" Crediderim hominem hunc utpote venatorem ferocem et sodalium comitatu succinctura semper in ore habuisse et ingeminasse, ad reliquos in rebellionem excitandos, illud ramrod^ nimrod^ h.e. rehellemus^ rebellemus^ atque inde postea ab aliis, etiam ab ipso Mose, hoc vocabalo tanquam proprio nomine designatum," and who supports his opinion by other similar instances in history.
^ This view of Nimrod and his deeds is favoured by the Eastern legend, which not only makes him the builder of the tower of Babel, which was to reach to heaven, but has also placed him among the constellations of heaven as a heaven-storming giant, who was chained by God in consequence. Vid. Herzog's Real-Encycl. Art. Nimrod.
far from either, and Pressel is probably riglit in identifying it with the ruins of Niffer, to the south of Ilillah; — ^'and Calneh:'* this is found by early writers on the site of Ctesiphon, now a great heap of ruins, twenty hours north-east of Babel. These four cities were in the land of Shinar, i.e. of the province of Babylon, on the Lower Euphrates and Tigris. — Vers. 11, 12. From Shinar Nimrod went to Assyria p^K^N is the accusative of direction), the country on the east of the Tigris, and there built four cities, or probably a large imperial city composed of the four cities named. As three of these cities — Rehohoth-Ir^ Le, city markets (not " street-city," as Bunsen interprets it), Chelachj and Resen — are not met with again, whereas Nineveh was renowned in antiquity for its remarkable size {yid. Jonah iii. 3), the words " this is the great city " must apply not to Resen, but to Nineveh. This is grammatically admissible, if we regard the last three names as subordinate to the first, taking as the sign of subordination (Ewald, § 33r9a), and render the passage thus: " he built Nineveh, w4th Rehoboth-Ir, Cheloch, and Resen between Nineveh and Chelach, this is the great city." From this it follows that the four places formed a large composite city, a large range of towns, to which the name of the (well-known) great city of Nineveh was applied, in distinction from Nineveh in the more restricted sense, with which Nimrod probably connected the other three places so as to form one great capital, possibly also the chief fortress of his kingdom on the Tigris. These four cities most likely correspond to the ruins on the east of the Tigris, which Layard has so fully explored, viz. Nehbi Yunus and Kouyunjik opposite to Mosul, Khorsahad five hours to the north, and Nimrud eight hours to the south of Mosul.^
Vers. 13, 14. From Mizraim descended Ludim: not the Semitic Ludim (ver. 22), but, according to Movers, the old tribe of the Lewdtah dwelling on the Syrtea, according to others, the Moorish tribes collectively. Whether the name is connected with the Laud jiumen {Plin, v. 1) is uncertain; in any case Knohel is wrong in thinking of Ludian Shemites, whether Hyksos, who forced their way to Egypt, or Egyptianized Arabians. Anamim: inhabitants of the Delta, according to Knohel, He associates the ^ Eveiiejiei^ of the LXX. with
^ This supposition of Raivlinson^ Grote^ M. v. Niebuhr^ Knohel^ Delitzsch, and others, has recently been adopted by Ewald also.
SanemJiit, or Northern Egypt: '^ tsanemhit, i.e. pars, regio sep^ tentrionis.^^ Lehabim (= Luhim^ Nahum iii. 9) are, according to Josephus, the AijBve^ or Av^ie^ij not the great Libyan tribe (Phut, ver. 6), which Nahum distinguishes from them, but the Libyaegyptii of the ancients. Naphtucliim: in Knohel^s opinion, the Middle Egyptians, as the nation of Pthah, the god of Memphis: but Bocliart is more probably correct in associating the name with N6(f>6v<;y in Plut. de Is., the northern coast line of Egypt. Pathrusim: inhabitants of Pathros, na6ovpTj<;, Egypt. Petres, land of the south; i.e. Upper Egypt, the Thehais of the ancients. Casluchim: according to general admission the Colchians, who descended from the Egyptians (Herod, ii. 104), though the connection of the name with Cassiotis is uncertain. ''From thence (i.e. from Casluchim, which is the name of both peo|)le and country) proceeded the Philistines.''^ Philistim, LXX. ^v\- larteifM or ^A\\6(f)v\oc, lit. emigrants or immigrants from the Ethiopic falldsa. This is not at variance with Amos ix. 7 and Jer. xlvii. 4, according to which the Philistines came from Caphtor, so that there is no necessity to transpose the relative clause after Philistim. The two statements may be reconciled on the simple supposition that the Philistian nation was primarily a Casluchian colony, which settled on the south-eastern coast line of the Mediterranean between Gaza (ver. 19) and Pelusium, but was afterwards strengthened by immigrants from Caphtor, and extended its territory by pressing out the Avim (Deut. ii. 23, cf. Josh. xiii. 3). Caphtorim: according to the old Jewish explanation, the Cappadocians; but according to Lakemacher's opinion, which has been revived by Ewald, etc., the Cretans. This is not decisively proved, however, either by the name Cherethites, given to the Philistines in 1 Sam. xxx. 14, Zeph. ii. 5, and Ezek. xxv. 16, or by the expression " isle of Caphtor" in Jer. xlvii. 4. — Vers. 15 sqq. From Canaan descended '' Zidon his first-horn, and Hethr Although Zidon occurs in ver. 19 and throughout the Old Testament as the name of the oldest capital of the Phoenicians, here it must be regarded as the name of a person j not only because of the apposition " his first-horn^'* and the verb ^?^, " hegat^^ but also because the name of a city does not harmonize with the names of the other descendants of Canaan, the analogy of which would lead us to expect the nomen gentile '' Sidonian^^ O^^clg. iii. 3, etc.);
and lastly, because the word Zidon, from n^v to hunt, to catch, is not directly applicable to a sea-port and commercial town, and there are serious objections upon philological grounds to Justin s derivation, " quayn a piscium uhertate Sidona appellaverunt, nam piscem Phoenices Sidon vocant^^ (var. hist. 18, 3). ITeth is also the name of a person, from which the term Hittite (xxv. 9; Num. xiii. 29), equivalent to ''sons of Iletli'* (chap, xxiii. 5), is derived. "-The Jelmsite i^"* inhabitants of Jebus, afterwards called Jerusalem. " The Amomie i^'' not the inhabitants of the mountain or heights, for the derivation from "^''^^f, " summit^'* is not established, but a branch of the Canaanites, descended from Emor (Amor), which was spread far and wide over the mountains of Judah and beyond the Jordan in the time of Moses, so that in chap. xv. 16, xlviii. 22, all the Canaanites are comprehended by the name. " The GirgashiteSj^ T6p<y6aato<; (LXX.), are also mentioned in chap. xv. 21, Deut. vii. 1, and Josh. xxiv. 11; but their dwelling-place is unknown, as the reading Tep^eo-rjvol in Matt. viii. 28 is critically suspicious. " The Hivites''^ dwelt in Sichem (xxxiv. 2), at Gibeon (Josh. ix. 7), and at the foot of Hermon (Josh xi. 3); the meiining of the word is uncertain. ''The Arkites:^^ inhabitants of ^ApKij, to the north of Tripolis at the foot of Lebanon, the ruins of which still exist (vid. Robinson). " The Sinite:^'' the inhabitants of Sin or Sinna^ a place in Lebanon not yet discovered. " The Arvadite^^ or AradianSy occupied from the eighth century before Christ, the small rocky island of Arados to the north of Tripolis. " The Zemarite:" the inhabitants of Simyra in Eleutherus. " The Hamathite: " the inhabitants or rather founders of Hamath on the most northerly border of Palestine (Num. xiii. 21, xxxiv. 8), afterwards called Epiphania, on the river Orontes, the present ITamdh, with 100,000 inhabitants. The words in ver. 18, "and afterward were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad" mean that they all proceeded from one local centre as branches of the same tribe, and spread themselves over the country, the limits of which are given in two directions, with evident reference to the fact that it was afterwards promised to the seed of Abraham for its inheritance, viz. from north to south, — "from Sidon, in the direction (lit. as thou comest) towards Gerar (see chap. XX. 1), unto Gaza^^ the primitive Avvite city of the Philistines (Deut. ii. 23), now called Guzzeh, at the S.W. corner of
Palestine, — and thence from west to east, "in the direction towards Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zehoim (see xix. 24) to Lesha^^ i.e. Calirrhoe, a place with sulphur baths, on the eastern side of the Dead Sea, in Wady Serka Maein (^Seetzen and Hitter).
