Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

(Gen. xlviii. 20). But the Niphal '^"133 has only the passive signification " to be blessed." And the promise not only meant that all families of the earth would wish for the blessing which Abram possessed, but that they would really receive this blessing in Abram and his seed. By the explanation "wish themselves blessed" the point of the promise is broken off; and not only is its connection with the prophecy of Noah respecting Japhet's dwelling in the tents of Shem overlooked, and the parallel between the blessing on all the families of the earth, and the curse pronounced upon the earth after the flood, destroyed, but the actual participation of all the nations of the earth in this blessing is rendered doubtful, and the application of this promise by Peter (Acts iii. 25) and Paul (Gal. iii. 8) to all nations, is left without any firm scriptural basis. At the same time, we must not attribute a passive signification on that account to the Hithpael in chap. xxii. 18 and xxvi. 4. In these passages prominence is given to the subjective attitude of the nations towards the blessing of Abraham, — in other words, to the fact that the nations would desire the blessing promised to them in Abraham and his seed.

Vers. 4-9. Eemoval to Canaan. — Abram cheerfully followed the call of the Lord, and " departed as the Lord had spoken to him." He was then 75 years old. His age is given, because a new period in the history of mankind commenced with his exodus. After this brief notice there follows a more circumstantial account, in ver. 5, of the fact that he left Haran with his wife, with Lot, and with all that they possessed of servants and cattle, whereas Terah remained in Haran (cf. chap. xi. 31). lE'J? "iK^S B'san are not the souls which they had begotten, but the male and female slaves that Abram and Lot had acquired. — Ver. 6. On his arival in Canaan, " Abram passed through the land to the place of Sichem: " i.e. the place where Sichem, the present Nablus, afterwards stood, between Ebal and Geriziro, in the heart of the land. " To the terebinth (or, according to Deut. xi. 30, the terebinths) ofMoreh:" t^^^, ^'^ (chap. xiv. 6) and n^>K are the terebinth, ti^»? and nW the oak: though in many MSS. and editions th^ and |i^K are interchanged in Josh. xix. 33 and Judg. iv. 11, either because the pointing in one of these passages is inaccurate, or because the word itself was uncertain, as the ever-green oaks and terebinths resemble one another in the colour of their foliage and their fissured bark of sombre grey. — The notice that " the Canaanites were then in the land " does not jjoint to a post-Mosaic date, when the Canaanites were extinct. For it does not mean that the Canaanites were then still in the land, but refers to the promise which follows, that God would give this land to the seed of Abram (ver. 7), and merely states that the land into which Abram had come was not uninhabited and without a possessor; so that Abram could not regard it at once as his own and proceed to take possession of it, but could only wander in it in faith as in a foreign land (Heb. xi. 9). — ^Ver. 7. Here in Sichem Jehovah appeared to him, and assured him of the possession of the land of Canaan for his descendants. The assurance was made by means of an appearance of Jehovah, as a sign that this land was henceforth to be the scene of the manifestation of Jehovah. Abram understood this, " and there huilded he an altar to Jehovah, who appeared to him" to make the soil which was hallowed by the appearance of God a place for the worship of the God who appeared to him. — Ver. 8. He did this also in the mountains, to which he probably removed to secure the necessary pasture for his flocks, after he had pitched his tent there. " Bethel westwards and Ai eastwards" i.e. in a spot with Ai to the east and Bethel to the west. The name Bethel occurs here proleptically: at the time referred to, it was still called Luz (chap, xxviii. 19); its present name is Beitin (Robinson's Palestine). At a distance of about five miles to the east was Ai, ruins of which are still to be seen, bearing the name of Medinet Gai {Bitter s Erdkunde). On the words " called upon the name of the Lord,'* see chap. iv. 26. From this point Abram proceeded slowly to the Negeh, i.e. to the southern district of Canaan towards the Arabian desert (yid. chap. xx. 1).

Vers. 10-20. Abram in Egypt. — Abram had scarcely passed through the land promised to his seed, when a famine compelled him to leave it, and take refuge in Egypt, which abounded in corn; just as the Bedouins in the neighbourhood are accustomed to do now. Whilst the famine in Canaan was to teach Abram, that even in the promised land food and clothing come from the Lord and His blessing, he was to discover in

Egypt that earthly craft is soon put to shame when deahng with the possessor of the power of this world, and that help and deliverance are to be found with the Lord alone, who can so smite the mightiest kings, that they cannot touch His chosen or do them harm (Ps. cv. 14, 15). — When trembling for his life in Egypt on account of the beauty of. Sarai his wife, he arranged with her, as he approached that land, that she should give herself out as his sister, since she really was his half-sister (chap, xi. 29). He had already made an arrangement with her, that she should do this in certain possible contingencies, when they first removed to Canaan (chap. xx. 13). The conduct of the Sodomites (chap, xix.) was a proof that he had reason for his anxiety; and it was not without cause even so far as Egypt was concerned. But his precaution did not spring from faith. He might possibly hope, that by means of the plan concerted, he should escape the danger of being put to death on account of his wife, if any one should wish to take her; but how he expected to save the honour and retain possession of his wife, we cannot understand, though we must assume, that he thought he should be able to protect and keep her as his sister more easily, than if he acknowledged her as his wife. But the very thing lie feared and hoped to avoid actually occurred. — ^Vers. 15 sqq. The princes of Pharaoh finding her very beautiful, extolled her beauty to the king, and she was taken to Pharaoh's house. As Sarah was then 65 years old (cf. chap. xvii. 17 and xii. 4), her beauty at such an age has been made a difficulty by some. But as she lived to the age of 127 (chap, xxiii. 1), she was then middle-aged; and as her vigour and bloom had not been tried by bearing children, she might easily appear very beautiful in the eyes of the Egyptians, whose wives, according to both ancient and modern testimony, were generally ugly, and faded €arly. Pharaoh (the Egyptian ouro, king, with the article Fi) is the Hebrew name for all the Egyptian kings in the Old Testament; their proper names being only occasionally mentioned, as, for example, Necho in 2 Kings xxiii. 29, or Hophra in Jer. xliv. 30. For Sarai's sake Pharaoh treated Abram well, presenting him with cattle and slaves, possessions which constitute the wealth of nomads. These presents Abram could not refuse, though by accepting them he increased his sin. God then interfered (ver. 17), and smote Pharaoh and his house with great plagues. What the nature of these plagues was, cannot be determined; they were certainly of such a kind, however, that whilst Sarah was preserved by them from dishonour, Pharaoh saw at once that they were sent as punishment by the Deity on account of his relation to Sarai; he may also have learned, on inquiry from Sarai herself, that she was Abram's wife. He gave her back to him, therefore, with a reproof for his untruthfulness, and told him to depart, appointing men to conduct him out of the land together with his wife and all his possessions, n??', to dismiss, to give an escort (xviii. 16, xxxi. 27), does not necessarily denote an involuntary dismissal here. For as Pharaoh had discovered in the plague the wrath of the God of Abraham, he did not venture to treat him harshly, but rather sought to mitigate the anger of his God, by the safe-conduct which he granted him on his departure. But Abram was not justified by this result, as was very apparent from the fact, that he was mute under Pharaoh's reproofs, and did not venture to utter a single word in vindication of his conduct, as he did in the similar circumstances described in chap. XX. 11, 12. The saving mercy of God had so humbled him, that he silently acknowledged his guilt in concealing his relation to Sarah from the Egyptian king.

Vers. 1-4. Abram, having returned from Egypt to the south of Canaan with his wife and property uninjured, through the gracious protection of God, proceeded with Lot Vj;Doi5 " according to his journeys " {lit. with the repeated breaking up of his camp, required by a nomad life; on J?pJ to break up a tent, to remove, see Ex. xii. 37) into the neighbourhood of Bethel and Ai, where he had previously encamped and built an altar (chap. xii. 8), that he might there call upon the name of the Lord again. That i<"Ji^?l (ver. 4) is not a continuation of the relative clause, but a resumption of the main sentence, and therefore corresponds with ^^?1 (ver. 3), " he went... and called upon the name of the Lord there^' has been correctly concluded by Delitzsch from the repetition of the subject Abram. — Vers. 5-7. But as Abram was very rich ("133, lit. weighty) in possessions (n3j50j cattle and slaves), and Lot also had flocks, and herds, and tents (D^fink for a'-^nx, Ges. § 93, 6, 3) for his men, of whom there must have been many therefore, the land did not bear them when dwelling together (^^^, masculine at the commencement of the sentence, as is often the case when the verb precedes the subject, vid. Ges. § 147), i.e. the land did not furnish space enough for the numerous herd to graze. Consequently disputes arose between the two parties of herdsmen. The difficulty was increased by the fact that the Canaanites and Perizzites were then dwelling in the land, so that the space was very contracted. The Perizzites, who are mentioned here and in chap, xxxiv. 30, Judg. i. 4, along with the Canaanites, and who are placed in the other lists of the inhabitants of Canaan among the different Canaanitish tribes (chap. xv. 20; Ex. iii. 8, 17, etc.), are not mentioned among the descendants of Canaan (chap. x. 15-17), and may therefore, like the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, and Eephaim (xv. 19-21), not have been descendants of Ham at all. The common explanation of the name Perizzite as equivalent toninS) pS 3B^ "inhabitant of the level ground" (Ezek. xxxviii. 11), is at variance not only with the form of the word, the inhabitant of the level ground being called ""PSn (Deut. iii. 5), but with the fact of their combination sometimes with the Canaanites, sometimes with the other tribes of Canaan, whose names were derived from their founders. Moreover, to explain the term " Canaanite," as denoting " the civilised inhabitants of towns," or " the trading Phoenicians," is just as arbitrary as if we were to regard the Kenites, Kenizzites, and the other tribes mentioned chap. xv. 19 sqq. along with the Canaanites, as all alike traders or inhabitants of towns. The origin of the name Perizzite is involved in obscurity, like that of the Kenites and other tribes settled in Canaan that were not descended from Ham. But we may infer from the frequency with which they are mentioned in connection with the Hamitic inhabitants of Canaan, that they were widely dispersed among the latter. Vid. chap. XV. 19-21. — Vers. 8, 9. To put an end to the strife between their herdsmen, Abram proposed to Lot that they should separate, as strife was unseemly between D'^ns CK^J*?, men who stood in the relation of brethren, and left him to choose his ground. " If thou to the left, I will turn to the right; and if thou to the right, I loill turn to the left." Although Abram was the older, and the leader of the company, he was magnanimous enougli to leave the choice to his nephew, who was the younger, in the confident assurance that the Lord would so direct the decision, that His promise would be fulfilled. — Vers. 10-13. Lot chose what was apparently the best portion of the land, the whole district of the Jordan, or the valley on both sides of the Jordan from the Lake of Gennesareth to what was then the vale of Siddim. For previous to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, this whole country was well watered, " as the garden of JeJiovah," the garden planted by Jehovah in paradise, and " as Egypt,'' the land rendered so fertile by the overflowing of the Nile, "in the direction of ZoarJ' Abram therefore remained in the land of Canaan, whilst Lot settled in the cities of the plain of the Jordan, and tented (pitched his tents) as far as Sodom. In anticipation of the succeeding history (chap, xix.), it is mentioned here (ver. 13), that the inhabitants of Sodom were very wicked, and sinful before Jehovah. — Vers. 14-18. After Lot's departure, Jehovah repeated to Abram (by a mental, inward assurance, as we may infer from the fact that i^N " said " is not accompanied by N'^.'.l " he appeared") His promise that He would give the land to him and to his seed in its whole extent, northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward, and would make his seed innumerable like the dust of the earth. From this we may see that the separation of Lot was in accordance with the will of God, as Lot had no share in the promise of God; though God afterwards saved him from destruction for Abram's sake. The possession of the land is promised a7)V iy "for ever." The promise of God is unchangeable. As the seed of Abraham was to exist before God for ever, so Canaan was to be its everlasting possession. But this applied not to the lineal posterity of Abram, to his seed according to the flesh, but to the true spiritual seed, which embraced the promise in faith, and held it in a pure believing heart. The promise, therefore, neither precluded the expulsion of the unbelieving seed from the land of Canaan, nor guarantees to existing Jews a return to the' earthly Palestine after their conversion to Christ. For as Calvin justly says, " quum terra in sceculum promittitur, non simpliciter notatur perpetuitas; sed qua finem accepit in Christo." Through Christ the promise has been exalted from its temporal form to its true essence; through Him the whole earth becomes Canaan (vid. chap. xvii. 8). That Abram might appropriate this renewed and now more fully expanded promise, Jehovah directed him to walk through the land in the length of it and the breadth of it. In doing this he came in his "tenting,^' i.e. his wandering through the land, to Hebron, where he settled by the terebinth of the Amorite Mamre (chap. xiv. 13), and built an altar to Jehovah. The term 2^'< (set himself, settled down, sat, dwelt) • denotes that Abram made this place the central point of his subsequent stay in Canaan (cf. chap. xiv. 13, xviii. 1, and chap, xxiii.). On Hebron, see chap, xxiii. 2.

