after these things, that one said to Joseph, Behold, thy father is 2 sick : and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. And one told Jacob, and said, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto thee : and Israel strengthened himself, and 3 sat upon the bed. And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz 4 in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, and said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruit- ful, and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a company of peoples ; and will give this 5 land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession. And now thy two sons, which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine ; 6 Ephraim and Manasseh, even as Reuben and Simeon, shall be mine. And thy issue, which thou begetest after them, shall be thine ; they shall be called after the name of 7 their brethren in their inheritance. And as for me, when I came from Paddan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan in the way, when there was still some way to come unto Ephrath : and I buried her there in the way to Ephrath (the same is Beth-lehem). 8 And Israel beheld Joseph's sons, and said, Who are these ? And Joseph said unto his 9 father, They are my sons, whom God hath given me here. And he said, Bring them, I 10 pray thee, unto me, and I will bless them. Now the eyes of Israel were dim for age, so that he could not see. And he brought them near unto him ; and he kissed them, and 11 embraced them. And Israel said unto Joseph, I had not thought to see thy face : and, 12 lo, God hath let me see thy seed also. And Joseph brought them out from between his 13 knees ; and he bowed himself with his face to the earth. And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand toward Israel's left hand, and Manasseh in his left hand toward 14 Israel's right hand, and brought them near unto him. And Israel stretched out his right hand, and laid it upon Ephraim's head, who was the younger, and his left hand upon 15 Manasseh's head, guiding his hands wittingly ; for Manasseh was the firstborn. And he blessed Joseph, and said, The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, 16 the God which hath fed me all my life long unto this day, the angel which hath redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads ; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac ; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the 17 earth. And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, it displeased him : and he held up his father's hand, to remove it from Ephraim's head 18 unto Manasseh's head. And Joseph said unto his father, Not so, my father : for this is 19 the firstborn ; put thy right hand upon his head. And his father refused, and said, I know it, my son, I know it : he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great : how- beit his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of 20 nations. And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee shall Israel bless, saying, God 21 make thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh : and he set Ephraim before Manasseh. And Israel said unto Joseph, Behold, I die : but God shall be with you, and bring you again 22 unto the land of your fathers. Moreover I have given to thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow. Observe the many incidents and suggestive topics presented in these 27 verses : Israel's set- tlement and great prosperity in Egypt ; Jacob's serene old age ; the approach of his time of de- parture ; his summons to Joseph in order that he might bind him by an oath to bury his re- mains in the burying place of his fathers ; his sickness reported to Joseph ; Joseph's visit with his two sons to Jacob ; Jacob's recital of God's covenant with him at Bethel ; his adoption of Joseph's two sons as his own ; his touching reminiscence of Rachel's death and burial ; his notice of Joseph's sons and question respecting them, followed by his embrace and blessing of both ; the discriminate laying on of his hands, so that Ephraim the younger was placed before the elder, Manasseh ; the special gift to Joseph of the region around Shechem, the only land on earth of which he claimed the ownership ; and last, most beautiful and impressive of all, his threefold reference to the God of his fathers, who had fed and kept him life-long and deliv- ered him from evil. Alike full of impressive facts and suggestive truths, these few verses do but emphasize the richness, breadth and helpfulness of this whole inspired History, and strongly commend its thoughtful continuous study. B. 47 : 27, 28. While the Egyptians were impoverished in their own land, Jacob was replenished in a strange land. He lived seventeen years after he came into Egypt, far beyond his own expectation; seventeen years he had nourished Joseph (for so old he was when he was sold from him), and now, by way of requital, seventeen years Joseph nourished him. So that when he was old and least able to bear care and fatigue, he had least occasion for it, being well provided for by his son. H.—“And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt and had possessions therein, and grew and multiplied exceedingly. And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years.” Such is the brief statement which sketches for us the delightful picture of rest and enjoyment after the long years of trouble and sorrow. The intricate plot is at last unravelled; and its tragic acts have evolved this beautiful scene of quiet rest to the chosen family, secure in their own settled homes and possessions, their own institutions of social order and worship. These last seventeen years of his life were enough to make him forget all the trouble of the former days of evil. He begins now to see the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham of the posterity innumerable as the stars of heaven. And his home is happy now, for his household is a loving household now. For we cannot imagine that the lessons of the scenes through which they have passed have been lost upon them. They have learned doubtless “not to fall out by the way.” Joseph has taught them the lesson of love by showing them what true love is. This is to Jacob a blessed seventeen years, and to our human view it would seem the highest kindness of God to allow them to be prolonged indefinitely. Yet this is not Jacob’s rest—“here is no continuing city,” as we are all too apt to feel when God, in his providence, surrounds us so bountifully with these home joys. Just at the height of this enjoyment comes the announcement, “The time drew near when Israel must die.” It is a representative picture which finds its counterpart more or less complete in every Christian community at this day. S. R. 29. Israel, as he is here again characteristically named, was preparing for another great act of faith. On his dying bed, he still held fast by the promises of God concerning the possession of Canaan, and all that was connected with it. (It is most instructive to notice in this history the frequent change of the names of Jacob and Israel.) A. E.—30. Jacob’s desire that his body should be laid in Machpelah had a deeper root than nature. The land of Canaan was his by God’s covenant. He was to die without entering on its possession; but in his death he would show that he still believed that his children would have its ownership, and therefore he made Joseph swear that he would bury him in the sepulchre of his fathers. W. M. T. The Apostle acquaints us with the secret of his injunction when he tells us (Heb. 11 : 22), that “by faith Jacob gave commandment concerning his bones.” He believed the promise, that the land of Canaan should be given to him in the persons of his seed. By having his dead body conveyed to that land, he published to his seed and to the world that he believed and embraced the promise. Bush. 31. And Israel bowed himself on the head of the bed. On receiving the solemn promise of Joseph, he turns toward the head of the bed, and assumes the posture of adoration, rendering thanks to God for all the mercies of his past life, and for this closing token of filial duty and affection. The Septuagint has the rendering “on the top of his staff,” which is given in the Epistle to the Hebrews. This is obtained by a mere change in the vowel pointing of the last word. M.—The Hebrew word without the vowel points means either “bed” or “staff.” It is impossible to decide with certainty which was the original sense of the word. It is possible that the meaning is, as the Apostle quotes the passage, that after Joseph had sworn to bury him in Canaan, Jacob bowed himself upon the staff which had gone with him through all his wanderings, and so worshipped God. E. H. B. 7. There comes into the narrative here a touch of nature which is exceedingly affecting. He has been putting Ephraim and Manasseh into the birthright place forfeited by Reuben, because to them, as the sons of Joseph who was the firstborn of Rachel, after its forfeiture by the firstborn of Leah, it rightfully belonged; and that suggests to him his first, his early, his constant, his supreme love for Rachel, so that he goes on to speak of her—of the time, place, and manner of her death, and of her lonely grave, precisely as if the incidents had happened only a short while before. It is so like an old man in the apparent abruptness of the transition from his grandsons to Rachel, and in the fond circumstantiality of his references to his well-beloved. W. M. T. 14. Israel stretched out his right hand.** Laying hands on the head was always used among the Jews in giving blessings, designating men to any office, and in the consecration of solemn sacrifices. This is the first time we find it mentioned; but we often read of it afterward. But this preference has no concern with God's conferring a greater measure of his love and approbation on one person more than another; for this we are assured can arise from nothing but men's moral characters; it is the determination of truth that with God there is no respect of persons, but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him (Acts 10:34, 35). Dodd. The younger. Grace observes not the order of nature, nor does God prefer those whom we think fittest to be preferred, but as it pleases him. It is observable, how often God, by the distinguishing favors of his covenant, advanced the younger above the elder; Abel above Cain, Shem above Japheth, Abraham above Nahor and Haran, Isaac above Ishmael, Jacob above Esau; Judah and Joseph were preferred before Reuben; Moses before Aaron; David and Solomon before their elder brethren. He tied the Jews to observe the birthright (Deut. 21:17), but he never tied himself to observe it. H. There are providences of two sorts, seemingly good and seemingly bad; and those do usually as Jacob did when he blessed the sons of Joseph, cross hands and lay the blessing where we would not. There are providences unto which we would have the blessings entailed; but they are not. And there are providences that smile upon the flesh, such as cast into the lap health, wealth, plenty, ease, friends, and abundance of this world's good: but the great blessing is not in them. There are providences again, that take away from us whatever is desirable to the flesh; such are sickness, losses, crosses, and affliction; and usually in these, though they shock us whenever they come upon us, blessing coucheth and is ready to help us. For God, as the name of Ephraim signifies, makes us fruitful in the land of affliction. He therefore, in blessing his people, lays his hands across, guiding them wittingly and laying the chiefest blessing on the head of Ephraim, or in that providence that sanctifies affliction. He that has skill to judge of providences aright, has a great ability in him "to comprehend with other saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height;" but he that has no skill as to discerning them, is but a child in his judgment in those high and mysterious things. Bunyan. 15, 16. "The God before whose face walked my fathers, Abraham and Isaac; the God who pastured me from my existence on unto this day; THE ANGEL who redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name, and the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, be named upon them, and let them increase to a multitude in the midst of the land." In this threefold reference to God as the covenant God, the Shepherd and the Angel-Redeemer, we have a distinct anticipation of the truth concerning the blessed Trinity. A. E. Observe the beautiful humility of Jacob. He does not speak about his own walking before God, but, "God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk." He knows that he himself has not walked very closely with God. The God which fed me. The word fed is scarcely wide enough to express the meaning. It means God who has shepherded me; who has been my shepherd all my life long unto this day; who has been guiding me and restoring me and controlling me, as well as feeding me. The faith of the patriarch is seen especially in his acknowledging God as his shepherd through all his wanderings, and through all his sorrows too. He has recognized at last that all these things have worked together for his good. Gibson. The Angel which redeemed me. The Angel cannot be a created angel, but the Angel of God's presence; the Messenger who spake with divine authority and as himself divine. Alford.—The God who fed him, and the Angel who redeemed him, are but one undivided object of his prayers. It is not putting undue stress upon Jacob's words to understand them as implying that Jacob was redeemed by this Angel from far worse evils than men had it in their power to inflict. He was redeemed from all his iniquities and from their consequences. The Angel-Jehovah of the Old Testament is the Saviour-Christ of the New, and who but he has been in every age the Redeemer of lost men? Bash.—It is impossible that the Angel thus identified with God can be a created Angel. Jacob alludes to the Angel who wrestled with him and whom he called God, the same as the Angel of the Covenant (Mal. 3:1). Luther observes that the verb "bless," which thus refers to the God of his fathers, to the God who had been his Shepherd, and to the Angel who redeemed him, is in the singular, not in the plural, showing that these three are but one God, and that the Angel is one with the fathers' God and with the God who fed Jacob like a sheep. E. H. B. No thought now of his own schemes, his own efforts, his own successes. The preservation, the support, the provision all through life he attributes alone to God—he the source of all his strength, he the blesser of all his efforts, he the giver of all that he has got or gained—the all-providing God. The incidents of the bygone life no longer spoken of as of old—as “things that had been against him”—no longer thought of as a series of perils, and trials, and bereavements; but appearing now to the clear eye of faith as so many deliverances commanded and wrought out for him by that Angel of the covenant with whom he had that mysterious struggle at Peniel; over whom, through weakness, he had power, and who not merely from the common ills of life—out of the hands of a Laban and an Esau had rescued him—but from all evil had delivered him—the redeeming God, whose goodness and mercy had followed him all the days of his life, and into whose provided house and home he had so soon to enter. Such was the aspect in which the dying Jacob looked at God. W. H. 19. The fulness of the nations.** Such he became, when the tribe of Ephraim was the head of the northern kingdom of the ten tribes, representing them all (“the fulness of the nations”) in itself. See the numerous allusions to Ephraim, as not only representing, but mainly constituting, the kingdom of the ten tribes. T. J. C. 21. And then, at the close, comes this simple and pathetic “Behold, I die,” as short and calm as when, after a long interview, we take each other by the hand at parting, and say, We must away. “I die; but God shall be with you.” What a transition, but at the same time what a contrast! I die; but God! The creature of a day, and the Eternal; the child of dust, and the Father of spirits; the departing friend, and the ever-remaining Guide, of whom Jacob at this moment has nothing more to ask for himself, but this alone to assure his successors: “He shall bring you again into the land of your fathers.” Van O.—He left with him the promise of their return out of Egypt, as a sacred trust. Accordingly, Joseph, when he died, left it with his brethren (ch. 50 : 24). This assurance was given them and carefully preserved among them, that they might neither love Egypt too much when it favored them, nor fear it too much when it frowned upon them. These words of Jacob furnish us with comfort in reference to the death of our friends; they die. But God shall be with us, and his gracious presence is sufficient to make up the loss. They leave us, but he will never fail us. He will bring us to the land of our fathers, the heavenly Canaan, whither our godly fathers are gone before us. If God be with us while we stay behind in this world, and will receive us shortly to be with them that are gone before to a better world, we ought not to sorrow as those that have no hope. H. He died away from the Land of Promise, but he “greeted it from afar,” and on his death-bed reaffirmed his faith that his children would possess it. “God will be with you;” yes, and on the other side of it “he would be with God,” in the true land of promise, the Canaan of the skies; for that, as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews assures us, was at the moment in his desire. But what was seen by him only through type becomes a direct object of faith to the Christian. Dying he leaves the Lord with his friends, and goes himself to be with the Lord. So he has calmness and peace. W. M. T. 22. I have given to thee one portion.