Vers. 21-32. Descendants of Shem. — Ver. 21. For the construction, vid. chap. iv. 26. Shem is called the father of all the sons of Eber, because two tribes sprang from Eber through Peleg and Joktan, viz. the Abrahamides, and also the Arabian tribe of the Joktanides (vers. 26 sqq.). — On the expression, " the brother of Japhet ''^"'^n," see chap. ix. 24. The names of the five sons of Shem occur elsewhere as the names of tribes and countries; at the same time, as there is no proof that in any single instance the name was transferred from the country to its earliest inhabitants, no well-grounded objection can be offered to the assumption, which the analogy of the other descendants of Shem renders probable, that they were originally the names of individuals. As the name of a people, Elam denotes the ELymcBans, who stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea, but who are first met with as Persians no longer speaking a Semitic language. Asshur: the Assyrians who settled in the country of Assyria, ^Arovpia, to the east of the Tigris, but who afterwards spread in the direction of Asia Minor. Arphaxad: the inhabitants of ^ Appaira'^Q.rv^ in northern Assyria. The explanation given of the name, viz. " fortress of the Chaldeans" {Ewald), " highland of the Chaldeans " {Knohel), " territory of the Chaldeans" {Dietrich), are very questionable. Lud: the Lydians of Asia Minor, whose connection with the Assyrians is confirmed by the names of the ancestors of their kings. Aram: the ancestor of the Aramoeans of Syria and Mesopotamia. — Yer 23. Descendants of Aram. Uz: a name which occurs among the JVahorides (chap. xxii. 21) and Horites (xxxvi. 28), and which is associated with the Alalrau of Ptolemy, in Arabia deserta towards Babylon; this is favoured by the fact that Uz, the country of Job, is called by the LXX.;^a;pa Avaln^, although the notion that these Aesites were an Aramaean tribe, afterwards mixed up with Nahorides and Horites, is mere conjecture. Hul: Delitzsch associates this with Cheli (Cheri), the old Egyptian name for the Syrians, and the Hylatce who dwelt near the Emesenes (Plin. 5, 19). Gether he connects with the name given in the Arabian legends to the ancestor of the tribes Themud and Ghadis. Mash: for which we find Meshech in 1 Chron. i. 17, a tribe mentioned in Ps. cxx. 5 along w^ith Kedar, and since the time of Bochart generally associated with the opo9 Mdaiov above Nisibis. — -Ver. 25. Among the descendants of Arphaxad, Eber's eldest son received the name of Peleg, because in his days the earth, i.e. the population of the earth, was divided, in consequence of the building of the tower of Babel (xi. 8). His brother Joktan is called Kachtan by the Arabians, and is regarded as the father of all the primitive tribes of Arabia. The names of his sons are given in vers. 26-29. There are thirteen of them, some of which are still retained in places and districts of Arabia, whilst others are not yet discovered, or are entirely extinct. Nothing certain has been ascertained about Almodad^ Jerah^ Diklah, Obal, Abimael, and Jobab. Of the rest, Sheleph is identical with Salif or Sulaf (in Ptol. 6, 7, SaXaTrrjvoi), an old Arabian tribe, also a district of Yemen. Hazarmaveth (i.e. forecourt of death) is the Arabian Hadhramaiit in South-eastern Arabia on the Indian Ocean, whose name Jauhari is derived from the unhealthiness of the climate. Hadoram: the ^ASpa/urai of Ptol. 6, 7, Atramitce of Plin. 6, 28, on the southern coast of Arabia. Uzal: one of the most important towns of Yemen, south-west of Mareb. Sheba: the Sabceans, with the capital Saba or Mareb, Mariaba regia (Plin.), whose connection with the Cushite (ver. 7) and Abrahamite Sabaeans (chap. xxv. 3) is quite in obscurity. Ophir has not yet been discovered in Arabia; it is probably to be sought on the Persian Gulf, even if the Ophir of Solomon was not situated there. Havilah appears to answer to Chaulaw of Edrisij a district between Sanaa and Mecca. But this district, which lies in the heart of Yemen, does not fit the account in 1 Sam. xv. 7, nor the statement in chap. xxv. 18, that Havilah formed the boundary of the territory of the Ishmaelites. These two passages point rather to XavXoraloi, a place on the border of Arabia Petraea towards Yemen, betw^een the Nabataeans and Hagrites, which Strabo describes as habitable. — Yer. 30. The settlements of these Joktanides lay '''from Mesha towards Sephar the mountain of the EastJ* Mesha is still unknown: according to Gesenius, it is Mesene on the Persian Gulf, and in KnobeVs opinion, it is the valley of Bisha or Beishe in the north of Yemen; but both are very improbable. Sephar is supposed by Mesnel to be the ancient Himyaritish capital, Shafdr, on the Indian Ocean; and the mountain of the East, the mountain of incense, which is situated still farther to the east. — The genealogy of the Shemites closes with ver. 31, and the entire genealogy of the nations with ver. 32. According to the Jewish Midrash, there are seventy tribes, with as many different languages; but this number can only be arrived at by reckoning Nimrod among the Hamites, and not only placing Peleg among the Shemites, but taking his ancestors Salah and Eber to be names of separate tribes. By this we obtain for Japhet 14, for Ham 31, and for Shem 25, — in all 70 names. The Rabbins, on the other hand, reckon 14 Japhetic, 30 Hamitic, and 26 Semitic nations; whilst the fathers make 72 in all. But as these calculations are perfectly arbitrary, and the number 70 is nowhere given or hinted at, we can neither regard it as intended, nor discover in it " the number of the divinely appointed varieties of the human race," or " of the cosmical development," even if the seventy disciples (Luke x. 1) were meant to answer to the seventy nations whom the Jews supposed to exist upon the earth. — Ver. 32. The words, ''And by these were the nations of the earth divided in the earth after the fiood^"* prepare the way for the description of that event which led to the division of the one race into many nations with different languages.
