CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY COHNELL UWVERSlTt U B«A«' 3 1924 070 685 718 PI Cornell University fj Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924070685718 CLAEK'S FOEEIGN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY. FOUETH SEEIES. VOL. II. iatil anl jicIttiiScI) on t1)t iPcntatcucI). VOL. 1. EDINBUKGH: T. AND T. CLARK, 38, GEORGE STREET. MDCCCl.XXXV. PBINTED BT MOERiaOW AND OIBB, FOR T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. LOiNTJON, . , HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CtS. DUBLIN, . . GEORGE HERBERT. new YOflK, . , , SCRIBNER AND WELPORD. BIBLICAL COMMENTARY OM THE OLD TESTAMENT. BV C. F piL, DM AND F. DELITZSCH, D.D, " PROFESSOES OP THEOLOGY. VOLUME I. THE PENTATEUCH. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY THE REV. JAMES MAKTIN, B.A., NOTTUJGHAll. EDINBUEGH: T. & T. CLAEK, 38, GEOEGE STEEET. MDOCCLXXXV. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE, ra?9 7 GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES. § 1. Prolegomena on the Old Testament and its leading divisions, 9 § 2. Title, Contents, and Plan of the Books of Moses, . . 1& § 3. Origin and Date of the Books of Moses, . . .17 § 4. Historical Character of the Books of Moses, . . 28 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES (GENESIS). Introduction. Contents, Design, and Plan of Genesis, 33 The Creation of the World (Chap. i. 1-ii. 3), I. History of the Heavens and the Earth (Chap. ii. 4-iv II. History of Adam (Chap, v.-vi. 8), III. History of Noah (Chap. vi. 9-ix. 29), IV. History of the Sons of Noah (Chap, x.-xi. 9), V. History of Shem (Chap. xi. 10-26), . VI. History of Terah (Chap. xi. 27-xxv. 11), 26), 37 70 J20 140 161 177 179 b TABLE OF CONTENTS. Psge VII. History of Ishmael (Chap. xxv. 12-18), . . .264 VIII. History of Isaac (Chap. xxv. 19-xxxv.), . • .266 IX. History of Esau (Chap, xxxvi.), . . . • 320 X. History of Jacob (Chap. xxxvii.-I.), . 329 THE SECOND BOOK OF MOSES (EXODUS). Inteoddction. Contents and Arrangement of the Book of Exodus, . • 41 J Increase in the Number of the Israelites and their Bondage in Egypt (Chap, i.), . . . . .418 Birth and Education of Moses ; Flight from Egypt, and Life in Midian (Chap, ii.), .... 426 Call of Moses, and his return to Egypt (Chap. iii. and iv.), 436 Moses and Aaron sent to Pharaoh (Chap, v.-vii. 7), Moses' Negotiations with Pharaoh (Chap. vii. 8-xi. 10), The first three Plagues (Chap. vii. 14-viii. 15), The three following Plagues (Chap. viii. 20-ix. 12), The last three Plagues (Chap. ix. 13-xi. 10), . 461 472 477 485 489 PREFACE. HE Old Testament is the basis of the New. " God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake unto the fathers by the prophets, hath spoken unto us by His only-begotten Son." The Church of Christ is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. For Christ came not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfil. As He said to the Jews, " Search the Scriptures, for in theni ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me ;" so also, a short time before His ascension. He opened the understanding of His disciples, that they might understand the Scriptures, and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. "With firm faith in the truth of this testimony of our Lord, the fathers and teachers of the Church in all ages have studied the Old Testa- ment Scriptures, and have expounded the revelations of God under the Old Covenant in learned and edifying works, unfold- ing to the Christian community the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God which they contain, and impressing them upon the heart, for doctrine, for reproof, for improvement, for instruc- tion in righteousness. It was reserved for the Deism, Natural- ism, and Rationalism which became so prevalent in the closing quarter of the eighteenth century, to be the first to undermine the belief in the inspiration of the first covenant, and more and more to choke up this well of saving truth ; so that at the present day depreciation of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament is O l-KEl-ACE. as widely spread as ignorance of what they really contain. A1 the same time, very much has been done during the last thirtji years on the part of believers in divine revelation, to bring aboul a just appreciation and correct understanding of the Old lesta- ment Scriptures. As a still further contribution towards the same result, it is our present intention to issue a condensed Commentary upon tin whole of the Old Testament, in which we shall endeavour to furnish not only a grammatical and historical exposition of the facts and truths of divine revelation, but a biblical commentary also, and thus to present to all careful readers of the Bible, especially to divinity students and ministers of the Gospel, an escegetical handbook, from which they may obtain some help to- wards a full understanding of the Old Testament economy of salvation, so far as the theological learning of the Church has yet been able to fathom it, and possibly also an impulse to further study and a deeper plunge into the unfathomable depths of the Word of God. May the Lord grant His blessing upon our labours, and assist with His own Spirit and power a work designed to pro- mote the knowledge of His holy Word. C. F. KEH.. ^ This is unquestionably the case in Germany ; and although it is grow- ingly applicable to England also, it is happily far from describing our present condition. — Tr. GENEEAL INTRODUCTION TO THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES. § 1. PROLEGOMENA ON THE OLD TESTAMENT AND ITS LEADING DIVISIONS. I HE Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament contain the divine revelations which prepared the way for the redemption of fallen man by Christ. The revela- tion of God commenced with the creation of the heaven and the earth, when the triune God called into existence a world teeming with organized and living creatures, whose life and movements proclaimed the glory of their Creator; whilst, in the person of man, who was formed in the image of God, they were created to participate in the blessedness of the divine life. But when the human race, having yielded in its progenitors to the temptation of the wicked one, and forsaken the path ap- pointed by its Creator, had fallen a prey to sin and death, and involved the whole terrestrial creation in the effects of its fall ; the mercy of God commenced the work of restoration and re- demption, which had been planned in the counsel of the triune love before the foundation of the world. Hence, from the very beginning, God not only manifested His eternal power and god- head in the creation, preservation, and government of the world and its inhabitants, but also revealed through His Spirit His purpose and desire for the well-being of man. This manifesta- PENT. — ^VOL. I. B 10 GENERAL INTEODUCTION. tion of the personal God upon and in the world assumed, in consequence of the fall, the form of a plan of salvation, rising above the general providence and government of the world, and filling the order of nature with higher powers of spiritual life, in order that the evil, which had entered through sin into the nature of man and passed from man into the whole world, might be overcome and exterminated, the world be transformed into a kingdom of God in which all creatures should follow His holy will, and humanity glorified into the likeness of God by the complete transfiguration of its nature. These mani- festations of divine grace, which made the history of the world " a development of humanity into a kingdom of God under the educational and judicial superintendence of the living God," culminated in the incarnation of God in Christ to reconcile the world unto Himself. This act of unfathomable love divides the whole course of the world's history into two periods — the times of preparation, and the times of accomplishment and completion. The former extend from the fall of Adam to the coming of Christ, and have their culminating point in the economy of the first covenant. The latter commence with the appearance of the Son of God on earth in human form and human nature, and will last till His return in glory, when He will change the kingdom of grace into the kingdom of glory through the last judgment and the creation of a new heaven and new earth out of the elements of the old world, " the heavens and the earth which are now." The course of the universe will then be completed and closed, and time exalted into eternity (1 Cor. xv. 23-28 ; Kev. xx. and xxi.). If we examine the revelations of the first covenant, as they have been handed down to us in the sacred scriptures of the Old Testament, we can distinguish three stages of progressive development : preparation for the kingdom of God in its Old Testament form; its establishment through the mediatorial office of Moses ; and its development and extension through the prophets. In all these periods God revealed Himself and His salvation to the human race by words and deeds. As the Gospel of the New Covenant is not limited to the truths and moral precepts taught by Christ and His apostles, but the fact of the incarnation of God in Christ Jesus, and the work of re- § 1. PROLEGOMENA ON THE OLD TESTAMENT. 11 demption completed by the God-man through deeds and suffer- ings, death and resurrection, constitute the quintessence of the Christian religion ; so also the divine revelations of the Old Covenant are not restricted to the truths proclaimed by Moses, and by the patriarchs before him and prophets after him, as to the real nature of God, His relation to the world, and the divine destiny of man, but consist even more of the historical events by whi-^h the personal and living God manifested Himself to men in His infinite love, in acts of judgment and righteousness, of mercy and grace, that He might lead them back to Himself as the only source of life. Hence all the acts of God in history, by which the rising tides of iniquity have been stemmed, and piety and morality promoted, including not only the judgments of God which have fallen upon the earth and its inhabitants, but the calling of individuals to be the upholders of His salva- tion and the miraculous guidance afforded them, are to be re- garded as essential elements of the religion of the Old Testament, quite as much as the verbal revelations, by which God made known His will and saving counsel through precepts and promises to holy men, sometimes by means of higher and supernatural light within them, at other times, and still more frequently, through supernatural dreams, and visions, and theo- phanies in which the outward senses apprehended the sounds and words of human language. Revealed religion has not only been introduced into the world by the special interposition of God, but is essentially a history of what God has done to establish His kingdom upon the earth ; in other words, to restore a real personal fellowship between God whose omnipresence fills the world, and man who was created in His image, in order that God might renew and sanctify humanity by filling it with His Spirit, and raise it to the glory of living and movmg in His fulness of life. The way was opened for the establishment of this kingdom 'in its Old Testament form by the call of Abraham, and his ■election to be the father of that nation, with which the Lord was about to make a covenant of grace as the source of blessing to all the families of the earth. The firsi stage in the sacred history commences with the departure of Abraham, in obedience to the call of God, from his native country and his father's house, and reaches to the time when the posterity promised to 12 GENERAL INTEODUCTION. the patriarch had expanded in Egypt into the twelve tribes o1 Israel. The divine revelations during this period consisted o; promises, which laid the foundation for the whole future de velopment of the kingdom of God on earth, and of that specia guidance, by which God proved Himself, in accordance will these promises, to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The second stage commences with the call of Moses and th( deliverance of Israel from the bondage of Egypt, and embrace) the establishment of the Old Testament kingdom of God, no: only through the covenant which God made at Sinai with th( people of Israel, whom He had redeemed with mighty deeds oui of Egypt, but also through the national constitution, which H« gave in the Mosaic law to the people whom He had chosen zi His inheritance, and which regulated the conditions of theii covenant relation. In this constitution the eternal truths anc essential characteristics of the real, spiritual kingdom are sei forth in earthly forms and popular institutions, and are so fai incorporated in them, that the visible forms shadow fort! spiritual truths, and contain the germs of that spiritual anc glorified kingdom in which God will be all in all. In cons© quence of the design of this kingdom being merely to prepar( and typify the full revelation of God in His kingdom, its pre dominant character was that of law, in order that, whilst pro ducing a deep and clear insight into human sinfulness anc divine holiness, it might excite an earnest craving for de liverance from sin and death, and for the blessedness of livinj in the peace of God. But the laws and institutions of thi kingdom not only impressed upon the people the importance o consecrating their whole life to the Lord God, they also openec up to them the way of holiness and access to the grace of God whence power might be derived to walk in righteousness befon God, through the institution of a sanctuary which the Lord o heaven and earth filled with His gracious presence, and of ; sacrificial altar which Israel might approach, and there in th blood of the sacrifice receive the forgiveness of its sins and re joice in the gracious fellowship of its God. The third stage in the Old Testament histoiy embraces th progressive development of the kingdom of God established upo) Sinai, from the death of Moses, the lawgiver, till the extinctioi of prophecy at the close of the Babylonian captivity. Durini S 1. PROLEGOMENA ON THE OLD TESTAMENT. 