Vers. 1-12. The war, which furnished Abram with an opportunity, while in the promised land of which as yet he could not really call a single rood his own, to prove himself a valiant warrior, and not only to smite the existing chiefs of the imperial power of Asia, but to bring back to the kings of Canaan the booty that had been carried off, is circumstantially described, not so much in the interests of secular history as on account of its significance in relation to the kingdom of God. It is of importance, however, as a simple historical fact, to see that in the statement in ver. 1, the king of Shinar occupies the first place, although the king of Edom, Chedorlaomer, not only took the lead in the expedition, and had allied himself for that purpose with the other kings, but had previously subjugated the cities of the valley of Siddim, and therefore had extended his dominion very widely over hither Asia. If, notwithstanding this, the time of the war related here is connected with " the days of Amraphely king of Shinar,** this is done, no doubt, with reference to the fact that the first worldly kingdom was founded in Shinar by Nimrod (chap. x. 10), a kingdom which still existed under Amraphel. though it was now confined to Shinar itself, whilst Elam possessed the supremacy in inner Asia. There is no ground whatever for regarding the four kings mentioned in ver. 1 as four Assyrian generals or viceroys, as Josephus has done in direct contradiction to the biblical text; for, according to the more careful historical researches, the commencement of the Assyrian kingdom belongs to a later period; and Berosus speaks of an earlier Median rule in Babylon, which reaches as far back as the age of the patriarchs (cf. M. v. Niehuhr, Gesch. Assurs, p. 271). It appears significant also, that the imperial power of Asia had already extended as far as Canaan, and had subdued the valley of the Jordan, no doubt with the intention of holding the Jordan valley as the high-road to Egypt. "We have here a prelude of the future assault of the worldly power upon the kingdom of God established in Canaan; and the importance of this event to sacred history consists in the fact, that the kings of the valley of the Jordan and the surrounding country submitted to the worldly power, whilst Abram, on the contrary, with his home-born servants, smote the conquerors and rescued their booty, — a prophetic sign that in the conflict with the power of the world the seed of Abram would not only not be subdued, but would be able to rescue from destruction those who appealed to it for aid. In vers. 1-3 the account is introduced by a list of the parties eugaged in war. The kings named here are not mentioned again. On Shinar, see chap. x. 10; and on Elam, chap. x. 22. It cannot be determined with certainty where Ellasar was. Knohel supposes it to be Artemita, which was also called XaXdaapf. in southern Assyria, to the north of Babylon. Goyim is not used here for nations generally, but is the name of one particular nation or country. In DelitzscKs opinion it is an older name for Galilee, though probably with different boundaries (cf. Josh. xii. 23; Judg. iv. 2; and Isa. ix. 1). — The verb Vi^V {made)y in ver. 2, is governed by the kings mentioned in ver. 1. To Bela, whose king is not mentioned by name, the later name Zoar {vid. xix. 22) is added as being better known. — Ver. 3. " All these (five kings) allied themselves together, (and came with their forces) into the vale of Siddim (C'^^'n, prob. fields or plains), which is the Salt Sea;" that is to say, which was changed into the Salt Sea on the destruction of its cities (chap. xix. 24, 25). That there should be five kings in the five cities (TreyraTroXt?, Wisdom X. 6) of this valley, was quite in harmony with the condition of Canaan, where even at a later period every city had its king. — Vers. 4 sqq. The occasion of the war was the revolt of the kings, of the vale of Siddim from Chedorlaomer. They had been subject to him for twelve years, " and the thirteenth year they rebelled." In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer came with his. allies to punish them for their rebellion, and attacked on his way several other cities to the east of the Arabah, as far as the

Elanitic Gulf, no doubt because they also had withdrawn from liis dominion. The ai'my moved along the great military road from inner Asia, past Damascus, through Peraea, where they smote the Rephaims, Zuzims, Emims, and Horites. " The Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim:^^ all that is known with certainty of the Rephaim is, that they were a tribe of gigantic stature, and in the time of Abram had spread over the whole of Per£ea, and held not only Bashan, but the country afterwards possessed by the Moabites; from which possessions they were subsequently expelled by the descendants of Lot and the Amorites, and so nearly exterminated, that Og, king of Bashan, is described as the remnant of the Rephaim (Deut. ii. 20, iii. 11, 13; Josh. xii. 4, xiii. 12). Beside this, there were Rephaim on this side of the Jordan among the Canaanitish tribes (chap. xv. 20), some to the west of Jerusalem, in the valley which was called after them the valley of the Rephaim (Josh. xv. 8, xviii. 16; 2 Sam. V. 18, etc.), others on the mountains of Ephraim (Josh, xvii. 15); while the last remains of them were also to be found among the Philistines (2 Sam. xxi. 16 sqq.; 1 Chron. xx. 4 sqq.). The current explanation of the name, viz. " the long-stretched," or giants (Ewald), does not prevent our regarding NST as the personal name of their forefather, though no intimation is given of their origin. That they were not Canaanites may be inferred from the fact, that on the eastern side of the Jordan they were subjugated and exterminated by the Canaanitish branch of the Amorites. Notwithstanding this, they may have been descendants of Ham, though the fact that the Canaanites spoke a Semitic tongue rather favours the conclusion that the oldest population of Canaan, and therefore the Rephaim, were of Semitic descent. At any rate, the opinion of J. G. Milller, that they belonged to the aborigines, who were not related to Shem, Ham, and Japhet, is perfectly arbitrary. — A shteroth Karnaim, or briefly ^sA^aro^/i, the capital afterwards of Og of Bashan, was situated in Hauran; and ruins of it are said to be still seen in Tell Ashtereh, two hours and a half from Nowah, and one and three-quarters from the ancient Edrei, somewhere between Nowah and Mezareib (see Bitter, Erdkunde)} — " Tlie Zuzims in Ham'*

' J. O. Weiztein, however, has lately denied the identity of Ashteroth Karnaim, which he interprets as meaning Ashtaroth near Karnaim, witli Ashtaroth the capital of Og (See Reiseher. iib. Hauran, etc. 1860, p. 107).

were probably the people whom the Ammonites called Zam zummim, and who were also reckoned among the Eephaim (Deut. ii. 20). Ham was possibly the ancient name of Rahba of the Ammonites (Deut, iii. 11), the remains being still preserved in the ruins of Amman. — " The Emim in the plain of Kirr/athaim:" the D'-ID'-K or D''P^? {i.e. fearful, terrible), were the earlier inhabitants of the country of the Moabites, who gave them the name; and, like the Anakim, they were also reckoned among the Rephaim (Deut. ii. 11). Kiryathaim is certainly not to be found where Eusehius and Jerome supposed, viz. in KaptdBa, Coraiatha, the modem Koerriath or Kereyat, ten miles to the west of Medabah; for this is not situated in the plain, and corresponds to Kerioth (Jer. xlviii. 24), with which Eusehius and Jerome have confounded Kiryathaim. It is probably still to be seen in the ruins of el Teym or et Tueme, about a mile to the west of Medabah. " Tlie Horites (from ""in, dwellers in caves), in the mountains of Seir" were the earlier inhabitants of the land between the Dead Sea and the Elanitic Gulf, who were conquered and exterminated by the Edomites (xxxvi. 20sqq.). — " To El-Paran, which is by the wilderness:" i.e. on the eastern side of the desert of Paran (see chap. xxi. 21),. probably the same as Elath (Deut. ii. 8) or Eloth (1 Bangs ix. 26), the important harbour of Aila on the northern extremity of the socalled Elanitic Gulf, near the modern fortress of Akaha, where extensive heaps of rubbish show the site of the former town, which received its name El or Elath (terebinth, or rather wood) probably from the palm-groves in the vicinity. — ^Ver. 7. From Aila the conquerors turned round, and marched (not through the Arabah, but on the desert plateau which they ascended from

But he does so witliout sufficient reason. He disputes most strongly the fact that Ashtaroth was situated on the hill Ashtere, because the Arabs now in Hauran assured him, that the ruins of this Tell (or hill) suggested rather a monastery or watch-tower than a large city, and associates it with the Bostra of the Greeks and Eomans, the modern Bozra, partly on account of the central situation of this town, and its consequent importance to Hauran and Persea generally, and partly also on account of the similarity in the name, as Bostra is the latinized form of Beeshterah, which we find in Josh. xxi. 27 in the place of the Ashtaroth of 1 Chron. vi. 66; and that form is composed of Beth Ashtaroth^ to which there are as many analogies as there are instances of the omission of Beth before the names of towns, which is a sufficient explanation of Ashtaroth (cf. Ges. thes., p. 175 and 193).