Ver. 1. " And the whole earth (i.e. the population of the earth, vid. chap. ii. 19) was one lip and one kind of words:" unius lahii eorundemgue verhorum. The unity of language of the whole human race follows from the unity of its descent from one human pair {vid. ii. 2^). But as the origin and formation of the races of mankind are beyond the limits of empirical research, so no philology will ever be able to prove or deduce the original unity of human speech from the languages which have been historically preserved, however far comparative grammar may proceed in establishing the genealogical relation of the languages of different nations. — Vers. 2 sqq. As men multiplied they moved from the land of Ararat ''eastward,^* or more strictly to the south-east J and settled in a plain, nvipn does not denote a valley hetweon inountaiu ranges, but a broad plain, irehiov /Lteya, as Herodotus calls the neighbourhood of Babylon. There they resolved to build an immense tower; and for this purpose they made bricks and burned them thoroughly (■^9"^- " *^ burning'* serves to intensify the verb like the inf. ahsoL), so that thev became stone; whereas in the East ordinary buildings are constructed of bricks of clay, simply dried in the sun. For mortar they used asphalt, in which the neighbourhood of Babylon abounds. From this material, which may still be seen in the ruins of Babylon, they intended to build a city and a tower, whose top should be in heaven, i.e. reach to the sky, to make to themselves a name, that they might not be scattered over the whole earth. DK^" \P nb'y denotes, here and everywhere else, to establish a name, or reputation, to set up a memorial (Isa. Ixiii. 12, 14; Jer. xxxii. 20, etc.). The real motive therefore was the desire for renown, and the object was to establish a noted central point, which might serve to maintain their unity. The one was just as ungodly as the other. For, according to the divine purpose, men were to fill the earth, i.e, to spread over the whole earth, not indeed to separate, but to maintain their inward unity notwithstanding their dispersion. But the fact that they were afraid of dispersion is a proof that the inward spiritual bond of unity and fellowship, not only " the oneness of their God and their worship," but also the unity of brotherly love, w^as already broken by sin. Consequently the undertaking, dictated by pride, to preserve and consolidate by outward means the unity which was inwardly lost, could not be successful, but could only bring down the judgment of dispersion. — Vers. 5 sqq. " Jehovah came down to see the city and the tower ^ which the children of men had huiW^ (the perfect ^^^ refers to the building as one finished up to a certain point). Jehovah's "coming down" is not the same here as in Ex. xix. 20, xxxiv. 5, Num. xi. 25, xii. 5, viz. the descent from heaven of some visible symbol of His presence, but is an anthropomorphic description of God's interposition in the actions of men, primarily a " judicial cognizance of the actual fact," and then, ver. 7, a judicial infliction of punishment. The reason for the judgment is given in the word, i.e. the sentence, which Jehovah pronounces upon the undertaking (ver. 6): " Behold one people (pV lit. union, connected whole, from ^'OV to bind) and one language have they ally and this (the building of this city and tower) is (only) the beginning of their deeds; and now (sc. when they have finished this) nothing will be invpossible to them (p\}^ "i^^^ ^^ lit. cut off from them, prevented) which they purpose to do " (^or for ^tDT^ from D^J, see chap. ix. 19). By the firm estabhshment of an ungodly unity, the wickedness and audacity of men would have led to fearful enterprises. But God determined, by confusing their language, to prevent the heightening of sin through ungodly association, and to frustrate their design. " Up " (^^n " go to," in ironical imitation of the same expression in vers. 3 and 4), " We will go doivn, and there confound their language (on the plural, see chap. i. 26; '^J'^3 for n^hJ, Kal from /P3, like IDr in ver. 6), that they may not understand one another's speech^ The execution of this divine purpose is given in ver. 8, in a description of its consequences: ^'Jehovah scattered them abroad from thence vpon the face of all the earthy and they left off building the cityT We must not conclude from this, however, that the differences in language were simply the result of the separation of the various tribes, and that the latter arose from discord and strife; in which case the confusion of tongues would be nothing more than " dissensio aiiimortim, per quam factum sit, ut qui turrem struebant distracti sint in contraria studia et consilia'* (Vitringa). Such a view not only does violence to the words " that one may not disceim (understand) the lip (language) of the other,'' but is also at variance with the object of the narrative. When it is stated, first of all, that God resolved to destroy the unity of lips and words by a confusion of the lips, and then that He scattered the men abroad, this act of divine judgment cannot be understood in any other way, than that God deprived them of the ability to comprehend one another, and thus effected their dispersion. The event itself cannot have consisted merely in a change of the organs of speech, produced by the omnipotence of God, whereby speakers were turned into stammerers who were unintelligible to one another. This opinion, which is held by Vitringa and Hofmann, is neither reconcilable with the text, nor tenable as a matter of fact. The differences, to which this event gave rise, consisted not merely in variations of sound, such as might be attributed to differences in the formation in the organs of speech (the lip or tongue), but had a much deeper foundation in the human mind. If language is the audible expression of emotions, conceptions, and thoughts of the mind, the cause of the confusion or division of the one human language into different national dialects must be sought in an effect produced upon the human mind, by which the original unity of emotion, conception, thought, and will was broken up. This inward unity had no doubt been already disturbed by sin, but the disturbance had not yet amounted to a perfect breach. This happened first of all in the event recorded here, through a direct manifestation of divine power, which caused the disturbance produced by sin in the unity of emotion, thought, and will to issue in a diversity of language, and thus by a miraculous suspension of mutual understanding frustrated the enterprise by which men hoped to render dispersion and estrangement impossible. More we cannot say in explanation of this miracle, which lies before us in the great multiplicity and variety of tongues, since even those languages which are genealogically related — for example, the Semitic and Indo-Germanic — were no longer intelligible to the same people even in the dim primeval age, whilst others are so fundamentally different from one another, that hardly a trace remains of their original unity. With the disappearance of unity the one original language was also lost, so that neither in the Hebrew nor in any other language of history has enough been preserved to enable us to form the least conception of its character.^ The primitive language is extinct, buried in the materials of the languages of the nations, to rise again one day to eternal life in the glorified form of the Kaival yXwo-o-ai, intelligible to all the redeemed, when sin with its consequences is overcome and extinguished by the power of grace. A type and pledge of this hope was given in the gift of tongues on the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Church
^ The opinion of the Rabbins and earlier theologians, that the Hebrew was the primitive language, has been generally abandoned in consequence of modern philological researches. The fact that the biblical names handed down from the earliest times are of Hebrew extraction proves nothing. With the gradual development and change of language, the traditions with their names were cast into the mould of existing dialects, without thereby affecting the truth of the tradition. For as Drechster has said, " it makes
no difference whether I say that Adam's eldest son had a name corresponding to the name Cain from T\^^>, or to the name Ctesias from Krocadctt; the truth of the Thorah, which presents us with the tradition handed down from the sons of Noah through Shem to Abraham and Israel, is not a verbal, but a living tradition — is not in the letter, but in the spirit."
on the first Christian day of Pentecost, when the apostles, filled with the Holy Ghost, spoke with other or new tongues of " the wonderful works of God," so that the people of every nation under heaven understood in their own language (Acts ii. 1-11). From the confusion of tongues the city received the name Bahel Q^^ i.e. confusion, contracted from ^3p3 from P?3 to confuse), according to divine direction, though without any such intention on the part of those who first gave the name, as a standing memorial of the judgment of God which follows all the ungodly enterprises of the power of the world. ^ Of this city considerable ruins still remain, including the remains of an enormous tower, B'lrs Nimrud, which is regarded by the Arabs as the tower of Babel that was destroyed by fire from heaven. Whether these ruins have any historical connection with the tower of the confusion of tongues, must remain, at least for the present, a matter of uncertainty. With regard to the date of the event, we find from ver. 10 that the division of the human race occurred in the days of Peleg, who was born 100 years after the flood. In 150 or 180 years, with a rapid succession of births, the descendants of the three sons of Noah, who were already 100 years old and married at the time of the flood, might have become quite numerous enough to proceed to the erection of such a building. If we reckon, for example, only four male and four female births as the average number to each marriage, since it is evident from chap. xi. 12 sqq. that children were born as early as the 30th or 35th year of their parent's age, the sixth generation would be born by 150 years after the flood, and the human race would number 12,288 males and as many females. Consequently there would be at least about 30,000 people in the world at this time.
^ Such explanations of the name as " gate, or house, or fortress of Bel," are all the less worthy of notice, because the derivation d'Tro rov Bv^'hov in the Etymol. magn.^ and in Persian and Nabatean works, is founded upon the myth, that Bel was the founder of the city. And as this myth is destitute of historical worth, so is also the legend that the city was built by Semiramis, which may possibly have so much of history as its basis, that this half-mythical queen extended and beautified the city, just as Nebuchadnezzar added a new quarter, and a second fortress, and strongly fortified it.
Alter describing the division of the one family which sprang from the three sons of Noah, into many nations scattered over the earth and speaking different languages, the narrative returns to Shem, and traces his descendants in a direct line to Terah the father of Abraham. The first five members of this pedigree have already been given in the genealogy of the Shemites; and in that case the object was to point out the connection in which all the descendants of Eber stood to one another. They are repeated here to show the direct descent of the Terahites through Peleg from Shem, but more especially to follow the chronological thread of the family line, which could not be given in the genealogical tree without disturbing the uniformity of its plan. By the statement in ver. 10, that " Shem^ a hundred years old, begat Arphaocad two years after the flood,^^ the chronological data already given of Noah's age at the birth of his sons (chap. v. 32) and at the commencement of the flood (vii. 11) are made still more definite. As the expression " after the flood" refers to the commencement of the flood (chap. ix. 28), and according to chap, vii. 11 the flood began in the second month, or near the beginning of the six hundredth year of Noah's life, though the year 600 is given in chap. vii. 6 in round numbers, it is not necessary to assume, as some do, in order to reconcile the difference between our verse and chap. v. 32, that the number 500 in chap. v. 32 stands as a round number for 502. On the other hand, there can be no objection to such an assumption. The different statements may be easily reconciled by placing the birth of Shem at the end of the five hundredth year of Noah's life, and the birth of Arphaxad at the end of the hundredth year of that of Shem; in which case Shem would be just 99 years old when the flood began, and would be fully 100 years old " two years after the flood," that is to say, in the second year from the commencement of the flood, when he begat Arphaxad. In this case the " two years after the flood" are not to be added to the sum-total of the chronological data, but are included in it. The table given here forms in a chronological and material respect the direct continuation of the one in chap, v., and differs from it only in form, viz. by giving merely the length of life of the different fathers before and after the birth of their sons, without also summing up the whole number of their years as is the case there, since this is superfluous for chronological purposes. But on comparing the chronological data of the two tables, we find this very important difference in the duration of life before and after the flood, that the patriarchs after the flood lived upon an average only half the number of years of those before it, and that with Peleg the average duration of life was again reduced by one half. Whilst Noah with his 950 years belonged entirely to the old world, and Shem, who was born before the flood, reached the age of 600, Arphaxad lived only 438 years, Salah 433, and Eber 464; and again, with Peleg the duration of life fell to 239 years, Eeu also lived only 239 years, Serug 230, and Nahor not more than 148. Here, then, we see that the two catastrophes, the flood and the separation of the human race into nations, exerted a powerful influence in shortening the duration of life; the former by altering the climate of the earth, the latter by changing the habits of men. But while the length of life diminished, the children were born proportionally earlier. Shem begat his first-born in his hundredth year, Arphaxad in the thirtyfifth, Salah in the thirtieth, and so on to Terah, who had no children till his seventieth year; consequently the human race, notwithstanding the shortening of life, increased with sufficient rapidity to people the earth very soon after their dispersion. There is nothing astonishing, therefore, in the circumstance, that wherever Abraham went he found tribes, towns, and kingdoms, though only 365 years had elapsed since the flood, when we consider that eleven generations would have followed one another in that time, and that, supposing every marriage to have been blessed with eight children on an average (four male and four female), the eleventh generation would contain 12,582,912 couples, or 25,165,824 individuals. And if we reckon ten children as the average number, the eleventh generation would contain 146,484,375 pairs, or 292,968,750 individuals. In neither of these cases have we included such of the earlier generations as would be still living, although their number would be by no means inconsiderable, since nearly all the patriarchs from Shem to Terah were alive at the time of Abram's migration. In ver.