13 this lengthened period God revealed Himself as the covenant God and the monarch in His kingdom, partly by the special protection which He afforded to His people, so long as they were faithful to Him, or when they returned to Him after a time of apostasy and sought His aid, either by raising up warlike heroes to combat the powers of the world, or by miraculous displays of His own omnipotence, and partly by the mission of prophets endowed with the might of His own Spirit, who kept His law and testimony befoi'e the minds of the people, denounced judg- ment upon an apostate race, and foretold to the righteous the Messiah's salvation, attesting their divine mission, wherever it was necessary, by the performance of miraculous deeds. In the first centuries after Moses there was a predominance of the direct acts of God to establish His kingdom in Canaan, and exalt it' to power and distinction in comparison with the nations round about. But after it had attained its highest earthly power, and when the separation of the ten tribes from the house of David had been followed by the apostasy of the nation from the Lord, and the kingdom of God was hurrying rapidly to destruction, God increased the number of prophets, and thus prepared the way by the word of prophecy for the full revelation of His sal- vation in the establishment of a new covenant. Thus did the works of God go hand in hand with His reve lation in the words of promise, of law, and of prophecy, in the economy of the Old Covenant, not merely as preparing the way for the introduction of the salvation announced in the law and in prophecy, but as essential factors of the plan of God for the redemption of man, as acts which regulated and determined the whole course of the world, and contained in the germ the consummation of all things ; — the law, as a " schoolmaster to bring to Christ," by training Israel to welcome the Saviour ; and prophecy, as proclaiming His advent with growing clearness, and even shedding upon the dark and deadly shades of a world at enmity against God, the first rays of the dawn of that coming day of salvation, in which the Sun of Kighteousness would rise upon the nations with healing beneath His wings. As the revelation of the first covenant may be thus divided into three progressive stages, so the documents containing this revelation, the sacred books of the Old Testament, have also been divided into three classes — the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagio- 14 GENERAL INTRODUCTION ffrapha or holy writings. But although this triple classificatioB of the Old Testament canon has reference not merely to three stages of canonization, but also to three degrees of divine inspira- tion, the three parts of the Old Testament do not answer to the three historical stages in the development of the first covenant The only division sustained by the historical facts is that of Lau and Prophets. These two contain all that was objective in the Old Testament revelation, and so distributed that the Thorak as the five books of Moses are designated even in the Scriptures themselves, contains the groundwork of the Old Covenant, oi that revelation of God in words and deeds which laid the foun- dation of the kingdom of God in its Old Testament form, and also those revelations of the primitive ages and the early historj of Israel which prepared the way for this kingdom ; whilst the Prophets, on the other hand, contain the revelations which helped to preserve and develop the Israelitish kingdom of God, from the death of Moses till its ultimate dissolution. The Prophets are also subdivided into two classes. The first of these embraces the so-called earlier prophets (prophetce priores), i.e. the prophe- tical books of history (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and the Kings), which contain the revelation of God as fulfilled in the historical guidance of Israel by judges, kings, high priests, and prophets ; the second, the later prophets {prophetce posteriores), i.e. the pro- phetical books of prediction (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets), which contain the progressive testimonj to the counsel of God, delivered in connection with the acts oi God during the period of the gradual decay of the Old Testameni kingdom. The former, or historical books, are placed among the Prophets in the Old Testament canon, not merely because thej narrate the acts of prophets in Israel, but still more, because thej exhibit the development of the Israelitish kingdom of God fron a prophet's point of view, and, in connection with the historical development of the nation and kingdom, set forth the progressive development of the revelation of God. The predictions of the later prophets, which were not composed till some centuries aftei the division of the kingdom, were placed in the same class wit! these, as being " the national records, which contained the pledge of the heavenly King, that the fall of His people and kingdon in the world had not taken place in opposition to His will bui expressly in accordance with it, and that He had not therefore § 2. TITLE, CONTENTS, AND PLAN OF THE BOOKS 01' MOSES. 15 given up His people and kingdom, but at some future time, when its inward condition allowed, would restore it again in new and more exalted power and glory" {Auherhn). The other writings of the Old Covenant are all grouped together in the third part of the Old Testament canon under the title of ypafpeia, Scripta, or Hagiographa, as being also composed under the influence of the Holy Ghost. The Hagiographa differ from the prophetical books both of history and prediction in their peculiarly subjective character, and the individuality of their representations of the facts and truths of divine revelation ; a feature common to all the writings in this class, notwithstand- ing their diversities in form and subject-matter. They include, (1) ihQ poetical books : Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, and the Lamentations of Jeremiah, — which bear witness of the spiritual fruits already brought to maturity in the faith, the thinking, and the life of the righteous by the revealed religion of the Old Covenant ; — (2) the book of Daniel, who lived and laboured at the Chaldean and Persian court, with its rich store of divinely inspired dreams and visions, prophetic of the future history of the kingdom of God ; — (3) the historical books of Kuth, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, which depict the history of the government of David and his dynasty, with special reference to the relation in which the kings stood to the Levitical worship in the temple, and the fate of the remnant of the covenant nation, which was preserved in the downfall of the kingdom of Judah, from the time of its captivity until its return from Babylon, and its re-establishment in Jerusalem and Judah. § 2. TITLE, CONTENTS, AND PLAN OF THE BOOKS OF MOSES. The five books of Moses (^ Uei/Tarei/p^o? sc. jSt/3\o?, Penta- teuchus sc. liber, the book in five parts) are called in the Old Testament Sepher hattorah, the Law-book (Deut. xxxi. 26 ; Josh, i. 8, etc.), or, more concisely still, Hattorah, 6 vo/ioi;, the Law (Neh. viii. 2, 7, 13, etc.),-^a name descriptive both of the contents of the work and of its importance in relation to the economy of the Old Covenant. The word Jri'in, a Hiphil noun from nnin, demonstrare, docere, denotes instruction. The ThoraJt 16 GENERAL INTEODUCTION. IS „ the book of instruction, which Jehovah gave through Mosei to the people of Israel, and is therefore called Torath J^'':°^"'' (2 Chron.xvii. 9, xxxiv. 14; Neh. ix. 3) and Torath Moshe (Josh. viii. 31 ; 2 Kings xiv. 6 ; Neh. viii. 1), or Sepher Mosheh the book of Moses (2 Ohron. xxv. 4, xxxv. 12 ; Ezra vi. 18 Neh. xiii. 1). Its contents are a divine revelation in words anc deeds, or rather the fundamental revelation, through whicl Jehovah selected Israel to be His people, and gave to them theii rule of life (vo/io?), or theocratical constitution as a people anc kingdom. The entire work, though divided into five parts, forms botl in plan and execution one complete and carefully constructec whole, commencing with the creation, and reaching to the deatl of Moses, the mediator of the Old Covenant. The foundatioi for the divine revelation was really laid in and along with th< creation of the world. The world which God created is the scene of a history embracing both God and man, the site foi the kingdom of God in its earthly and temporal form. All tha the Jirst book contains with reference to the early history of th< human race, from Adam to the patriarchs of Israel, stands ii a more or less immediate relation to the kingdom of God ii Israel, of which the other books describe the actual establish ment. The second depicts the inauguration of this kingdon at Sinai. Of the third and fourth, the former narrates th( spiritual, the latter the political, organization of the kingdon by facts and legal precepts. The fifth recapitulates the whoL in a hortatory strain, embracing both history and legislation and impresses it upon the hearts of the people, for the purpos( of arousing true fidelity to the covenant, and securing it lasting duration. The economy of the Old Covenant having been thus established, the revelation of the law closes with thi death of its mediator. The division of the work into five books was, therefore, th most simple and natural that could be adopted, according to th contents and plan which we have thus generally described. Th three middle books contain the history of the establishment o the Old Testament kingdom ; the first sketches the preliminar history, by which the way was prepared for its introduction' and the fifth recapitulates and confirms it. This fivefold divi sion was not made by some later editor, but is founded in th § 3. ORIGIN AND DATE OF THE BOOKS OP MOSES 17 entire plan of the law, and is therefore to be regarded as original. For even the three central books, which contain a continuous history of the estabhshment of the theocracy, are divided into three by the fact, that the middle portion, the third book of the Pentateuch, is separated from the other two, not only by its contents, but also by its introduction, chap. i. 1, and its concluding formula, chap, xxvii. 34. § 3. OEIGIN AND DATE OF THE BOOKS OF MOSES. The five books of Moses occupy the first place in the canon of the Old Testament, not merely on account of their peculiar character as the foundation and norm of all the rest, but also because of their actual date, as being the oldest writings in the canon, and the groundwork of the whole of the Old Testament literature ; all the historical, prophetic, and poetical works of the Israelites subsequent to the Mosaic era pointing back to the law of Moses as their primary source and type, and assum- ing the existence not merely of the law itself, but also of a book of the law, of precisely the character and form of the five books of Moses. In all the other historical books of the Old Testa- ment not a single trace is to be found of any progressive expan- sion of, or subsequent additions to, the statutes and laws of Israel ; for the account contained in 2 Kings xxii. and 2 Ghron. xxxiv. of the discovery of the book of the law, i.e. of the copy placed by the side of the ark, cannot be construed, without a wilful perversion of the words, into a historical proof, that the Pentateuch or the book of Deuteronomy was composed at that time, or that it was then brought to light for the first time.^ On ^ Vaihinger seeks to give probability to Ewald's idea of th'e progressive growth of the Mosaic legislation, and also of the Pentateuch, during a period of nine or ten centuries, by the following argument : — " We observe in the law-books of the ancient Parsees, in the Zendavesta, and in the historical writings of India and Arabia, that it was a custom in the East to supple- ment the earlier works, and after a lapse of time to reconstruct them, so that whilst the root remained, the old stock was pruned and supplanted by a new one. Later editors constantly brought new streams to the old, until eventually the circle of legends and histories was closed, refined, and transfigured. Now, as the Israelites belonged to the same great family as 18 GENERAL INTEODXJOTION. the contrary, we find that, from the time of Joshua to the age < Ezra and Nehemiah, the law of Moses and his book of the la were the only valid and unalterable code by which the nationi life was regulated, either in its civil or its religious institution Numerous cases undoubtedly occur, in which different con mands contained in the law were broken, and particular ord nances were neglected ; but even in the anarchical and trouble times of the Judges, public worship was performed in tl tabernacle at Shiloh by priests of the tribe of Levi accordin to the directions of the Thorah, and the devout made the periodical pilgrimages to the house of God at the appoints feasts to worship and sacrifice before Jehovah at Shiloh (Jud| xviii. 31, cf Josh, xviii. 1 ; 1 Sam. i. 1-iv. 4). On the estal lishment of the monarchy (1 Sam. viii.-x.), the course adopte was in complete accordance with the laws contained in Deu xvii. 14 sqq. The priesthood and the place of worship wei reorganized by David and Solomon in perfect harmony wit the law of Moses. Jehoshaphat made provision for the instruc tion of the people in the book of the law, and reformed th jurisdiction of the land according to its precepts (2 Chroi xvii. 7 sqq., xix. 4 sqq.). Hezekiah and Josiah not only ab( lished the idolatry introduced by their predecessors, as As had done, but restored the worship of Jehovah, and kept th Passover as a national feast, according to the regulations of th Mosaic law (2 Chron. xxix.-xxxi. ; 2 Kings xxiii. ; and 2 Chroi xxxiv. and xxxv.). Even in the kingdom of the ten tribei which separated from the Davidic kingdom, the law of Most retained its force not merely in questions of ci-val law, but als in connection with the religious life of the devout, in spite c the rest of the Oriental nations (sic ! so that the Parsees and Hindoos ai Semitic !), and had almost everything in common with them so far as dres manners, and customs were concerned, there is ground for the suppositioi that their literature followed the same course" {Herzoq's Cycl) But 1 this we reply, that the literature of a nation is not an outward thing to 1 put on and worn like a dress, or adopted like some particular custom ( habit, until somethirg more convenient or acceptable induces a change and that there is a ccnsiderable difference between Polytheism and heathe mythology on the one hand, and Monotheism and revealed rehgion on tl other, which forbids us to determine the origin of the religious writings ( the Israelites by the standard of the Indian Veda and Parana or tI different portions of the Zendavesta. ' I 3. ORIGIN AND DATE OF THE BOOKS OF MOSES. 