Aila) to En-mishpat (well of judgment)^ the older name of Kadeshf the situation of which, indeed, cannot be proved with certainty, but which is most probably to be sought for in the neighbourhood of the spring Ain Kades, discovered by Rowland, to the south of Bir Seba and Khalasa (Elusa), twelve miles E.S.E. of Moyle, the halting-place for caravans, near Hagar's well (xvi. 14), on the heights oiJebelHalal (see Bitter, Erdkunde, and Num. xiii.). " And they smote all the country of the Amorlekites,^^ i.e. the country afterwards possessed by the Amalekites (vid. chap, xxxvi. 12),^ to the west of Edomitis on the southern border of the mountains of Judah (Num. xiii. 29), " and also the Amorites, who dwelt in Hazazon-Thamar" i.e. Engedi, on the western side of the Dead Sea (2 Chron. xx. 2). — Vers. 8 sqq. After conquering all these tribes to the east and west of the Arabah, they gave battle to the kings of the Pentapolis in the vale of Siddim, and put them to flight. The kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fell there, the valley being full of asphalt-pits, and the ground therefore unfavourable for flight; but the others escaped to the mountains (p^J^ for '^'^'!j!'^), that is, to the Moabitish highlands with their numerous defiles. The conquerors thereupon plundered the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and carried off Lot, who dwelt in Sodom, and all his possessions, along with the rest of the captives, probably taking the route through the valley of the Jordan up to Damascus.

Vers. 13-16. A fugitive (lit. the fugitive; the article denotes the genus, Ewald, § 277) brought intelligence of this to Abram the Hebrew (''l^Vv'j an immigrant from beyond the Euphrates). Abram is so called in distinction from Mamre and his two brothers, who were Amorites, and had made a defensive treaty with him. To rescue Lot, Abram ordered his trained slaves (V3''3n, i.e. practised in arms) born in the house (cf. xvii. 12), 318 men, to turn out (lit. to pour themselves out); and with these, and (as the supplementary remark in ver. 24 shows) with his allies, he pursued the enemy as far as Dan, where " he divided

' The circumstance that in the midst of a list of tribes who were defeated, we find not the tribe but only the fields (mb^) of the Amalekites mentioned, can only be explained on the supposition that the nation of the Amalekites was not then in existence, and the country was designated proleptically by the name of its future and well-known inhabitants {Hengstenherg, Diss. ii. p. 249, translation).

himself against them, he and his servants, ly night^^ — i.e. he divided his men into companies, who fell upon the enemy by night from different sides, — " smote them, and pursued them to Hohah, to the left (or north) of Damascus^ Hobah has probably been preserved in the village of Hoha, mentioned by Troilo, a quarter of a mile to the north of Damascus. So far as the situation of Dan is concerned, this passage proves that it cannot have been identical vy^ith Leshem or Laish in the valley of Beth Rehob, which the Danites conquered and named Dan (Judg. xviii. 28, 29; Josh. xix. 47); for this Laish-Dan was on the central source of the Jordan, el Leddan in Tell el Kady, which does not lie in either of the two roads, leading from the vale of Siddim or of the Jordan to Damascus.^ This Dan belonged to Gilead (Deut. xxxiv. 1), and is no doubt the same as the Dan-Jaan mentioned in 2 Sam. xxiv. 6 in connection with Gilead, and to be sought for in northern Persea to the south-west of Damascus.

Vers. 17-24. — As Abram returned with the booty which he had taken from the enemy, the king of Sodom (of course, the successor to the one who fell in the battle) and Melchizedek, king of Salem, came to meet him to congratulate him on his victory; the former probably also with the intention of asking | for the prisoners who had been rescued. They met him in " the valley of Shaveh, which is (what was afterwards called) the King's ddleP This valley, in which Absalom erected a monument for himself (2 Sam. xviii. 18), was, according to Josephus, two stadia from Jerusalem, probably by the brook Kidron therefore, although Absalom's pillar, which tradition places there, was of the Grecian style rather than the early Hebrew. The name King's dale was given to it undoubtedly with reference to the event referred to here, which points to the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. For the Salem of Melchizedek cannot have been the Salem near to which John baptized (John iii. 23), or iEnon, which was eight Roman miles south of Scythopolis, as a march

1 One runs below the Sea of Galilee past Fik and Nowa, almost in a straight line to Damascus; the other from Jacob's Bridge, below Lake Merom. But if the enemy, instead of returning with their booty to Thapsacus, on the Euphrates, by one of the direct roads leading from the Jordan past Damascus and Palmyra, had gone through the land of Canaan to the sources of the Jordan, they would undoubtedly, when defeated at Laish-Dan, Lave fled through the Wady et Teim and the Bekaa to Hamath, and not by Damascus at all (vid. Robinson, Bibl. Researches.

of about forty hours for the purpose of meeting Abraham, if not romantic, would at least be at variance with the text of Scripture, where the kings are said to have gone out to Abram after his return. It must be Jerusalem, therefore, which is called by the old name Salem in Ps. Ixxvi. 2, out of which the name Jerusalem (founding of peace, or possession of peace) was formed by the addition of the prefix ^^l = "'^"i^. " founding," or C^">1 " possession." Melchizedek brings bread and wine from Salem " to supply the exhausted warriors with food and drink, but more especially as a mark of gratitude to Abram, who had conquered for them peace, freedom, and prosperity " (DelitzscK). This gratitude he expresses, as a priest of the supreme God, in the words, " Blessed he Abram of the Most High God, the founder of heaven and earth; and blessed be God, the Most High, who hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand" The form of the blessing is poetical, two parallel members with words peculiar to poetry, "l^^^ for 'n^a^^k, and 120.— ti^l'V h^ without the article is a proper name for the supreme God, the God over all (cf. Ex. xviii. 11), who is pointed out as the only true God by the additional clause, " founder of the heaven and the earth." On the construction of "^^^^ with?, vid. chap. xxxi. 15, Ex. xii. 16, and Ges. § 143, 2. ^pj founder and possessor: nji? combines the meanings of /cri^etv and KrdcrOat. This priestly reception Abram reciprocated by giving him the tenth of all, i.e. of the whole of the booty taken from the enemy. Giving the tenth was a practical acknowledgment of the divine priesthood of Melchizedek; for the tenth was, according to the general custom, the offering presented to the Deity. Abram also acknowledged the God of Melchizedek as the true God; for when the king of Sodom asked for his people only, and would have left the rest of the booty to Abram, he lifted up his hand as a solemn oath " to Jehovah, the Most High God, the founder of heaven and earth," — acknowledging himself as the servant of this God by calling Him by the name Jehovah, — and swore that he would not take ^^ from a thread to a shoe-string^' i.e. the smallest or most worthless thing belonging to the king of Sodom, that he might not be able to say, he had made Abram rich. DK, as the sign of an oath, is negative, and in an earnest address is repeated before the verb. " Except (^IV^?, lit. not to me, nothing for me) only what the young men (Abram's men) have eaten, and the portion of my allies.... let them take their portion:" i.e. his followers should receive what had been consumed as their share, and the allies should have the remainder of the booty.

Of the property belonging to the king of Sodom, which he had taken from the enemy, Abram would not keep the smallest part, because he would not have anything in common with Sodom. On the other hand, he accepted from Salem's priest and king, Melchizedek, not only bread and wine for the invigoration of the exhausted warriors, but a priestly blessing also, and gave him in return the tenth of all his booty, as a sign that he acknowledged this king as a priest of the living God, and submitted to his royal priesthood. In this self-subordination of Abram to Melchizedek there was the practical prediction of a royal priesthood which is higher than the priesthood entrusted to Abram's descendants, the sons of Levi, and foreshadowed in the noble form of Melchizedek, who blessed as king and priest the patriarch whom God had called to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. The name of this royal priest is full of meaning: Melchizedek, i.e. King of Righteousness. Even though, judging from Josh. x. 1, 3, where a much later king is called Adonizedek, i.e. Lord of Righteousness, this name may have been a standing title of the ancient kings of Salem, it no doubt originated with a king who ruled his people in righteousness, and was perfectly appropriate in the case of the Melchizedek mentioned here. There is no less significance in the name of the seat of his government, Salem, the peaceful or peace, since it shows that the capital of its kings was a citadel of peace, not only as a natural stronghold, but through the righteousness of its sovereign; for which reason David chose it as the seat of royalty in Israel; and Moriah, which formed part of it, was pointed out to Abraham by Jehovah as the place of sacrifice for the kingdom of God which was afterwards to be established. And, lastly, there was something very significant in the appearance in the midst of the degenerate tribes of Canaan of this king of righteousness, and priest of the true God of heaven and earth, without any account of his descent, or of the beginning and end of his life; so that he stands forth in the Scriptures, " without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life." Although it by no means follows from this, however, that Melchizedek was a celestial being (the Logos, or an angel), or one of the primeval patriarchs (Enoch or Shem), as Church fathers. Rabbins, and others have conjectured, and we can see in him nothing more than one, perhaps the last, of the witnesses and confessors of the early revelation of God, coming out into the hght of history from the dark night of heathenism; yet this appearance does point to a priesthood of universal significance, and to a higher order of things, which existed at the commencement of the world, and is one day to be restored again. In all these respects, the noble form of this king of Salem and priest of the Most High God was a type of the God-King and eternal High Priest Jesus Christ; a thought which is expanded in Heb. vii. on the basis of this account, and of the divine utterance revealed to David in the Spirit, that the King of Zion sitting at the right hand of Jehovah should be a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek (Ps. ex. 4).