** There is little doubt but that this rendering is correct. The past tense is used by prophetic anticipation, and the meaning is, “I have assigned to thee one portion of that land, which my descendants are destined to take out of the hands of the Amorites.” The word rendered portion is Shechem, meaning literally “a shoulder,” thence probably a ridge or neck of land, hence here rendered by most versions and commentators “portion.” Shechem, the city of Samaria, was probably named from the fact of its standing thus on a ridge or shoulder of ground. E. H. B. The accounts given in Scripture are the history, not so much of the intentions of man, as of the plans of God. Especially in the vernal sunshine of patriarchal days, we behold God’s hand, we feel his presence, we admit his agency, at every turn. And all the way through the tangled web of Judaic history, it is Jehovah who is the planner, it is Jehovah who is the hero of the story. Well were it for each of us, if we could transfer this spirit of the Bible to the explanation of our own lives. It would clear up many a day of clouds, and solve many an enigma. J. W. A. under his especial protection, the descendants of Abraham. Hence their civil and religious history is inseparable. The God of the chosen people is their temporal as well as spiritual sovereign; he is not merely their legislator, but also the administrator of their laws. Their land is his gift, held from him, as from a feudal liege-lord, on certain conditions. He is their leader in war, their counsellor in peace. Their happiness or adversity, national as well as individual, depends solely and immediately on their maintenance or neglect of the divine institu- tions. Such was the common popular religion of the Jews, as it appears in all their records, in their law, their history, their poetry, and their moral philosophy. Hence, to the mere speculative inquirer, the study of the human race presents no phenomenon so singular as the character of this extraordinary people; to the Christian, no chapter in the history of mankind can be more instructive or important than that which contains the rise, progress, and downfall of his religious ancestors. Milman. 13. And there was no bread in all the land; for the famine was very sore, so that the land of 14 Egypt and the land of Canaan fainted by reason of the famine. And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, for the corn which 15 they bought; and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh's house. And when the money was all spent in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph, and said, Give us bread; for why should we die in thy presence? for our money fail- 16 eth. And Joseph said, Give your cattle; and I will give you for your cattle, if money fail. 17 And they brought their cattle unto Joseph; and Joseph gave them bread in exchange for the horses, and for the flocks, and for the herds, and for the asses: and he fed them with bread 18 in exchange for all their cattle for that year. And when that year was ended, they came unto him the second year, and said unto him, We will not hide from my lord, how that our money is all spent; and the herds of cattle are my lord's; there is nought left in the sight of my 19 lord, but our bodies, and our lands: wherefore should we die before thine eyes, both we and our land? buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants unto Pharaoh: 20 and give us seed, that we may live, and not die, and that the land be not desolate. So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because 21 the famine was sore upon them: and the land became Pharaoh's. And as for the people, he removed them to the cities from one end of the border of Egypt even to the other end thereof. 22 Only the land of the priests bought he not: for the priests had a portion from Pharaoh, and 23 did eat their portion which Pharaoh gave them; wherefore they sold not their land. Then Joseph said unto the people, Behold, I have bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh: 24 lo, here is seed for you, and ye shall sow the land. And it shall come to pass at the ingather- ings, that ye shall give a fifth unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own, for seed of the field, and for your food, and for them of your households, and for food for your little ones. 25 And they said, Thou hast saved our lives: let us find grace in the sight of my lord, and we 26 will be Pharaoh's servants. And Joseph made it a statute concerning the land of Egypt unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth; only the land of the priests' alone became not Pharaoh's. 13-26. In the years of scarcity Joseph sold corn to the people, first for their money, then for their cattle, and, when both were done, for their land, which they spontaneously offered. Having thus gained possession of the whole country, he again disposed of it to the people on definite principles, making them the king's vassals, and obliging them to pay annually the fifth part of the produce in lieu of ground-rent. Only the lands of the priesthood remained untouched, since their revenues from the royal treasury had protected them from the consequences of the famine. Profane writers and the monuments confirm the Biblical account, in so far as they distinctly state that the peasantry were not the landed proprietors, and that the priests possessed real property free of taxation. K. The policy of Joseph was simply to economize during the seven years of abundance to such an extent that provision might be made against the seven years of famine. He calculated that one fifth of the produce of years so extraordinarily plenteous would serve for the seven scarce years. This fifth he bought in the king's name from the people. When the years of famine came, the people were referred to Joseph; and, till their money was gone, he sold corn to them, probably not at famine prices. Next he acquired their cattle, and finally, in exchange for food, they yielded to him both their lands and their persons. So that the result of the whole was, that the people who would otherwise have perished were preserved, and in return for this preservation they paid a tax or rent on their farm-lands to the amount of one fifth of their produce. The people ceased to be proprietors of their own farms, but they were not slaves with no interest in the soil, but tenants sitting at easy rents—a fair enough exchange for being preserved in life. This kind of taxation is eminently fair in principle, securing, as it does, that the wealth of the king and government shall vary with the prosperity of the whole land. Dods. It is somewhat remarkable, that amid the vicissitudes to which that country has been subject, the compact between the ruler and his subjects, entered into by Joseph, has always subsisted there in principle. To this day the fellah, or peasant, in Egypt, cultivates the land for his sovereign, and receives a portion of the produce for his own wants. But, amid the grasping exactions of our own age, and the harsh oppressions to which he is subject by the government and its officers, he has much reason to regret that the moderation of Joseph does not actuate its present rulers. Kit. This whole transaction, which did not affect the Israelites themselves, is here mentioned so circumstantially, because afterward among them a similar right was introduced in reference to their highest King—God Himself. He had given and divided the land of Canaan to them. They were all His servants. They must pay to Him a double tithe. Of this God gave one part to the priests and Levites for their maintenance (as Pharaoh to the Egyptian priests), the other was consumed in high feasts at sacrificial meals, which were given to the Levites, the widows, orphans, and the poor. Those relations of dependence of person and property on the king, and of acknowledgment of his supreme right over all by the payment of the fifths, was Israel to transfer to its invisible King. The main principle of the whole outer life of the Israelites was always to be in subjection to Him. Gerl. 16. Give me your cattle. This was the wisest measure that could be adopted, both for the preservation of the people, and of the cattle also. As the people had not grain for their own sustenance, consequently they could have none for their cattle. The cattle being bought by Joseph, were supported at the royal expense, and very likely returned to the people at the end of the famine; for how else could they cultivate their ground, transport their merchandise? etc. 21. As for the people, he removed them to cities. Joseph was influenced merely by humanity and prudence. As the corn was laid up in the cities, it was more convenient to bring them to places where they might be within reach of an easy distribution. Thus the country, which could afford no sustenance, was abandoned for the time being that the people might be fed in places where the provision was deposited. A. C. 22. Only the land of the priests bought he not. The Egyptian priests were obliged to provide all sacrifices and to bear all the charges of the national religion; and religion was in those days a matter of very great expense to them. The numerous sacrifices that were offered in these times could not be provided, nor the preparations and ceremonies in offering them performed except at a very great charge. The priests of Egypt were the king's counsellors and assistants: they were the professors and cultivators of astronomy, without which even agriculture itself could not have proceeded: they were the keepers of the public registers, memoirs, and chronicles of the kingdom: in a word, under the king, they were the magistrates, and filled all the prime offices. So that Pharaoh might well think that they had not too much to support the stations they were to act in; and for that reason he ordered that no tax should be laid upon them. Shackford. 23. Behold, I have bought you this day. The bargain could not be denied; but he would not insist upon it strictly. He requires only a fifth part of the increase of their ground for the king; and tells them the rest shall be their own. Herein he showed himself both a good man and a wise statesman, in taking away all matter of complaint from the people. Bp. Patrick. It fully appears that the kingdom of Egypt was, previous to the time of Joseph, a limited monarchy. The king had his estates; the priests had their lands; and the common people their patrimony, independently of both. We may conclude from those purchases, that Pharaoh had no power to levy taxes upon his subjects to increase his own revenue, until he had bought the original right which each individual had in his possessions. 24. And when Joseph bought this for the king, he raised the crown an ample revenue (though he restored the lands), by obliging each to pay one fifth of the product to the king. A. C.—Long after this it was observed by an ancient writer and traveller in Egypt (Diodorus), that the kings were enabled, by the abundant revenues derived from the crown lands, to defray the expenses of wars and of their own regal state, and to reward those who distinguished themselves in the public service, without overwhelming the common people with taxes. T. J. C.—Joseph certainly had in view no less the good of the country than the interest of the king; inasmuch as he converted the disproportionate division of the landed property into an equable leasing of it in small portions, for an annual rent. Delit. In all these respects, his political measures have been strongly vindicated, not only as being directed by God, but as being obviously the best, everything considered, for the safety, honor, and welfare of his sovereign and the kingdom. It is true, he bought the lands of the people for the king; but he farmed them to the original occupiers again, at the moderate and fixed crown rent of one-fifth part of the produce. A. C.—Thus did he provide for the liberty and independence of the people, while he strengthened the authority of the king by making him sole proprietor of the lands. And to secure the people from further exaction, Joseph made it a law over all the land of Egypt, that Pharaoh (the king) should have only the fifth part: which law subsisted to the time of Moses. By this wise regulation the people had four fifths of the produce of the lands for their own use, and were exempted from any further taxes, the king being bound to support his civil and military establishment out of the crown rents. Hales. 25. The peculiar nature of the land, its dependence on the overflow of the Nile, and the unthrifty habits of the cultivators, made it desirable to establish a system of centralization, perhaps to introduce some general principle of irrigation; in modern phraseology, to promote the prosperity of the country by great government works, in preference to leaving all to the uncertainty of individual enterprise. If this were so, then the saying "Thou hast saved our lives" was no language of Eastern adulation, but the verdict of a grateful people. E. H. B.—Besides being indebted to Joseph for their preservation, the Egyptians owed to him an extension of their influence; for, as all the lands round about became dependent on Egypt for provision, they must have contracted a respect for the Egyptian administration. They must also have added greatly to Egypt's wealth, and during these years of constant traffic many commercial connections must have been formed which in future years would be of untold value to Egypt. But above all, from the confidence Joseph won with the people, there seems every reason to believe that the permanent alterations he made on their tenure of land were considered as competent as certainly they were bold. Dods. 25,26. The result of all this was that at the close of the seven years the people and all that belonged to them were the property of the king. Egypt under its Shepherd Pharaoh was precisely in the condition England would have been in under her Norman conquerors, if we suppose the barons swept away, and no middle class left between the Norman king and the Saxon serfs, except the priests. But Joseph was far too enlightened, and too humane, to intend to leave the whole population in a state of villenage or serfdom. From the vantage-ground of the position in which the famine had left him he proposed to restore to the people their freedom, and restore to them their lands, only on a new tenure. They were not to have them as freeholders, but as tenants of the crown, paying one-fifth portion to the king as rent forever. Thus Joseph had effected two things: first, he had saved the people from starvation; and, secondly, he had consolidated the power of the Pharaohs, and secured to them an ample revenue wherewith they might effect important improvements in the agriculture of the country. For it seems that the system of artificial irrigation described upon the monuments, supplementing most beneficially the natural action of the river, dated from this epoch. That the people thankfully accepted these changes, and fully understood that but for Joseph's measures they would have perished, is clear from their own words: "Thou hast saved our lives: let us find grace in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh's servants." This willing acceptance of the Pharaoh as their king seems to imply a disaffection in previous years that must have been a source of continual danger to the country's peace. All this Joseph's wisdom effected; and it had a yet further result, far more important to the world's destiny—it enabled him, under God's providence, to preserve the Chosen Family, in whose promised seed all the nations of the earth were to be blessed. J. P. N. According to Herodotus, an ancient king had divided the whole land among the Egyptians, giving to each a square portion of equal excellence, and receiving from each a yearly rent in return. According to Diodorus, all the land in Egypt belonged either to the kings, or the priests, or the military caste. According to Strabo, the Egyptians, who were engaged in agriculture, held their land of the sovereign, and paid rent. According to the monuments, as we learn from Wilkinson, only kings, priests, and the military order were land-owners. All these profane authorities concur with holy writ in the main fact, viz. : that the cultivators were not the owners of the soil. On one point, indeed, there is an apparent disagreement. The Pentateuch limits the ownership of land to the kings and the priests ; Strabo extends it to the military order as well ; and herein his authority is confirmed by the sculptures. But Herodotus furnishes a key, whereby this apparent discrepancy can be reconciled. It is in the statement made by him, that the land of the soldiers differed from that of the peasants in being free of rent ; otherwise, he says, it belonged to the kings, and was given by them in fee to the soldiery. But there is still another point of disagreement between the Pentateuch and these profane authors. Moses asserts an original possession of the soil of Egypt by the cultivators, and a transfer of the title to the king under extraordinary circumstances ; Herodotus knows nothing of this, but represents the king as the original proprietor. Now this contradiction, so far from invalidating the credibility of the Pentateuch, serves rather to confirm it, since it presents in a strong light the superior knowledge of the author, which extends back to a period not even approached by the knowledge of profane writers. Here is an historical fact, stated by the Pentateuch, and vouched in the most ample manner by these writers, viz. : the possession by the king of all the land of Egypt not owned by the priests. E. C. W. If a man only wishes that his own conceptions of prosperity be realized, then let him keep his land in his own hand and work his material irrespective of God's demands ; for certainly if he yields himself to God, his own ideas of prosperity will not be realized. But if he suspects that God may have a more liberal conception of prosperity and may understand better than he what is eternally beneficial, let him commit himself and all his material of prosperity without doubting into God's hand, and let him greedily obey all God's precepts ; for in neglecting one of these, he so far neglects and misses what God would have him enter into. Dods.—Joseph showed the Egyptians that plenty and famine were themselves sent to cultivate self-discipline and providence in men. He used the experience of their wants and sufferings as a means of leading them to acquiesce in an arrangement which made them for the first time conscious that they were under a government which was caring for them, and watching over them ; a government not arbitrary, not seeking its own ends, but confessing obligations to its subjects, while it demanded obedience from them. He organized a community,—he made the king feel that he stood in an actual living relation to his subjects, and his subjects in an actual relation to him and to each other. Scripture represents this as a divine work, for which a man must have a divine vocation. Maurice. 