19 the worship established by Jeroboam in opposition to the law, as we may clearly see from the labours of Elijah and Elisha, of Hosea and Amos, within that kingdom. Moreover, all the historical books are richly stored with unmistakeable allusions and references to the law, which furnish a stronger proof than the actual mention of the book of the law, how deeply the Thorah of Moses had penetrated into the religious, civil, and political life of Israel. (For proofs, see my Introduction to the Old Test. § 34, i.) In precisely the same way prophecy derived its authority and influence throughout from the law of Moses ; for all the prophets, from the first to the last, invariably kept the precepts and pro- hibitions of the law before the minds of the people. They judged, reproved, and punished the conduct, the sins, the crimes of the people according to its rules ; they resumed and expanded its threats and promises, proclaiming their certain fulfilment ; and finally, they employed the historical events of the books of Moses for the purpose of reproof or consolation, frequently citing the very words of the Thorah, especially the threats and promises of Lev. xxvi. and Deut. xxviii., to give force and emphasis to their warnings, exhortations, and prophecies. And, lastly, the poetry, that flourished under David and Solomon, had also its roots in the law, which not only scans, illumines, and consecrates all the emotions and changes of a righteous life in the Psalms, and all the relations of civil life in the Proverbs, but makes itself heard in various ways in the book of Job and the Song of Solomon, and is even commended in Ecclesiastes (chap. xii. 13) as the sum and substance of true wisdom. Again, the internal character of the book is in perfect har- mony with this indisputable fact, that the Thorah, as Delitzsch says, "is as certainly presupposed by the whole of the post- Mosaic history and literature, as the root is by the tree." For it cannot be shown to bear any traces of post-Mosaic times and circumstances ; on the contrary, it has the evident stamp of Mosaic origin both in substance and in style. All that has been adduced in proof of the contrary by the so-called modern criticism is founded either upon misunderstanding and misinter- pretation, or upon a misapprehension of the peculiarities of the Semitic style of historical writing, or lastly upon doctrinal pre- judices, in other words, upon a repudiation of all the super- 20 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. natural characteristics of divine revelation, whether in the oi of miracle or prophecy. The evidence of this will be given the Commentary itself, in the exposition of the passages whi have been supposed to contain either allusions to historical c: cumstances and institutions of a later age, or contradictions ai repetitions that are irreconcilable with the Mosaic origin the work. The Thorah "answers all the expectations whi a study of the personal character of Moses could lead us just to form of any work composed by him. He was one of the master-spirits, in whose life the rich maturity of one historic period is associated with the creative commencement of anothe in whom a long past culminates, and a far-reaching futu strikes its roots. In him the patriarchal age terminated, ai the period of the law began ; consequently we expect to fii him, as a sacred historian, linking the existing revelation wi its patriarchal and primitive antecedents. As the mediator the law, he was a prophet, and, indeed, the greatest of all pr phets: we expect from him, therefore, an incomparable, pr phetic insight into the ways of God in both past and futm He was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians ; a woi from his hand, therefore, would show, in various intelligei allusions to Egyptian customs, laws, and incidents, the wfe educated native of that land " (Delitzsch). In all these respecl not only does the Thorah satisfy in a general manner the d mands which a modest and unprejudiced criticism makes up( a work of Moses ; but on a closer investigation of its contents, presents so many marks of the Mosaic age and Mosaic spir that it is a priori probable that Moses was its author. Ho admirably, for example, was the way prepared for the revel tion of God at Sinai, by the revelations recorded in Genes of the primitive and patriarchal times 1 The same God wh when making a covenant with Abram, revealed Himself to hi in a vision as Jehovah who had brought him out of Ur of tl Chaldees (Gen. xv. 7), and who afterwards, in His charact of El Shaddai, i.e. the omnipotent God, maintained the cov nant which He had made with him (Gen. xvii. 1 sqq.), mvii him in Isaac the heir of the promise, and leading and preservii both Isaac and Jacob in their way, appeared to Moses at Hore to manifest Himself to the seed of Abraham, Isaac and T in the full significance of His name Jehovah, by redee ' § 3. ORIGIN AND DATE OF THE BOOKS OF JIOSES. 21 the children of Israel from the bondage of Egypt, and by ac- cepting them as the people of His possession (Ex. vi. 2 sqq.). How magnificent are the prophetic revelations contained in the Thorali, embracing the whole future history of the kingdom of God till its glorious consummation at the end of the world! Apart from such promises as Gen. xii. 1-3, Ex. xix. 5, 6, and others, which point to the goal and termination of the ways of God from the very commencement of His work of salvation ; not only does Moses in the ode sung at the Red Sea behold his people brought safely to Canaan, and Jehovah enthroned as the everlasting King in the sanctuary established by Himself (Ex. XV. 13, 17, 18), but from Sinai and in the plains of Moab he surveys the future history of his people, and the land to which they are about to march, and sees the whole so clearly in the light of the revelation received in the law, as to foretell to a people just delivered from the power of the heathen, that they will again be scattered among the heathen for their apostasy from the Lord, and the beautiful land, which they are about for the first time to take possession of, be once more laid waste (Lev. xxvi.; Deut. xxviii.-xxx., but especially xxxii.). And with such exactness does he foretell this, that all the other prophets, in their predictions of the captivity, base their prophecies upon the words of Moses, simply extending the latter in the light thrown upon them by the historical circumstances of their own times.^ How richly stored, again, are all five books with delicate and casual allusions to Egypt, its historical events, its manners, customs, and natural history! Hengstenberg has accumulated a great mass of proofs, in his " Egypt and the Books of Moses," of the most accurate acquaintance on the part of the author of the Thorah, with Egypt and its institutions. To select only a few — and those such as are apparently trivial, and introduced quite incidentally into either the history or the laws, but which are as characteristic as they are conclusive, — we would mention the thoroughly Egyptian custom of men carrying baskets upon their heads, in the dream of Pharaoh's chief baker (Gen. xl. 16); the shaving of the beard (xli. 14) ; prophesying with the cup 1 Yet we never find in these words of Moses, or in the Pentateuch generally, the name Jehovah Sabaoth, which was unknown in the Mosaic age, but was current as early as the time of Samuel and David, and sc favourite a name with all the prophets. 22 GENERAL INTEODUCTION. (xliv. 5) ; the custom of embalming dead bodies and plac. them in sarcophagi (1. 2, 3, and 26) ; the basket made ot papyrus and covered with asphalt and pitch (Ex. "• ^) ' prohibition against lying with cattle (Ex. xxii. 19 ; Lf"*"- ^'^ 23, XX. 15, 16), and against other unnatural crimes which w common in Egypt; the remark that Hebron was built sei years before Zoan in Egypt (Num. xiii. 22) ; the allusion Num. xi. 5 to the ordinary and favourite food of Egypt ; Egj-ptian mode of watering (Deut. xi. 10, 11) ; the reference the Egyptian mode of whipping (Deut. xxv. 2, 3) ; the expr mention of the "eruptions and diseases of Egypt (Deut. vii. xxviii. 27, 35, 60), and many other things, especially in the count of the plagues, which tally so closely with the natu history of that country (Ex. vii. 8-x. 23). In its general form, too, the Thorah answers the expec tions which we are warranted in entertaining of a work Moses, In such a work we should expect to find " the unity a magnificent plan , comparative indifference to the mere tails, but a comprehensive and spirited grasp of the whole i of salient points ; depth and elevation combined with greatest simplicity. In the magnificent unity of plan, we si detect the mighty leader and ruler of a people numbering teni thousands ; in the childlike simplicity, the shepherd of Midi who fed the sheep of Jethro far away from the varied see of Egypt in the fertile clefts of the mountains of Sin; (Delitzsch). The unity of the magnificent plan of the Tho we have already shown in its most general outlines, and si point out still more minutely in our commentary upon the se rate books. The childlike naivety of the shepherd of Mid is seen most distinctly in those figures and similes drawn fi the immediate contemplation of nature, which we find in more rhetorical portions of the work. To this class belong si poetical expressions as " covering the eye of the earth " (Ex 5, 15 ; Num. xxii. 5, 11) ; such similes as these : "as a nurs father beareth the suckling " (Num. xi. 12) ; " as a man d bear his son " (Deut. i. 31) ; " as the ox licketh up the gras! the field" (Num. xxii. 4); " as sheep which have no shephei (Num. xxvii. 17); "as bees do" (Deut. i. 44) ; "asthees flieth " (Deut. xxviii. 49) ; — and again the figurative expressio "borne on eagles' wings" (Ex. xix. 4, cf. Deut. xxxii. 11) ; « § 3. ORIGIN AND DATE OF THE BOOKS OF MOSES. 23 vouring fire " (Ex. xxiv. 17 ; Deut. iv. 24, ix. 3) ; " head and tail" (Deut. xxviii. 13, 44) ; " a root that beareth gall and wormwood" (Deut. xxix. 18); "wet to dry" (Deut. xxix. 19), and many others. To this we may add the antiquated character of the style, which is common to all five books, and distinguishes them essen- tially from all the other writings of the Old Testament. This appears sometimes in the use of words, of forms, or of phrases, which subsequently disappeared from the spoken language, and which either do not occur again, or are only used here and there by the writers of the time of the captivity and afterwards, and then are taken from the Pentateuch itself; at other times, in the fact that words and phrases are employed in the books of Moses in simple prose, which were afterwards restricted to poetry alone ; or else have entirely changed their meaning. For example, the pronoun s^in and the noun IW are used in the Pentateuch for both genders, whereas the forms K''n and Tnyi were afterwards employed for the feminine ; whilst the former of these occurs only eleven times in the Pentateuch, the latter only once. The demonstrative pronoun is spelt ?tQ nx. He shall do this himself, for he is net t^-^ ancestor's copy. Mishneh in itself means nothing more than Thorah m] § 3. ORIGIN AND DATE OF THE BOOKS Of MOSES. 27 Still less can this evidence be set aside or rendered doubtful by the objection, offered by Vaihinger, that " Moses cannot have related his own death and burial (Deut. xxxiv.) ; and yet the account of these forms an essential part of the work as we possess it now, and in language and style bears a close resem- blance to Num. xxvii. 12-23." The M'ords in chap. xxxi. 24, " "When Moses had finished writing the words of this law in a book to the end," are a sufficient proof of themselves that the account of his death was added by a different hand, without its needing to be distinctly stated.'^ The argument, moreover, re- (Deuteronomy). How do I know that the other words of the Thorah were to be written also ? This is evident from the Scriptures, which add, ' to do all the words of this law.' But if this he the case, why is it called Mishneh Thorah ? Because there would be a transformation of the law. Others say that on the day of assembly Deuteronomy alone was read." From this passage of the ancient Midrash we learn, indeed, that many of the Eabbins were of opinion, that at the feast of Tabernacles in the sabbatical year, the book of Deuteronomy only was to be read, but that the author himself was of a differ- ent opinion ; and, notwithstanding the fact that he thought the expression Mishneh Thorah must be understood as applying to the Deuterosis of the law, still maintained that the law, of which the king was to have a copy taken, was not only Deuteronomy, but the whole of the Pentateuch, and that he endeavoured to establish this opinion by a strange but truly rabbinical in- terpretation of the word Mishneh as denoting a transformation of the law. ' The weakness of the argument against the Mosaic authorship of the Thorah, founded upon the account of the death and burial of Moses, may be seen from the analogous case cited by Hengstenherg in his Dissertation! on the Pentateuch. In the last book of the Commentarii de statu religioniti et reipublicse Carolo V. Csesare, by J. Sleidanus, the account of Charles having abdicated and sailed to Spain is followed, without any break, by the words: " Octohris die ultimo Joannes Sleidanus, J. U. L., vir et propter eximias animi dotes et singularem doctrinam omni laude dignus, Argentorati e vita decedit, atque ibidem honorijice sepelitur.^' This account of the death and burial of Sleidan is given in every edition of his Commentarii, contain- ing the 26th book, which the author added to the 25 books of the first edition of April 1555, for the purpose of bringing down the life of Charles V. to his abdication in September 1556. Even in the very first edition, Argentorati 1558, it is added without a break, and inserted in the table of contents as an integral part of the book, without the least intimation that it is by a different hand. " No doubt the writer thought that it was quite unnecessary to distinguish himself from the author of the work, as every- body would know that a man could not possibly write an account of his own death and burial." Yet any one who should appeal to this as a proof that Sleidan was not the author of the Commentarii, would make himself ndiculous in the eyes of every student of history. 