26 the genealogy closes, like that in chap. v. 32, with the names of three sons of Terah, all of whom sustained an important relation to the subsequent history, viz. Abram as the father of the chosen family, Nahor as the ancestor of Rebekah (cf. ver. 29 with chap. xxii. 20-23), and Haran as the father of Lot (ver. 27).
The genealogical data in vers. 27-32 prepare the way for the history of the patriarchs. The heading, " These are the generations of Terah^' belongs not merely to vers. 27-32, but to the whole of the following account of Abram, since it corresponds to '' the generations" of Ishmael and of Isaac in chap. xxv. 12 and 19. Of the three sons of Terah, who are mentioned again in ver. 27 to complete the plan of the different Toledoth, such genealogical notices are given as are of importance to the history of Abram and his family. According to the regular plan of Genesis, the fact that Haran the youngest son of Terah begat Lot, is mentioned first of all, because the latter w^ent with Abram to Canaan; and then the fact that he died before his father Terah, because the link which would have connected Lot with his native land was broken in consequence. " Before his father, ^^ *pQ p^ lit. upon the face of his father, so that he saw and survived his death. Ur of the Chaldees is to be sought either in the " Ur nomine persicum castellum^^ of Ammian (25, 8), between Hatra and Nisibis, near Arrapachitis, or in Orhoi, Armenian Urrhai, the old name for Edessa, the modern Urfa, — Yer. 29. Abram and Nahor took wives from their kindred. Abram married Sarai, his half-sister (xx. 12), of whom it is already related, in anticipation of what follows, that she was barren. Nahor married Milcah, the daughter of his brother Haran, who bore to him Bethuel, the father of Rebekah (xxii. 22, 23). The reason why Iscah is mentioned is doubtful. For the rabbinical notion, that Iscah is another name for Sarai, is irreconcilable with chap. xx. 12, where Abram calls Sarai his sister, daughter of his father, though not of his mother; on the
Other hand, the circumstance that Sarai is introduced in ver 31 merely as the daughter-in-law of Terah, may be explained on the ground that she left Ur, not as his daughter, but as the wife of his son Abram. A better hypothesis is that of Ewald, that Iscah is mentioned because she was the wife of Lot; but this is pure conjecture. According to ver. 31, Terah already prepared to leave Ur of the Chaldees with Abram and Lot, and to remove to Canaan. In the phrase " ther/ went forth with theni,^^ the subject cannot be the unmentioned members of the family, such as Nahor and his children; though Nahor must also have gone to Haran, since it is called in chap. xxiv. 10 the city of Nahor. For if he accompanied them at this time, there is no perceptible reason why he should not have been jnentioned along with the rest. The nominative to the verb must be Lot and Sarai, who went with Terah and Abram; so that although Terah is placed at the head, Abram must have taken an active part in the removal, or the resolution to remove. This does fiot, however, necessitate the conclusion, that he had already been called by God in Ur. Nor does chap. xv. 7 require any such assumption. For it is not stated there that God called Abram in Ur, but only that He brought him out. But the simple fact of removing from Ur might also be called a leading out, as a work of divine superintendence and guidance, without a special call from God. It was in Haran that Abram first received the divine call to go to Canaan (xii. 1-4), when he left not only his country and kindred, but also his father's house. Terah did not carry out his intention to proceed to Canaan, but remained in Haran, in his native country Mesopotamia, probably because he found there what he was going to look for in the land of Canaan. Haran, more properly Charan, PJ^, is a place in north-western Mesopotamia, the ruins of which may still be seen, a full day's journey to the south of Edessa (Gr. Kdppac, Lat. CarrcE), where Crassus fell when defeated by the Parthians. It was a leading settlement of the Ssabians, who had a temple there dedicated to the moon, which they traced back to Abraham. There Terah died at the age of 205, or sixty years after the departure of Abram for Canaan; for, according to ver. 26, Terah was seventy years old when Abram was born, and Abram was seventy-five years old when he arrived in Canaan. When Stephen, therefore, placed the removal of Abram from Haran to Canaan after the death of his father, he merely inferred this from the fact, that the call of Abram (chap, xii.) was not mentioned till after the death of Terah had been noticed, taking the order of the narrative as the order of events; whereas, according to the plan of Genesis, the death of Terah is introduced here, because Abram never met with his father again after leaving Haran, and there was consequently nothing: more to be related concerning him.
The dispersion of the descendants of the sons of Noah, who had now grown into numerous families, was necessarily followed on the one hand by the rise of a variety of nations, differing in language, manners, and customs, and more and more estranged from one another; and on the other by the expansion of the germs of idolatry, contained in the different attitudes of these nations towards God, into the polytheistic religions of heathenism, in which the glory of the immortal God was changed into an image made like to mortal man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things (Rom. i. 23 cf. Wisdom xiii.-xv.). If God therefore would fulfil His promise, no more to smite the earth with the curse of the destruction of every living thing because of the sin of man (chap. viii. 21, 22), and yet would prevent the moral corruption which worketh death from sweeping all before it; it was necessary that by the side of these self-formed nations He should form a nation for Himself, to b^ the recipient and preserver of His salvation, and that in opposition to the rising kingdoms of the world He should establish a kingdom for the living, saving fellowship of man with Himself. The foundation for this was laid by God in the call and separation of Abram from his people and his country, to make him, by special guidance, the father of a nation from which the salvation of the world should come. With the choice of Abram the revelation of God to man assumed a select character, inasmuch as God manifested Himself henceforth to Abram and his posterity alone as the author of salvation and the guide to true life; whilst other nations were left to follow their own course according to the powers conferred unon them, in order that they might learn that in their way, and without fellowship with the living God, it was impossible to find peace to the soul, and the true blessedness of life (cf. Acts xvii.27).
But this exclusiveness contained from the very first the germ of universalism. Abram was called, that through him all the families of the earth might be blessed (chap. xii. 1-3). Hence the new form which the divine guidance of the human race assumed in the call of Abram was connected with the general development of the world, — on the one hand, by the fact that Abram belonged to the family of Shem, which Jehovah had blessed, and on the other, by his not being called alone, but as a married man with his wife. But whilst, regarded in this light, the continuity of the divine revelation was guaranteed, as well as the plan of human development established in the creation itself, the call of Abram introduced so far the commencement of a new period, that to carry out the designs of God their very foundations required to be renewed. Although, for example, the knowledge and worship of the true God had been preserved in the families of Shem in a purer form than among the remaining descendants of Noah, even in the house of Terah the worship of God was corrupted by idolatry (Josh. xxiv. 2, 3); and although Abram was to become the father of the nation which God was about to form, yet his wife was barren, and therefore, in the way of nature, a new family could not be expected to spring from him.