47 : 27 And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen ; and they gat them possessions therein, and were fruitful, and multiplied exceedingly. And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years : so the days of Jacob, the years of his life, were an hundred forty and seven years. And the time drew near that Israel must die : and he called his son Joseph, and said unto him, If now I have found grace in thy sight, put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me ; bury me not, I pray 30 thee, in Egypt : but when I sleep with my fathers, thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and 31 bury me in their buryingplace. And he said, I will do as thou hast said. And he said, Swear unto me : and he sware unto him. And Israel bowed himself upon the bed's head. 48 : 1 And it came to pass after these things, that one said to Joseph, Behold, thy father is 2 sick : and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. And one told Jacob, and said, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto thee : and Israel strengthened himself, and 3 sat upon the bed. And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz 4 in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, and said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruit- ful, and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a company of peoples ; and will give this 5 land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession. And now thy two sons, which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine ; 6 Ephraim and Manasseh, even as Reuben and Simeon, shall be mine. And thy issue, which thou begetest after them, shall be thine ; they shall be called after the name of 7 their brethren in their inheritance. And as for me, when I came from Paddan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan in the way, when there was still some way to come unto Ephrath : and I buried her there in the way to Ephrath (the same is Beth-lehem). 8 And Israel beheld Joseph's sons, and said, Who are these ? And Joseph said unto his 9 father, They are my sons, whom God hath given me here. And he said, Bring them, I 10 pray thee, unto me, and I will bless them. Now the eyes of Israel were dim for age, so that he could not see. And he brought them near unto him ; and he kissed them, and 11 embraced them. And Israel said unto Joseph, I had not thought to see thy face : and, 12 lo, God hath let me see thy seed also. And Joseph brought them out from between his 13 knees ; and he bowed himself with his face to the earth. And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand toward Israel's left hand, and Manasseh in his left hand toward 14 Israel's right hand, and brought them near unto him. And Israel stretched out his right hand, and laid it upon Ephraim's head, who was the younger, and his left hand upon 15 Manasseh's head, guiding his hands wittingly ; for Manasseh was the firstborn. And he blessed Joseph, and said, The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, 16 the God which hath fed me all my life long unto this day, the angel which hath redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads ; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac ; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the 17 earth. And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, it displeased him : and he held up his father's hand, to remove it from Ephraim's head 18 unto Manasseh's head. And Joseph said unto his father, Not so, my father : for this is 19 the firstborn ; put thy right hand upon his head. And his father refused, and said, I know it, my son, I know it : he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great : how- beit his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of 20 nations. And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee shall Israel bless, saying, God 21 make thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh : and he set Ephraim before Manasseh. And Israel said unto Joseph, Behold, I die : but God shall be with you, and bring you again 22 unto the land of your fathers. Moreover I have given to thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow. Observe the many incidents and suggestive topics presented in these 27 verses : Israel's set- tlement and great prosperity in Egypt ; Jacob's serene old age ; the approach of his time of de- parture ; his summons to Joseph in order that he might bind him by an oath to bury his re- mains in the burying place of his fathers ; his sickness reported to Joseph ; Joseph's visit with his two sons to Jacob ; Jacob's recital of God's covenant with him at Bethel ; his adoption of Joseph's two sons as his own ; his touching reminiscence of Rachel's death and burial ; his notice of Joseph's sons and question respecting them, followed by his embrace and blessing of both ; the discriminate laying on of his hands, so that Ephraim the younger was placed before the elder, Manasseh ; the special gift to Joseph of the region around Shechem, the only land on earth of which he claimed the ownership ; and last, most beautiful and impressive of all, his threefold reference to the God of his fathers, who had fed and kept him life-long and deliv- ered him from evil. Alike full of impressive facts and suggestive truths, these few verses do but emphasize the richness, breadth and helpfulness of this whole inspired History, and strongly commend its thoughtful continuous study. B. 47 : 27, 28. While the Egyptians were impoverished in their own land, Jacob was replenished in a strange land. He lived seventeen years after he came into Egypt, far beyond his own expectation; seventeen years he had nourished Joseph (for so old he was when he was sold from him), and now, by way of requital, seventeen years Joseph nourished him. So that when he was old and least able to bear care and fatigue, he had least occasion for it, being well provided for by his son. H.—“And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt and had possessions therein, and grew and multiplied exceedingly. And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years.” Such is the brief statement which sketches for us the delightful picture of rest and enjoyment after the long years of trouble and sorrow. The intricate plot is at last unravelled; and its tragic acts have evolved this beautiful scene of quiet rest to the chosen family, secure in their own settled homes and possessions, their own institutions of social order and worship. These last seventeen years of his life were enough to make him forget all the trouble of the former days of evil. He begins now to see the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham of the posterity innumerable as the stars of heaven. And his home is happy now, for his household is a loving household now. For we cannot imagine that the lessons of the scenes through which they have passed have been lost upon them. They have learned doubtless “not to fall out by the way.” Joseph has taught them the lesson of love by showing them what true love is. This is to Jacob a blessed seventeen years, and to our human view it would seem the highest kindness of God to allow them to be prolonged indefinitely. Yet this is not Jacob’s rest—“here is no continuing city,” as we are all too apt to feel when God, in his providence, surrounds us so bountifully with these home joys. Just at the height of this enjoyment comes the announcement, “The time drew near when Israel must die.” It is a representative picture which finds its counterpart more or less complete in every Christian community at this day. S. R. 29. Israel, as he is here again characteristically named, was preparing for another great act of faith. On his dying bed, he still held fast by the promises of God concerning the possession of Canaan, and all that was connected with it. (It is most instructive to notice in this history the frequent change of the names of Jacob and Israel.) A. E.—30. Jacob’s desire that his body should be laid in Machpelah had a deeper root than nature. The land of Canaan was his by God’s covenant. He was to die without entering on its possession; but in his death he would show that he still believed that his children would have its ownership, and therefore he made Joseph swear that he would bury him in the sepulchre of his fathers. W. M. T. The Apostle acquaints us with the secret of his injunction when he tells us (Heb. 11 : 22), that “by faith Jacob gave commandment concerning his bones.” He believed the promise, that the land of Canaan should be given to him in the persons of his seed. By having his dead body conveyed to that land, he published to his seed and to the world that he believed and embraced the promise. Bush. 31. And Israel bowed himself on the head of the bed. On receiving the solemn promise of Joseph, he turns toward the head of the bed, and assumes the posture of adoration, rendering thanks to God for all the mercies of his past life, and for this closing token of filial duty and affection. The Septuagint has the rendering “on the top of his staff,” which is given in the Epistle to the Hebrews. This is obtained by a mere change in the vowel pointing of the last word. M.—The Hebrew word without the vowel points means either “bed” or “staff.” It is impossible to decide with certainty which was the original sense of the word. It is possible that the meaning is, as the Apostle quotes the passage, that after Joseph had sworn to bury him in Canaan, Jacob bowed himself upon the staff which had gone with him through all his wanderings, and so worshipped God. E. H. B. 7. There comes into the narrative here a touch of nature which is exceedingly affecting. He has been putting Ephraim and Manasseh into the birthright place forfeited by Reuben, because to them, as the sons of Joseph who was the firstborn of Rachel, after its forfeiture by the firstborn of Leah, it rightfully belonged; and that suggests to him his first, his early, his constant, his supreme love for Rachel, so that he goes on to speak of her—of the time, place, and manner of her death, and of her lonely grave, precisely as if the incidents had happened only a short while before. It is so like an old man in the apparent abruptness of the transition from his grandsons to Rachel, and in the fond circumstantiality of his references to his well-beloved. W. M. T. 14. Israel stretched out his right hand.** Laying hands on the head was always used among the Jews in giving blessings, designating men to any office, and in the consecration of solemn sacrifices. This is the first time we find it mentioned; but we often read of it afterward. But this preference has no concern with God's conferring a greater measure of his love and approbation on one person more than another; for this we are assured can arise from nothing but men's moral characters; it is the determination of truth that with God there is no respect of persons, but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him (Acts 10:34, 35). Dodd. The younger. Grace observes not the order of nature, nor does God prefer those whom we think fittest to be preferred, but as it pleases him. It is observable, how often God, by the distinguishing favors of his covenant, advanced the younger above the elder; Abel above Cain, Shem above Japheth, Abraham above Nahor and Haran, Isaac above Ishmael, Jacob above Esau; Judah and Joseph were preferred before Reuben; Moses before Aaron; David and Solomon before their elder brethren. He tied the Jews to observe the birthright (Deut. 21:17), but he never tied himself to observe it. H. There are providences of two sorts, seemingly good and seemingly bad; and those do usually as Jacob did when he blessed the sons of Joseph, cross hands and lay the blessing where we would not. There are providences unto which we would have the blessings entailed; but they are not. And there are providences that smile upon the flesh, such as cast into the lap health, wealth, plenty, ease, friends, and abundance of this world's good: but the great blessing is not in them. There are providences again, that take away from us whatever is desirable to the flesh; such are sickness, losses, crosses, and affliction; and usually in these, though they shock us whenever they come upon us, blessing coucheth and is ready to help us. For God, as the name of Ephraim signifies, makes us fruitful in the land of affliction. He therefore, in blessing his people, lays his hands across, guiding them wittingly and laying the chiefest blessing on the head of Ephraim, or in that providence that sanctifies affliction. He that has skill to judge of providences aright, has a great ability in him "to comprehend with other saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height;" but he that has no skill as to discerning them, is but a child in his judgment in those high and mysterious things. Bunyan. 15, 16. "The God before whose face walked my fathers, Abraham and Isaac; the God who pastured me from my existence on unto this day; THE ANGEL who redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name, and the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, be named upon them, and let them increase to a multitude in the midst of the land." In this threefold reference to God as the covenant God, the Shepherd and the Angel-Redeemer, we have a distinct anticipation of the truth concerning the blessed Trinity. A. E. Observe the beautiful humility of Jacob. He does not speak about his own walking before God, but, "God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk." He knows that he himself has not walked very closely with God. The God which fed me. The word fed is scarcely wide enough to express the meaning. It means God who has shepherded me; who has been my shepherd all my life long unto this day; who has been guiding me and restoring me and controlling me, as well as feeding me. The faith of the patriarch is seen especially in his acknowledging God as his shepherd through all his wanderings, and through all his sorrows too. He has recognized at last that all these things have worked together for his good. Gibson. The Angel which redeemed me. The Angel cannot be a created angel, but the Angel of God's presence; the Messenger who spake with divine authority and as himself divine. Alford.—The God who fed him, and the Angel who redeemed him, are but one undivided object of his prayers. It is not putting undue stress upon Jacob's words to understand them as implying that Jacob was redeemed by this Angel from far worse evils than men had it in their power to inflict. He was redeemed from all his iniquities and from their consequences. The Angel-Jehovah of the Old Testament is the Saviour-Christ of the New, and who but he has been in every age the Redeemer of lost men? Bash.—It is impossible that the Angel thus identified with God can be a created Angel. Jacob alludes to the Angel who wrestled with him and whom he called God, the same as the Angel of the Covenant (Mal. 3:1). Luther observes that the verb "bless," which thus refers to the God of his fathers, to the God who had been his Shepherd, and to the Angel who redeemed him, is in the singular, not in the plural, showing that these three are but one God, and that the Angel is one with the fathers' God and with the God who fed Jacob like a sheep. E. H. B. No thought now of his own schemes, his own efforts, his own successes. The preservation, the support, the provision all through life he attributes alone to God—he the source of all his strength, he the blesser of all his efforts, he the giver of all that he has got or gained—the all-providing God. The incidents of the bygone life no longer spoken of as of old—as “things that had been against him”—no longer thought of as a series of perils, and trials, and bereavements; but appearing now to the clear eye of faith as so many deliverances commanded and wrought out for him by that Angel of the covenant with whom he had that mysterious struggle at Peniel; over whom, through weakness, he had power, and who not merely from the common ills of life—out of the hands of a Laban and an Esau had rescued him—but from all evil had delivered him—the redeeming God, whose goodness and mercy had followed him all the days of his life, and into whose provided house and home he had so soon to enter. Such was the aspect in which the dying Jacob looked at God. W. H. 19. The fulness of the nations.** Such he became, when the tribe of Ephraim was the head of the northern kingdom of the ten tribes, representing them all (“the fulness of the nations”) in itself. See the numerous allusions to Ephraim, as not only representing, but mainly constituting, the kingdom of the ten tribes. T. J. C. 21. And then, at the close, comes this simple and pathetic “Behold, I die,” as short and calm as when, after a long interview, we take each other by the hand at parting, and say, We must away. “I die; but God shall be with you.” What a transition, but at the same time what a contrast! I die; but God! The creature of a day, and the Eternal; the child of dust, and the Father of spirits; the departing friend, and the ever-remaining Guide, of whom Jacob at this moment has nothing more to ask for himself, but this alone to assure his successors: “He shall bring you again into the land of your fathers.” Van O.—He left with him the promise of their return out of Egypt, as a sacred trust. Accordingly, Joseph, when he died, left it with his brethren (ch. 50 : 24). This assurance was given them and carefully preserved among them, that they might neither love Egypt too much when it favored them, nor fear it too much when it frowned upon them. These words of Jacob furnish us with comfort in reference to the death of our friends; they die. But God shall be with us, and his gracious presence is sufficient to make up the loss. They leave us, but he will never fail us. He will bring us to the land of our fathers, the heavenly Canaan, whither our godly fathers are gone before us. If God be with us while we stay behind in this world, and will receive us shortly to be with them that are gone before to a better world, we ought not to sorrow as those that have no hope. H. He died away from the Land of Promise, but he “greeted it from afar,” and on his death-bed reaffirmed his faith that his children would possess it. “God will be with you;” yes, and on the other side of it “he would be with God,” in the true land of promise, the Canaan of the skies; for that, as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews assures us, was at the moment in his desire. But what was seen by him only through type becomes a direct object of faith to the Christian. Dying he leaves the Lord with his friends, and goes himself to be with the Lord. So he has calmness and peace. W. M. T. 22. I have given to thee one portion.