28 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. tains all its force, even if not only ctap. xxxiv., the blessii Moses in chap, xxxiii., whose title proves it to be an appe to the Thorah, and the song in chap, xxxii., are included ii supplement added by a different hand, but if the supple; commences at chap. xxxi. 24, or, as Delitzsch supposes, at ( xxxi. 9. For even in the latter case, the precepts of Mos( the reading of the Thorah at the feast of Tabernacles ol year of release, and on the preservation of the copy by the of the ark, would have been inserted in the original prepare Moses himself before it was deposited in the place appoir and the work of Moses would have been concluded, aftei death, with the notice of his death and burial. The supplei itself was undoubtedly added, not merely by a contempo] but by a man who was intimately associated with Moses, occupied a prominent position in the Israelitish communit; that his testimony ranks with that of Moses. Other objections to the Mosaic authorship we shall no so far as they need any special refutation, in our commen upon the passages in question. At the close of our expos; of the whole five books, we will review the modern hypoth which regard the work as the resultant of frequent revisions § 4. HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE BOOKS OF MOSES Acknowledgment of the historical credibility of the i recorded in the books of Moses requires a previous admissio the reality of a supernatural revelation from God. The w spread naturalism of modem theologians, which deduces origin and development of the religious ideas and truths of Old Testament from the nature of the human mind, mus necessity remit all that is said in the Pentateuch about direc supernatural manifestations or acts of God, to the region of titious sagas and myths, and refuse to admit the historical ta and reality of miracles and prophecies. But such an opii must be condemned as neither springing from the truth leadmg to the truth, on the simple ground that it is direct! variance with what Christ and His apostles have tauc^ht in' New Testament with reference to the Old, and alsols leac either to an unspiritual Deism or to a comfortless Pantl he: § i. HISTORICAL CHARACTER OP THE BOOKS OF MOSES 29 which ignores the working of God on the one hand, and the inmost nature of the human mind on the other. Of the reality of the divine revelations, accompanied by miracles and prophe- cies, the Christian, i.e. the believing Christian, has already a pledge in the miracle of regenerati(m and the working of the Holy Spirit within his own heart. He who has experienced in himself this spiritual miracle of divine grace, will also recognise as historical facts the natural miracles, by which the true and living God established His kingdom of grace in Israel, wherever the testimony of eye-witnesses ensures their credibility. Now we have this testimony in the ' case of all the events of Moses' own time, from his call downwards, or rather from his birth till his death ; that is to say, of all the events which are narrated in the last four books of Moses. The legal code contained in these books is now acknowledged by the most naturalistic oppo- nents of biblical revelation to have proceeded from Moses, so far as its most essential elements are concerned; and this is in itself a simple confession that the Mosaic age is not a dark and mythi- cal one, but falls within the clear light of history. The events of such an age might, indeed, by possibility be transmuted into legends in the course of centuries ; but onlj' in cases where they had been handed down from generation to generation by simple word of mouth. Now this cannot apply to the events of the Mosaic age ; for even the opponents of the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch admit, that the art of writing had been learned by the Israelites from the Egyptians long before that time, and that not merely separate laws, but also memorable events, were committed to writing. To this we must add, that the historical events of the books of Moses contain no traces of legendary transmutation, or mythical adornment of the actual facts. Cases of discrepancy, which some critics have adduced as containing proofs of this, have been pronounced by others of the same theo- logical school to be quite unfounded. Thus Bertheau says, with regard to the supposed contradictions in the different laws : " It always appears to me rash, to assume that there are contradic- tions in the laws, and to adduce these as evidence that the con- tradictory passages must belong to different periods. The state of the case is really this : even if the Pentateuch did gradually receive the form in which it has come down to us, whoever made additions must have known what the existing contents were, and 30 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. would therefore not only admit nothing that was contradid but would erase anything contradictory that might have its way in before. The liberty to make additions does appear to me to be either greater, or more involved inditbcul than that to make particular erasures." And on the supp discrepancies in the historical accounts, C. v. Lengerke hm says : " The discrepancies which some critics have discover© the historical portions of Deuteronomy, as compared with earlier books, have really no existence." Throughout, in J the pretended contradictions have for the most part been ir duced into the biblical text by the critics themselves, and 1 so little to sustain them in the narrative itself, that on cl research they resolve themselves into mere appearance, and differences can for the most part be easily explained. — The re is just the same in the case of the repetitions of the same histo] events, which have been regarded as legendary reduplicatior things that occurred but once. There are only two miracu occurrences mentioned in the Mosaic era which are said to 1 been repeated ; only two cases, therefore, in which it is pi ble to place the repetition to the account of legendary ficti viz. the feeding with quails, and bringing of water from a r But both of these are of such a character that the appearanc identity vanishes entirely before the distinctness of the histoi accounts, and the differences in the attendant circumstan The first feeding with quails took place in the desert of I before the arrival of the Israelites at Sinai, in the second mc of the first year ; the second occurred after their departure f Sinai, in the second month of the second year, at the so-ca graves of lust. The latter was sent as a judgment or plaj which brought the murmurers into the graves of their lust ; former merely supplied the deficiency of animal food. ' water was brought from the rock the first time in Eephic during the first year of their journey, at a spot which was ca in consequence Massah and Meribah ; the second time, at : desh, in the fortieth year, — and on this occasion Moses and As sinned so grievously that they were not allowed to enter Can; It is apparently different with the historical contents of book of Genesis. If Genesis was written by Moses, even tween the history of the patriarchs and the time of Moses tl is an interval of four or five centuries, in which the tradi § 4. HISTOEICAL CHAKACTER OF THE BOOKS OF MOSES. 31 might possibly have been corrupted or obscured. But to infer the reahty from the bare possibiKty would be a very unscientific proceeding, and at variance with the simplest rules of logic. Now, if w^ look at the history which has been handed down to us in the book of Genesis from the primitive times of the human race and the patriarchal days of Israel, the traditions from the primitive times are restricted to a few simple incidents natiirally described, and to genealogies which exhibit the development of the earliest families, and the origin of the different nations, in the plainest possible style. These transmitted accounts have such a genuine historical stamp, that no well-founded question can be raised concerning their credibility; but, on the contrary, all thorough historical research into the origin of different nations only tends to their confirmation. This also applies to the patri- archal history, in which, with the exception of the divine mani- festations, nothing whatever occurs that could in the most remote degree call to mind the myths and fables of the heathen nations, as to the lives and deeds of their heroes and progenitors. There are three separate accounts, indeed, in the lives of Abraham and Isaac of an abduction of their wives ; and modern critics can see nothing more in these, than three different mythical embel- lishments of one single event. But on a close and unprejudiced examination of the three accounts, the attendant circumstances in all three cases are so peculiar, and correspond so exactly to the respective positions, that the appearance of a legendary mul- tiplication vanishes, and all three events must rest upon a good historical foundation. " As the history of the world, and of the plan of salvation, abounds not only in repetitions of wonderful events, but also in wonderful repetitions, critics had need act modestly, lest in excess of wisdom they become foolish and ridiculous" {Delitzscli). Again, we find that in the guidance of the human race, from the earliest ages downwards, more espe- cially in the lives of the three patriarchs, God prepared the way by revelations for the covenant which He made at Sinai w'ith the people of Israel. But in these preparations we can discover no sign of any legendary and unhistorical transference of later cir- cumstances and institutions, either Mosaic or post-Mosaic, to the patriarchal age ; and they are sufficiently justified by the facts themselves, since the Mosaic economy cannot possibly have been brought into the world, like a deus ex machina, without the 32 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. slightest previous preparation. The natural simplicity o i patriarchal life, which shines out in every narrative, is anotJ thing that produces on every unprejudiced reader the impress of a genuine historical tradition. This tradition, therefore, e^ though for the most part transmitted from generation to gene tion by word of mouth alone, has every title to credibility, sii it was perpetuated within the patriarchal family, " in whi. according to divine command (Gen. xviii. 19), the manifes tions of God in the lives of the fathers were handed down as heirloom, and that with all the greater ease, in proportion to 1 longevity of the patriarchs, the simplicity of their life, and I closeness of their seclusion from foreign and discordant ini ences. Such a tradition would undoubtedly be guarded w the greatest care. It was the foundation of the very existei of the chosen family, the bond of its unity, the mirror of duties, the pledge of its future history, and therefore its dear inheritance" (Delitzsch). But we are by no means to supp that all the accounts and incidents in the book of Genesis w( dependent upon oral tradition ; on the contrary, there is mc which was simply copied from written documents handed do' from the earliest times. Not only the ancient genealogies, wh: may be distinguished at once from the historical narratives their antique style, with its repetitions of almost stereotyj formularies, and by the peculiar forms of the names which tl contain, but certain historical sections — such, for example, the account of the war in Gen. xiv., with its superabundance genuine and exact accounts of a primitive age, both histori and geographical, and its old words, which had disappeared fr the living language before the time of Moses, as well as ma others — were unquestionably copied by Moses from ancient doi ments. (See UdvernicMs Introduction.) To all this must be added the fact, that the historical c( tents, not of Genesis only, but of all the five books of Mos are pervaded and sustained by the spirit of true religion. T spirit has impressed a seal of truth upon the historical writu of the Old Testament, which distinguishes them from all mar human historical compositions, and may be recognised in fact, that to all who yield themselves up to the influence of Spirit which lives and moves in them, it points the way to knowledge of that salvation which God Himself has revealed THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. (GENESIS.) INTEODUCTION. CONTENTS, DESIGN, AND PLAN OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS. [HE first book of Moses, wliicli has the superscription fT'K'Nna in the original, Fez/ecrts Koa-fiov in the Cod. Alex, of the LXX., and is called liber creationis by the Eabbins, has received the name of Genesis from its entire contents. Commencing with the creation of the Jieaven and the earth, and concluding with the death of the patriarchs Jacob and Joseph, this book supplies us with infor- mation with regard not only to the first beginnings and earlier stages of the world and of the human race, but also to those of the divine institutions which laid the foundation for the king- dom of God. Genesis commences with the creation of the world, because the heavens and the earth form the appointed sphere, so far as time and space are concerned, for the kingdom of God; because God, according to His eternal counsel, ap- pointed the world to be the scene both for the revelation of His invisible essence, and also for the operations of His eternal love within and among His creatures ; and because in the beginning He created the world to be and to become the kingdom of God. The creation of the heaven and the earth, therefore, receives as its centre, paradise ; and in paradise, man, created in the image of God, is the head and crown of all created beings. The his- tory of the world and of the kingdom of God begins with him. His fall from God brought death and corruption into the whole creation (Gen. iii. 17 sqq. ; Eom. viii. 19 sqq.) ; his redemp- 34 INTRODUCTION. tion from the fall will be completed in and with the g oi cation of the heavens and the earth (Isa. Ixv. 17, Ixvi- - Pet. iii. 13 ; Kev. xxi. 1). By sin, men have departed i separated themselves from God; but God, in His infinite mei has not cut Himself off from men, His creatures. Aot o did He announce redemption along with punishment imi diately after the fall, but from that time forward He contini to reveal Himself to them, that He might draw them baci Himself, and lead them from the path of destruction to the v of salvation. And through these operations of God upon world in-theophanies, or revelations by word and deed, the his rical development of the human race became a history of plan of salvation. The book of Genesis narrates that historj broad, deep, comprehensive sketches, from its first beginning the time of the