As a perfectly new beginning, therefore, the patriarchal history assumed the form of a family history, in which the grace of God prepared the ground for the coming Israel. For the nation was to gi'ow out of the family, and in the lives of the patriarchs its character was to be determined and its development foreshadowed. The early history consists of three stages, which are indicated by the three patriarchs, peculiarly so called, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and in the sons of Jacob the unity of the chosen family was expanded into the twelve immediate fathers of the nation. In the triple number of the patriarchs, the divine election of the nation on the one hand, and the entire formation of the character and guidance of the life of Israel on the other, were to attain to their fullest typical manifestation. These two were the pivots, upon which all the divine revelations made to the patriarchs, and all the guidance they received, were made to turn. The revelations consisted almost exclusively of promises; and so far as these promises were fulfilled in the lives of the patriarchs, the fulfilments themselves were predictions and pledges of the ultimate and complete fulfilment, reserved for a distant, or for the most remote futurity. And the guidance vouchsafed had for its object the calling forth of faith in response to the promise, which should maintain itself amidst all the changes of this earthly life. " A faith, which laid hold of the word of promise, and on the strength of that word gave up the visible and present for the invisible and future, was the fundamental characteristic of the patriarchs" (Delitzsch). This faith Abram manifested and sustained by great sacrifices, by enduring patience, and by self-denying obedience of such a kind, that he thereby became the father of believers (irarrjp iravTcav rcov Tria- T€v6vT0)v, Rom. iv. 11). Isaac also was strong in patience and hope; and Jacob wrestled in faith amidst painful circumstances of various kinds, until he had secured the blessing of the promise. " Abraham was a man of faith that works; Isaac, of faith that endures; Jacob, of faith that wrestles" {Baumgarten). — Thus, walking in faith, the patriarchs were types of faith for all the families that should spring from them, and be blessed through them., and ancestors of a nation which God had resolved to form according to the election of His grace. For the election of God was not restricted to the separation of Abram from the family of Shem, to be the father of the nation which was destined to be the vehicle of salvation; it was also manifest in the exclusion of Ishmael, whom Abram had begotten by the will of man, through Hagar the handmaid of his wife, for the purpose of securing the promised seed, and in the new life imparted to the womb of the barren Sarai, and her consequent conception and birth of Isaac, the son of promise. And lastly, it appeared still more manifestly in the twin sons born by Rebekah to Isaac, of w^hom the first-born, Esau, was rejected, and the younger, Jacob, chosen to be the heir of the promise; and this choice, which was announced before their birth, was maintained in spite of Isaac's plans, so that Jacob, and not Esau, received the blessing of the promise. — All this occurred as a type for the future, that Israel might know and lay to heart the fact, that bodily descent from Abraham did not make a man a child of God, but that they alone were children of God who laid hold of the divine promise in faith, and walked in the steps of their forefather's faith (cf. Rom. ix. 6-13).
If we fix our eyes upon the method of the divine revelation, we find a new beginning in this respect, that as soon as Abram is called, we read of the appearing of God. It is true that from the very beginning God had manifested Himself visibly to men; but in the olden time we read nothing of appearances, because before the flood God had not withdrawn His presence from the earth. Even to Noah He revealed Himself before the flood as one who was present on the earth. But when He had established a covenant with him after the flood, and thereby had assured the continuance of the earth and of the human race, the direct manifestations ceased, for God withdrew His visible presence from the world; so that it was from heaven that the judgment fell upon the tower of Babel, and even the call to Abram in his home in Haran was issued through His word, that is to say, no doubt, through an inward monition. But as soon as Abram had gone to Canaan, in obedience to the call of God, Jehovah appeared to him there (chap. xii. 7). These appearances, which were constantly repeated from that time forward, must have taken place from heaven; for we read that Jehovah, after speaking with Abram and the other patriarchs, " went away" (chap, xviii. 33), or " went up" (chap, jxvii. 22, xxxv. 13); and the'patriarehs saw them, sometimes while in a waking condition, in a form discernible to the bodily senses, sometimes in visions, in a state of mental ecstasy, and at other times in the form of a dream (chap, xxviii. 12 sqq.). On the form in which God appeared, in most instances, nothing is related. But in chap, xviii. 1 sqq. it is stated that three men came to Abram, one of whom is introduced as Jehovah, whilst the other two are called angels (chap. xix. 1). Beside this, we frequently read of appearances of the " angel of Jehovah" (xvi.. 7, xxii. 11, etc.), or of " Elohim," and the "angel of Elohim" (chap. xxi. 17, xxxi. 11, etc.), which were repeated throughout the whole of the Old Testament, and even occurred, though only in vision, in the case of the prophet Zechariah. The appearances of the angel of Jehovah (or Elohim) cannot have been essentially different from those of Jehovah (or Elohim) Himself; for Jacob describes the appearance of Jehovah at Bethel (chap, xxviii. 13 sqq.) as an appearance of " the angel of Elohim," and of "the God of Bethel" (chap. xxxi. 11, 13); and in his blessing on the sons of Joseph (chap, xlviii. 15, 16), " The God {Elohim) before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God (Elohim) which fed me all my life long unto this (lay, tlie angel which redeemed ine from all evil, bless tlin lads,'* he places the angel of God on a perfect equality with God, not only regarding Ilim as the Being to whom he has been indebted for protection all his life long, but entreating from Him a blessing upon his descendants.
The question arises, therefore, whether the angel of Jehovah, or of God, was God Himself in one particular phase of His self-manifestation, or a created angel of whom God made use as the organ of His self-revelation.^ The former appears to us to be the only scriptural view. For the essential unity of the Angel of Jehovah with Jehovah Himself follows indisputably from the following facts. In the first place, the Angel of God identifies Himself with Jehovah and Elohim, by attributing to Himself divine attributes and performing divine works: e.g., chap. xxii. 12, "Now /know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me^^ (i.e. hast been willing to offer him up as a burnt sacrifice to God); again (to Hagar) chap. xvi. 10, " i will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude;" chap, xxi., '/will make him a great nation," — the very word^ used by Elohim in chap. xvii. 20 with reference to Ishmael, and by Jehovah in chap. xlii. 16, xv. 4, 5, with regard to Isaac; also Ex. Hi. 6 sqq., "/am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: / have surely seen the affliction of My people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry, and / am come down to deliver them " (cf. Judg. ii. 1). In addition to this, He performs miracles, consuming with fire the offering placed before Him by Gideon, and the sacrifice prepared by Manoah, and ascending to heaven In the flame of the burnt-offering (Judg. vi. 21, xlii. 19, 20). Secondly, the Angel of God was recognised as God by those to whom He appeared,
1 In the old Jewish synagogue the Angel of Jehovah was regarded as the Shechinah, the indwelling of God in the world, i.e. the only Mediator between God and the world, who bears in the Jewish theology the name Metatron. The early Church regarded Him as the Logos., the second person of the Deity; and only a few of the fathers, such as Augustine and Jerome., thought of a created angel (yid. Hengsteriberg, Christol. vol. 3, app.). This view was adopted by many Romish theologians, by the Socinians, Arminians, and others, and has been defended recently by Hofmann., whom Delitzsch., Kurtz., and others follow. But the opinion of the early Church has been vindicated most thoroughly by Hevgsteriberg in his Christology.