With the formula " after these things^^ there is introduced a new revelation of the Lord to Abram, which differs from the previous ones in form and substance, and constitutes a new turning point in his life. The " word of Jehovah " came to him " in a vision;^* i.e. neither by a direct internal address, nor by such a manifestation of Himself as fell upon the outward senses, nor in a dream of the night, but in a state of ecstasy by an inward spiritual intuition, and that not in a nocturnal vision, as in chap, xlvi. 2, but in the day-time. The expression " in a vision " applies to the whole chapter. There is no pause anywhere, nor any sign that the vision ceased, or that the action was transferred to the sphere of the senses and of external reality. Consequently the whole process is to be regarded as an internal one. The vision embraces not only vers. 1-4 or 8, but the entire chapter, with this difference merely, that from ver. 12 onwards the ecstasy assumed the form of a prophetic sleep produced by God. It is true that the bringing Abram out, his seeing the stars (ver. 5), and still more especially his taking the sacrificial animals and dividing them (vers. 9, 10), have been supposed by some to belong to the sphere of external reality, on the ground that these purely external acts would not necessarily presuppose a cessation of the ecstasy, since the vision was no catalepsy, and did not preclude the full (?) use of the outward senses. But however true this may be, not only is every mark wanting, which would warrant us in assuming a transition from the purely inward and spiritual sphere, to the outward sphere of the senses, but the entire revelation culminates in a prophetic sleep, which also bears the character of a vision. As it was in a deep sleep that Abram saw the passing of the divine appearance through the carefully arranged portions of the sacrifice, and no reference is made either to the burning of them, as in Judg. vi. 21, or to any other removal, the arrangement of the sacrificial animals must also have been a purely internal process. To regard this as an outward act, we must break up the continuity of the narrative in a most arbitrary way, and not only transfer the commencement of the vision into the night, and suppose it to have lasted from twelve to eighteen hours, but we must interpolate the burning of the sacrifices, etc., in a still more arbitrary manner, merely for the sake of supporting the erroneous assumption, that visionary procedures had no objective reality, or, at all events, less evidence of reality than outward acts, and things perceived by the senses. A vision wrought by God was not a mere fancy, or a subjective play of the thoughts, but a spiritual fact, which was not only in all respects as real as things discernible by the senses, but which surpassed in its lasting significance the acts and events that strike the eye. The covenant which Jehovah made with Abram was not intended to give force to a mere agreement respecting mutual rights and obligations, — a thing which could have been accomplished by an external sacrificial transaction, and by God passing through the divided animals in an assumed human form, — but it was designed to establish the purely spiritual relation of a living fellowship between God and Abram, of the deep inward meaning of which, nothing but a spiritual intuition and experience could give to Abram an effective and permanent hold. Vers. 1-6. The words of Jehovah run thus: " Fear not, Abram: I am a shield to thee, thy reward very much." na'in an inf. absoL, generally used adverbially, but here as an adjective, equivalent to " thy very great reioard." The divine promise to be a shield to him, that is to say, a protection against all enemies, and a reward, i.e. richly to reward his confidence, his ready obedience, stands here, as the opening words " after these things" indicate, in close connection with the previous guidance of Abram. Whilst the protection of his wife in Egypt was a practical pledge of the possibility of his having a posterity, and the separation of Lot, followed by the conquest of the kings of the East, was also a pledge of the possibility of his one day possessing the promised land, there was as yet no prospect whatever of the promise being realized, that he should become a gi'eat nation, and possess an innumerable posterity. In these circumstances, anxiety about the future might naturally arise in his mind. To meet this, the word of the Lord came to him with the comforting assurance, "Fear not, I am thy shield." But when the Lord added, " and thy very great reward," Abram could only reply, as he thought of his childless condition: ^^ Lord Jehovah, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless?" Of what avail are all my possessions, wealth, and power, since I have no child, and the heir of my house is Eliezer the Damascene ■? Pf^, synonymous with pK'OO (Zeph. ii. 9), possession, or the seizure of possession, is chosen on account of its assonance with p?'^!. P^^~\r^, son of the seizing of possession = seizer of possession, or heir. Eliezer of Damascus (lit. Damascus viz. Eliezer): Eliezer is an explanatory apposition to Damascus, in the sense of the Damascene Eliezer; though P^^l, on account of its position before "ijy^X) cannot be taken grammatically as equivalent to '^p^^'^.} — To give still more distinct utterance to his grief, Abram adds (ver. 3): " Behold, to me Thou hast given no seed; and lo, an inmate of my house (''^''?"i? in distinction from n^liT"?^, home-born, chap. xiv. 14) icill he my heir." The word of the Lord then came to him: " Not he, but one who shall come forth from thy body, he will be thine heir." God then took him into the open air, told him to look up to heaven, and promised him a posterity as numerous as the innumerable host of stars (cf. chap. xxii. 17, xxvi. 4; Ex. xxxii. 13, etc). Whether Abram at this time was " in the body or out of the body," is a matter of no moment. The reality of the occurrence is the same in either case. This is evident from the remark made by Moses (the historian) as to the conduct of Abram in relation to

^ The legend of Abram having been king in Damascus appears to have originated in this, though the passage before us does not so much as show that Abram obtained possession of Eliezer on his way through Damascus.

the promise of God: "And he believed in Jehovah, and Fie counted it to him for righteousness." In the strictly objective character of the account in Genesis, in accordance with which the simple, facts are related throughout without any introduction of subjective opinions, this remark appears so striking, that the question naturally arises, What led Moses to introduce it? In what way did Abram make known his faith in Jehovah?• And in what way did Jehovah count it to him as righteousness "? The reply to both questions must not be sought in the New Testament, but must be given or indicated in the context. What reply did Abram make on receiving the promise, or what did he do in consequence? When God, to confirm the promise, declared Himself to be Jehovah, who brought him out of Ur of the Chaldees to give him that land as a possession, Abram replied, " Lord, whereby shall I know that I shall possess it?" God then directed him to "fetch a heifer of three years old," etc.; and Abram fetched the animals requked, and arranged them (as we may certainly suppose, though it is not expressly stated) as God had commanded him. By this readiness to perform what God commanded him, Abram gave a practical proof that he believed Jehovah; and what God did with the animals so arranged was a practical declaration on the part of Jehovah, that He reckoned this faith to Abram as righteousness. The significance of the divine act is, finally, summed up in ver. 18, in the words, " On that day Jehovah made a covenant with Abram" Consequently Jehovah reckoned Abram' s faith to him as righteousness, by making a covenant with him, by taking Abram into covenant fellowship with Himself, rp^.i!}, from p^ to continue and to preserve, to be firm and to confirm, in Hiphil to trust, believe (inareveLv), expresses " that state of mind which is sure of its object, and relies firmly upon it;" and as denoting conduct towards God, as "a firm, inward, personal, self-surrendering reliance upon a personal being, especially upon the source of all being," it is construed sometimes with p {e.g. Dent. ix. 23), but more frequently with 2 (Num. xiv. 11, xx. 12; Deut. i. 32), "to believe the Lord," and " to believe on the Lord," to trust in Him, — ina— reveiv iirl rov Qeov, as the apostle has more correctly rendered the eiriaTevaev — ra> Qeat of the LXX. (yid. Rom. iv. 5). Faith therefore is not merely assensus, hntfiducia also, unconditional trust in the Lord and His word, even where the natural course of events furnishes no ground for hope or expectation. This faith Abram manifested, as the apostle has shown in Kom. iv.; and this faith God reckoned to him as righteousness by the actual conclusion of a covenant with him. '"'iJ'^Vj righteousness, as a human characteristic, is correspondence to the will of God both in character and conduct, or a state answering to the divine purpose of a man's being. This was the state in which man was first created in the image of God; but it was lost bysin, through which he placed himself in opposition to the will of God and to his own divinely appointed destiny, and could only be restored by God. When the human race had universally corrupted its way, Noah alone was found righteous before God (vii. 1), because he was blameless and walked with God (vi. 9). This righteousness Abram acquired through his unconditional trust in the Lord, his undoubting faith in His promise, and his ready obedience to His word. This state of mind, which is expressed in the words niiTia l^'J^iAi]^ was reckoned to him as righteousness, so that God treated him as a righteous man, and formed such a relationship with him, that he was placed in living fellowship with God. The foundation of this relationship was laid in the manner described in vers. 7—11.

Vers. 7—11. Abram's question, " Whereby shall I know that 1 shall take possession of it (the land)?" was not an expression of doubt, but of desire for the confirmation or sealing of a promise, which transcended human thought and conception. To gratify this desire, God commanded him to make preparation for the conclusion of a covenant. " Take Me, He said, a heifer of three years old, and a she-goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon;^^ one of every species of the animals suitable for sacrifice. Abram took these, and " divided them in the midst," i.e. in half, " and placed one half of each opposite to the other (nri3 K^K, every one its half, cf. xlii. 25; Num. xvii. 17); only the birds divided he not," just as in sacrifice the doves were not divided into pieces, but placed upon the fire whole (Lev. i. 17). The animals chosen, as well as the fact that the doves were left whole, corresponded exactly to the ritual of sacrifice. Yet the transaction itself was not a real sacrifice, since there was neither sprinkling of blood nor offering upon an altar (oblatio), and no mention is made of the pieces being burned. The proceeding corresponded rather to the custom, prevalent in many ancient nations, of slaughtering animals when concluding a covenant, and after dividing them into pieces, of laying the pieces opposite to one another, that the persons making the covenant might pass between them. Thus Ephraem Svrus (1, IGl) observes, that God condescended to follow the custom of the Chaldeans, that He might in the most solemn manner confirm His oath to Abram the Chaldean. The wide extension of this custom is evident from the expression used to denote the conclusion of a covenant, JTiin n"i3 to hew, or cut a covenant, Aram. D^i? ra, Greek opKia refiveiv, fcedus ferire, i.e. ferienda Jiostia facere fcedus; cf. Bochart {Hieroz. 1, 332); whilst it is evident from Jer. xxxiv. 18, that this was still customary among the Israelites of later times. The choice of sacrificial animals for a transaction which was not strictly a sacrifice, was founded upon the symbolical significance of the sacrificial animals, i.e. upon the fact that they represented and took the place of those who offered them. In the case before us, they were meant to typify the promised seed of Abram. This would not hold good, indeed, if the cutting of the animals had been merely intended to signify, that any who broke the covenant would be treated like the animals that were there cut in pieces. But there is no sure ground in Jer. xxxiv. 18 sqq. for thus interpreting the ancient custom. The meaning which the prophet there assigns to the symbolical usage, may be simply a different application of it, which does not preclude an earlier and different intention in the symbol. The division of the animals probably denoted originally the two parties to the covenant, and the passing of the latter through the pieces laid opposite to one another, their formation into one: a signification to which the other might easily have been attacned as a further consequence and explanation. And if in such a case the sacrificial animals represented the parties to the covenant, so also even in the present instance the sacrificial animals were fitted for that purpose, since, although originally representing only the owner or offerer of the sacrifice, by their consecration as sacrifices they were also brought into connection with Jehovah. But in the case before us the animals represented Abram and his seed, not in the fact of their being slaughtered, as significant of the slaying of that seed, but only in what happened to and in connection with the slaughtered animals: birds of prey attempted to eat them, and when extreme darkness came on, the glory of God passed through them. As all the seed of Abram was concerned, one of every kind of animal suitable for sacrifice was taken, zit ex toto populo et singulis partibus sacrificium unum fieret (^Calvin). The age of the animals, three years old, was supposed by Theodoret to refer to the three generations of Israel which were to remain in Egypt, or the three centuries of captivity in a foreign land; and this is rendered very probable by the fact, that in Judg. vi. 25 the bullock of seven years old undoubtedly refers to the seven years of Midianitish oppression. On the other hand, we cannot find in the six halves of the three animals and the undivided birds, either 7 thino;s or the sacred number 7, for two undivided birds cannot represent one whole, but two; nor can we attribute to the eight pieces any symbolical meaning, for these numbers necessarily followed from the choice of one specimen of every kind of animal that was fit for sacrifice, and from the division of the larger animals into two. — Ver. 11. " Then birds of prey (p)V[^ with the article, as chap. xiv. 13) came down upon the carcases, and Abram frightened them away." The birds of prey represented the foes of Israel, who would seek to eat up, i.e. exterminate it. And the fact that Abram frightened them away was a sign, that Abram' s faith and his relation to the Lord would preserve the whole of his posterity from destruction, that Israel would be saved for Abram's sake (Ps. cv. 42).