patriarchs, whom God chose from among nations of the earth to be the bearers of salvation for the en1 world. This long space of 2300 years (from Adam to flood, 1656 ; to the entrance of Abram into Canaan, 365 ; Joseph's death, 285 ; in all, 2306 years) is divisible into t periods. The first period embraces the development of : human race from its first creation and fall to its dispersion o- the earth, and the division of the one race into many natio with different languages (chap. ii. 4-xi. 26) ; and is divided the flood into two distinct ages, which we may call the prime age and the preparatory age. All that is related qf the prime age, from Adam to Noah, is the history of the fall ; the mode life, and longevity of the two families which descended from • two sons of Adam ; and the universal spread of sinful corrupt in consequence of the intermarriage of these two families, y differed so essentially in their relation to God (chap. ii. 4-vi. The primeval history closes with the flood, in which the world perished (chap. vi. 9-viii. 19). Of the preparatory c from Noah to Terah the father of Abraham, we have an accoi of the covenant which God made with Noah, and of Noa blessing and curse ; the genealogies of the families and tri which descended from his three sons ; an account of the c^ fusion of tongues, and the dispersion of the people ; and ■ genealogical table from Shem to Terah (chap. viii. 20-ii. 26) The second period consists of the patriarchal era. From this have an elaborate description cf the lives of the three patriar CONTENTS, DESIGN, AND PLAN OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS. 35 of Israel, the family chosen to be the people of God, from the call of Abraham to the death of Joseph (chap. xi. 27-1.). Thus the history of humanity is gathered up into the history of the one family, which, received the promise, that God would multiply it into a great people, or rather into a multitude of peoples, would make it a blessing to all the families of the earth, and would give it the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. This general survey will suffice to bring out the design of the book of Genesis, viz., to relate the early history of the Old Testament kingdom of God. By a simple and unvarnished description of the development of the world under the guidance and discipline of God, it shows how God, as the preserver and governor of the world, dealt with the human race which He haq created in His own image, and how, notwithstanding their fall and through the misery which ensued. He prepared the way for the fulfilment of His original design, and the establishment! of the kingdom which should bring salvation to the world. Whilst by virtue of the blessing bestowed in their creation, the human race was increasing from a single pair to families and nations, and peopling the earth; God stemmed the evil, which sin had introduced, by words and deeds, by the announcement of His will in commandments, promises, and threats, and by the infliction of punishments and judgments upon the despisers of His mercy. Side by side with the law of expansion from the unity of a family to the plurality of nations, there was carried on from the very first a law of separation between the ungodly and those that feared God, for the purpose of preparing and preserving a holy seed for the rescue and salvation of the whole human race. This double law is the organic principle which lies at the root of all the separations, connections, and disposi- tions which constitute the history of the book of Genesis. In accordance with the law of reproduction, which prevails in the preservation , and increase of the human race, the genealogies show the historical bounds within which the persons and events that marked the various epochs are confined ; whilst the law of selection determines the arrangement and subdivision- of such historical materials as are employed. So far as the plan of the book is concerned, the historical contents are divided into ten groups, with the uniform heading, " These are the generations'^ (with the exception of chap. v. 1 : 36 INTRODUCTION. "This is the book of the generations"); the account of 1 creation forming the substratum of the whole. These groi consist of the Tholedoth : 1. of the heavens and the earth (ch ii. 4-iv. 26); 2. of Adam (v. 1-vi. 8); 3. of Noah (vi. 9- 29) ; 4. of Noah's sons (x. 1-xi. 9) ; 5. of Shem (xi. 10-2( 6. of Terah (xi. 27-xxv. 11) ; 7. of Ishmael (xxv. 12-18); of Isaac (xxv. 19-xxxv. 29) ; 9. of Esau (xxxvi.) ; and 10. Jacob (xxxvii.-L). There are five groups in the first peri and five in the second. Although, therefore, the two peri( differ* considerably with regard to their scope and contents, then: historical importance to the book of Genesis they are uj a par ; and the number ten stamps upon the entire book, rather upon the early history of Israel recorded in the book, 1 character of completeness. This arrangement flowed qu naturally from the contents and purport of the book. The t periods, of which the early historj' of the kingdom of God Israel consists, evidently constitute two great divisions, so far their internal character is concerned. All that is related the first period, from Adam to Terah, is obviously connected, doubt, with the establishment of the kingdom of God in Isrs but only in a remote degree. The account of paradise exhil the primary relation of man to God and his position in world. In the fall, the necessity is shown for the interposit of God to rescue the fallen. In the promise which followed curse of transgression, the first glimpse of redemption is se The division of the descendants of Adam into a God-fearing i an ungodly race exhibits the relation of the whole human r to God. The flood prefigures the judgment of God upon ungodly; and the preservation and blessing of Noah, the j tection of the godly from destruction. And lastly, in genealogy and division of the different nations on the one ha and the genealogical table of Shem on the other, the selectioi one nation is anticipated to be the recipient and custodial the divine revelation. The special preparations for the train of this nation commence with the call of Abraham, and con of the care bestowed upon Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and tl posterity, and of the promises which they received. The lead events in the first period, and the prominent individuals in second, also furnished, in a simple and natural way, the requi points of view for grouping the historical materials of cncli un THE FIEST BOOK OF MOSES I. 1- II. 3. 37 a fivefold division. The proof of this will be found in the ex- position. Within the different groups themselves the arrange- ment adopted is this : the materials are arranged and distri- buted according to the law of divine selection ; the families which branched off from the main line are noticed first of all ; and when they have been removed from the general scope of the history, the course of the main line is more elaborately de- scribed, and the history itself is carried forward. According to this plan, which is strictly adhered to, the history of Oain and his family precedes that of Seth and his posterity ; the gene- alogy of Japhet and Ham stands before that of Shem ; the history of Ishmael and Esau, before that of Isaac and Jacob ; and the death of Terah, before the call and migration of Abra- ham to Canaan. In this regularity of composition, according to a settled plan, the book of Genesis may clearly be seen to be the careful production of one single author, who looked at the historical development of the human race in the light of divine revelation, and thus exhibited it as a complete and well arranged introduction to the history of the Old Testament kingdom of God. THE CREATION OF THE WORLD. CHAP. I. l-II. 3 The account of the creation, its commencement, progress, and completion, bears the marks, both in form and substance, of a historical document in which it is intended that we should accept as actual truth, not only the assertion that God created the heavens, and the earth, and all that lives and moves in the world, but also the description of the creation itself in all its several stages. If we look merely at the form of this document, its place at the beginning of the book of Genesis is sufficient to warrant the expectation that it will give us history, and not fiction, or human speculation. As the development of the human family has been from' the first a historical fact, and as man really occupies that place in the world which this record assigns him, the creation of man, as well as that of the earth on 38 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. which, and the heaven for which, he is to live, must also hi work of God, i.e. a fact of objective truth and reahty. i grand simplicity of the account is in perfect harmony witli t fact. " The whole narrative is sober, definite, clear, and cc crate. The historical events described contain a rich treasn of speculative thoughts and poetical glory; but they themseh are free from the influence of human invention and hum philosophizing" (JDelitzsch). This is also true of the arran^ ment of the whole. The work of creation does not fall, fferder and others maintain, into two triads of days, with t work of the second answering to that of the first. For althou, the creation of the light on the first day seems to correspond that of the light-bearing stars on the fourth, there is no reali in the parallelism which some discover between the second a third days on the one hand, and the third and fourth on t other. On the second day the firmament or atmosphere formed ; on the fifth, the fish and fowl. On the third, after t sea and land are separated, the plants are formed ; on the sisi the animals of the dry land and man. Now, if the creation the fowls which fill the air answers to that of the firmamei the formation of the fish as the inhabitants of the waters ou£ to be assigned to the sixth day, and not to the fifth, as bei parallel to the creation of the seas. The creation of the f and fowl on the same day is an evident proof that a parallel!: between the first three days of creation and the last three is i intended, and does not exist. Moreover, if the division of 1 work of creation into so many days had been the result human reflection ; the creation of man, who was appointed I( of the earth, would certainly not have been assigned to the sa: day as that of the beasts and reptiles, but would have been k( distinct from the creation of the beasts, and allotted to the sevei day, in which the creation was completed, — a meaning wh: Ricliers and Keerl have actually tried to force upon the text the Bible. In the different acts of creation we perceive ind( an evident progress from the general to the particular, from i lower to the higher orders of creatures, or rather a steady advai towards more and more concrete forms. But on the fourth c this progress is interrupted in a way which we cannot expls Tn the transition from the creation of the plants to that of s' moon, and stars, it is impossible to discover either a " wi CHAP. I. l-II. 3. 39 arranged and constant progress," or " a genetic advance," since the stars are not intermediate links between plants and animals, and, in fact, have no place at all in the scale of earthly creatures. — ^If we pass on to the contents of our account of the creation, they differ as widely from all other cosmogonies as truth from fiction. Those of heathen nations are either hjdozoistical, de- ducing the origin of life and living beings from some primeval matter ; or pantheistical, regarding the whole world as emanating from a common divine substance ; or mythological, tracing both gods and men to a chaos or world-egg. They do not even rise to the notion of a creation, much less to the knowledge of an almighty God, as the Creator of all things.^ Even in the Etruscan and Persian myths, which correspond so remarkably to the biblical account that they must have been derived from it, the successive acts of creation are arranged according to the suggestions of human probability and adaptation.^ In contrast ^ According to Berosus and Syncellus, the Chaldean myth represents the "All" as consisting of darkness and water, filled with monstrous creatures, and ruled by a woman, Markaya, or 'Ofiopaxa (? Ocean). Bel divided the darkness, and cut the woman into two halves, of which he formed the heaven and the earth ; he then cut off his own head, and from the drops of blood men were formed. — According to the Phoenician myth of Sancliu- niathon, the beginning of the AU was a movement of dark air, and a dark, turbid chaos. - By the union of the spirit with the All, Mot, i.e. slime, was formed, from which every seed of creation and the universe was deve- loped ; and the heavens were made in the form of an egg, from which the sun and moon, the stars and constellations, sprang. By the heating of the earth and sea there arose winds, clouds and rain, lightning and thunder, the roaring of which wakened up sensitive beings, so that living creatures of both sexes moved in the waters and upon the earth. In another passage Sanchuniathon represents KoX^r/a (probably n'a ?ip, the moaning of the wind) and his wife B««w (bohu) as producing Aiau and -rrparoyovoi;, two mortal men, from whom sprang Tiuo; and Tiuici, the inhabitants of PhoB- nicia. — It is weU known from Hesioifs iheogony how the Grecian myth represents the gods as coming into existence at the same time as the world. The numerous inventions of the Indians, again, all agree in this, that they picture the origin of the world as an emanation from the absolute, through Brahma's thinking, or through the contemplation of a primeval being called Tad (it).