on the one hand by their addressing Him as Adonai {ue. the Lord God; Judg. vi. 15), declaring that they had seen God, and fearing that they should die (chap. xvi. 13; Ex. iii. 6; Judg. vi. 22, 23, xiii. 22), and on the other hand by their paying Him divine honour, offering sacrifices which He accepted, and worshipping Him (Judg. vi. 20, xiii. 19, 20, cf. ii. 5). The force of these facts has been met by the assertion, that the ambassador perfectly represents the person of the sender; and evidence of this is adduced not only from Grecian literature, but from the Old Testament also, where the addresses of the prophets often glide imperceptibly into the words of Jehovah, whose instrument they are. But even if the address in chap, xxii. 16, where the oath of the Angel of Jehovah is accompanied by the words, " saith the Lord,'* and the words and deeds of the Angel of God in certain other cases, might be explained in this way, a created angel sent by God could never say, " / am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," or by the acceptance of sacrifices and adoration, encourage the presentation of divine honours to himself. How utterly irreconcilable this fact is with the opinion that the Angel of Jehovah was a created angel, is conclusively proved by Rev. xxii. 9, which is generally regarded as perfectly corresponding to the account of the " Angel of Jehovah" of the Old Testament. The anixel of God, who shows the sacred seer the heavenly Jerusalem, and who is supposed to say, "Behold, I come quickly" (ver. 7), and "I am Alpha and Omega" (ver. 13), refuses in the most decided way the worship which John is about to present, and exclaims, " See I am thy fellow-servant: worship God." Thirdly, the Angel of Jehovah is also identified with Jehovah by the sacred writers themselves, who call the Angel Jehovah without the least reserve (cf. Ex. iii. 2 and 4, Judg. vi. 12 and 14-16, but especially Ex. xiv. 19, where the Angel of Jehovah goes before the host of the Israelites, just as Jehovah is said to do in Ex. xiii. 21). — On the other hand, the objection is raised, that arfyeko^ Kvpiov in the New Testament, which is confessedly the Greek rendering of mn^ IN^D, is always a created angel, and for that reason cannot be the uncreated Logos or Son of God, since the latter could not possibly have announced His own birth to the sliepherds at Bethlehem. But this important difference has been overlooked, that according to Greek usage, dyy€\o<; rcvpiov denotes an (any)
anfiel of the Lord, whereas accordliiix to the rules of the Hebrew lan<:jiia(xe nin^ T|K7D means the aiifjel of the Lord; that in the New Testament the angel who appears is always described as dyye\o<^ Kvptov without the article, and the definite article is only introduced in the further course of the narrative to denote the angel whose appearance lias been already mentioned, whereas in the Old Testament it is always " the Angel of Jehovah *' who appears, and whenever the appearance of a created angel is referred to, he is introduced first of all as " an angel *' {yid. 1 Kings xix. 5 and 7).^ At the same time, it does not follow from this use of the expression Maleach Jehovah, that the (particular) angel of Jehovah was essentially one with God, or that Maleach Jehovah always has the same signification; for in Mai. ii. 7 the priest is called Maleach Jehovah, i.e. the messenger of the Lord. Who the messenger or angel of Jehovah was, must be determined in each particular instance from the connection of the passage; and where the context furnishes no criterion, it must remain undecided. Consequently such passages as Ps. xxxiv. 7, XXXV. 5, 6, etc., where the angel of Jehovah is not more particularly described, or Num. xx. 16, where the general term angel is intentionally employed, or Acts vii. 30, Gal. iii. 19, and Heb. ii. 2, where the words are general and indefinite, furnish no evidence that the Angel of Jehovah, who proclaimed Himself in His appearances as one with God, was not in reality equal with God, unless we are to adopt as the rule for interpreting Scripture the inverted principle, that clear and definite statements are to be explained by those that are indefinite and obscure.
In attempting now to determine the connection between the appearance of the Angel of Jehovah (or Elohim) and the appearance of Jehovah or Elohim Himself, and to fix the precise meaning of the expression Maleach Jehovah, we cannot make
^ The force of this difference cannot be set aside by the objection that the New Testament writers follow the usage of the Septuagint, where ^vh'O nin'' is rendered oiyyiKo; Kvpiov. For neither in the New Testament nor in the Alex, version of the Old is oiyyi'hQg Kvptov used as a proper name; it is A simple appellative, as is apparent from the fact that in every instance, in which further reference is made to an angel who has appeared, he is called 0 Ayyihoq^ with or without Kvpiov. All that the Septuagint rendering proves, is that the translators supposed " the angel of the Lord " to be a created angel; but it by no means follows that their supposition is correct.
use, as recent opponents of the old Church view have done, of the manifestation of God in Gen. xviii. and xix., and the allusion to the great prince Michael in Dan. x. 13, 21, xii. 1; just because neither the appearance of Jehovah in the former instance, nor that of the archangel Michael in the latter, is represented as an appearance of the Angel of Jehovah. We must confine ourselves to the passages in which " the Angel of Jehovah" is actually referred to. We will examine these, first of all, for the purpose of obtaining a clear conception of the form in which the Angel of Jehovah appeared. Gen. xvi., where He is mentioned for the first time, contains no distinct statement as to His shape, but produces on the whole the impression that He appeared to Hagar in a human form, or one resembling that of man; since it was not till after His departure that she drew the inference from His words, that Jehovah had spoken with her. He came in the same form to Gideon, and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah with a staff in His hand (Judg. vi. 11 and 21); also to Manoah's wife, for she took Him to be a man of God, Le. a propliet, whose appearance was like that of the Angel of Jehovah (Judg. xiii. 6); and lastly, to Manoah himself, who did not recognise Him at first, hut discovered afterwards, from the miracle which He wrought before his eyes, and from His miraculous ascent in the flame of the altar, that He was the Angel of Jehovah (vers. 9-20). In other cases He revealed Himself merely by calling and speaking from heaven, without those who heard His voice perceiving any form at all: e.g,, to Hagar, in Gen. xxi. 17 sqq., and to Abraham, chap. xxii. 11 sqq. On the other hand. He appeared to Moses (Ex. iii. 2) in a flame of fire, speaking to him from the burning bush, and to the people of Israel in a pillar of cloud and fire (Ex. xiv. 19, cf. xiii. 21 sq.), without any angelic form being visible in either case. Balaam He met in a human or angelic form, with a drawn sword in His hand (Num. xxii. 22, 23). David saw Him by the threshing-floor of Araunah, standing between heaven and earth, with the sword drawn in His hand and stretched out over Jerusalem (1 Chron. xxi. 16); and He appeared to Zechariah in a vision as a rider upon a red horse (Zech. i. 9 sqq.). — From these varying forms of appearance it is evident that the opinion that the Angel of the Lord was a real angel, a divine manifestation, " not in the disguise of angel, but through the actual appearance of an angel," is not in harmony witli all the state* nients of the Bible. The form of the Angel of Jehovah, whicli was discernible by the senses, varied according to the pur))ose of the appearance; and, apart from Gen. xxi. 17 antl xxii. 11, we have a sutHcient proof that it was not a real angelic appearance, or the appearance of a created angel, in the fact that in two instances it was not really an angel at all, but a flame of fire and a shining cloud which formed the earthly substratum of the revelation of God in the Angel of Jehovah (Ex. iii. 2, xiv. 19), unless indeed we are to regard natural phenomena as angels, without any scriptural warrant for doing so.^ These earthly substrata of the manifestation of the "Angel of Jehovah" perfectly suffice to establish the conclusion, that the Angel of Jehovah was only a peculiar form in which Jehovah Himself appeared, and which differed from the manifestations of God described as appearances of Jehovah simply in this, that in " the Angel of Jehovah," God or Jehovah revealed Himself in a mode which was more easily discernible by human senses, and exhibited in a guise of symbolical significance the design of each particular manifestation. In the appearances of Jehovah no reference is made to any form visible to the bodily eye, unless they were through the medium of a vision or a dream, excepting in one instance (Gen. xviii.), where Jehovah and two angels come to Abraham in the form of three men, and are entertained
^ The only passage that could be adduced in support of this, viz. Ps. civ. 4, does not prove that God makes natural objects, winds and flaming fire, into forms in which heavenly spirits appear, or that He creates spirits out of them. Even if we render this passage, with Delitzsch^ "making His messengers of winds, His servants of flaming fire," the allusion, as Delitzsch himself observes, is not to the creation of angels; nor can the meaning be, that God gives wind and fire to His angels as the material of their appearance, and as it were of their self-incorporation. For riK^y, constructed with two accusatives, the second of which expresses the materia ex qua^ is never met with in this sense, not even in 2 Chron. iv. 18-22. For the greater part of the temple furniture summed up in this passage, of which it is stated that Solomon made them of gold, was composed of pure gold; and if some of the things were merely covered with gold, the writer might easily apply the same expression to this, because he had already given a more minute account of their construction (e.g. chap. iii. 7). But we neither regard this rendering of the psalm as in harmony with the context, nor assent to the assertion that nb^y with a double accusative, in the sense of making into anything, is ungrammatical by him, — a form of appearance perfectly resembling the appearances of the Angel of Jehovah, but which is not so described by the author, because in this case Jehovah does not appear alone, but in the company of two angels, that " the Angel of Jehovah'* might not be regarded as a created angel.