** There is little doubt but that this rendering is correct. The past tense is used by prophetic anticipation, and the meaning is, “I have assigned to thee one portion of that land, which my descendants are destined to take out of the hands of the Amorites.” The word rendered portion is Shechem, meaning literally “a shoulder,” thence probably a ridge or neck of land, hence here rendered by most versions and commentators “portion.” Shechem, the city of Samaria, was probably named from the fact of its standing thus on a ridge or shoulder of ground. E. H. B. The accounts given in Scripture are the history, not so much of the intentions of man, as of the plans of God. Especially in the vernal sunshine of patriarchal days, we behold God’s hand, we feel his presence, we admit his agency, at every turn. And all the way through the tangled web of Judaic history, it is Jehovah who is the planner, it is Jehovah who is the hero of the story. Well were it for each of us, if we could transfer this spirit of the Bible to the explanation of our own lives. It would clear up many a day of clouds, and solve many an enigma. J. W. A. under his especial protection, the descendants of Abraham. Hence their civil and religious history is inseparable. The God of the chosen people is their temporal as well as spiritual sovereign; he is not merely their legislator, but also the administrator of their laws. Their land is his gift, held from him, as from a feudal liege-lord, on certain conditions. He is their leader in war, their counsellor in peace. Their happiness or adversity, national as well as individual, depends solely and immediately on their maintenance or neglect of the divine institu- tions. Such was the common popular religion of the Jews, as it appears in all their records, in their law, their history, their poetry, and their moral philosophy. Hence, to the mere speculative inquirer, the study of the human race presents no phenomenon so singular as the character of this extraordinary people; to the Christian, no chapter in the history of mankind can be more instructive or important than that which contains the rise, progress, and downfall of his religious ancestors. Milman. 1. AND Jacob called unto his sons, and said : Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the latter days. 2. Assemble yourselves, and hear, ye sons of Jacob ; And hearken unto Israel your father. 3. Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength ; The excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power. 4. Unstable as water, thou shalt not have the excellency ; Because thou wentest up to thy father's bed : Then defiledst thou it : he went up to my couch. 5. Simeon and Levi are brethren ; Weapons of violence are their swords. 6. O my soul, come not thou into their council ; Unto their assembly, my glory, be not thou united ; For in their anger they slew a man, And in their self will they houghed an ox. 7. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce ; And their wrath, for it was cruel : I will divide them in Jacob, And scatter them in Israel. 8. Judah, thee shall thy brethren praise : Thy hand shall be on the neck of thine enemies ; Thy father's sons shall bow down before thee. 9. Judah is a lion's whelp ; From the prey, my son, thou art gone up : He stooped down, he couched as a lion, And as a lioness ; who shall rouse him up ? 10. The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, Until Shiloh come ; And unto him shall the obedience of the peoples be. 11. Binding his foal unto the vine, And his ass's colt unto the choice vine ; He hath washed his garments in wine, And his vesture in the blood of grapes : 12. His eyes shall be red with wine, And his teeth white with milk. 13. Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea : And he shall be for an haven of ships ; And his border shall be upon Zidon. 14. Issachar is a strong ass, Couching down between the sheepfolds : 15. And he saw a resting place that it was good, And the land that it was pleasant ; And he bowed his shoulder to bear, And became a servant under taskwork. 16. Dan shall judge his people, As one of the tribes of Israel. 17. Dan shall be a serpent in the way, An adder in the path, That biteth the horse's heels, So that his rider falleth backward. 18. I have waited for thy salvation, O LORD. 19. Gad, a troop shall press upon him : But he shall press upon their heel. 20. Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, And he shall yield royal dainties. 21. Naphtali is a hind let loose : He giveth goodly words. 22. Joseph is a fruitful bough, A fruitful bough by a fountain ; His branches run over the wall. 23. The archers have sorely grieved him, And shot at him, and persecuted him : 24. But his bow abode in strength, And the arms of his hands were made strong, By the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob, (From thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel,) 25. Even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee, And by the Almighty, who shall bless thee, With blessings of heaven above, Blessings of the deep that coucheth beneath, Blessings of the breasts, and of the womb. 26. The blessings of thy father Have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors Unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills : They shall be on the head of Joseph, And on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren. 27. Benjamin is a wolf that ravineth : In the morning he shall devour the prey, And at even he shall divide the spoil. The death-scene was sublime. All the sons were summoned and stood round the bed. The time has arrived to give them all his last blessing. It comes in a series of flitting fragmentary visions, in which son after son, tribe after tribe, is presented; the character of each son sketched, the after destiny of each tribe dimly and brokenly shadowed forth: not a set of distinct prophecies, as if Jacob had the particular events that were to happen actually before his eye, and was giving so many imaginative descriptions of them—still less a set of prophetic sketches contrived by some one long after the events had happened, and put into the lips of the dying seer. W. H. The words were of mingled blessing and prediction. Before him, in prophetic vision, unrolled, as it were, pictures of the tribes of which his sons were to be the ancestors; and what he saw he sketched in grand outlines. It is utterly impossible to regard these prophetic pictures as exact representations of any one definite period or even event in the history of Israel. They are sketches of the tribes in their grand characteristics, rather than predictions, either of special events, or of the history of Israel as a whole. And to them applies especially the description which one has given of prophetic visions generally, that “they are pictures drawn without perspective,”—that is, such that you cannot discern the distance from you of the various objects. A. E.—Before Jacob’s mind are gathered in one living picture all the pleasing and painful events of which they have been the cause. With prophetic vision he traces the characters and dispositions of the fathers, as they are transmitted, expanded, or modified, through the history of their descendants. And aided by this insight, he allots to every one, on the authority of God, his fitting portion of that land in which he himself has led a pilgrim life for more than a hundred years, and which now stands with all its natural diversities and with its rich and manifold productions, as vividly and distinctly before his mind as the different characters of his own sons. K. Looking back into the rude scenes of a very distant age, I see a man surrounded by a few camels and sheep, whose greatest boon was a well of spring-water or a pasture. This man knew very few moral rules, and did not always obey what he knew; he had no Ten Commandments, no prophets, no Gospel,—yet I see that 28. All these are the twelve tribes of Israel: and this is it that their father spake unto them and blessed them; every one according to his blessing he blessed them. man turning with unspeakable awe to the One invisible; longing, even unrighteously, for the spiritual birthright. In his distress I see him struggling as a wrestler with God the night through. As years go on I see him growing and rising in spiritual life, and at the end I see him, the most secular of the patriarchs, uplifted into such faith in God and into such visions as only faith can see, so that his lips break into the first prophetic song found in the Bible—every sentence filled with the finest insight, with a wonderful condensation of thought, of beauty and boldness of imagery, and all standing together as a series of great sculptures, in which the coming history of the Hebrew tribes is cut as in the everlasting rock. Mercer. Jacob prophesies the destiny of each of his sons, and predicts, in still clearer terms, the advent of the Messiah. He is first represented in general terms, as “the seed of the woman.” It is predicted that he shall descend from Shem. From among the sons of Shem, Abraham is selected: from the sons of Abraham, Isaac is chosen: of the two sons of Isaac, Jacob obtains the blessing: from the twelve sons of Jacob, Judah is announced as the ancestor of the Deliverer of man: and from all the numerous descendants of Judah, it is at length predicted that the Messiah shall spring from the line of David. By these gradual revelations the providence of God perpetually kept up the attention, and preserved the faith of man in the expected Mediator; and the prophecy of Jacob was eminently useful to strengthen the faith of the Israelites in that gloomy season of bondage and distress, which began after the death of Joseph, and continued till the Exodus. G. T.—The prophecy of Jacob sketches generally the fortunes of his family; but all is leading up to that which was to be the great consummation, when the promised Seed should come and extend the blessings of the Spiritual Israel throughout all the world. It is to be carefully noted, that the occupation of Canaan by the twelve tribes under Joshua was not the point to which his expectations pointed as an end, but rather that from which his predictions took their beginning. The return to Canaan was a fact established in the decrees of Providence, the certainty of which rested on promises given and repeated to the Patriarchs. Jacob therefore does not repeat this, further than by the injunction, in the previous chapter, and again at the end of this, that he should be buried, not in Egypt, but at Machpelah, the burying-place of his fathers. E. H. B. 2. Jacob and Israel both apply to the same person, and to the race of which he is the head. The one refers to the natural, the other to the spiritual. The distinction is similar to that between Elohim and Jehovah: the former of which designates the eternal God, antecedent to all creation, and therefore equally related to the whole universe; the latter, the self-existent God, subsequent to the creation of intelligent beings, and specially related to them, as the moral Governor, the Keeper of covenant, and the Performer of promise. M. 2-27. The Spirit of God gives light and life to the germ of prophecy in Jacob's mind. First, he sees Reuben stand before him, full of strength and gentleness; but by one act of sin and shame he has forfeited his birthright. His tribe receives but a small inheritance in the south eastern pastures, between the Jordan and Euphrates. This tribe plays an unimportant part in all the after history.—The fierce, undisciplined, fiery natures of Levi and Simeon come next into review. They receive now the punishment of their cruelty and treachery on Hamor and Sichem. As a tribe they could not dwell together. Their inheritance is divided and dispersed among the rest.—Next comes the kingly, haughty, and powerful Judah. He receives the birthright of sovereignty taken from Reuben. His tribe possessed invincible heroism, certainty of the future royal dignity, riches and abundance in their fruitful borders.—Zebulun seems to have had a disposition for business and commerce. It was to settle on the sea-shore, and stretch to Sidon.—Issachar is a powerful, but lazy, beast of burden. His dwelling suits his character. So that he can have peace, he is content with subjection.—Dan has an independent adventurous spirit, which spurs him on to bold and crafty deeds.—Gad allows himself to be attacked, but boldly turns and defeats the enemy. In his district, on the east of Jordan, this tribe was more exposed than most to continual assaults.—Asher is delicate, and prepares kingly dainties.—Naphtali is a slim hind, with eloquent beautiful language.—But all there is of outward blessing and riches is heaped on Joseph's house. Fruitful and powerful, he spreads himself on all sides. No assault can fall on him. In the fulness of his possessions he surpasses his brethren. In Benjamin, the youngest son of the beloved wife, is only to be seen a spirit of lawlessness and viovidence, which made this tribe dangerous, and brought upon it well-deserved humiliations. This "prophetic land-chart" of Canaan is very remarkable; for, although Jacob is guided by the character of his sons in the description which he gives of their future lot, and by their past conduct, yet the Spirit of prophecy gives a width of meaning to his words, and the result turned out very differently from what might have been expected. Gerlach. 3,4. Reuben, the firstborn, appears in many points not to have been by any means the worst of the brethren. He took no part in the deed of violence and treachery against the Shechemites; he dissuaded his brethren from the murder of Joseph, and wished to restore him to his father; he offered to become surety for the safety of Benjamin. But the dark spot of his life, and one which abode upon the mind of his father,—so that he disregarded his offered suretyship for Benjamin,—was his foul sin with Bilhah his father's concubine. Alf.—The prerogatives of the birthright consisted chiefly in a double portion of the father's estate; the priesthood; and the kingdom, that is, the chief authority among his brethren. The first of these was given to Joseph; the second to Levi; and the third to Judah, to descend to their respective tribes; while the tribe of Reuben, who had forfeited his prerogative by his crime, recorded before by Moses and now alluded to by Jacob, was to continue in obscurity. Bp. Patrick. In v. 4, the phrase, "Unstable as water," does not compare water to the solid earth or to more solid rock as treacherous to the foot and unsafe to stand on; but rather as bubbling, effervescing under heat or applied force—as therefore a fit image of ungoverned passion; of wantonness, impatient of restraint. Reuben had no moral stamina, and therefore could not hold his natural place of headship as the firstborn—a moral lesson worthy of thoughtful consideration. A young man given to licentious indulgence can have no solid bottom to his character. The sagacious will never trust him. H. C.—Reuben ought, as the firstborn, to have been the firmest defender of the honor of the family, and it was by him that it had been violated. For that reason the crown of dignity and might, to which his birthright entitled him, was taken from his head. 5-7. Simeon and Levi were the next in order, but the dignity, which Reuben had forfeited, could not be conferred upon them; for through their treachery toward the Shechemites they had brought disgrace upon the house of Jacob. They had wafted for the purpose of crime, therefore they were to be scattered in Israel. The three elder sons were thus excluded from the rights and privileges of the birthright. They were not to inhabit the heart of the land, which would otherwise have fallen to their share. Reuben's inheritance was to be outside the true holy land, and therefore was not even mentioned. Simeon and Levi were to be scattered in fragments among the rest of the tribes, and therefore to lose the advantages and independence, which only compactness and unity could secure. K.—Jacob pronounces a curse upon their anger, not because indignation against sin is unwarrantable in itself, but because their wrath was marked by deeds of fierceness and cruelty. He does not cut them off from any part in the promised inheritance; but he divides and scatters them. M.—Their fault was a bad union; their punishment is a just division. Their fault was "hand-in-hand;" they were too near; their punishment is, they shall be set far enough asunder. So whom the devil hath joined God puts insunder, and a righteous thing it is it should be so. Bp. Andrews.—The tribe of Simeon had not any inheritance properly of their own, but only a portion in the midst of the tribe of Judah (Josh. 19 : 1-9); whence several of them afterward went in quest of new habitations (1 Chron. 4 : 39, 42), and so were divided from the rest of their brethren. The tribe of Levi had no inheritance allotted to them, but were dispersed among all the tribes, having certain cities assigned to them, with a little land adjoining. This indeed did not prove a curse to them, they having the tenth of all the increase of the land: for this curse seems to have been taken off by reason of their eminent services in falling on the worshippers of the golden calf, and so consecrating themselves to the Lord (Exod. 32 : 26, 29); on which account Moses blesses this tribe a little before his death, whereas he gives no blessing to the tribe of Simeon, but leaves them under the curse here pronounced by Jacob. Bp. Patrick. 8. Judah, thee shall thy brethren praise.