— Buddhism also acknowledges no God as creator of the world, teaches no creation, but simply describes the origin of the world and the beings that inhabit it as the necessary consequence of former acts performed by these beings themselves. ^ According to the Etruscan saga, which Suidas quotes from a his- torian, who was a " t«;o avrois (the Tyrrhenians) efiTupo; xu'/ip (therefore 40 THE FIEST BOOK OF MOSES. with all these mythical inventions, the biblical account sliines c in the clear light of truth, and proves itself by its contents .o an integral part of the revealed history, of which it is accept as the pedestal throughout the whole of the sacred Scnptur This is not the case with the Old Testament only ; but in t New Testament also it is accepted and taught by Christ and t apostles as the basis of the divine revelation. To select onlj few from the many passages of the Old and New Testamen in which God is referred to as the Creator of the heavens a the earth, and the almighty operations of the living God in i world are based upon the fact of its creation : in Ex. xx. 9-1 xxxi. 12-17, the command to keep the Sabbath is founded up the fact that God rested on the seventh day, when the work creation was complete ; and in Ps. viii. and civ., the creation depicted as a work of divine omnipotence in close adherence the narrative before us. From the creation of man, as descril in Gen. i. 27 and ii. 24, Christ demonstrates the irdissolu' character of marriage as a divine ordinance (Matt. xix. 4-( Peter speaks of the earth as standing out of the water and the water by the word of God (2 Pet. iii. 5) ; .and the author the Epistle to the Hebrews, " starting from Gen. ii. 2, descril it as the motive principle of all history, that the Sabbath of G is to become the Sabbath of the creature" (Delitzsch). The biblical account of the creation can also vindicate claim to be true and actual history, in the presence of doctrines of philosophy and the established results of natv science. So long, indeed, as philosophy undertakes to constr the universe from general ideas, it will be utterly unable comprehend the creation ; but ideas will never explain the es not a native)," God created the world in six periods of one thousan,d y each : in the first, the heavens and the earth;; in the second, the flrmam in the third, the sea and other waters of the earth; in the fourth, sun, m and stars ; in the fifth, the beasts of the air, the water, and the land the sixth, men. The world wiU last twelve thousand years, the human six thousand. — According to the saga of the Zend in Avesta, the sup] Being Ormuzd created the visible world by his word in six periods or tl sands of years : (1) the heaven, with the stars ; (2) the water on the ef with the clouds ; (3) the earth, with the mountain Alborj and the c mountains ; (4) the trees ; (5) the beasts, which sprang from the prin beast; (6) men, the first of whom was Kajomorts. Every one of i separate creations is celebrated by a festival. The world will last tv thousand years. CHAP. I. l-ll. 3. 4-1 ence of things. Creation is an act of the personal God, not a process of nature, the development of which can be traced to the laws of birth and decay that prevail in the created world. But the work of God, as described in the history of creation, is in perfect harmony with the correct notions of divine omnipo- tence, wisdom, and goodness. The assertion, so frequently made, that the course of the creation takes its form from the Hebrew week, which was already in existence, and the idea of God's rest- ing on the seventh day, from the institution of the Hebrew Sab- bath, is entirely without foundation. There is no allusion in Gen. ii. 2, 3 to the Sabbath of the Israelites ; and the week of seven days is older than the Sabbath of the Jewish covenant. Natural research, again, will never explain the origin of the universe, or even of the earth ; for the creation lies beyond the limits of the territory within its reach. By all modest natural- ists, therefore, it is assumed that the origin of matter, or of the original material of the world, was due to an act of divine crea- tion. But there is no firm ground for the conclusion which they draw, on the basis of this assumption, with regard to the forma- tion or development of the world from its first chaotic condition into a fit abode for man. All the theories which have been adopted, from Descartes to the present day, are not the simple and well-established inductions of natural science founded upon careful observation, but combinations of partial discoveries em- pirically made, with speculative ideas of very questionable worth. The periods of creation, which modem geology maintains with such confidence, that not a few theologians have accepted them as undoubted and sought to bring them into harmony with the scriptural account of the creation, if not to deduce them from the Bible itself, are inferences partly from the successive strata which compose the crust of the earth, and partly from the various fossil remains of plants and animals to be found in those strata. The former are regarded as proofs of successive formation; and from the difference between the plants and animals found in a fossil state arid those in existence now, the conclusion is drawn, that their creation must have preceded the present formation, which either accompanied or was closed by the advent of man. But it is not difficult to see that the former of these conclusions could only be regarded as fully established, if the process by which the different strata were formed were PENT. VOL. I. P 42 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. clearly and fully known, or if the different formations wf always found lying in the same order, and could be readily d tinguished from one another. But with regard to the origin the different species of rock, geologists, as is well known, i divided into two contending schools : the Neptunists, who att bute all the mountain formations to deposit in water ; and t Plutonists, who trace all the non-fossiliferous rocks to the acti of heat. According to the Neptunists, the crystalHne rocks r the earliest or primary formations ; according to the Plutonis the granite burst through the transition and stratified rocks, a were driven up from witliin the earth, so that they are of la1 date. But neither theory is sufficient to account in this mecl nical way for all the phenomena connected with the relati position of the rocks ; consequently, a third theory, which si: poses the rocks to be the result of chemical processes, is stead gaining ground. Now if the rocks, both crystalline and stra fied, were formed, not in any mechanical way, but by chemii processes, in which, besides fire and water, electricity, galvanis magnetism, and possibly other forces at present unknown physical science were at work; the different formations m have been produced contemporaneously and laid one up another. Till natural science has advanced beyond mere o nion and conjecture, with regard to the mode in which the roc were formed and their positions determined ; there can be ground for assuming that conclusions drawn from the success order of the various strata, with regard to the periods of th formation, must of necessity be true. This is the more appare when we consider, on the one hand, that even the principal f mations (the primary, transitional, stratified, and tertiary), not mention the subdivisions of which each of these is composed, not always occur in the order laid down in the system, but not a few instances the order is reversed, crystalline primi rocks lying upon transitional, stratified, and tertiary formatii (granite, syenite, gneiss, etc., above both Jura-limestone £ chalk) ; and, on the other hand, that not only do the differ leading formations and their various subdivisions frequer shade off into one another so imperceptibly, that no bound line can be drawn between them and the species distinguisl by oryctognosis are not sharply and clearly defined in nati but that, instead of surrounding the entire globe, thev are CHAP. I. l-II. 3. 43 met with in certain localities only, whilst whole series of inter- mediate links are frequently missing, the tertiary formationa especially being universally admitted to be only partial. — The- second of these conclusions also stands or falls with the assump- tions on which they are founded, viz. with the three proposi- tions : (1) that each of the fossiliferous formations contains an order of plants and animals peculiar to itself ; (2) that these are so totally different from the existing plants and animals, that the latter could not have sprung from them ; (3) that no fossil remains of man exist of the same antiquity as the fossil remains of animals. Not one of these can be regarded as an established truth, or as the unanimously accepted result of geognosis. The assertion so often made as an established fact, that the transition rocks contain none but fossils of the lower orders of plants and animals, that mammalia are first met with in the Trias, Jura, and chalk formations, and warm-blooded animals in the tertiary rocks, has not been confirmed by continued geognostic re- searches, but is more and more regarded as untenable. Even the frequently expressed opinion, that in the different forms of plants and animals of the successive rocks there is a gradual and to a certain extent progressive development of the animal and vegetable world, has not commanded universal acceptance. Numerous instances are known, in which the remains of one and the same species occur not only in two, but in several suc- cessive formations, and there are some types that occur in nearly all. And the widely spread notion, that the fossil types are alto- gether different from the existing families of plants and animals, is one of the unscientific exaggerations of actual facts. All the fossil plants and animals can be arranged in the orders and classes of the existing flora and fauna. Even with regard to the genera there is no essential difference, although many of the existing types are far inferior in size to the forms of the old world. It is only the species that can be shown to differ, either entirely or in the vast majority of cases, from species in exist- ence now. But even if all the species differed, which can by no means be proved, this would be no valid evidence that the existing plants and animals had not sprung from those that have passed away, so long as natural science is unable to obtain any clear insight into the origin and formation of species, and the question as to the extinction of a species or its transition into 44 THE FIEST BOOK OF MOSES. another has met with no satisfactory solution. Lastly, even ni the occurrence of fossil human bones among those of anim that perished at least before the historic age, can no lon^ be disputed, although Central Asia, the cradle of the hum race, has not yet been thoroughly explored by palseontologis If then the premises from which the geological periods ha been deduced are of such a nature that not one of them firmly established, the different theories as to the formati of the earth also rest upon two questionable assumptions, v (1) that the immediate working of God in the creation was ] stricted to the production of the chaotic matter, and that t formation of this primary matter into a world peopled by i numerable organisms and living beings proceeded according the laws of nature, which have been discovered by science as force in the existing world ; and (2) that all the changes, whi the world and its inhabitants have undergone since the creati^ was finished, may be measured by the standard of changes o served in modem times, and stiU occurring from time to tin But the Bible actually mentions two events of the primeval a£ whose effect upon the form of the earth and the animal ai vegetable world no natural science can explain. We refer the curse pronounced upon the earth in consequence of the fi of the progenitors of our race, by which even the animal woi was made subject to 1 (rendered Veste by Luther, after the aTepecofia of the LXX. SiaA firmamentum of the Vulgate) is called heaven in ver. 8, i.e. the vault of heaven, vs^hich stretches out above the earth. The waters under the firmament are the waters upon the globe itself ; those above are not ethereal waters^ beyond the limits of the ^ There is no proof of the existence of such " ethereal waters" to be found in such passages as Rev. iv. 6, xv. 2, xxii. 1 ; for what th© holy seer there beholds before the throne as " a sea of glass like unto crystal mingled with fire," and " a river of living'water, clear as crystal," flowing from the throne of God into the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem, are wide as the poles from any fluid or material substance from which the stars were made upon the fourth day. Of such a fluid the Scriptures know quite as little, as of the nebu- lar theory of La Place, which, notwithstanding the bright spots in Mars and the inferior density of Jupiter, Saturn, and other planets, is still enveloped in a mist which no astronomy will ever disperse. If the waters above the fir- mament were the elementary matter of which the stars were made, the waters beneath must be the elementary matter of which the earth was formed ; for the waters were one and the same' before the creation of the firmament. But the earth was not formed from the waters beneath ; on the contrary, these waters were merely spread upon the earth and then gathered together into one place, and this place is called Sea. The earth, which appeared as dry land after the accumulation of the waters in the sea, was created in the beginning along with the heavens ; but until the separation of land and water on the third day, it was so completely enveloped in water, that nothing could be seen but " the deep," or " the waters" (ver. 2). If, therefore, in the course of the work of creation, the heaven with its stars, and the earth with its vegetation and living creatures, came forth from this deep, or, to speak more correctly, if they appeared as well-ordered, and in a certain sense as finished worlds ; it would be a complete misunderstanding of the account of the creation to suppose it to teach, that the water formed the elementary matter, out of which the heaven and the earth were made with aU their hosts. Had this been the meaning of the writer, he would have mentioned water as the first creation, and not the heaven and the earth. How irreconcilable the idea of the waters above the firmament being ethereal waters is with the biblical representation of the opening of the windows of heaven when it rains, is evident from the way in which Keerl, the latest supporter of this theory, sets aside this difficulty, viz. by the bold assertion, that the mass of water which came through the windows of heaven at the flood was different from thfe rain which falls from the clouds ; in direct opposition to the text of the Scriptures, which speaks of it not merely as rain (vii. 12), but as the water of the clouds. Vid. ch. ix. 12 sqq., where it is said that when God brings a cloud over the earth, He will set the rainbow in the cloud, as a sign that the water (of the clouds collected above the earth) shall not become a flood to destroy the earth again. 