But although there was no essential difference, but only a formal one, between the appearing of Jehovah and the appearing of the Angel of Jehovah, the distinction between Jehovah and the Angel of Jehovah points to a distinction in the divine nature, to which even the Old Testament contains several obvious allusions. The very name indicates such a difference. ^t??D nSp) (from "n^J to work, from which come •"'^^^P the work, opus, and ^^5?D, lit. he through whom a work is executed, but in ordinary usage restricted to the idea of a messenger) denotes the person through whom God works and appears. Beside these passages which represent " the Angel of Jehovah" as one with Jehovah, there are others in which the Angel distinguishes Himself from Jehovah; e.g, when He gives emphasis to the oath by Himself as an oath by Jehovah, by adding " saith Jehovah" (Gen. xxii. 16); when He greets Gideon with the words, " Jehovah with thee, thou brave hero" (Judg. vi. 12); when He says to Manoah, " Though thou constrainedst me, I would not eat of thy food; but if thou wilt offer a burnt-offering to Jehovah, thou may est offer it" (Judg. xiii. 16); or when He prays, in Zech. i. 12, "Jehovah Sabaoth, how long wilt Thou not have mercy on Jerusalem?" (Compare also Gen. xix. 24, where Jehovah is distinguished from Jehovah.) Just as in these passages the Angel of Jehovah distinguishes Himself personally from Jehovah, there are others in which a distinction is drawn between a self-revealing side of the divine nature, visible to men, and a hidden side, invisible to men, i.e. between the self-revealing and the hidden God. Thus, for example, not only does Jehovah say of the Angel, whom He sends before Israel in the pillar of cloud and fire, " My name is in Him," i.e. he reveals My nature (Ex. xxiii. 21), but He also calls Him ^^B, " My face" (xxxiii. 14); and in reply to Moses* request to see His glory. He says " Thou canst not see My face, for there shall no man see Me and live," and then causes His glory to pass by Moses in such a way that he only sees His back, but not His face (xxxiii. 18-23). On the strength of these expressions, He in whom Jehovah manifested Himself to Ills people as a Saviour is called in Isa. Ixiii. 9, " the Angel of His face," and all the guidance and protection of Israel are ascribed to Him. In accordance with this, Malachi, the last prophet of the Old Testament, proclaims to the people waiting for the manifestation of Jehovah, that is to say, for the appearance of the Messiah predicted by former prophets, that the Lord (P"'^'^, i.e. God), the Angel of the covenant, will come to His temple (iii. 1). This " Angel of the covenant," or " Angel of the face," has appeared in Christ. The Angel of Jehovah, therefore, was no other than the Logos, which not only " was with God," but "w^as God," and in Jesus Christ "was made flesh" and "came unto His own" (John i. 1, 2, 11); the only-begotten Son of God, who was sent by the Father into the world, who, though one with the Father, prayed to the Father (John xvii.), and who is even called "the Apostle," o diroaToXo^iy in Heb. iii. 1. From all this it is sufficiently obvious, that neither the title Angel or Messenger of Jehovah, nor the fact that the Angel of Jehovah prayed to Jehovah Sabaoth, furnishes any evidence against His essential unity with Jehovah. That which is unfolded in perfect clearness in the New Testament through the incarnation of the Son of God, was still veiled in the Old Tesment according to the wisdom apparent in the divine training. The difference between.Jehovah and the Angel of Jehovah is generally hidden behind the unity of the two, and for the most part Jehovah is referred to as He who chose Israel as His nation and kingdom, and who would reveal Himself at some future time to His people in all His glory; so that in the New Testament nearly all the manifestations of Jehovah under the Old Covenant are referred to Christ, and regarded as fulfilled through Him.^
^ This is not a mere accommodation of Scripture, but the correct interpretation of the obscure hints of the Old Testament by the light of the fulfilment in the New. For not only is the Maleach Jehovah the revealer of God, but Jehovah Himself is the revealed God and Saviour. Just as in the history of the Old Testament there are not only revelations of the Maleach Jehovah, but revelations of Jehovah also; so in the prophecies the announcement of the Messiah, the sprout of David and servant of Jehovah, is intermingled with the announcement of the coming of Jehovah to glorify His people and perfect His kingdom.
The life of Abraham, from his call to his death, consists of four stages, the commencement of each of which is marked by a divine revelation of sufficient importance to constitute a distinct epoch. The first stage (chap, xii.-xiv.) commences w^ith his call and removal to Canaan; the second (chap. xv. xvi.), with the promise of a lineal heir and the conclusion of a covenant; the third (chap, xvii.— xxi.), with the establishment of the covenant, accompanied by a change in his name, and the appointment of the covenant sign of circumcision; the fourth (chap, xxii.-xxv. 11), with the temptation of Abrahaua to attest and perfect his life of faith. All the revelations made to him proceed from Jehovah; and the name Jehovah is employed throughout the whole life of the father of the faithful, Elohim being used only where Jehovah, from its meaning, would be either entirely inapplicable, or at any rate less appropriate.^
Vers. 1-3. The Call. — The word of Jehovah, by which Abram was called, contained a command and a promise. Abram was to leave all — his country, his kindred (see chap, xliii. 7), and his father's house — and to follow the Lord into the land which He would show him. Thus he was to trust entirely to the guidance of God, and to follow wherever He might lead him. But as he went in consequence of this divine summons into the land of Canaan (ver. 5), we must assume that God gave him at the very first a distinct intimation, if not of the land itself, at least of the direction he was to take. That Canaan was to be his destination, was no doubt made known as a matter of certainty in the revelation which he received after his arrival there (ver. 7). — For thus renouncing and denying all natural ties, the Lord gave him the inconceivably great promise, *' I will make of thee a great nation; and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing" The four members of this promise are not to be divided
^ The hypothesis, that the history is compounded of Jehovistic and Elohistic documents, can only be maintained by those who misunderstand the distinctive meaning of these two names, and arbitrarily set aside the Jehovah in chap. xvii. 1, on account of an erroneous determination of the relation in which >'!]^ ^^ stands to nvi^ into two parallel members, in which case the athnach would stand in the wrong place; but are to be regarded as an ascending climax, expressing four elements of the salvation promised to Abram, the last of which is still further expanded in ver. 3. By placing the athnach under ^p^ the fourth member is marked as a new and independent feature added to the other three. The four distinct elements are — 1. increase into a numerous people 2. a blessing, that is to say, material and spiritual prosperity; 3. the exaltation of his name, i.e. the elevation of Abram to honour and glory; 4. his appointment to be the possessor and dispenser of the blessing. Abram was not only to receive blessing, but to be a blessing; not only to be blessed by God, but to become a blessing, or the medium of blessing, to others. The blessing, as the more minute definition of the expression " be a blessing^* in ver. 3 clearly shows, was henceforth to keep pace as it were with Abram himself, so that (1) the blessing and cursing of men were to depend entirely upon their attitude towards him, and (2) all the families of the earth were to be blessed in him. pPJ^, lit. to treat as light or little, to despise, denotes " blasphemous cursing on the part of a man;" "I15< "judicial cursing on the part of God.'* It appears significant, however, " that the plural is used in relation to the blessing, and the singular only in relation to the cursing; grace expects that there will be many to bless, and that only an individual here and there will render not blessing for blessing, but curse for curse." — In ver. 3 6, Abram, the one, is made a blessing for all. In the word ^3 the primary meaning of 3, in, is not to be given up, though the instrumental sense, through, is not to be excluded. Abram was not merely to become a mediator, but the source of blessing for all. The expression " all the families of the ground'^ points to the division of the one family into many (chap. x. 5, 20, 31), and the word •^^l^-"? ^^ *^® curse pronounced upon the ground (chap. iii. 17). The blessing of Abraham was once more to unite the divided families, and change the curse, pronounced upon the ground on account of sin, into a blessing for the whole human race. This concluding word comprehends all nations and times, and condenses, as Baumgarten has said, the whole fulness of the divine counsel for the salvation of men into the call of Abram. All further promises, therefore, not only to the patriarchs, but also to Israel, were merely expansions and closer definitions of the salvation held out to the whole human race in the first promise. Even the assurance, which Abram received after his entrance into Canaan (ver. 6), was implicitly contained in this first promise; since a great nation could not be conceived of, without a country of its own. This promise was renewed to Abram on several occasions: first after his separation from Lot (xiii. 14-16), on which occasion, however, the " blessing" was not mentioned, because not required by the connection, and the two elements only, viz. the numerous increase of his seed, and the possession of the land of Canaan, were assured to him and to his seed, and that " for ever; " secondly, in chap, xviii. 18 somewhat more casually, as a reason for the confidential manner in which Jehovah explained to him the secret of His government; and lastly, at the two principal turning points of his life, where the whole promise was confirmed with the greatest solemnity, viz. in chap. xvii. at the commencement of the establishment of the covenant made with him, where " I will make of thee a great nation" was heightened into " I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee," and his being a blessing was more fully defined as the establishment of a covenant, inasmuch as Jehovah would be God to him and to his posterity (vers. 3 sqq.), and in chap. xxii. after the attestation of his faith and obedience, even to the sacrifice of his only son, where the innumerable increase of his seed and the blessing to pass from him to all nations were guaranteed by an oath. The same promise was afterwards renewed to Isaac, with a distinct allusion to the oath (chap. xxvi. 3, 4), and again to Jacob, both on his flight from Canaan for fear of Esau (chap, xxviii. 13, 14), and on his return thither (chap. xxxv. 11, 12). In the case of these renewals, it is only in chap, xxviii. 14 that the last expression, "all the families of theAdamah," is repeated verbatim, though with the additional clause "and in thy seed;" in the other passages " all the nations of the earth" are mentioned, the family connection being left out of sight, and the national character of the blessing being brought into especial prominence. In two instances also, instead of the Niphal ^^'inj we find the Hithpael ^^snn. This change of conjugation by no means proves that the Niphal is to be taken in its original reflective sense. The Hithpael has no doubt the meaning " to wish one's self blessed" (Deut. xxix. 19), with n of the person from whom the blessing is sought (Isa. Ixv. 16; Jer. iv, 2), or whose blessing is desired