Vers. 12-17. " And when the sun was just about to go down (on the construction, see Ges. § 132), and deep sleep ("^^lll'? ^^ in chap. ii. 21, a deep sleep produced by God) had fallen upon Abram, behold there fell upon him terror, great darkness." The vision here passes into a prophetic sleep produced by God. In this sleep there fell upon Abram dread and darkness; this is shown by the interchange of the perfect n^sj and the participle ri.^??j. The reference to the time is intended to show " the supernatural character of the darkness and sleep, and the distinction between the vision and a dream" (0. v. Gerlach). It also possesses a symbolical meaning. The setting of the sun prefigured to Abram the departure of the sun of grace, which shone upon Israel, and the commencement of a dark and dreadful period of suffering for his posterity, the very anticipation of which involved Abram in darkness. For the words which he heard in the darkness were these (vers. 13 sqq.): " Know of a surety, that thy seed shall he a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them (the lords of the strange land), and they (the foreigners) shall oppress them 400 years" That these words had reference to the sojourn of the children of Israel in Egypt, is placed beyond all doubt by the fulfilment. The 400 years were, according to prophetic language, a round number for the 430 years that Israel spent in Egypt (Ex. xii. 40). " Also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge (see the fulfilment, Ex. vi. 11); and afterward shall they come out with great substance (the actual fact according to Ex. xii. 31-36). And thou shall go to thy fathers in peace, and he buried in a good old age (cf. chap. XXV. 7, 8); and in the fourth generation they shall come hither again." The calculations are made here on the basis of a hundred years to a generation: not too much for those times, when the average duration of life was above 150 years, and Isaac was born in the hundredth year of Abraham's life. " For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yetfuW Amorite, the name of the most powerful tribe of the Canaanites, is used here as the common name of all the inhabitants of Canaan, just as in Josh, xxiv. 15 (cf. X. 5), Judg. vi. 10, etc.). — By this revelation Abram had the future history of his seed pointed out to him in general outlines, and was informed at the same time why neither he nor his descendants could obtain immediate possession of the promised land, viz. because the Canaanites were not yet ripe for the sentence of extermination. — Ver. 17. When the sun had gone down, and thick darkness had come on {^''Jl impersonal), " behold a smoking furnace, and (with) a fiery torch, which passed between those pieces," — a description of what Abram saw in his deep prophetic sleep, corresponding to the mysterious character of the whole proceeding. "i^3ri, a stove, is a cylindrical fire-pot, such as is used in the dwelling-houses of the East. The phenomenon, which passed through the pieces as they lay opposite to one another, resembled such a smoking stove, from which a fiery torch, i.e. a brilliant flame, was streaming forth. In this symbol Jehovah manifested Himself to Abram, just as He afterwards did to the people of Israel in the pillar of cloud and fire. Passing through the pieces. He ratified the covenant which He made with Abram. His glory was enveloped in fire and smoke, the product of the consuminofire, — both symbols of the wrath of God (cf. Ps. xviii. 9, and Hengstenherg in loc), whose fiery zeal consumes whatever opposes it (yid. Ex. iii. 2). — To establish and give reality to the covenant to be concluded with Abram, Jehovah would have to pass through the seed of Abram when oppressed by the Egyptians and threatened with destruction, and to execute judgment upon their oppressors (Ex. vii. 4, xii. 12). In this symbol, the passing of the Lord between the pieces meant something altogether different from the oath of the Lord by Himself in chap. xxii. 16, or by His life in Deut. xxxii. 40, or by His soul in Amos vi. 8 and Jer. li. 14. It set before Abram the condescension of the Lord to his seed, in the fearful glory of His majesty as the judge of their foes. Hence the pieces were not consumed by the fire; for the transaction had reference not to a sacrifice, which God accepted, and in which the soul of the offerer was to ascend in the smoke to God, but to a covenant in which God came down to man. From the nature of this covenant, it followed, however, that God alone went through the pieces in a symbolical representation of Himself, and not Abram also. For although a covenant always establishes a reciprocal relation between two individuals, yet in that covenant which God concluded with a man, the man did not stand on an equality with God, but God established the relation of fellowship by His promise and His gracious condescension to the man, who was at first purely a recipient, and was only qualified and bound to fulfil the obligations consequent upon the covenant by the reception of gifts of grace.

In vers. 18-21 this divine revelation is described as the making of a covenant (nna, from ni3 to cut, lit. the bond concluded by cutting up the sacrificial animals), and the substance of this covenant is embraced in the promise, that God would give that land to the seed of Abram, from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates. The river (^n^) of Egypt is the Nile, and not the brook {bn:^ of Egypt (Num. xxxiv. 5), i.e. the boundary stream Ehinocorura, Wady el ArisTi. According to the oratorical character of the promise, the two large rivers, the Nile and the Euphrates, are mentioned as the boundaries within which the seed of Abram would possess the promised land, the exact limits of which are more minutely described in the list of the tribes who were then in possession. Ten tribes are mentioned between the southern border of the land and the extreme north, " to convey the impression of universality without exception, of unqualified completeness, the symbol of which is the number ten" {Delitzsch). In other passages we find sometimes seven tribes mentioned (Deut. vii. 1; Josh. iii. 10), at other times six (Ex. iii. 8, 17, xxiii. 23; Deut. xx. 17), at others five (Ex. xiii. 5), at others again only two (chap. xiii. 7); whilst occasionally they are all included in the common name of Canaanites (chap, xii. 6). The absence of the Hivites is striking here, since they are not omitted from any other list where as many as five or seven tribes are mentioned. Out of the eleven descendants of Canaan (chap. X. 15-18) the names of four only are given here; the others are included in the common name of Canaanites. On the other hand, four tribes are given, whose descent from Canaan is very improbable. The origin of the Kenites cannot be determined. According to Judg. i. 16, iv. 11, Hobab, the brotherin-law of Moses, was a Kenite. His being called a Midianite (Num. X. 29) does not prove that he was descended from Midian (Gen. XXV. 2), but is to be accounted for from the fact that he dwelt in the land of Midian, or among the Midianites (Ex. ii. 15). This branch of the Kenites went with the Israelites to Canaan, into the wilderness of Judah (Judg. i. 16), and dwelt even in Saul's time among the Amalekites on the southern border of Judah (1 Sam. xv. 6), and in the same towns with members of the tribe of Judah (1 Sam. xxx. 29). There is nothing either in this passage, or in Num. xxiv. 21, 22, to compel us to distinguish these Midianitish Kenites from those of Canaan. The Philistines also were not Canaanites, and yet their territory was assigned to the Israelites. And just as the Philistines had forced their way into the land, so the Kenites may have taken possession of certain tracts of the country. All that can be inferred from the two passages is, that there were Kenites outside Midian, who were to be exterminated by the Israelites. On the Kenizzites, all that can be affirmed with certainty is, that the name is neither to be traced to the Edomitish Kenaz (chap, xxxvi. 15, 42), nor to be identified with the Kenezite Jephunneh, the father of Caleb of Judah (Num. xxxii. 12; Josh. xiv. 6: see my Comm. on Joshua, p. 356, Eng. tr.). — The Kadmonites are never mentioned again, and their origin cannot be determined. On the

Vers. 1—6. As the promise of a lineal heir (chap. xv. 4) did not seem likely to be fulfilled, even after the covenant had been made, Sarai resolved, ten years after their entrance into Canaan, to give her Egyptian maid Hagar to her husband, that if possible she might " be built up by her^^ i.e. obtain children, who might found a house or family (chap. xxx. 3). The resolution seemed a judicious one, and according to the customs of the East, there would be nothing wrong in carrying it out. Hence Abraham consented without opposition, because, as Malachi (ii. 1 5) says, he sought the seed promised by God. But they were both of them soon to learn, that their thoughts were the thoughts of man and not of God, and that their wishes and actions were not in accordance with the divine promise. Sarai, the originator of the plan, was the first to experience its evil consequences. When the maid was with child by Abram, " her mistress became little in her eyes." When Sarai complained to Abram of the contempt she received from her maid (saying, " My wrong" the wrong done to me, " come upon thee," cf. Jer. li. 35; Gen. xxvii. 13), and called upon Jehovah to judge between her and her husband,^ Abram gave her full power to act as mistress towards her maid, without raising the slave who was made a concubine above her position. But as soon as Sarai made her feel her power, Hagar fled. Thus, instead of securing the fulfilment of their wishes, Sarai and Abram had reaped nothing but grief and vexation, and apparently had lost the maid through their self-concerted scheme. But the faithful covenant God turned the whole into a blessing.

Vers. 7—14. Hagar no doubt intended to escape to Egypt by a road used from time immemorial, that ran from Hebron past Beersheba, " by the way of Shur." — Shur, the present Jifar, is the name given to the north-western portion of the desert of Arabia (cf. Ex. xv. 22). There the angel of the Lord found

^ ^3^3, with a point over the second Jod, to show that it is irregular and suspicious; since pa with the singular suffix is alwayB treats as a singular, and only with a plural suffix as plural.

her by a well, and directed her to return to her mistress, and submit to her; at the same time he promised her the birth of a son, and an innumerable multiplication of her descendants. As the fruit of her womb was the seed of Abram, she was to return to his house and there bear him a son, who, though not the seed promised by God, would be honoured for Abram's sake with the blessing of an innumerable posterity. For this reason also Jehovah appeared to her in the form of the Angel of Jehovah (cf. p. 129). nnn is adj. verb, as in chap, xxxviii. 24, etc.: " thou art loitli cJiild and wilt bear;" F}\?'' for JTjT (chap. xvii. 19) is found again in Judg. xiii. 5, 7. This son she was to call Ishmael (" God hears "), "/or Jehovah hath hearkened to thy distress" ■•jy afflictionem sine dubio vocat, quam Hagar ajiictionem sentiebat esse, nempe conditionem servitem et quod castigata esset a Sara {Luther). It was Jehovah, not Elohim, who had heard, although the latter name was most naturally suggested as the explanation of Ishmael, because the hearing, i.e. the multiplication of Ishmael's descendants, was the result of the covenant grace of Jehovah. Moreover, in contrast with the oppression which she had endured and still would endure, she received the promise that her son would endure no such oppression. " He will be a loild ass of a man." The figure of a i*"]3, onager, that wild and untameable animal, roaming at its will in the desert, of which so highly poetic a description is given in Job xxxix. 5—8, depicts most aptly " the Bedouin's boundless love of freedom as he rides about in the desert, spear in hand, upon his camel or his horse, hardy, frugal, revelling in the varied beauty of nature, and despising town life in every form;" and the words, " his hand ivill be against every man, and every man's hand against him," describe most truly the incessant state of feud, in which the Ishmaelites live with one another or with their neighbours. " He loill dioell before the face of all his brethren." ''.^3 hv denotes, it is true, to the east of (cf. chap. xxv. 18), and this meaning is to be retained here; but the geographical notice of the dwelling-place of the Ishmaelites hardly exhausts the force of the expression, which also indicated that Ishmael would maintain an independent standing before (in the presence of) all the descendants of Abraham. History has confirmed this promise. The Ishmaelites have continued to this day in free and undiminished possession of the extensive peninsula between the Euplirates, the