** The rest of the nation shall be called Jews, and their whole country Judea, from Judah (Esther 3 : 6 ; Matt. 27 : 37). This tribe was famous also for their conquests over their enemies (Judg. 1 : 2), and the dominion which it enjoyed over their brethren. It was famous for the kingdom of the house of David; but especially because the Messiah was born of this tribe, whose kingdom is everlasting. Bp. Kuder. On the neck of thine enemies. The intrepid and successful bravery of the men of Judah was often the subject of admiration. As soon as the tribes of Israel sent forth separate armies against the Canaanites, the tribe of Judah gained a high distinction which was well maintained in succeeding generations. The fiercest giants about the region of Hebron could not stand before Caleb and his brave associates. David was of the tribe of Judah. By him was the kingdom of Israel raised to a pitch of power and glory which made his name great in distant lands. The enemies of Judah were more especially overthrown and brought into complete subjection under David, who, evidently referring to this prophecy, says (Ps. 18 : 40), "Thou hast also given me the neck of mine enemies, that I might destroy them that hate me." —Thy father's sons shall bow down before thee. They shall acknowledge thee as exalted to the highest dignity among them. This prediction began to be accomplished when he took precedence of the other tribes in leading the armies of Israel, after the death of Joshua. It was also still more fully confirmed at a subsequent period (1 Chron. 5 : 2), "For Judah prevailed above his brethren, and of him came the chief ruler." But its complete accomplishment was to be realized only in Christ, in that transcendent dignity with which he is invested as King of kings and Lord of lords. Its ultimate spiritual fulfilment is to be seen symbolically represented in Rev. 5 : 5-8, where, when the Lion of the tribe of Judah takes the sealed book, the whole host of heavenly worshippers are discovered in prostrate adorations at his feet. Bush. 9. Literally:** "A young lion is Judah; from the prey, my son, art thou gone up: he kneels, he couches as a lion, and as a lioness, who shall rouse him up?" Judah is a lion's whelp: he goes forth to the prey, he mounts up with his prey triumphantly to the mountain-den; there he couches as a lion, nay, like the still fiercer lioness, who shall venture to rouse him? In the description the imagery increases in force, perhaps in reference to the continually increasing power of this tribe, which received its consummation in the greatest of all Victors, in the Lion of the tribe of Judah (Rev. 5 : 5). Geri. 10. The meaning of the verse appears to be "The Sceptre (either of royal, or perhaps only of tribal, authority) shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver (senator or scribe) from before him, until Shiloh (i.e. either 'the Prince of peace,' or 'he whose right it is') shall come, and to him shall the nations be obedient." There are some obscure expressions, but we may confidently hold that the above paraphrase conveys the true sense of the passage. E. H. B.—Shall not depart from Judah. Shall not pass from him to another, is the meaning. So general an expression should be taken in its obvious general import; namely, that Judah should retain the supremacy among the tribes of Israel, and should yield it to no other. This is verified in its history. For notwithstanding the revolt of the ten tribes, and the seventy years of captivity, it (and it alone) maintained its nationality to the coming of the Messiah, at which time it still had its own national institutions and laws. At the captivity, the nationality of the rival kingdom of the revolted tribes ceased, and was known no more: that of Judah continued to the coming of the Messiah, and soon after ceased forever. Ruler's staff—between his feet. As often represented in ancient sculptures, Shiloh; meaning, Peaceful, or Maker of peace. Compare Prince of peace, in Isaiah 9:6. That this refers to the Messiah, was held by the oldest Jewish interpreters, and there is no sufficient ground for dissenting from their opinion. To him**; referring either to the nearest subject, Shiloh, the most obvious grammatical reference, or to Judah the leading subject of the sentence. In the former case, the word peoples is to be taken in its widest sense. In the latter, it has its more usual meaning, namely the tribes of Israel; and the reference is to the most brilliant period of Judah's supremacy, when all were united under the sway of David and Solomon. T. J. C.—Far more probable is the rendering which makes Shiloh a proper name, and the subject of the verb, signifying "Peace," or rather, "the Peace-maker," the "Prince of peace." So, with slight variations, Luther, Vater, Gesenius, Rosenmüller, Hengstenberg, Knobel, Keil and others of the highest authority. The title is one most appropriate to Messiah (see Isaiah, 9:6). The word is legitimately formed from the verb Shalah, to rest, to be at peace; and if the received reading be the true reading, there need be little doubt that this is its meaning. E. H. B. This victorious tribe shall maintain its preeminence above the rest until the Prince of Peace shall come, to whom, not only the other tribes, but all people, shall yield obedience. The triumph which all nations shall enjoy in Abraham and his seed is to consist in peace, which the mighty, victorious Leader shall give to them. The "Prince of Peace," as says Isaiah, carrying out this image, shall erect a kingdom in which peace shall have no end. Gerl.—This distinctive feature of the Messiah's character and mission is the theme of Ps. 72 and of many passages in Isaiah, e.g. 9:6, 7, and 11:1-10, and 60:18-22. These prophecies naturally follow the lead of this and therefore sustain the construction here given it. Moreover, it is natural and highly probable that Jacob, whose twelve sons were to found the twelve tribes of Israel and who knew that the Messiah was to come in the line of some one of his sons, should indicate which. Noah had designated Shem: God had designated Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; now the choice is naturally made out of these twelve. H. C. As regards the fulfilment of this prophecy, it is undoubted that the tribal authority and the highest place in the nation continued with Judah until the destruction of Jerusalem. Israel never ceased to be a nation, Judah never ceased to be a tribe with at least a tribal sceptre and lawgivers, or expositors of the law, Sanhedrim or Senators, and with a general preeminence in the land, nor was there a foreign ruler of the people, till at least the time of Herod the Great, just before the birth of the Saviour. E. H. B.—We learn from history that Judah never lost his tribe, the greatest care having been exercised to preserve distinct this tribe and its families. Thus, in the days of Saul the men of Judah were numbered apart (1 Sam. 11:8); the same also was the case in the time of David (2 Sam. 24:9). Prophets also were employed to record the genealogies of this tribe under the kings (2 Chron. 12:15, and 13:22), and the same care appears to have been exercised during the captivity in Babylon, for while there was difficulty in making out the genealogies of some of the other tribes there was none in regard to this (Ez. 2:62; Neh. 7:64). And while in fact a portion of the other ten tribes never returned at all to the land of their fathers, Judah, with Benjamin its accessory, returned with its integrity unbroken, and so remained till the birth of Christ, the whole nation as well as the land itself receiving its denomination from Judah, the one being called "Jews," the other "Judea." Thus it was that the sceptre, or the tribal constitution, did not depart from Judah before the predicted era. It is abundantly evident, however, that both the sceptre and what is called the lawgiver are long since lost in Judah; that the tribe of Judah has lost the record of its genealogies; and that none can discriminate the true descendants of the patriarch Judah from the descendants of Benjamin or of the other patriarchs. Either then this word of promise to Judah has failed forevermore, or Shiloh is come, and it is vain to look for another Messiah. Bush. The second king of Israel was of the tribe of Judah; and from that time to the Babylonish captivity Judah had not only the sceptre of a tribe, but the sceptre of a kingdom. When it was promised that the sceptre should not depart from Judah, it was implied that it should depart from the other tribes: accordingly the tribe of Benjamin became an appendage to the kingdom of Judah, and the other ten tribes were carried into Assyria, whence [as tribes] they never returned. The Jews also were carried captive to Babylon, but returned after seventy years. During their captivity they had lived as a distinct people; had rulers and governors of their own; and a "prince of Judah" (Ez. 1:8). These princes and rulers managed their return and settlement afterward. After the Babylonish captivity they lived under the dominion of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans, not so free as before; but still as a distinct people under their own laws. The authority of their rulers and governors subsisted under these foreign masters; afterward under the Asmonean princes; and even in our Saviour's time. Their power indeed in capital causes, especially those relating to the state, was abridged. The sceptre was then departing; and in about forty years it totally departed. Their city was taken; their temple was destroyed; and they themselves were either slain with the sword, or sold for slaves. And from that time to this, they have never formed one body or society, but have been dispersed among all nations; their tribes and genealogies have been all confounded; and they have lived without a ruler, without a lawgiver, and without supreme authority and government in any part of the earth. And this a captivity not for seventy years, but for seventeen hundred.—Unto him shall the gathering of the people be. That is, of the Gentiles. This is foretold in many other Scriptures. It began to be fulfilled in Cornelius the centurion, and in a few years the Gospel was disseminated in the most considerable parts of the then known world. We ourselves were of the Gentiles, but are now gathered unto Christ. Bp. Newton. We now see the excellency of the blessing given to Judah. He was to be the father of the Shiloh; and till the Shiloh came, this tribe was to be the most glorious of all the tribes of Israel. The great burden of Judah's blessing was the promise of the Messiah. Bush.—He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, who having spoiled principalities and powers went up a Conqueror, and couched so as none can stir him up when he sat down on the right hand of the Father. To him belongs the sceptre; to him shall the gathering of the people be, as the Desire of all nations (Hag. 2:7), who being lifted up from the earth should draw all men unto him, and in whom the children of God that are scattered abroad should meet, as the centre of their unity. H. 11,22. The image of Judah, given in antique poetic speech, is in the highest degree picturesque. We see him binding his beast to the vine, which is the blessing of his land. The choice red sap flows for him in such abundance that he has washed his garments in it, which therefore show the royal purple. We only need look at him to see the profuse abundance yielded by his land. The dark fire peculiar to wine streams from his eyes, the dazzling white of milk from his teeth; so that we see with what his land overflows. As the land designed for him brings forth the noblest and richest fruit, the royal vine, so he himself is comparable in lofty energy to the royal lion, and as such he will bear the sceptre. Here plainly two stages are distinguished in Judah's future, a stage of conflict and one of peace. In the conflict for the attainment of his high destiny he will be the resistless conqueror, in peace the ruler unsurpassed in glory. History has brought the fulfilment. Not only was Judah in the van on the desert-march, not only was he the unwearied champion in the conquest of the land, but in other ways he showed his lion-like superiority. The age of greatest triumph and glory was ushered in by David when he assumed the sceptre and staff, no more to depart from his house. And under Solomon, the calmly couching lion, followed the most peaceful epoch of abundant prosperity, as under a true Prince of Peace. This was the climax of Israelitish national life. But the ideal was not reached then, still less afterward. On this account prophecy speaks again and again of a new setting up of the tabernacle of David (Amos 9:11), of a future David to whom it belongs to administer the law (Ezek. 34:23), who will subjugate all nations and bring in eternal peace. This king will enter Zion riding on the animal of peace (Zech. 9:9); under him men will enjoy the abundance of the land undisturbed (Joel 4:18; Micah 4:4). The final fulfilment of this patriarchal blessing we can only find with the apostolic Church in Christ, who has overcome as "the lion of the tribe of Judah," and now extends his kingdom in undisturbed peace, and rejoices in its glory. Orelli. The whole description here is full of Messianic allusions, which were afterward taken up in the prophecy of Balaam; then applied to David (Ps. 89); and from him carried forward in prophecy, through Ps. 72, Isa. 9:11, to Ezek. 21:27, and Zech. 9:9, till they were finally realized in Jesus Christ, "sprung out of Juda," "our peace, who hath made both one," and who "must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet," "the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David," who "hath prevailed." A. E.—Through the Old Testament Scriptures we find the conception of a kingdom to be set up in the latter days held forth continually both as the hope of Israel, and as the consummation of God's purposes of grace for mankind. We go back to that primitive scene of the patriarch of the twelve tribes, dying in a strange land, his sons gathered around him as he braces himself upon the edge of his couch, and leans upon the top of his staff and worships the God before whom his fathers "Abraham and Isaac did walk," and as his dimmed eyes brighten with the vision of the future, we hear him say, with the confidence of a Seer to whom that vision is reality,—"The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until Shiloh—the Peace shall come; and unto him shall the obedience of the Peoples be." Hardly is David seated upon his throne in Judah, and the ark that had rested in Shiloh brought up to Zion, when, as if to disclaim the fulfilment of Jacob's prediction in himself, the Psalmist prophesied anew the coming of the Lord's anointed, who should have "the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession" (Ps. 2). But though Judah in the time of her prosperity must still wait for the consummation of her kingdom, yet in her times of depression and fear the promise is renewed to revive her hope. Isaiah then lifts up his voice like a trumpet, rallying the discomfited and despairing people: "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever" (Isa. 9:6, 7). And Zechariah, making the hills of Palestine vocal with the welcome to Messiah, sings, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion: shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold thy king cometh unto Thee" (Zech. 9:9); and Micah reaches forth the prophetic benediction to Bethlehem—"Though least among the thousands of Judah, yet out of her shall he come forth that is to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting" (Micah 5:2). And all the history of the ages is brought to crystallize about this single thread of the promised kingdom of the Messiah. It is wonderful with what tenacity of assertion the Bible holds to this conception of the kingdom of God; it is amazing with what majesty of purpose, what stateliness of march the Providence of God moves ever toward the consummation of that kingdom in the coming of Christ. Men, kings, peoples, dynasties, empires, as brought within the contemplation of this Book, are nothing, save as they touch upon this kingdom, and are the agents or opponents of its progress. Egypt, Arabia and Tyre, Assyria, Babylon and Persia, the later Macedonian and Roman empires—all are of no account save as they help or hinder the unfolding of the kingdom of God. The covenant with Abraham posited that kingdom in the oath of Jehovah as the guarantee of its universality and its perpetuity; the constitution of Israel under a Theocracy erected before the world a symbol of this divine kingdom, and provided within itself the means of its spiritual development; and when the fulness of time had arrived for the spiritual to burst its shell and stand forth in the beauty of Righteousness, the majesty of Truth, the power of Love, then the polity like the ritual fell away, and symbol, prophecy, and history met and were fulfilled in Christ. J. P. T. 13. The lot of God's providence exactly agrees with the plan of God's counsel, like a true copy with the original. If prophecy says, Zebulun shall be a haven of ships, Providence will so plant him. God appoints the bounds of our habitation. It is our wisdom and duty to accommodate ourselves to our lot, and to improve it. If Zebulun dwell at the haven of the sea, let him be for a haven of ships. H. 14,15. The principal portion of the great plain of Esdraelon fell to the lot of the tribe of Issachar. And for the sake of securing himself in so desirable a portion, Issachar appears to have become at times humbly subservient to the Cananites of the adjacent fortified towns, and to the proud country of Phœnicia on the near sea-coast. The people of Issachar—in the language of Ritter—"assumed a position of almost slavish servitude in relation to the Phœnicians, becoming their common carriers, mule-drivers, and servants of all work." Such humiliation of this tribe the dying Jacob must have foreseen, when he spake this of Issachar. N. C. B. 16,17. Dan. We have only to consult the history of Samson's warfare with the Philistines to see how strikingly this predicted character was then realized. Bush.—18. That the long-promised Seed was in Jacob's thought is forcibly and beautifully suggested in the midst of these dying benedictions by the words—"I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord." In the sustaining hope of a coming Saviour he had waited and trusted through many long years; for these words express the precious experiences of a life. As Jesus himself testified of Abraham, "He rejoiced to see my day," hailing it joyously from afar, so Jacob witnesses of himself, "I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord." H. C.