(Gen. xlviii. 20). But the Niphal T)^'^ 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. Removal 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). ^by IK^X tJ^*D3n 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, " Ahram passed through the land to the place of Sichem: " i.e. the place w^here Sichem, the present Nablus, afterwards stood, between Ebal and Gerizim, in the heart of the land. " To the terebinth (or, according to Deut. xi. 30, the terebinths) of Moreh: " ^i'^?, ^^K (chap. xiv. 6) and np"'NI are the terebinth, p?5< and n?X the oak; though in many MSS. and editions \h^ and P?^ 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 Canaanltes were then in the land " does not point 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 (Robinsons 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 {Ritter'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 {vid. 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 he 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 early. Pharaoh (the Egyptian owro, king, with the article Pi) 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. ^)>p, 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 VVE)Dp " according to his journeys " (lit, with the repeated breaking up of his camp, required by a nomad life; on yp: 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 N'JPfl (ver. 4) is not a continuation of the relative clause, but a resumption of the main sentence, and therefore corresponds with "J]??! (ver. 3), ''he went... and called upon the name of the Lord there^^ has been correctly concluded by Delitzsck from the repetition of the subject Abram. — Vers. 5-7. But as Abram was very rich ("J??, lit, weighty) in possessions (^IPO, cattle and slaves), and Lot also had flocks, and herds, and tents (Dy^^ for Dy;"!?> Ges. § 93, G, 3) for liis men, of whom there must liave been many therefore, the land did not hear them wlien dwelling together (^jf'^, 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 Rephaim (xv. 19-21), not have been descendants of Ham at all. The common explanation of the name Perizzite as equivalent ton^PB pK 2^ "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 ^HBH (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''nN ^''tJ^^fc^? i^^en vi^ho 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 J I will turn to the leftP Although Abram was the older, and the leader of the company, he was magnanimous enough to leave the choice to his nephew, who was the youngei, 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 vallev 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 Jehovah^^ the garden planted by Jehovah in paradise, and " as Egypty* the land rendered so fertile by the overflowing of the Nile, "m the direction of ZoarT Abram therefore remained in the land of Canaan, whilst Lot settled in the cities of the plain of the Jordan, and tented (])itched 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 "^^K ^^ said " is not accompanied by N"J.^1 "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 tlie 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 QJ'iV ^V "/or everr 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, " guum terra in sceculum promittitur, non simpliciter notatur perpetuitas; sed quae frnem accepitin 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 Harare (chap. xiv. 13), and built an altar to Jehovah. The term 3^^ (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 Amraphel^ king of Sliinar^^ this is done, no doubt, with reference to the fact that the first w^orldly 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 Assvrian 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 m 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 engaged 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 XaXdaap, 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 ^^V {made), 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) i7ito the vale of Siddim (D"''nfe'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 (Trei/raTroXt?, 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 rehelledr 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 his dominion. The army moved along the great military road from inner Asia, past Damascus, through Peraea, where they smote the Rephaims, Zuzims, Emims, and Horites. ^' The Repliaim in Ashteroth Kamaim:^^ 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 Peraea, 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 KS"] 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. Midler^ that they belonged to the aborigines, who were not related to Shem, Ham, and Japhet, is perfectly arbitrary. — Ashteroth Karnaim^ or briefly Ashtaroth, the capital afterwards of Og of Bashan, was situated in Hauran; and ruins of it are said to be still seen in Tell Aahtereh, two hours and a half from Nowah^ and one and three-quarters from the ancient Edrei^ somewhere between Nowah and Mezareib (see Hitter, Erdkunde)} — " TJie Zuzims in Ilam^
* J. G. Wetztein^ however, has lately denied the identity of Ashteroth Karnaim, which he interprets as meaning Ashtaroth near Karnaiui, witii Ashtaroth the capital of Og (^i-r lici.^iher. iih. Iluuran^ etc. 18GC>, p. 107).
were probably the people whom the Ammonites called Zam zummimy and who were also reckoned among the Rephaim (Deut. ii. 20). Ham was possibly the ancient name of Bahha of the Ammonites (Deut. iii. 11), the remains being still preserved in the ruins of Amman, — " The JEmim in the plain of Kiryathaim:" the ^^9^^? ^^ ^^P^ (^•^* 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). Kiryaihaim is certainly not to be found where Eusehius and Jerome supposed, viz. in KapidBa, Coraiatha^ the modem Koerriath or Kereyatj 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. " TTie 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. 20 sqq.). — " 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 Kings ix. 26), the important harbour of Aila on the northern extremity of the socalled Elanitic Gulf, near the modern fortress of Akaba, where extensive heaps of rubbish show the site of the former town, which received its name ^/ or Elath (terebinth, or rather tcood) 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 without 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 Romans, 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. 56; 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 (of. Ges. thes.^ p. 175 and 193).
Aila) to En-mishpat {well of judgment)^ the older name of KadesJi, 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 (JElusa), twelve miles E.S.E. of Moyle, the halting-place for caravans, near Hagar's well (xvi. 14), on the heights oi Jehel Halal (see Bitter, Erdkunde, and Num. xiii.). " And they smote all the country of the Amalekites,^^ Le, 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,^^ Le, 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 (niri for ^"JfJ"^), 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^Vn, 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 (Vp''jn, i,e, practised in arms) born in the house (cf. xvii. 12), 318 men, to turn out {liU 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 midfit of a list of tribes who were defeated, we find not the tribe butonly thajields (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 {Ihugstenberg^ Ditis. ii. p. 24 'J, translation}.
himself against theniy he and his servants, hy 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 ffobah, 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 w^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 Peraea 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 daUy This valley, in which Absalom erected a monument for himself (2 Sam. xviii. 18), was, according to Josephiis, 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 -^non, 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 ^ the sources of the Jordan, they would undoubtedly, when defeated at Laish-Dan, have fled through the Wady et Teim and the Bekaa to Hamath, and not by Damascus at all (yid. 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 (foimding of peace, or possession of peace) was formed by the addition of the prefix 'i*^^. = '"i"!''. " founding," or tJ^"!"! " 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" (JDelitzscK), 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 he 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, 1^7? for l''?*'.^, and |2D. — fivy 7« 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 ^^"^2 with p, vid. chap. xxxi. 15, Ex. xii. 16, and Ges, § 143, 2. ^y?, founder and possessor: ^^\> combines the meanings of KTi^eiv and KraaOai, 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. Di<, as the sign of an oath, is negative, and in an earnest address is repeated before the verb. *^ Except ('IVrr^, 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 ta'ke their portion:^^ i.e. his folio wera should receive what had been consumed as their share, and the allies should have the remainder of the booty.