Straits of Suez, and the Ked Sea, from which they have overspread both Northern Africa and Southern Asia. — Ver. 13. In the angel, Hagar recognised God manifesting Himself to her, the presence of Jehovah, and called Him, " Thou art a God of seeing; for she said, Have I also seen here after seeing T* Believing that a man must die if he saw God (Ex. xx. 19, xxxiii. 20), Hagar was astonished that she had seen God and remained alive, and called Jehovah, who had spoken to her, "God of seeing," i.e. who allows Himself to be seen, because here, on the spot where this sight was granted her, after seeing she still saw, i.e. remained alive. From this occurrence the well received the name of " well of the seeing alive" i.e. at which a man saw God and remained alive. Beer-lahai-roi: according to Ewald, ^KT ""n is to be regarded as a composite noun, and? as a sign of the genitive; but this explanation, in which ""KT is treated as a pausal form of "'Nn, does not suit the form "'XT with the accent upon the last syllable, which points rather to the participle HNin with the fii'st pers. suffix. On this ground Delitzsch and others have decided in favour of the interpretation given in the Chaldee version, " Thou art a God of seeing, i.e. the all-seeing, from whose all-seeing eye the helpless and forsaken is not hidden even in the farthest corner of the desert." "Have I not even here (in the barren land of solitude) looked after Him, who saw meV and Beer-lahai-roi, " the well of the Living One who sees me, i.e. of the omnipresent Providence." But still greater difficulties lie in the way of this view. It not only overthrows the close connection between this and the similar passages chap, xxxii. 31, Ex. xxxiii. 20, Judg. xiii. 22, where the sight of God excites a fear of death, but it renders the name, which the well received from this appearance of God, an inexplicable riddle. If Hagar called the God who appeared to her i^i ^x because she looked after Him whom she saw, i.e. as we must necessarily understand the word, saw not His face, but only His back; how could it ever occur to her or to any one else, to call the well Beer-lahai-roi, " well of the Living One, who sees me," instead of Beer-el-roi f Moreover, what completely overthrows this explanation, is the fact that neither in Genesis nor anywhere in the Pentateuch is God called " the Living One;" and throughout the Old Testament it is only in contrast with the dead gods or idols of the heathen, a contrast never thought of here, that the expressions ""n Q^"??^ and

T^ -'^ occur, whilst ""nn is never used in the Old Testament as a name of God. For these reasons we must abide by the first explanation, and change the reading ""XT into ''ip} With regard to the well, it is still further added that it was between Kadesh (xiv. 7) and Bered. Though Bered has not been discovered, Rowland believes, with good reason, that he has found the well of Hagar, which is mentioned again in chap. xxiv. 62, xxv. 11, in the spring Ain Kades, to the south of Beersheba, at the leading place of encampment of the caravans passing from Syria to Sinai, viz. Moyle, or Moilahi, or Muweilili (Robinson, Pal. i. p. 280), which the Arabs call Moilahi Hagar, and in the neighbourhood of which they point out a rock Beit Hagar. Bered must lie to the west of this.

Vers. 15—16. Having returned to Abram's house, Hagar bare him a son in his 86th year. He gave it the name Ishmael, and regarded it probably as the promised seed, until, thirteen years afterwards, the counsel of God was more clearly unfolded to him.

SEALING OF THE COVENANT BY THE GIVING OF NEW NAMES AND BY THE EITE OF CIRCUMCISION. — CHAP. XVII.

Vers. 1-14. The covenant had been made with Abram for at least fourteen years, and yet Abram remained without any visible sign of its accomplishment, and was merely pointed in faith to the inviolable character of the promise of God. Jehovah now appeared to Him again, when he was ninety-nine years old, twenty-four years after his migration, and thirteen after the birth of Ishmael, to give effect to the covenant and prepare for its execution. Having come down to Abram in a visible form (ver 22), He said to him, "lam El Shaddai (almighty God): walk before Me and be blameless." At the establishment of the

^ The objections to this change in the accentuation are entirely counterbalanced by the grammatical difficulty connected with the second explanation. If, for example, 1^{^ is a participle with the 1st pers. suff., it should be written tJXT (Isa. xxix. 16) or ij{<n (Isa. xlvii. 10). i^i cannot mean, " who sees me," but "my seer," an expression utterly inapplicable to God, which cannot be supported by a reference to Job vii. 8, for the accentuation varies there; and the derivation of ixi from iST " eye of the seeing," for the eye which looks after me, is apparently fully warranted by the analogous expreasion m^ n^H in Jer. xiii. 21.

covenant, God had manifested Himself to him as Jehovah (xv. 7); here Jehovah describes Himself as El Shaddai, God the Mighty One. "•'iK': from TiK^ to be strong, with the substantive termination ai, like ''Sn the festal, ''^^^\ the old man, ''3''p the thorn-grown, etc. This name is not to be regarded as identical with Elohim, that is to say, with God as Creator and Preserver of the world, although in simple narrative Elohim is used for El Shaddai, which is only employed in the more elevated and solemn style of writing. It belonged to the sphere of salvation, forming one element in the manifestation of Jehovah, and describing Jehovah, the covenant God, as possessing the power to realize His promises, even when the order of nature presented no prospect of their fulfilment, and the powers of nature were insufficient to secure it. The name which Jehovah thus gave to Himself was to be a pledge, that in spite of " his own body npw dead," and "the deadness of Sarah's womb" (Rom. iv. 19), God could and would give him the promised innumerable posterity. On the other hand, God required this of Abram, " Walk heforeMe (cf. chap. v. 22) and he blameless" (vi. 9). "Just as righteousness received in faith was necessary for the establishment of the covenant, so a blameless walk before God was required for the maintenance and confirmation of the covenant." This introduction is followed by a more definite account of the new revelation; first of the promise involved in the new name of God (vers. 2-8), and then of the obligation imposed upon Abram (vers. 9-14). " / will give My covenant" says the Almighty, " between Me and thee, and multiply thee exceedinglyT n"''i3 jn: signifies, not to make a covenant, but to give, to put, i.e. to realize, to set in operation the things promised in the covenant — equivalent to setting up the covenant (cf. ver. 7 and ix. 12 with Lx. 9). This promise Abram appropriated to himself by falling upon his face in worship, upon which God still further expounded the nature of the covenant about to be executed. — ^Ver. 4. On the part of God C^K placed at the beginning absolutely: so far as I am concerned, for my part) it was to consist of this: (1) that God would make Abram the father (3K instead of ""^K chosen with reference to the name Abram) of a multitude of nations, the ancestor of nations and kings; (2) that He would be God, show Himself to be God, in an eternal covenant relation, to him and to his posterity, according to their families, according to all their succes- sive generations; and (3) that He would give them the land in which he had wandered as a foreigner, viz. all Canaan, for an everlasting possession. ' As a pledge of this promise God changed his name Q"]3NI, i.e. high father, into ^^nnnx, i.e. father of the multitude, from 3X and QH'J, Arab, ruhdm = multitude. In this name God gave him a tangible pledge of the fulfilment of His covenant, inasmuch as a name which God gives cannot be a mere empty sound, but must be the expression of something real, or eventually acquire reality. — ^Vers. 9 sqq. On the part of Abraham (^^^?l thou, the antithesis to ''J>*, as for me, ver. 4) God required that he and his descendants in all generations should keep the covenant, and that as a sign he should circumcise himself and every male in his house. 7i^n Niph. of?^D, and 0^^!??? jjerf. Niph. for Qn?»3j from P?0=?^0. As the sign of the covenant, circumcision is called in ver. 13, "the covenant in the flesh" so far as the nature of the covenant was manifested in the flesh. It was to be extended not only to the seed, the lineal descendants of Abraham, but to all the males in his house, even to every foreign slave not belonging to the seed of Abram, whether born in tlie house or acquired (i.e. bought) with money, and to the " son of eight days" i.e. the male child eight days old; with the threat that the uncircumcised should be exterminated from his people, because by neglecting circumcision he had broken the covenant with God. The form of speech N''nn tJ'San nnn^J^ by which many of the laws are enforced (cf. Ex. xii. 15, 19; Lev. vii. 20, 21, 25, etc.), denotes not rejection from the nation, or banishment, but death, whether by a direct judgment from God, an untimely death at the hand of God, or by the punishment of death inflicted by the congregation or the magistrates, and that whether nw ni» is added, as in Ex. xxxi. 14, etc., or not. This is very evident from Lev. xvii. 9, 10, where the extermination to be effected by the authorities is distinguished from that to be executed by God Himself (see my biblische Archdologie ii. § 153, 1). In this sense we sometimes find, in the place of the earlier expression "from his people" i.e. his nation^ such expressions as "from among his people" (Lev. xvii. 4, 10; Num. XV. 30), "from Israel" (Ex. xii. 15; Num. xix. 13), " from the congregation of Israel" (Ex. xii. 19); and instead of "that soul,'- in Lev. xvii. 4, 9 (cf. Ex. xxx. 33, 38), we find "that man." Vers. 15-21. The appointment of the sign of the covenant was followed by this further revelation as to the promised seed, that Abram would receive it through his wife Sarai. In confirmation of this her exalted destiny, she was no longer to be called /Sarai {'''j^, probably from llJi* with the termination ai, the princely), but nnb'j the princess; for she was to become nations, the mother of kings of nations. Abraham then fell upon his face and laughed, saying in himself (i.e. thinking), " Shall a child he horn to him that is a hundred years old, or shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, hearV^ " The promise was so immensely great, that he sank in adoration to the ground, and so immensely paradoxical, that he could not help laughing" {Del.). " Not that he either ridiculed the promise of God, or treated it as a fable, or rejected it altogether; but, as often happens when things occur which are least expected, partly lifted up with joy, partly carried out of himself with wonder, he burst out into laughter" {Calvin). In this joyous amazement he said to God (ver. 18), " 0 that Tshmael might live hefore Thee! " To regard these words, with Calvin and others, as intimating that he should be satisfied with the prosperity of Ishmael, as though he durst not hope for anything higher, is hardly sufficient. The prayer implies anxiety, lest Ishmael should have no part in the blessings of the covenant. God answers, " Yes (73i{ imo), Sarah thy wife hears thee a son, and thou wilt call his name Isaac (according to the Greek form 'laadtc, for the Hebrew pny;, i.e. laugher, with reference to Abraham's laughing; ver. 17, cf. xxi. 6), and I will estahlish Afy covenant with him," i.e. make him the recipient of the covenant grace. And the prayer for Ishmael God would also grant: He would make him very fruitful, so that he should beget twelve princes and become a great nation. But the covenant, God repeated (ver. 21), should be established with Isaac, whom Sarah was to bear to him at that very time in the following year. — Since Ishmael therefore was excluded from participating in the covenant grace, which was ensured to Isaac alone; and yet Abraham was to become a multitude of nations, and that through Sarah, who was to become " nations " through the son she was to bear (ver. 16); the "multitude of nations" could not include either the Ishmaelites or the tribes descended from the sons of Keturah (chap. xxv. 2 sqq.), but the descendants of Isaac alone; and as one of Isaac's two sons received no part of the covenant promise, the descendants of Jacob alone. But the whole of the twelve sons of Jacob founded only the one nation of Israel, with which Jehovah established the covenant made with Abraham (Ex. vi. and xx.-xxiv.), so that Abraham became through Israel the lineal father of one nation only. From this it necessarily follows, that the posterity of Abraham, which was to expand into a multitude of nations, extends beyond this one lineal posterity, and embraces the spiritual posterity also, i.e. all nations who are grafted e/c Tr/o-Teci)? 'A^padfjb into the seed of Abraham (Rom. iv. 11, 12, and 16, 17). Moreover, the fact that the seed of Abraham was not to be restricted to his lineal descendants, is evident from the fact, that circumcision as the covenant sign was not confined to them, but extended to all the inmates of his house, so that these strangers were received into the fellowship of the covenant, and reckoned as part of the promised seed. Now, if the whole land of Canaan was promised to this posterity, which was to increase into a multitude of nations (ver. 8), it is perfectly evident, from what has just been said, that the sum and substance of the promise was not exhausted by the gift of the land, whose boundaries are described in chap. xv. 18-21, as a possession to the nation of Israel, but that the extension of the idea of the lineal posterity, " Israel after the flesh,", to the spiritual posterity, " Israel after the spirit," requires the expansion of the idea and extent of the earthly Canaan to the full extent of the spiritual Canaan, whose boundaries reach as widely as the multitude of nations having Abraham as father; and, therefore, that in reality Abraham received the promise " that he should be the heir of the world" (Rom. iv. 13).^

And what is true of the seed of Abraham and the land of Canaan must also hold good of the covenant and the covenant sign.