54 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. terrestrial atmosphere, but the waters which float in the at- mosphere, and are separated by it from those upon the eartli the waters which accumulate in clouds, and then bursting these their bottles, pour down as rain upon the earth. For, accord- ing to the Old Testament representation, whenever it rains heavily, the doors or windows of heaven are opened (ch. vii. 11, 12 ; Ps. Ixxviii. 23, cf. 2 Kings vii. 2, 19 ; Isa. xxiv. 18). It is in (or with) the upper waters that God layeth the beams of His chambers, from which He watereth the hills (Ps. civ. 3, 13), and the clouds are His tabernacle (Job xxxvi. 29). If, therefore, according to this conception, looking from an earthly point of view, the mass of water which flows upon the earth in showers of rain is shut up in heaven (cf. viii. 2), it is evident that it must be regarded as above the vault which spans the eai-th, or, accordina: to the words of Ps. cxlviii. 4, " above the heavens."^ Vers. 9-13. The Third Day.— The work of this day was twofold, yet closely connected. At first the waters beneath the heavens, i.e. those upon the surface of the earth, were gathered together, so that the dry (i^^'a^n, the solid ground) appeared. In what way the gathering of the earthly waters in the sea and the appearance of the dry land were effected, whether by the sinking or deepening of places in the body of the globe, into which the water was drawn off, or by the elevation of the solid ground, the record does not inform us, since it never describes the process by which effects are produced. It is probable, how- ever, that the separation was caused both by depression and elevation. With the dry land the mountains naturally arose as the headlands of the mainland. But of this we have no physi- cal explanations, either in the account before us, or in the poetical description of the creation in Ps. civ. Even if we render Ps. civ. 8, " the mountains arise, and they (the waters^ ' In ver. 8 the LXX. interpolate xai tHev 6 Qtig on x-oChiv (and Goc saw that it was good), and transfer the words " and it was so" from thi end of ver. 7 to the close of ver. 6. Two apparent improvements, but ii reality two arbitrary changes. The transposition is copied from vers. 9 15, 24 ; and in making the interpolation, the author of the gloss has no observed that the division of the waters was not complete till the separa tiou of the dry land from the water had taken place, and therefore th proper place for the expression of approval is at the close of the work o the third day. CHAP. I. 9-13. 55 descend into the valleys, to the place which Thou (Jehovah) hast founded for them," we have no proof, in this poetical ac- count, of the elevation-theory of geology, since the psalmist is not speaking as a naturalist, but as a sacred poet describing the creation on the basis of Gen. i. " The dry" God called Earth, and " the gathering of the waters" i.e. the place into which the waters were collected. He called Sea. D''13||, an intensive rather than a numerical plural, is the great ocean, which surrounds the mainland on all sides, so that the earth appears to be founded upon seas (Ps. xxiv. 2). Earth and sea are the two constituents of the globe, by the separation of which its formation was com- pleted. The " seas " include the rivers which flow into the ocean, and the lakes which are as it were "detached fragments" of the ocean, though they are not specially mentioned here. By the divine act of naming the two constituents of the globe, and the divine approval which follows, this work is stamped with permanency ; and the second act of the third day, the clothing of the earth with vegetation, is immediately connected with it. At the command of God " the earth brought forth green (^W^\ seed yielding herb (3?'??), and fruit^bearing fruit-trees (''IS fV)'!^ These three classes embrace all the productions of the vegetable kingdom. sa''n, lit. the young, tender green, which shoots up after rain and covers the meadows and downs (2 Sam. xxiii. 4 ; Job xxxviii. 27 ; Joel ii. 22 ; Ps. xxiii. 2), is a generic name for all grasses and cryptogamous plants. 3W, with the epithet J*!! ?'''1!Pj yielding or forming seed, is used as a generic term for ■all herbaceous plants, corn, vegetables, and other plants by which seed-pods are formed, na ys : not only fruit-trees, but all trees and .shrubs, bearing fruit in which there is a seed according to its kind, i.e. fruit with kernels. pK? -'5' (upon the earth) is not to be joined to " fruit-tree," as though indicating the superior size of the trees which bear seed above the earth, in distinction from vegetables which propagate their species upon or in the ground; for even the latter bear their seed above the earth. It is appended to StJ''in, as a more minute explanation : the earth is to bring forth grass, herb, and trees, upon or above the ground, as an ornament or covering for it. iJ"'*?? (after its land), from fp species, which, is not only repeated in ver. 12 in its old form iwpf' in the case of the fruit-tree, but is also ap- pended to the herb. It indicates that the herbs and trees sprang 56 THE FIKST BOOK OF MOSES. out of the earth according to their kinds, and received, togeth with power to bear seed and fruit, the capacity to propaga and multiply their own kind. In the case of the grass there no reference either to different kinds, or to the production seed, inasmuch as in the young green grass neither the one n the other is apparent to the eye. Moreover, we must not pictu: the work of creation as consisting of the production of the fir tender germs which were gradually developed into herbs, shral and trees ; on the contrary, we must regard it as one element i the miracle of creation itself, that at the word of God not oa tender grasses, but herbs, shrubs, and trees, sprang out of tl earth, each ripe for the formation of blossom and the bearii of seed and fruit, without the necessity of waiting for yea before the vegetation created was ready to blossom and bei fruit. Even if the earth was employed as a medium in tl creation of the plants, since it was God who caused it to brin them forth, they were not the product of the powers of naturi generatio cequivoca in the ordinary sense of the word, but a wor of divine omnipotence, by which the trees came into existenc before their seed, and their fruit was produced in full develoj ment, without expanding gradually imder the influence of sui: shine and rain. Vers. 14-19. The Fourth Day. — After the earth ha been clothed with vegetation, and fitted to be the abode c living beings, there were created on the fourth day the sm moon, and stars, heavenly bodies in which the elementary ligl was concentrated, in order that its influence upon the earthl globe might be sufficiently modified and regulated for livin beings to exist and thrive beneath its rays, in the water, in th air, and upon the dry land. At the creative word of God tl bodies of light came into existence in the firmament, as lamp On ''n^, the singular of the predicate before the plural of th subject, in ver. 14, v. 23, ix. 29, etc., vid. Gesenius, Heb. G: § 147. nnisp, bodies of light, light-bearers, then lamps. Thes bodies of light received a threefold appointment : (1) They wei " to divide between the day and the night" or, according to ve 18, between the light and the darkness, in other words, to regi late from that time forward the difference, which had existc ever since the creation of light, between the night and the da- CHAP. 1. 14-19. 57 (2) They were to he (or serve : l''ni. after an imperative has the force of a command), — (a) for signs {sc. for the earth), partly as portents of extraordinary events (Matt. ii. 2 ; Luke xxi. 25) and divine judgments (Joel ii. 30 ; Jer. x. 2 ; Matt. xxiv. 29), partly as showing the different quarters of the heavens, and as prog- nosticating the changes in the v^eather ; — (6) for seasons, or for fixed, definite times (Cnpin, from IT to fix, establish), — not for festal seasons merely, but " to regulate definite points and periods of time, by virtue of their periodical influence upon agriculture, navigation, and other human occupations, as well as upon the course of human, animal, and vegetable life {e.g. the breeding time of animals, and the migrations of birds, Jer. viii. 7, etc.) ; — (c) for days and years, i.e. for the division and calculation of days and years. The grammatical construction will not allow the clause to be rendered as a Hendiadys, viz. " as signs for definite times and for days and years," or as signs both for the times and also for days and years. (3.) They were to serve as lamps upon the earth, i.e. to pour out their light, which is in- dispensable to the growth and health of every creature. That this, the primary object of the lights, should be mentioned last, is correctly explained by Delitesch : " From the astrological and chronological utility of the heavenly bodies, the record ascends to their universal utility which arises from the necessity of light for the growth and continuance of everything earthly." This applies especially to the two great lights which were created by God and placed in the firmament ; the greater to rule the day, the lesser to rule the night. "The great" and "the small" in correlative clauses are to be understood as used comparatively (cf. Gesenius, § 119, 1). That the sun and moon were intended, was too obvious to need to be specially mentioned. It might appear strange, however, that these lights should not receive names from God, Hke the works of the first three days. This cannot be attributed to forgetfulness on the part of the author, as Tuch supposes. As a rule, the names were given by God only to the greater sections into which the universe was divided, and not to individual bodies (either plants or animals). The man and the woman are the only exceptions (chap. v. 2). The Sim and moon are called great, not in comparison with the earth, but in contrast with the stars, according to the amount of light which shines from them upon the earth and determines their PENT. — VOL. I. ^' 58 THE FIRST BOOK OF JTOSES. rule over the day and night ; not so much with reference to th fact, that the stronger light of the sun produces the daylighi and the weaker light of the moon illumines the night, as to th influence which their light exerts by day and night upon al nature, both organic and inorganic — an influence generally ad mitted, but by no means fully understood. In this respect thi sun and moon are the two great lights, the stars small bodies o: light ; the former exerting great, the latter but little, influena upon the earth and its inhabitants. This truth, which arises from the relative magnitude of th( heavenly bodies, or rather their apparent size as seen from th( earth, is not affected by the fact that from the standpoint ol natural science many of the stars far surpass both sun anc moon in magnitude. Nor does the fact, that in our accoiint which was written for inhabitants of the eaxth and for reUgioui purposes, it is only the utility of the sun, moon, and stars to tht inhabitants of the earth that is mentioned, preclude the possibi- lity of each by itself, and all combined, fulfilling other purposes in the universe of God. And not only is our record silent, bul God Himself made no direct revelation to man on this subject; because astronomy and physical science, generally, neither leac to godliness, nor promise peace and salvation to the soul. Beliel in the truth of this account as a divine revelation could only bf shaken, if the facts which science has discovered as indisputablj true, with regard to the number, size, and movements of the heavenly bodies, were irreconcilable with the bibMcal account oi the creation. But neither the innumerable host nor the ini' measurable size of many of the heavenly bodies, nor the almosi infinite distance of the fixed stars from our earth and the solai system, warrants any such assumption. Who can set bounds t( the divine omnipotence, and determine what and how much i can create in a moment ? The objection, that the creation o: the innumerable and immeasurably great and distant heavenl] bodies in one day, is so disproportioned to the creation of this oni little globe in six days, as to be irreconcilable with our notion of divine omnipotence and wisdom, does not affect the Bible but shows that the account of the creation has been misunder stood. We are not taught here that on one day, viz. the fourtl God created all the heavenly bodies out of nothing, and in perfect condition ; on the contrary, we are told that in the begin CHAP. I. 14-19. 59 ning God created the heaven and the earth, and on the fourth day that He made the sun, the moon, and the stars (planets, comets, and fixed stars) in the firmament, to be lights for the earth. According to these distinct words, the primary material, not only of the earth, but also of the heaven and the heavenly bodies, was created in the beginning. If, therefore, the heavenly bodies were first made or created on the fourth day, as lights for the earth, in the firmament of heaven ; the words can have no other meaning than that their creation was completed on the fourth daj;, just as the creative formation of our globe was finished on the third ; that the creation of the heavenly bodies therefore proceeded side by side, and probably by similar stages, with that of the earth, so that the heaven with its stars was com- pleted on the fourth day. Is this representation of the work of creation, which follows in the simplest way from the word of God, at variance with correct ideas of the omnipotence and wis- dom of God ? Could not the Almighty create the innumerable host of heaven at the same time as the earthly globe ? Or would Omnipotence require more time for the creation of the moon, the planets, and the sun, or of Orion, Sirius, the Pleiades, and other heavenly bodies whose magnitude has not yet been ascer- tained, than for the creation of the earth itself ? Let us beware of measuring the wbrks of Divine Omnipotence by the standard of human power. The fact, that in our account the gradual formation of the heavenly bodies is not described with the same minuteness as that of the earth ; but that, after the general statement in ver. 1 as to the creation of the heavens, all that is mentioned is their completion on the fourth day, when for the first time they assumed, or were placed in, such a position with regard to the earth as to influence its development ; may be ex- plained on the simple ground that it was the intention of the sacred historian to describe the work of creation from the stand- point of the globe : in other words, as it would have appeared to an observer from the earth, if there had been one in existence at the time. Eor only from such a standpoint could this work of God be made intelligible to all men, uneducated as well as learned, and the account of it be made subservient to the reli- gious wants of all.