—Nothing can be more natural than to suppose that the dying patriarch, at the moment when he was formally transmitting to his children the theocratic blessing, had his thoughts lifted up toward that great salvation, of which all these material and temporal benedictions pronounced upon his sons were but the shadows and the types, and of which perhaps he had been incidentally reminded by the mention of the biting serpent, to which he had just likened Dan. It is noticeable that this is the first occurrence of the term salvation. T. W. The salvation he waited for was Christ, the promised Seed, whom he had spoken of (v. 10). Now that he was going to be gathered to his people, he breathes after him to whom the gathering of the people shall be. Now that he is going to enjoy the salvation, he comforts himself with this, that he had waited for the salvation. It is the comfort of a dying saint thus to have waited for the salvation of the Lord; for then he shall have what he has been waiting for: long-looked-for will come. H.—Our Lord appears as the chief, the central object of prophecy; the light that illuminates its obscurity. Even in the early period of the patriarchs, he was the principal object of desiring expectation to holy men. All the ancient saints were waiting for him, down to Simeon, who could depart in peace, because his eyes had seen the Saviour. R. Hall. 19. Gad. The language refers to attacks of nomadic tribes which would harass and annoy the Gadites, but which they would successfully repel. 20. Asher. The import of the blessing is that Asher should possess a specially productive soil. Whitelaw. 22-26. There is here a fulness of paternal feeling, a richness and prodigality of blessing, such as would naturally be poured forth on the lost and recovered child of the object of early love, and child of old age. These natural affections, under divine guidance, often become, as here, the fittest instruments for the expression of the divine will. T. J. C.—The blessing on Joseph forms the climax of the father's fondness and the prophet's fervor. Taking his name (adding or increase) as a sign both of his past abundance and his future enlargement, he compares him to a fruitful vine, or rather a branch of the vine of Israel, throwing its shoots over the wall of the cistern by which it is planted; and he promises his favorite son every form of blessing that man could desire or enjoy. As in all his history, so in this prophecy especially, Joseph is one of the most eminent types of Christ. P. S. 22. A fruitful bough. Joseph is fitly compared to a fruitful bough by reason of his numerous offspring. He was the head of two tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh, and they were both very numerous. 23. Joseph was aimed and shot at and greatly oppressed by his enemies. His own brethren reviled him, shooting at him with the arrows of bitter words: they contrived his death. He was sold into Egypt through envy, and imprisoned by a lie. 24. But his bow abode in strength. The Divine help and mercy did not forsake him: he was preserved and relieved by the mighty God of Israel. By him he was kept alive, when his death was designed; preserved chaste, when he was greatly tempted; rendered prosperous in his lowest circumstances; and from them advanced to great dignity, and made an instrument of very great good to others. From thence, that is, from the same Divine power and mercy, Joseph, who had been sold, tempted, maligned, and imprisoned, and greatly oppressed, became the feeder, and stay and support (called here stone, compare Gen. 28:11), or rock of defence of his father and his family. "Neither was there a man born like unto Joseph, a governor of his brethren, a stay of the people" (Ecclus. 49:15). Bp. Kidder. 25,26. These two thoughts—the peaceful abundance of his old age, which he owed to Joseph, and the persecutions his beloved son had endured—stir the fountains of his affections until they overflow with blessings. Blessings of heaven above,—the air, the rain, and the sun. Blessings of the deep,—the springs and streams, as well as the fertile soil. Blessings of the breasts and the womb,—the children of the home and the young of the flocks and herds. The benedictions pronounced upon Joseph exceed those that came upon Jacob himself from his fathers. To Joseph is given a double portion, with a double measure of affection from a father's heart. M. 27. Benjamin. As Judah is likened to a lion, Issachar to a strong ass, Dan to a serpent, Naphtali to an hind let loose, Joseph to a fruitful bough, or tree planted by the waters; so Benjamin is fitly compared to a ravenous wolf, for his warlike courage and success against his enemies. Kidder.—It was a fierce and warlike tribe, as appears from several instances, and especially in the case of the Levite's wife (Judg. 20), when they alone waged war against all the other tribes, and overcame them in two battles. In the morning.** The morning and night here are the morning and night of the Jewish state, which is the subject of all Jacob's prophecy: as in Moses's prophecy, which is an exposition of this of Jacob, "Benjamin shall dwell in safety; the Lord shall cover him all the day long." This imports that Benjamin should continue longer than the other tribes, even to the very last times of the Jewish state. And this was most exactly fulfilled. As the tribe of Benjamin annexed itself to the tribe of Judah as its head, so it ran the same fortune with it: they went together into captivity; they returned home together; and were both in being when Shiloh came. Bp. Newton. 28,29. The concluding words (v. 29) show that this was a formal appointment of Jacob's twelve sons to be the twelve heads of the chosen race, now becoming a nation, instead of its having one head as hitherto; and also that the blessings and prophecies of the dying patriarch had respect rather to the tribes than to their individual ancestors; and henceforth the tribes are continually spoken of as if they were persons. P. S. The Jews, without reference to their religious belief, are among the most remarkable people in the annals of mankind. Sprung from one stock, they pass the infancy of their nation in a state of servitude in a foreign country, where, nevertheless, they increase so rapidly, as to appear on a sudden the fierce and irresistible conquerors of their native valleys in Palestine. There they settle down under a form of government and code of laws totally unlike those of any other rude or civilized community. They sustain a long and doubtful conflict, sometimes enslaved, sometimes victorious, with the neighboring tribes. At length, united under one monarchy, they gradually rise to the rank of a powerful, opulent, and commercial people. Subsequently weakened by internal discord, they are overwhelmed by the vast monarchies which arose on the banks of the Euphrates, and transplanted into a foreign region. They are partially restored, by the generosity or policy of the Eastern sovereigns, to their native land. They are engaged in wars of the most romantic gallantry, in assertion of their independence, against the Syro Grecian successors of Alexander. Under Herod, they rise to a second era of splendor, as a dependent kingdom of Rome: finally, they make the last desperate resistance to the universal dominion of the Cessars. Scattered from that period over the face of the earth—hated, scorned, and oppressed, they subsist, a numerous and often a thriving people; and in all the changes of manners and opinions retain their ancient institutions, their national character, and their indelible hope of restoration to grandeur and happiness in their native land. Thus the history of this, perhaps the only unmingled race, which can boast of high antiquity, leads us through every gradation of society, and brings us into contact with almost every nation which commands our interest in the ancient world; the migratory pastoral population of Asia; Egypt, the mysterious parent of arts, science, and legislation; the Arabian Desert; the Hebrew theocracy under the form of a federative agricultural republic, their kingdom powerful in war and splendid in peace; Babylon, in its magnificence and downfall; Grecian arts and luxury endeavoring to force an unnatural refinement within the pale of the rigid Mosaic institutions; Roman arms waging an exterminating war with the independence even of the smallest states; it descends, at length, to all the changes in the social state of the modern European and Asiatic nations. The religious history of this people is no less singular. In the narrow slip of land inhabited by their tribes the worship of one Almighty Creator of the Universe subsisted, as in its only sanctuary. In every stage of society, under the pastoral tent of Abraham, and in the sumptuous temple of Solomon, the same creed maintains its inviolable simplicity. During their long intercourse with foreign nations in Egypt and Babylon, though the primitive habits and character of the Hebrew nation were greatly modified, and perhaps some theological notions engrafted on their original tenets, this primary distinction still remains; after several periods of almost total apostasy, it revives in all its vigor. Nor is this merely a sublime speculative tenet, it is the basis of their civil constitution, and their national character. As there is but one Almighty God, so there is but one people 49 : 29 And he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my people : bury 30 me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a buryingplace : 31 there they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife ; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his 32 wife ; and there I buried Leah : the field and the cave that is therein, which was pur- 33 chased from the children of Heth. And when Jacob made an end of charging his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people.50 : 1 And Joseph fell upon his father's face, and wept upon him, and kissed him. And 2 Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father : and the physicians 3 embalmed Israel. And forty days were fulfilled for him ; for so are fulfilled the days of embalming : and the Egyptians wept for him threescore and ten days. 4 And when the days of weeping for him were past, Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh, saying, If now I have found grace in your eyes, speak, I pray you, in the ears of 5 Pharaoh, saying, My father made me swear, saying, Lo, I die : in my grave which I have 6 digged for me in the land of Canaan, there shalt thou bury me. Now therefore let me go 7 up, I pray thee, and bury my father, and I will come again. And Pharaoh said, Go up, 8 and bury thy father, according as he made thee swear. And Joseph went up to bury his 9 father : and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and 10 all the elders of the land of Egypt, and all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his 11 father's house : only their little ones, and their flocks, and their herds, they left in the 12 land of Goshen. And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen : and it was a 13 very great company. And they came to the threshing-floor of Atad, which is beyond 14 Jordan, and there they lamented with a very great and sore lamentation : and he made a 15 mourning for his father seven days. And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaan- 16 ites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourning to the 17 Egyptians : wherefore the name of it was called Abelmizraim, which is beyond Jordan. 18 And his sons did unto him according as he commanded them : for his sons carried him 19 into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which 20 Abraham bought with the field, for a possession of a buryingplace, of Ephron the Hittite, 21 before Mamre. The life of Jacob is a most striking illustration of the difficult sort of natural material which the grace of God often has to work upon. Jacob was not by nature a noble character. But the grace of God made him noble in the hour of trial. Of all men, Jacob might have applied himself to the language of the great apostle two thousand years after: "By the grace of God I am what I am." Hence, next to David's life, this checkered, troubled life of Jacob is the most instructive on the subject of Christian experience of any of the biographies of holy scripture. Nor is there a place of spiritual history into which sin and sorrow can cast the believing soul which may not directly or indirectly find its illustration in the story of Jacob's experience. This account of the last hours and the death of such a man is beautifully presented here. When "the time drew near that Israel must die," as we have already seen, he at once proceeded with the greatest self-possession to set his house in order. He has now announced the prophetic oracles concerning his posterity in the "afterhood of days," and has given solemn charge to lay his dead body with Abraham and Sarah and Isaac, in the land of the inheritance. And his work being all done, he lies down to await his last summons. Calmly he yielded up his spirit to Him who gave it, and is "gathered to his fathers." S. R. 29-32. Abraham had testified his faith in the divine promises by the purchase of the burying-place of Machpelah, and Jacob would show that he had the same confidence. His command to his sons was a public profession that he had lived and was now dying in the same faith by which his progenitors had embraced the promise. What was said by Paul of Joseph may be said of Jacob, that "by faith he gave commandment concerning his bones." Bush. 33. Jacob is the only one of the Old Testament patriarchs whom we are able to accompany to his very last hour. And here we see how the Old Testament death-bed was surrounded by brightness and peace, the fear of death being swallowed up in the certain hope of the rest that remaineth for the people of God. Baum.—He rather appears to have conquered death than to have suffered it. Who, seeing the end of this illustrious patriarch, can help exclaiming, There is none like the God of Jeshurun! Let Jacob's God be my God! Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his! A. C.—Death was no new subject to him; salvation not an untried theme; the grave no strange country; heaven not an unlooked-for home. He had waited for the Angel of the Covenant, who had redeemed him from all evil, and the summons, when it came, found him ready and willing to enter into the eternal presence. His work was done; his last blessings and behests had been pronounced; his last accents of prayer and praise breathed out; and he had now nothing to do but "to gather up his feet into his bed," and cheerfully to resign his spirit into the hand of his Father and his God. He was gathered to his people according to his own expectation and his hope. Bush. Here is more than quiet hope, here is full certainty of salvation: here is a waiting, an expectation which can afford to be patient because it is certain, and can in no case be mistaken. No remorse for the past disturbs him; the sinner has become the favored of God, the heir of the promise. No fear of the future concerns him; assured of God's salvation, his soul is thus set free from everything that might even at the last trouble his peace, and it surrenders all unconditionally with the words, "Lo, I die, but God shall be with you," and he falls asleep like a child on the faithful bosom of its mother. Glorious fruits of the hope of salvation in the glimmering twilight of the ancient covenant! If they could thus depart who have not seen the promises fulfilled, but merely beholding them from afar have believed and embraced them, what should be the life, what at last the death, of those who walk at noonday, and rejoice in an accomplished salvation! Van O. His yielding up the ghost and being gathered unto his people—as if these two events were in close juxtaposition—and the latter previous to the funeral which took place many days after—indicate another sort of gathering with his ancestors than merely being buried with them; as if his spirit in returning to God joined Abraham and Isaac—standing before him who is the God, not of the dead but of the living. T. C. "Many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven." This declaration of Christ, while it anticipates the vocation of the Gentiles as fellow-heirs with Israel of spiritual and celestial blessings, refers us in its full and final accomplishment to the grand eternal assembly of the redeemed: it points the eye of faith and hope to a prospect before which all others fade into littleness and darkness. What a multitude must that be which embraces the saved of all ages, from the beginning to the end of time! "a multitude," indeed, "which none can number;" innumerable as the leaves of autumn which moulden into earth, types of the buried bodies of the saints; innumerable as the leaves of spring which reappear in vernal beauty, types of those bodies destined to reappear in the beauty of the resurrection. Every dispensation, Patriarchal, Mosaic, Christian, will meet and mingle there. And not those only who walked with God in the shadowy moonlight of Judaism, and those who followed Christ in the bright sunshine of the gospel; but those also who "felt after their Maker, if happily they might find him," in the glimmering gloom of natural reason, may swell that immense host of the redeemed. Let us be followers of those who through faith and patience now inherit the promises; followers of those devout patriarchs who sought a better country; children of Abraham, Israelites indeed! R. Hail. 50 : 1. In full accordance with the promise made to Jacob by Jehovah at Beersheba, Joseph is present to close his eyes, and that done the great Egyptian prince gives vent to his uncontrollable sorrow. It is a beautiful exhibition of nature asserting her rights in spite of all official grandeur and etiquette. Joseph the man, the son, is above Joseph the prince. In all the glories of his exaltation he is not ashamed of his connection, by birth and sympathy, with this tribe of shepherds from Canaan. He sees by faith, as Moses did afterward, that it is better to be Jacob's son than prince of the Empire of Egypt. S. R. 2-4. Embalmed Israel. Great numbers of embalmed bodies ("mummies") have been found in Egyptian tombs within the present century, in perfect preservation. On this point the coincidences between sacred and profane history are striking. The practice was very ancient, some mummies bearing the date of the oldest kings. It was performed by a special class of physicians. In harmony with Moses, Herodotus and Diodorus state that the embalming process occupied forty days; the entire period of mourning seventy. Classic authorities give accounts similar to this of great mourning for the dead. The monuments contain representations to the same effect. Funeral trains and processions are represented abundantly in the oldest tombs at Elithias, also at Sagguarah, at Gizeh, and at Thebes. A coincidence so minute as this is noticed; that mourners forbore to shave their hair or beard; but none might appear before the king unshorn. Consequently we observe that Joseph does not come before the king in person but "spake unto the house of Pharaoh" requesting them to speak in his behalf to the king. H. C. 7-13. Of the funerals of the kings of Judah usually no more is said than this, They were buried with their fathers in the city of David; but the funeral of the patriarch Jacob is more largely and fully described. He had spoken more than once of dying for grief and going to the grave bereaved of his children, but he dies in honor, and is followed to the grave by all his children. His orders concerning his burial were given and observed in faith, and in expectation both of the earthly and of the heavenly Canaan. H.