^ What stands out clearly in this promise — viz. the fact that the expressions " seed of Abraham" (people of Israel) and " land of Canaan " are not exhausted in the physical Israel and earthly Canaan, but are to be understood spiritually, Israel and Canaan acquiring the typical significance of the people of God and land of the Lord — is still further expanded by the prophets, and most distinctly expressed in the New Testament by Christ and the apostles. This scriptural and spiritual interpretation of the Old Testament is entirely overlooked by those who, hke Auierlen, restrict all the promises of God and the prophetic proclamations of salvation to the physical Israel, and reduce the application of them to the " Israel after the spirit," i.e. to believing Christendom, to a mere accommodation.

Eternal duration was promised only to the covenant established by God with the seed of Abraham, which was to grow into a multitude of nations, but not to the covenant institution which God established in connection with the lineal posterity of Abraham, the twelve tribes of Israel. Everything in this institution which was of a local and limited character, and only befitted the physical Israel and the earthly Canaan, existed only so long as was necessary for the seed of Abraham to expand into a multitude of nations. So again it was only in its essence that circumcision could be a sign of the eternal covenant. Circumcision, whether it passed from Abraham to other nations, or sprang up among other nations independently of Abraham and his descendants (see my Archaologie, § 63, 1), was based upon the religious view, that the sin and moral impurity which the fall of Adam had introduced into the nature of man had concentrated itself in the sexual organs, because it is in sexual life that it generally manifests itself with peculiar force; and, consequently, that for the sanctification of life, a purification or sanctification of the organ of generation, by which life is propagated, is especially required. In this way circumcision in the flesh became a symbol of the circumcision, i.e. the purification, of the heart (Deut. X. 16, XXX. 6, cf. Lev. xxvi. 41, Jer. iv. 4, ix. 25, Ezek. xliv. 7), and a covenant sign to those who received it, inasmuch as they were received into the fellowship of the holy nation (Ex. xix. 6), and required to sanctify their lives, in other words, to fulfil all that the covenant demanded. It was to be performed on every boy on the eighth day after its birth, not because the child, like its mother, remains so long in a state of impurity, but because, as the analogous rule with regard to the fitness of young animals for sacrifice would lead us to conclude, this was regarded as the first day of independent existence (Lev. xxii. 27; Ex. xxii. 29; see my Archaologie, § 63).

Vers. 22-27. When God had finished His address and ascended again, Abraham immediately fulfilled the covenant duty enjoined upon him, by circumcising himself on that very day, along with all the male members of his house. Because Ishmael was 13 years old when he was circumcised, the Arabs even now defer circumcision to a much later period than the Jews, generally till between the ages of 5 and 13, and frequently even till the 13th year.

Having been received into the covenant with God throuo;h the rite of circumcision, Abraham was shortly afterwards honoured by being allowed to receive and entertain the Lord and two anfjels in his tent. This fresh manifestation of God had a double purpose, viz. to establish Sarah's faith in the promise that she should bear a son in her old age (vers. 1-15), and to announce the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah (vers. 16-33).

Vers. 1-15. When sitting, about mid-day, in the grove of Mamre, in front of his tent, Abraham looked up and unexpectedly saw three men standing at some distance from him (1 vj? above him, looking down upon him as he sat), viz. Jehovah, (ver. 13) and two angels (xix. 1); all three in human form. Perceiving at once that one of them was the Lord (""^"l?, i.e. God), he prostrated himself reverentially before them, and entreated them not to pass him by, but to suffer him to entertain them as his guests: " Let a little water he fetched, and wash your feet, and recline yourselves (IV^'? to recline, leaning upon the arm) under the treer — " Comfort your hearts:" lit. " strengthen the heart," i.e. refresh yourselves by eating and drinking (Judg. xix. 5; 1 Kings xxi. 7). ^^For therefore {sc. to give me an opportunity to entertain you hospitably) liave ye come over to your servant;" ""S I? pV does not stand for ^3 |3?V (Ges. thes. p. 682), but means " because for this purpose" (yid. Ewaldj § 353). — Vers. 6 sqq. When the three men had accepted the hospitable invitation, Abraham, just like a Bedouin sheikh of the present day, directed his wife to take three seahs (374 cubic inches each) of fine meal, and bake cakes of it as quickly as possible (nisy round unleavened cakes baked upon hot stones); he also had a tender calf killed, and sent for milk and butter, or curdled milk, and thus prepared a bountiful and savoury meal, of which the guests partook. The eating of material food on the part of these heavenly beings was not in appearance only, but was really eating; an act which may be attributed to the corporeality assumed, and is to be regarded as analo2[ous to the eating on the part of the risen and glorified Christ (Luke xxiv. 41 sqq.), although the miracle still remains physiologically incomprehensible.— Vers. 9-15. During the meal, at Avhich Abraham stood.

and waited upon tliom as the host, they asked for Sarah, for whom the visit was chiefly intended. On being told that she was in the tent, where she could hear, therefore, all that passed under the tree in front of the tent, the one whom Abraham addressed as Adonai (my Lord), and who is called Jehovah in ver. 13, said, ^^ I will return to thee (n*n n5;3) at this time, when it lives again" (p^^, reviviscens, without the article, Ges. § 111, 2b), i.e. at this time next year; " and, behold, Sarah, thy wife, will (then) have a son." Sarah heard this at the door of the tent; "and it was behind Him" (Jehovah), so that she could not be seen by Him as she stood at the door. But as the fulfilment of this promise seemed impossible to her, on account of Abraham's extreme age, and the fact that her own womb had lost the power of conception, she laughed within herself, thinking that she was not observed. But that she might know that the promise was made by the omniscient and omnipotent God, He reproved her for laughing, saying, "/s anything too wonderful (i.e. impossible) for Jehovah? at the time appointed I will return unto thee" etc.; and when her perplexity led her to deny it, He convicted her of falsehood. Abraham also had laughed at this promise (chap. xvii. 17), and without receiving any reproof. For his laughing was the joyous outburst of astonishment; Sarah's, on the contrary, the result of doubt and unbelief, which had to be broken down by reproof, and, as the result showed, really was broken down, inasmuch as she conceived and bore a son, whom she could only have conceived in faith (Heb. xi. 11).

Vers. 16-33. After this conversation with Sarah, the heavenly guests rose up and turned their faces towards the plain of Sodom (V.S 7y, as in chap. xix. 28; Num. xxi. 20, xxiii. 28). Abraham accompanied them some distance on the road; according to tradition, he went as far as the site of the later Caphar harucha, from Avhich you can see the Dead Sea through a ravine, — solitudinem ac terras Sodomce. And Jehovah said, " Shall I hide from Abraham what I propose to do? Abraham is destined to be a great nation and a blessing to all nations (xii. 2, 3); for I have known, i.e. acknowledged him (chosen him in anticipative love, jn^ as in Amos iii. 2; Hos. xiii. 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, not, as Kurtz supposes, because Abraham had been constituted the hereditary possessor of the land, and Jehovah, being mindful of His covenant, would not do anything to it without his knowledge and assent (a thought quite foreign to the context), but 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 partakers of the promised salvation, and not be overtaken by judgment. The destruction of Sodom and the surrounding cities was to be a permanent memorial of the punitive righteousness of God, and 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. — Ver. 20. " The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah, yea it is great; and their sin, yea it is ve}^/ grievous.'' The cry is the appeal for vengeance or punishment, which ascends to heaven (chap. iv. 10). The ''3 serves to give emphasis to the assertion, and is placed in the middle of the sentence to give the greater prominence to the leading thought (cf. Ewald, § 330). — Ver. 21. God was about to go down, and convince Himself whether they had done entirely according to the cry which had reached Him, or not. n?3 TWV, lit. to make completeness, here referring to the extremity of iniquity, generally to the extremity of punishment (Nahum i. 8, 9; Jer. iv. 27, V. 10): n73 is a noun, as Isa. x. 23 shows, not an adverb, as in Ex. xi. 1. After this explanation, the men (according to chap. xix. 1, the two angels) turned from thence to go to Sodom (ver. 22); but Abraham continued standing before Jehovah, who had been talking with him, and approached Him with earnestness and boldness of faith to intercede for Sodom. He was urged to this, not by any special interest in Lot, for in that case he would have prayed for his deliverance; nor by the circumstance that, as he had just before felt himself called upon to become the protector, avenger, and deliverer of the land from its foes, so he now thought himself called upon to act as mediator, and to appeal from Jehovah's judicial wrath to Jehovah's covenant grace {Kurtz), for he had not delivered the land from the foe, Ibut merely rescued his nephew Lot and all the booty that remained after the enemy had withdrawn; nor did he appeal to the covenant grace of Jehovah, but to His justice alone; and on the principle that the Judge of all the earth could not possibly destroy the righteous with the wicked, he founded his entreaty that God would forgive the city if there were but fifty righteous in it, or even if there were only ten. He was led to intercede in this way, not by " communis erga quinque populos misericordid" {Calvin), but by the love which springs from the consciousness that one's own preservation and rescue are due to compassionate grace alone; love, too, which cannot conceive of the guilt of others as too great for salvation to be possible. This sympathetic love, springing from the faith which was counted for righteousness, impelled him to the intercession which Luther thus describes: " sexies petiit, et cum tanto ardore ac affectu sic urgenie, ut prce nimia angustia, qua cupit consultum miseris civitatibus, videatur quasi stulte loqui." There may be apparent folly in the words, " Wilt Thou also destroy/ the righteous loith the wicked V but they were only " violenta oratio et impetuosa, quasi cogens Deum ad ignoscendum" For Abraham added, " peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city; wilt Thou also destroy and not forgive (^^Jj to take away and bear the guilt, I.e. forgive) the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?" and described the slaying of the righteous with the wicked as irreconcilable with the justice of God. He knew that he was speaking to the Judge of all the earth, and that before Him he was " but dust and ashes" — " dust in his origin, and ashes in the end;" and yet he made bold to appeal still further, and even as low as ten righteous, to pray that for their sake He would spare the city. — C^ysn!]$< (ver. 32) signifies " only this (one) time more" as in Ex. x. 17. This "seemingly commercial kind of entreaty is," as Delitzsch observes, " the essence of true prayer. It is the holy avaiheta, of which our Lord speaks in Luke xi. 8, the shamelessness of faith, which bridges over the infinite distance of the creature from the Creator, appeals with importunity to the heart of God, and ceases not till its point is gained. This would indeed be neither permissible nor possible, had not God, by virtue of the mysterious interlacing of necessity and freedom in His nature and operations, granted a power to the prayer of faith, to wliicli He consents to yield; had He not, by virtue of His absokiteness, which is anything but bhnd necessity, placed Himself in such a relation to men, that He not merely works upon them by means of His grace, but allows them to work upon Him by means of their faith; had He not interwoven the life of the free creature into His own absolute life, and accorded to a created personality the right to assert itself in faith, in distinction from His own." With the promise, that even for the sake of ten righteous He would not destroy the city, Jehovah " went His way," that is to say, vanished; and Abraham returned to his place, viz. to the grove of Mamre. The judgment which fell upon the wicked cities immediately afterwards, proves that there were not ten " righteous persons^' in Sodom; by which we understand, not merely ten sinless or holy men, but ten who through the fear of God and conscientiousness had kept themselves free from the prevailing sin and iniquity of these cities.