—9. A very great company. This must have been a very grand funeral procession—and that for more than two hundred miles—such as the world has seldom seen. There were not only the family of Israel—and not only the officers of the court, "the servants of Pharaoh"—but "the elders of Egypt," or the grandees of the empire. There were also chariots and horsemen, so that, with the attendants taken with them by so many high persons, the camp was very great, as the text states. Kit.—The splendor and magnificence of our Patriarch's funeral seem to be without a parallel in history. The noble obsequies of Marcellus come nearest in comparison. But how do even these fall short of the simple narrative before us! For what are the six hundred beds, for which the Roman solemnities on this occasion were so famous, when compared to that national itinerant multitude which swelled like a flood and moved like a river; to "all Pharaoh's servants, to the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt," that is, to the officers of his household, and deputies of his provinces; with "all the house" of Joseph, and his "brethren," and his "father's house," conducting their solemn sorrow for two hundred miles into a distant country? Stackhouse. 10. Atad, beyond Jordan. The vast cavalcade which left Egypt with the corpse of Jacob did not move directly by the shortest route to Canaan, but around on the eastern side of the Dead Sea to the Jordan. This was probably to avoid collision with the people of the thickly-settled country of South Canaan, or from unfriendly relations between Egypt and that region. Scriptural meaning and use of the term "Elder." It is worthy of special note that in this enumeration of the great personages that attended the funeral we have mentioned "all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt." The first mention we have of the "elder," as a title of office, is in the case of Eliezer, the servant and elder of Abraham's house in Gen. 24 : 2. It is obvious, from that place and this, that the title denoted from the first a ministerial agency, and therefore the term servant connected with it denoted nothing servile, but simply that the office was ministerial and under the direction of a higher authority. This is precisely the use made of the term in the New Testament. The apostles denominated themselves "stewards," or upper servants of the Church of God. It is a very striking illustration of the perpetuity of usage in certain terms as conveying the same general ideas from age to age. Why should the name "elder" have been given to ministerial agents, whether civil or religious? Doubtless from the first form of government on earth—the patriarchy—the government of the "old man" of the tribe. So long as human life extended to near a thousand years there could be no other government either in state or church than that of the family. The list of patriarchs from Adam to Abraham is doubtless a list of the succession of ruling heads over the people "that called on the name of Jehovah." When human life was shortened to a little more than a century this system of natural rulers or elders must, in the nature of the case, give way to the system of chosen rulers from among several of the same age. The term "elder" was transferred from the patriarchs to the appointed rulers, and hence, both in state and church, we find the Zakan (Hebrew), Presbuteros (Greek), elder (English) applied, as here, to the public ministers of Egypt, and subsequently to the magistrates of Moab and to both the civil and ecclesiastical rulers in Israel. The same idea of naming the officer from a term denoting age has run through all history since. Thus the Greek councillors were "Patres" (fathers), the Roman Senators (from Senex, an old man), and from the Latin was derived the Spanish Signor and the French Signeur. Then the German "Alderman," or older man, the same which we still apply to the councillors of a city. In the church of God that has continued to be the term properly denoting rule and ministerial authority in every age, through both the Old and New Testament. For, while other terms are applied to the ministers of religion in the New Testament, it will be found that they are used only incidentally. The term "Apostle," as describing men "sent" out by Christ as his witnesses—the term "epi-cepos"—occurring only half a dozen times, and always in speaking to Greeks—is manifestly only a Greek explanation of the old ecclesiastical term "Presbyter"—"elder," which Greeks had not yet grown familiar with. "Presbyter" is the fundamental title of office in the church throughout the history; and so in the prophetic visions of the church of the future as the Apostle John saw it in the Apocalypse, it still continues under the same organization. For he saw "four-and-twenty elders"—twelve representatives of the Old Testament church and twelve of the New—leading on the redeemed church, and casting their crowns at the feet of the Lamb, that sat upon the throne. It is a singular fact that on the monuments of Egypt the same peculiarity of "elder" as the name for a nobleman is found. The symbol in hieroglyphics, denoting a head man, or noble, is the figure of an old man with a long staff in hand. As a title of honor this is said to occur constantly on the monuments. S. R. 14. And Joseph returned into Egypt, he, and his brethren, and all that went up with him to 15 bury his father, after he had buried his father. And when Joseph's brethren saw that their 16 father was dead, they said, It may be that Joseph will hate us, and will fully requite us all the 17 evil which we did unto him. And they sent a message unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did 18 command before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the 19 transgression of thy brethren, and their sin, for that they did unto thee evil; and now, we 20 pray thee, forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph 21 wept when they spake unto him. And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; 22 and they said, Behold, we be thy servants. And Joseph said unto them, Fear not; for am I 23 in the place of God? And as for you, ye meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, 21 to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them. 22 And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father's house: and Joseph lived an hundred and ten years. And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation: the children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were born upon Joseph's knees. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: but God will surely visit you, and bring you up out of this land unto the land which he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. 15-20. If Joseph had been rancorous, this depreciation had charmed him; but now it resolves him into tears: they are not so ready to acknowledge their old offence, as he to protest his love; and if he chide them for anything, it is for that they thought they needed to entreat; since they might know it could not stand with the fellow-servant of their father's God, to harbor maliciousness, to purpose revenge; "Am not I under God?" And, fully to secure them he turns their eyes from themselves to the decree of God; from the action to the event; as one that would have them think there was no cause to repent of that which proved so successful. Bp. II.—20. Ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good. In using this language Joseph by no means intended to upbraid his brethren with what they had thought against him. His mention of their intentions was only designed as a contrast to the gracious intentions of God. What he had told them seventeen years before, he still adhered to, and the same considerations which induced him to pass by their offence then, induced him to do it still. Bush. The true Christian forgiveness, as here in Joseph's example, is unconditional. It was a frank, full, free remission—consoling them—trying to make them forget—neither by look nor word showing memory, unless the fault had been repeated. It was unconditional, with no reserve behind. That was forgiving and forgetting. No mere maxims got by heart about forgiveness of injuries—no texts perpetually on the tongue will do this—God alone can teach it: By experience; by a sense of human frailty; by a perception of "the soul of goodness in things evil;" by a cheerful trust in human nature; by a strong sense of God's love; by long and disciplined realization of the atoning love of Christ: only thus can we get that free, manly, large, princely spirit which the best and purest of all the patriarchs, Joseph, exhibited in his matured manhood. F. W. R. "Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good"—that is the golden lesson that comes out of this whole history. The Providence of God was in and over every incident in it, making them all co-operate for the bringing about of the great design which he had for the deliverance of the people in famine, for the education of the children of Israel in Egypt, and for the unification of them at length into a nation capable of taking possession of the Land of Promise. W. M. T. When God makes use of men's agency for the performance of his counsels, it is common for him to mean one thing, and them another, even the quite contrary; but God's counsels shall stand (see Is. 10:7). God often brings good out of evil and serves the designs of his providence, even by the sins of men; not that he is the Author of sin, but his infinite wisdom so overrules events and directs the chain of them, that in the issue that ends in his praise which in its own nature had a direct tendency to his dishonor; as the putting of Christ to death (Acts 2:23). This does not make sin the less sinful, nor sinners the less punishable, but it redounds greatly to the glory of God's wisdom. II.—God does not hinder evil by force; but even the abuse of human freedom to evil, He takes as a link in the chain of His adorable scheme of providence. Man is judged, not by the results, but by the motives and aim of his conduct; and moral evil remains evil, although higher wisdom interfere and from it bring forth good. Men were but instruments; but the counsel of God is fulfilled, and the fulfilment is nothing less than the deliverance of an entire nation. Van O.—At the end we see the wisdom and goodness of the design; while at the beginning, or at the middle, we see nothing but darkness. Thus it was dark when Joseph was thrown into the pit; when he was sold into Egypt; when by a false accusation he was cast into prison. The lingering days of that imprisonment were dark; but they lasted not one moment too long. Had one of the links in the chain of Providence been omitted, Joseph might never have been ruler in Egypt, nor his father and his father's house been kept alive from famine. Joseph's faith must have been sorely tried, as he could not foresee the end of the Lord, nor the reason of these dealings. Yet that trial and chastening might have been necessary to fit him for his subsequent advancement to power; and without them his exaltation might have been his ruin for time and eternity. God meant it all for good. And see how the subordinate purposes of God entwine together, and interweave themselves with the great purpose of the main scheme. Joseph was blessed, his father's house was saved; but God was also preparing a history by which men may believe his goodness while as yet they are unable to perceive it. The benefits conferred upon Joseph and his family were, perhaps, as nothing, compared with the greater and more enduring benefits to them who read his history. An. 22. Joseph dwelt in Egypt.** At the death of his father Joseph's age was 56, and he lived after that event 54 years more. The records of Egyptian history show that Apophis, the patron of Joseph, reigned alone 61 years. It was about the 51st or 54th year of his reign that Jacob and his family came into Egypt; so that he died about seven or ten years after that event, and consequently before the decease of Jacob, Joseph, then, survived Apophis many years, and was minister to his successors on the throne. According to Manetho, the successor of Apophis was named Jannes. He associated with himself his son Asses, who, according to the monuments, was "a most munificent and prosperous monarch." It is highly probable, then, that Jannes and Asses were the monarchs of Egypt during the latter period of the life of Joseph; and so valuable a servant had he proved to Apophis, that they retained him in the office which he held. The benefits he had conferred on Egypt were of the greatest value and importance, and they were not forgotten when he became infirm. He was had in esteem to the end of his days. M. Joseph lived an hundred and ten years. Eighty of which he spent in great prosperity, being but thirty years old when he first stood before Pharaoh. Bp. Patrick.—The life of Joseph was very different from that of his fathers. He lived in a sumptuous palace, honored by the whole nation of Egypt, and by the surrounding nations, as the wisest and one of the greatest of men. Yet he lived in his palace by faith, as his fathers had done in their tents. Not surely for the sake of the honors and pleasures which the court of Egypt could afford him, but rather because it was the will of God that he should dwell there to be a father to Pharaoh, and to be the shepherd of Israel. Bush. 23-26. Joseph had the joy of seeing his father's blessing commence to be fulfilled. Ephraim's children of the third generation and Manasseh's grandchildren "were brought up upon his knees." As he felt death approaching he gathered "his brethren" about him. Joseph was full of honors in Egypt; he had founded a family than which none was more highly placed. Yet his last act was to disown Egypt, and to choose the lot of Israel, to renounce the present in order to cleave unto the future. It was a noble act of faith, true like that of his fathers! His last words were these: "I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." And his last deed was to take a solemn oath of the children of Israel, to carry up his bones with them into the land of promise. In obedience to his wishes they embalmed his body, and laid it in one of those Egyptian coffins, generally made of sycamore wood, which resembled the shape of the human body. And there, through ages of suffering and bondage, stood the figure-like coffin of Joseph, ready to be lifted and carried thence when the sure hour of deliverance had come. Thus Joseph, being dead, yet spake to Israel, telling them that they were only temporary sojourners in Egypt, that their eyes must be turned away from Egypt unto the land of promise, and that in patience of faith they must wait for that hour when God would certainly and graciously fulfil his own promise. A. E. For a confession of his own faith, and a confirmation of theirs, he charges them to keep him unburied till that day should come, when they should be settled in the land of promise. He makes them promise him with an oath, that they would bury him in Canaan. Joseph prefers a significant burial in Canaan, before a magnificent one in Egypt. Thus Joseph, by faith in the doctrine of the resurrection and the promise of Canaan, gave commandment concerning his bones (Heb. 11:22). He dies in Egypt; but lays his bones at stake, that God will surely visit Israel and bring them to Canaan. H.—The most remarkable of all features in the character of Joseph is that which comes out in his dying charge, "God will surely visit you—bury me not in Egypt—carry my bones hence." So the Apostle evidently regarded it, since in looking over the whole life of Joseph for an instance best illustrating his heroic faith in God, he passes by his wonderful faith in prison, his faith in the warnings of God of the approaching famine—his faith that could comfort brethren with the assurance “it was not you that did it but God”—and selects this dying charge as the most wonderful instance of all—“By faith Joseph when he died made mention of the departing of the children of Israel and gave commandment concerning his bones.” Instead of desiring the Egypt of coming ages to remember their obligation to the son of Jacob, he desires no part or lot there, even a monument for himself, nor desires his brethren to settle permanently there, evinces most wonderful faith, and shows that the word of the God of Abraham and his promise were of infinitely more value in Joseph’s view than all the glory of Egypt. And even though that promise reached forward into a far distant future, his faith gave it reality, as the substance of a thing hoped for. It is saying, in effect, do not permit yourselves to be led astray from the covenant by your present prosperity. Remember, this is not your rest. Be ever on the alert, watching for the signal of your departure. You are pilgrims and strangers now, as all your fathers were. Thus the dying saint aims to win them away from that very glory to which he had attained, and from that prosperity to which he had brought them. And well, therefore, might the Apostle cite it as an illustrious instance of faith. S. R.—This man, surrounded by an ancient civilization, and dwelling among granite temples and solid pyramids, and firm-based sphinxes, the very emblems of eternity, confessed that here he had no continuing city, but sought one to come. As truly as his ancestors who dwelt in tabernacles; like Abraham journeying with his camels and herds, and pitching his tent outside the walls of Hebron; like Isaac in the grassy plains of the South country; like Jacob keeping himself apart from the families of the land, their descendant, an heir with them of the same promise, showed that he too regarded himself as a “stranger and a sojourner.” Dying, he said, “Carry my bones up from hence.” Therefore we may be sure that, living, the hope of the inheritance must have burned in his heart as a hidden light, and made him an alien everywhere but on its blessed soil. And faith will always produce just such effects. In exact proportion to its strength, that living trust in God will direct our thoughts and desires to the “King in his beauty, and the land that is very far off.” A. M. When we are called to leave the earth, the work in which we delighted shall not be lost. We die, but God lives; and we may be sure that under his care it will flourish. And the same thing holds true of the loved ones whom we are called to leave on earth. God remains to take care of them, so that we may say to them as Joseph did to his kinsmen, “I die, but God will surely visit you.” Though he have no other legacy to leave them, the dying Christian can leave his God to his children, and is not that enough? Therefore when we are in departing, we may take comfort in the thought that the covenant of Jehovah is with us and with our children, and that he remains to keep that covenant with those whom we leave behind us. W. M. T. The faith of the dying Jacob dwells upon the memories of the past with all its hereditary associations. It was natural enough, for he had recently left Canaan, an old man, and he longs that his dust shall mingle with that of those he loved. But the dying Joseph’s request has reference to the future rather than to the past. As Jacob belongs to the generations that have lived and died in Canaan, so Joseph belongs to the new generations of young Israel that are to spring up in Egypt from him as the fountain-head. Hence it is that while Jacob commanded, take me back to Canaan, and bury me beside my father and my wife, Joseph’s command is, “Keep me among you, for after death I would be one of you, and return along with you.” And while this is the principle that animated the faith of Joseph, there was also a profound reason of expediency for his course. He desires though dead to be yet speaking, and teaching his people perpetually the lesson so likely to be forgotten by them, which he now seeks to impress by his dying words. Joseph knew how likely they would be amid all this worldly prosperity to suffer God’s great truths to drop out of their consciousness. He will therefore stand among them as a perpetual monitor. He will have his embalmed corpse remain unsepulchred, because his people are waiting to return to Canaan, and Joseph, so far as his dead body can represent him, desires to go with them. His corpse shall stand as a perpetual symbol of a family waiting to go when the Lord God of Abraham shall call them. A mysterious but eloquent preacher—the more eloquent as silence is greater than speech—shall be this skeleton preacher, standing in the great banqueting hall of Ephraim’s house or Manasseh’s to keep Israel in perpetual remembrance. In solemn funeral tones it seemed to say even in the midst of festal gayeties, “This is not your rest, you have another home secured to you by the covenant of God. Egypt is not your home. Let not its smiles deceive you, nor its after frowns frighten you. Set not your hearts upon it. Remember the promises are all bound up in Canaan. Let the habit of your life be fashioned not after Egypt's license, but after the holy covenant of Canaan. And when sorrows come, as they will come, be assured, as you look upon my unsepulchred body, that the tribulations of Egypt are to end in the joy and peace of Canaan." And that Joseph judged wisely in this heroic act of faith their subsequent history testifies. Amid all the hurry of leaving Egypt on that memorable passover night we are expressly told (Ex. 13:19): "Moses took the bones of Joseph with him." And that the cherished remains were faithfully carried through all the forty years of rebellion and wandering in the wilderness, we know from the second in Joshua 24:32. "And the bones of Joseph which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt buried they at Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for an hundred pieces of silver, and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph." As this case of Joseph is a beautiful, practical example of what life believers should live, so is this death-bed scene a striking example of what should be a Christian's dying concern. As in life—whether in great prosperity or in the depths of adversity—you should strive, like him, to keep a steady eye on the promised inheritance, so in the arrangements for dying it should be a chief concern that children and friends shall be more effectually admonished, after you are gone, to fix their hearts, not on the transitory glories of Egypt, but upon the enduring pleasures of the Canaan which is promised to the household of faith. S. R. With the magnanimity of a great and pure soul, he passed uncontaminated through the flatteries and temptations of court-life; and, like Moses, "esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt." He has not indulged in any affectation of simplicity, nor has he, in the pride that apes humility, declined the ordinary honors due to a man in his position. He has lived in a region in which such honors make no deep impression; and in his death he shows where his heart has been. The small voice of God, spoken centuries ago to his forefathers, deafens him to the loud acclaim with which the people do him homage. By later generations this dying request of Joseph's was looked upon as one of the most remarkable instances of faith. And through all the terrible bondage they were destined to suffer, the embalmed body of Joseph stood as the most eloquent advocate of God's faithfulness, ceaselessly reminding the despondent generations of the oath which God would yet enable them to fulfil. And thus, as Joseph had been their pioneer who broke out a way for them into Egypt, so did he continue to hold open the gate and point the way back to Canaan. Jacob had been carried up to Canaan as soon as he was dead: Joseph declines this exceptional treatment, and prefers to share the fortunes of his brethren, and will then only enter on the promised land when all his people can go with him. As in life, so in death, he took a large view of things, and had no feeling that the world ended in him. His career had taught him to consider national interests; and now, on his death-bed, it is from the point of view of his people that he looks at the future. Dods. The person of Joseph is not mentioned in the Old or the New Testament as a type of Christ. The facts of his life in their hearing on the future were unquestionably typical. A. E.—It is a fundamental law of the whole of the sacred history, till its ultimate completion, that the way of salvation leads through abasement to exaltation, through serving to ruling, through sacrifice to possession, through suffering to glory. And this fundamental law, of which the highest and most perfect manifestation is seen in the life of the Redeemer, was first displayed in a definite and concrete form in the life of Joseph. The typical character of the life of Joseph consists in this, that he, the first temporary deliverer of Israel, who brought the first stage of its history to a close, like the perfect Saviour of Israel in whom its entire history terminated, was slighted, despised, persecuted, and betrayed by "his own;" that like Him he passed through abasement, service, and suffering, to exaltation and glory, and also that like Him he succeeded at length in softening their hardened hearts by the fulness of his forgiving love, and in raising his own to the enjoyment of the benefits which he had secured for them. K. In the four great patriarchs, faith showed itself under different phases or modes of operation. In Abraham we admire the firm, unshaken confidence, and the unhesitating obedience of faith, in all its power and fulness. In Isaac, faith is exercised in patient endurance and suffering, in quietness and waiting. In Jacob, it has to wrestle hard with flesh and blood,—with the corruptions of the heart within, as well as with the ills of the world without. In Joseph, it is seen both enduring patiently and working laboriously, and is crowned at last with signal victory. W. G. B.—Joseph, indeed, seemed to inherit and happily combine the highest qualities of his ancestors. He had Abraham's dignity and capacity, Isaac's purity and power of self-devotion, Jacob's cleverness, buoyancy and tenacity. Diels. The last of the patriarchs, as Joseph has been called, his character is almost without a flaw, and there are in it some of the most admirable traits ever exhibited to the world. Jehovah was with him; and therefore, as a modern writer has said, "he was a slave, and yet a free man; unfortunate, and yet a child of fortune; abandoned, yet still standing firm in the fiercest temptations; forlorn, yet still in the presence of God; an object of impending wrath, yet still preserved alive; a state prisoner, and yet a prison-keeper; every way subdued, yet ever again superior to his condition." The Lord was with Joseph to the last. He was always great, and always through faith victorious over evil and sin. His trials were such as few men are called to bear; but he rose superior to them,—the trials of adversity, and the still greater trials of prosperity, only serving to bring out the noble qualities of his mind. In his self-sacrificing spirit, in his love for his brethren, in his readiness to forgive, in his providing for the necessities of a numerous people, in his elevation to the government of a mighty nation, and in the wisdom with which he administered its affairs, we can now see set forth the greatness of the Redeemer of the world; but, as the antitype is always superior to the type, so Christ is in every respect far above Joseph, and to him, therefore, every knee must bow, and every tongue confess. Thornley Smith. We mark in Joseph a constant recognition of the presence of God with him. That seems to be the one great, all-dominating consciousness of his life. His history was a constant "walk with God." His faith had almost the strength of sight. He felt that the Lord was round about him, and whatever men might intend he knew that God always "meant it unto good." This faith in the constant presence of God with him kept him from being either very much depressed by adversity, or exceedingly elated by prosperity. God was with him in the dungeon, and that kept him from over-estimating its hardships; God was with him in the chariot, and that kept him from over-estimating its honor. W. M. T. Here ends the fourth and last division of the book (chs. 12-50) containing the history of the Patriarchs. The groundwork is now fully laid for the history of the people of Israel, and for all the historical allusions necessary for the illustration of their history, and of the purpose of God in selecting and setting them apart as his chosen people. T. J. C. The sacred writer here takes leave of the chosen family, and closes the bible of the sons of Israel. It is truly a wonderful book. It lifts the veil of mystery that hangs over the present condition of the human race. It records the origin and fall of man, and thus explains the coexistence of moral evil and a moral sense of God and judgment in the soul of man. It records the cause and mode of the confusion of tongues, and thus explains the concomitance of the unity of the race and the specific diversity of mode or form in human speech. It records the call of Abraham, and thus accounts for the preservation of the knowledge of God and his mercy in one section of the human race, and the corruption or loss of it in all the rest. It solves the fundamental questions of physics, ethics, philology, and theology for the race of Adam. It notes the primitive relation of man to God, and marks the three great stages of human development that came in with Adam, Noah, and Abraham. It points out the three forms of sin that usher in these stages,—the fall of Adam, the intermarriage of the sons of God with the daughters of men, and the building of the tower of Babel. It gradually unfolds the purpose and method of grace to the returning penitent through a Deliverer who is successively announced as the seed of the woman, of Shem, of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. Hence the Lord establishes his covenant successively with Adam, Noah, and Abraham; with Adam after the fall tacitly, with Noah expressly, and with both generally as the representatives of the race descending from them; with Abraham specially and instrumentally as the channel through which the blessings of salvation might be at length extended to all the families of the earth. M. The Law and the Prophets of the next Dispensation had their prototypes in that of the Patriarchs. Among these the distinction of clean and unclean is already known, as much in detail as under the Levitical Law, every animal being arranged by Noah in one class or the other; and the clean being exclusively used by him for sacrifice. The blood, which is the life of the animal, is withheld as food. Murder is denounced as demanding death for its punishment. Adultery is forbidden, as we learn from the cases of Pharaoh and Abimelech, of Reuben, and Joseph. Oaths are binding. Fornication is condemned, as in the case of Sheehan, who is said "to have wrought folly in Israel, which thing ought not to be done." Marriage with the uncircumcised or idolater is prohibited. A curse is denounced on him that setteth light by his father or his mother. Purifications are enjoined those who approach a holy place, for Jacob bids his people "be clean and change their garments" before they present themselves at Bethel. The brother is already commanded to marry the brother's widow, and to raise up seed unto his brother. These laws, afterward incorporated in the Levitical, drop out incidentally in the book of Genesis, as the course of the narrative happens to turn them up. They are therefore to be reckoned fragments of a more full and complete code which was the groundwork in all probability of the Levitical code itself; for it is difficult to suppose that where there were these there were not others like to them. But this is not all—the Patriarchs had their sacrifices, that great and leading rite of the Church of Aaron; the subjects of those sacrifices fixed; useless without the shedding of blood; for what but the violation of an express command full of meaning could have constituted the sin of Cain? It is impossible to read the particulars of Abraham's offering of the heifer, the goat, the ram, the turtle-dove, and the pigeon—their ages, their sex, the circumspection with which he dissects and disposes them—without feeling assured that very minute directions upon all these points were vouchsafed to the Patriarchal Church. She had her Sacraments; for sacrifice was one, and circumcision was the other. Then as she had her sacrifices and sacraments, so had she her types—types which in number scarcely yield to those of the Levitical Law, in precision and interest perhaps exceed them. For we meet with them in the names and fortunes of individuals whom the Almighty Disposer of events, without doing violence to the natural order of things, exhibits as pages of a living book in which the Promise is to be read—as characters expressing his counsels and covenants writ by his own finger—as actors, whereby he holds up to a world, not yet prepared for less gross and sensible impressions, scenes to come. Indeed I see the Promise all Genesis through, so that our Lord might well begin with Moses in expounding the things concerning himself; and well might Philip say, "We have found him of whom Moses in the Law did write." I see the Promise all Genesis through, and if we construct a rude and imperfect Temple of Patriarchal Worship out of the fragments which offer themselves to our hands in that history, the Messiah to come is the spirit that must fill that Temple with his all-pervading presence; none other than he must be the Shekinah of the Tabernacle we have reared. Couple it with this consideration, and the scheme of Revelation, like the physical scheme, proceeds with beautiful uniformity—a unity of plan connecting the meanest accidents of a household with the most illustrious visions of a prophet. Abstracted from this consideration, it presents details of actions, some trifling, some even offensive, pursued at a length (when compared with the whole) singularly disproportionate; while things which the angels would desire to look into are passed over and forgotten. But this principle once admitted, and all is consecrated—all assumes a new aspect—trifles that seem at first not bigger than a man's hand, occupy the heavens. It is upon this principle of interpretation that we may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, who have made those parts of the Mosaic History a stumbling-block to many, which, if rightly understood, are the very testimony of the covenant; and a principle, which is thus extensive in its application and successful in its results, which explains so much that is difficult, and answers so much that is objected against, has, from this circumstance alone, strong presumption in its favor, strong claims upon our sober regard. Such is the structure that appears to unfold itself, if we do but bring together the scattered materials of which it is composed. The place of worship—the priest to minister—the sacerdotal dress—the ceremonial forms—the appointed seasons for holy things—preachers—prophets—a code of laws—sacrifices—sacraments—types—and a Messiah in prospect, as leading a feature of the whole scheme, as He now is in retrospect of a scheme which has succeeded it. Complete the building is not, but still there is symmetry in its component parts, and unity in its whole. Yet Moses was certainly not contemplating any description of a Patriarchal Church. He had other matters in his thoughts: he was the mediator not of this system, but of another, which he was now to set forth in all its details, even of the Levitical. Blunt.