INIQUITY AND DESTRUCTION OF SODOM. ESCAPE OF LOT, AND HIS SUBSEQUENT HISTORY. — CHAP. XIX.

Vers. 1-11. The messengers (angels) sent by Jehovah to Sodom, arrived there in the evening, when Lot, who w^as sitting at the gate, pressed them to pass the night in his house. The gate, generally an arched entrance with deep recesses and seats on either side, was a place of meeting in the ancient towns of the East, where the inhabitants assembled either for social intercourse or to transact public business (vid. chap, xxxiv. 20; Deut. xxi. 19, xxii. 15, etc.). The two travellers, however (for such Lot supposed them to be, and only recognised them as angels when they had smitten the Sodomites miraculously with blindness), said that they would spend the night in the street — ^in"}3 the broad open space within the gate — as they had been sent to inquire into the state of the town. But they yielded to Lot's entreaty to enter his house; for the deliverance of Lot, after having ascertained his state of mind, formed part of their commission, and entering into his house might only serve to manifest the sin of Sodom in all its heinousness. While Lot was entertaining his guests with the greatest hospitality, the people of Sodom gathered round his house, " both old and young, all people from every quarter^' (of the town, as in Jer. li. 31), and demanded, with the basest violation of the sacred rite of hospitaHty and the most shameless proclamation of their sin (Isa. iii. 9), that the strangers should be brought out, that they might know them. JH' is applied, as in Judg. xix. 22, to the carnal sin of pcederastia, a crime very prevalent among the Canaanites (Lev. xviii. 22 sqq., xx. 23), and according to Rom. i. 27, a curse of heathenism generally. — Vers. 6 sqq. Lot went out to them, shut the door behind him to protect his guests, and offered to give his virgin daughters up to them. " Only to these men (/^\}, an archaism for npsn, occurs also in ver. 25, chap. xxvi. 3, 4, Lev. xviii. 27, and Deut. iv. 42, vii. 22, xix. 11; and ^fc? for n^N in 1 Chron. xx. 8) do nothing^ for tJierefore (viz. to be protected from injury) have they come tinder the shadow of my roof" In his anxiety. Lot was willing to sacrifice to the sanctity of hospitality his duty as a father, which ought to have been still more sacred, " and committed the sin of seeking to avert sin by sin." Even if he expected that his daughters would suffer no harm, as they were betrothed to Sodomites (ver. 14), the offer was a grievous violation of his paternal duty. But this offer only heightened the brutality of the mob. " Stand back " (make way, Isa. xlix. 20), they said; " the man, who came as a foreigner, is always wanting to play the judge" (probably because Lot had frequently reproved them for their licentious conduct, 2 Pet. ii. 7, 8): " now will we deal worse with thee than with them" With these words they pressed upon him, and approached the door to break it in. The men inside, that is to say, the angels, then pulled Lot into the house, shut the door, and by miraculous power smote the people without with blindness (Q^"?)pD here and 2 Kings vi. 18 for mental blindness, in which the eye sees, but does not see the right object), as a punishment for their utter moral blindness, and an omen of the coming judgment.

Vers. 12-22. The sin of Sodom had now become manifest. The men. Lot's guests, made themselves known to him as the messengers of judgment sent by Jehovah, and ordered him to remove any one that belonged to him out of the city. " Sonin-law (the singular without the article, because it is only assumed as a possible circumstance that he may have sons-inlaw), and thy sons, and thy daughters, and all that belongs to thee ' (sc. of persons, not of things). Sons Lot does not appear to PENT. — VOL. I. Q have had, as we read nothing more about them, but only " sonsin-law ("'''^33 '•nip?) who were about to take his daughters)^ as Josephus, the Vulgate, JSwald, and many others correctly renderj it. The LXX., Targums, Knohel, and Delitzsch adopt the rendering " who had taken his daughters," in proof of which the last two adduce J^^^^^^i] in ver. 15 as decisive. But without reason; for this refers not to the daughters who were still in the father's house, as distinguished from those who were married, but to his wife and two daughters who were to be found with him in the house, in distinction from the bridegrooms, who also belonged to him, but were not yet living with him, and who had received his summons in scorn, because in their carnal security they did not believe in any judgment of God (Luke xvii. 28, 29). If Lot had had married daughters, he would undoubtedly have called upon them to escape along with their husbands, his sons-in-law. — Ver. 15. As soon as it was dawn, the angels urged Lot to hasten away with his family; and when he still delayed, his heart evidently clinging to the earthly home and possessions which he was obliged to leave, they laid hold of him, with his wife and his two daughters, 1 vV nin) HPOna, " hi/ virtue of the sparing mercy of Jehovah (which operated) upon him^^ and led him out of the city. — Ver. 17. When they left him here (D''?'?j to let loose, and leave, to leave to one's self), the Lord commanded him, for the sake of his life, not ta look behind him, and not to stand still in all the plain ("133, xiii. 10), but to flee to the mountains (afterwards called the mountains of Moab). In ver. 17 we are struck by the change from the plural to the singular: " when they brought them forth, he said." To think of one of the two angels — the one, for. example, who led the conversation — seems out of place, not only because Lot addressed him by the name of God, " A donai " (ver. 18), but also because the speaker attributed to himself the! judgment upon the cities (vers. 21, 22), which is described in ver. 24 as executed by Jehovah. Yet there is nothing to indicate that Jehovah suddenly joined the angels. The only supposi-, tion that remains, therefore, is that Lot recognised in the two angels a manifestation of God, and so addressed them (ver. 18) as: Adonai (my Lord), and that the angel who spoke addressed hira as the messenger of Jehovah in the name of God, without its following from this, that Jehovah was present in the two angels.

Lot, instead of cheerfully obeying the commandment of the Lord, appealed to the great mercy shown to him in the preservation of his life, and to the impossibility of his escaping to the mountains, without the evil overtaking him, and entreated therefore that he might be allowed to take refuge in the small and neighbouring city, i.e. in Bela, which received the name of Zoar (chap. xiv. 2) on account of Lot's calling it little. Zoar, the ^Tjycop of the LXX., and Segor of the Crusaders, is hardly to be sought for on the peninsula which projects a long way into the southern half of the Dead Sea, in the Ghor of el Mezraa, as Irhy and Robinson (Pal. iii. p. 481) suppose; it is much more probably to be found on the south-eastern point of the Dead Sea, in the Ghor of el Szaphia, at the opening of the Wady el Ahsa (vid. v. Raumer, Pal. p. 273, Anm. 14).

Vers. 23-28. " When the sun had risen and Lot had come towards Zoar (i.e. was on the way thither, but had not yet arrived), Jehovah caused it to rain brimstone and Jire from Jehovah out of heaven, and overthreio those cities, and the whole plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and the produce of the earthy In the words "Jehovah caused it to rain from Jehovah " there is no distinction implied between the hidden and the manifested God, between the Jehovah present upon earth in His angels who called down the judgment, and the Jehovah enthroned in heaven who sent it down; but the expression "from Jehovah " is emphatica repetitio, quod non usitato natures ordine tunc Deus pluerit, sed tanquam exerta manu palam falminaverit prceter solitum morem: ut satis constaret nullis causis naturalibus conflatam fuisse pluviam illam ex igne et sulphure (Calvin). The rain of fire and brimstone was not a mere storm with lightning, which set on fire the soil already overcharged with naphtha and sulphur. The two passages, Ps. xi. 6 and Ezek. xxxviii. 22, cannot be adduced as proofs that lightning is ever called fire and brimstone in the Scriptures, for in both passages there is an allusion to the event recorded here. The words are to be understood quite literally, as meaning that brimstone and fire, i.e. burning brimstone, fell from the sky, even though the examples of burning bituminous matter falling upon the earth which are given in Oedmann^s vermischte Sammlungen (iii. 120) may be called in question by historical criticism. By this rain of fire and brimstone not only were the cities and their inhabitants consumed, but even the soil, which abounded in asphalt, was set on fire, so that the entire valley was burned out and sank, or was overthrown C^sn) i.e. utterly destroyed, and the Pead Sea took its place.^ In addition to Sodom, which was probably the chief city of the valley of Siddim, Gomorrah and the whole valley (i.e. the valley of Siddim, chap. xiv. 3) are mentioned; and along with these the cities of Admah and Zeboim, which were situated in the valley (Deut. xxix. 23, cf. Hos. xi. 8), also perished, Zoar alone, which is at the south-eastern end of the valley, being spared for Lot's sake. Even to the present day the Dead Sea, with the sulphureous vapour which hangs about it, the great blocks of saltpetre and sulphur which lie on every hand, and the utter absence of the slightest trace of animal and vegetable life in its waters, are a striking testimony to this catastrophe, which is held up in both the Old and New Testaments as a fearfully solemn judgment of God for the warning of self -secure and presumptuous sinners. — ^Ver. 26. On the way. Lot's wife, notwithstanding the divine command, looked " behind him away" — i.e. went behind her husband and looked backwards, probably from a longing for the house and the earthly possessions she had left with reluctance (cf. Luke xvii. 31, 32), — and " became a pillar of salt." We are not to suppose that she was actually turned into one, but having been killed by the fiery and sulphureous vapour with which the air was filled, and afterwards encrusted with salt, she resembled an actual statue of salt; just as even now, from the saline exhalation of the Dead Sea, objects near it are quickly covered with a crust of salt, so that the fact, to which Christ refers in Luke xvii. 32, may be understood without supposing a miracle.^ — In vers. 27,