^ 1 Most of the objections to Mie historical character of our account, which have been founded upon the work of the fourth day, rest upon a miscon- go THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. Vers 20-23. The Fifth Day.— « (?oi «airf : Let the waters swarm with swarms, with lining beings, and let birds fly above th earth in the face (the front, i.e. the side turned towards the earth) of the firmament." ^sn.B^: and ^pSH] are imperative, i^arher translators, on the contrary, have rendered the latter as a rela- tive clause, after the Trerewa Trero/iem of the LXX., " and with birds that fly ;" thus making the birds to spring out of the water, in opposition to chap. ii. 19. Even with regard to the element out of which the water animals were created the text is silent; for the assertion that ptJ' is to be understood " with a causative colouring" is erroneous, and is not sustained by Ex. viii. 3 or Ps. cv. 30. The construction with the accusative is common to all verbs of multitude. n«?, from P.B', to creep and swarm, is applied, "without regard to size, to those animals which congre- gate together in great numbers, and move about among one another." n»n E'fiJ, animu viva, living soul, animated beings (vid. ii. 7), is "in apposition to Pf , " swarms consisting of living beings." The expression applies not only to fishes, but to all water animals from the greatest to the least, including reptiles, etc. In carrying out His word, God created (ver. 21) the great « tanninim," —lit. the long-stretched, from !W, to stretch, — whales, crocodiles, and other sea-monsters ; and " all moving living beings with which the waters swarm after their kind, and all (every) winged fowl after its kind." That the water animals and birds of every kind were created on the same day, and before the land animals, cannot be explained on the ground assigned by early writers, that there is a similarity between the air and the Water, and a consequent correspondence between the two classes of ani- mals. For in the light of natural history the birds are at all events quite as near to the mammalia as to the fishes ; and the supposed resemblance between the fins of fishes and the wings of birds, is counterbalanced by the no less striking resemblance be- tween birds and land animals, viz. that both have feet. The ception of the proper point of view from which it should be studied. And in addition to that, the conjectures of astronomers as to the immeasurabl distance of most of the fixed stars, and the time which a ray of light wouli require to reach the earth, are accepted as indisputable mathematical proof whereas these approximative estimates of distance rest upon the unsubstan tiated supposition, that everything which has been ascertained with regari to the nature and motion of light in our solar system, must be equally tru of the light of the fixed stars. CHAP. I. 20-31. 61 real reason is rather this, that the creation proceeds throughout from the lower to the higher ; and in this ascending scale the fishes occupy to a great extent a lower place in the animal economy than birds, and both water animals and birds a lower place than land animals, more especially the mammalia. Again, it is not stated that only a single pair was created of each kind ; on the contrary, the words, " let the waters swarm with living beings," seem rather to indicate that the animals were created, not only in a rich variety of genera and species, but in large numbers of individuals. The fact that but one human being was created at first, by no means warrants the conclusion that the animals were created singly also ; for the unity of the human race has a very different signification from that of the so-called animal species. — (Ver. 22). As animated beings, the water animals and fowls "are endowed, through the divine blessing, with the power to he fruitful and multiply. The word of blessing was the actual com- munication of the capacity to propagate and increase in numbers. Vers. 24-31. The Sixth Day. — Sea and air are filled with living creatures ; and the word of God ,now goes forth to the earth, to produce living beings after their kind. These are divided into three classes, ^ona, cattle, from onn, mutum, brutum . esse, generally denotes the larger domesticated quadrupeds (e.g. chap, xlvii. 18 ; Ex. xiii. 12, etc.), but occasionally the larger land animals as a whole. B^DT (the creeping) embraces the smaller land animals, which move either without feet, or with feet that are scarcely perceptible, viz. reptiles, insects, and worms. In ver. 25 they are distinguished from the race of water reptiles by the term HDlsn. pS inin (the old form of the construct state, for nsn n^n), the beast of the earth, i.e. the freely roving wild ani- mals. — " After its kindj^^^^j&xsiers to all three classes of living creatures, each of^aifiich had its peciiliaiL .species ; consequently in ver. 25, wh^^ethe word of God is fulfilled, it is repeated with every class. This act of creation, too, like all that precede it, is shown by/lhe divine word " good" to be in accordance with the Jod. But the blessing pronounced is omitted, the author dg to the account of the creation of man, in which the creation culminated. The creation of man does not place through a word addressed by God to the earth, but as the result of the divine decree, " We will make man in Our 62 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. image, after our likeness," which proclaims at the very outset tl distinction and pre-eminence of man above all the other crei tures of the earth. The plural " We" was regarded by tl fathers and earlier theologians almost unanimously as indicativ of the Trinity : modern commentators, on the contrary, regard : either as pluralis majestatis ; or as an address by God to Himsell the subject and object being identical ; or as communicative, ai address to the spirits or angels who stand around the Deity am constitute His council. The last is Philo's explanation : hiaXe r^erai o tiSz' oKaiv iraT'^p Toi'i eavrov hvvdfieaiv (Svya/tiets^angels) But although such passages as 1 Kings xsii. 19 sqq., Ps. Ixxxix 8, and Dan. x., show that God, as King and Judge of the world is surrounded by heavenly hosts, who stand around His throne and execute His commands, the last interpretation founders upon this rock : either it assumes without sufficient scriptural authority, and in fact in opposition to such distinct passages as chap. ii. 7, 22, Isa. xl. 13 seq., xliv. 24, that the spirits took part in the creation of man ; or it reduces the plural to an empty phrase, inasmuch as God is made to summon the angels to co- operate in the creation of man, and then, instead of employing them, is represented as carrying out the work alone. Moreover this view is irreconcilable with the words " in our image, after our likeness ;" since man was created in the image of God alone (ver. 27, chap. v. 1), and not in the image of either the angels, or God and the angels. A likeness to the angels cannot be in- ferred from Heb. ii. 7, or from Luke xx. 36. Just as Ifttle ground is there for regarding the plural here and in other pas- sages (iii. 22, xi. 7 ; Isa. vi. 8, xli. 22) as reflective, an appeal to self ; since the singular is employed in such cases as these, even where God Himself is preparing for any particular work (of. ii. 18 ; Ps. xii. 5 ; Isa. xxxiii. lOl^^^oother explanation is left, thepafi^, than to regMdgig||(PH|8te|^ten- CHAP. I. 24-31. 63 His kingdom appeared with more and more distinctness as per- sons of the Divine Being. On the words " in our image, after our likeness" modern commentators have correctly observed, that there is no foundation for the distinction drawn by the Greek, and after them by many of the Latin Fathers, betwen elKtav (imago) and o/j^olcoai,^ (similitudo), the former of which they sup- posed to represent the physical aspect of the likeness to God, the latter the ethical ; but that, on the contrary, the older Lutheran theologians were correct in stating that the two words are syno- nymous, and are merely combined to add intensity to the thought: " an image which is like Us" \Luther) ; since it is no more pos- sible to discover a sharp or well-defined distinction in the ordinarv use of the words between D?i' and niD'n, than between 3 and 3. D?S, from ?V, lit. a shadow, hence sketch, outline, differs no more from nwi, likeness, portrait, copy, than the German words Vmriss or Abriss (outline or sketch) from Bild or Abbild (likeness, copy). 3 and 3 are also equally interchangeable, as we may see from a comparison of this verse with chap. v. 1 and 3. (Compare also Lev. vi. 4 with Lev. xxvii. 12, and for the use of 3 to denote a norm, or sample, Ex. xxv. 40, xxx. 32, 37, etc.). There is more difficulty in deciding in what the likeness to God consisted. Cer- tainly not in the bodily form, the upright position, or command- ing aspect of the man, since God has no bodily form, and the man's body was formed from the dust of the ground ; nor in the dominion of man over nature, for this is unquestionably ascribed to man simply as the consequence or effluence of his likeness to God. Man is the image of God by virtue of his spiritual nature, of the breath of God by which the being, formed from the dust of the earth, became a living soul.^ The image of God consists, therefore, in the spiritual personality of man, though not merely in unity of self-consciousness and self-determination, or in the fact that man was created a consciously free Ego ; for personality 1 " The breath of God became the soul of man ; the soul of man there- fore is nothing but the breath of God. The rest of the world exists through the word of God ; man through His own peculiar breath. This breath is the seal and pledge of our relation to God, of our godlike dignity; whereas the breath breathed into the animals is nothing but the common breath, the life-wind of nature, which is moving everywhere, and only appears in the animal fixed and bound into a certain independence and individuality, so that the animal soul is nothing but a nature-soul individualized into cer- tain, though still material spirituality." — Ziegler. (54 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSE& is merely the basis and form of the divine likeness, not its m essence. This consists rather in the fact, that the manendowei with free self-conscious personality possesses, in his spiritual a well as corporeal nature, a creaturely copy of the holiness am blessedness of the divine life. This concrete essence of th divine likeness was shattered by sin ; and it is only througl Christ, the brightness of the glory of God and the expressioi of His essence (Heb. i. 3), that our nature is transformed int the image of God again (Col. iii. 10 ; Eph. iv. 24).—" And the, (D'lN, a generic term for men) shall have dominion over thejishj' etc. There is something striking in the introduction of the ex pression " and over all the earth," after the different races o animals have been mentioned, especially as the list of race appears to be proceeded with afterwards. If this appearand were actually the fact, it would be impossible to escape the con elusion that the text is faulty, and that n»n has fallen out; si that the reading should be, " and over all the wild beasts of tk earth," as the Syriac has it. But as the identity of "ever creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth" {^'».T\) with "ever thing that creepeth upon the ground" (nDnsn) in ver. 25 is no absolutely certain; on the contrary, the change in expressioi indicates a difference of meaning ; and as the Masoretic text i supported by the oldest critical authorities (LXX., Sam., Onk.) the Syriac rendering must be dismissed as nothing more than i conjecture, and the Masoretic text be understood in the follow ing manner. The author passes on from the cattle to the entir earth, and embraces all the animal creation in the espressira " every moving thing (c'DllT^a) that moveth upon the earth, just as in ver. 28, " every living thing HB'p'in upon the earth. According to this, God determined to give to the man about to b created in His Hkeness the supremacy, not only over the anims vcorld, but over the earth itself ; and this agrees with the blessin in ver. 28, where the newly created man is exhorted to replenis the earth and subdue it; whereas, according to the conjectm of the Syriac, the subjugation of the earth by man would I omitted from the divine decree. — ^Ver. 27. In the account of tl accomplishment of the divine purpose the words swell into jubilant song, so that we meet here for the first time with parallelismus membrorum, the creation of man being celebrate in three parallel clauses. The distinction drawn between in»{r(i CHAP. I. 24-31. 65 the image of God created He him) and ons (as man and woman created He them) must not be overlooked. The word onx, which indicates that God created the man and woman as two human beings, completely overthrows the idea that man was at first androgynous (-cf. chap. ii. 18 sqq.). By the blessing in ver. 28, God not only confers upon man the power to multiply and fill the earth, as upon the beasts in ver. 22, but also gives him dominion over the earth and every beast. In conclusion, the food of both man and beast is pointed out in vers. 29, 30, exclusively from the vegetable kingdom. Man is to eat of " every seed-bearing herb on the face of all the earth, and every tree on which there are fruits containing seed" consequently of the productions of both field and tree, in other words, of corn and fruit ; the animals are to eat of " every green herb," i.e. of vege- tables or green plants, and grass. From this it follows, that, according to the creative will of God, men were not to slaughter animals for food, nor were animals to prey upon one another ; consequently, that the fact which now prevails universally in nature and the order of the world, the violent and often painful destruction of life, is not a primary law of nature, nor a divine institution founded in the creation itself, but entered the world along with death at the fall of man, and became a necessity of nature through the curse of sin. It was not till after the flood, that men received authority from God to employ the flesh of animals as well as the green herb as food (ix. 3) ; and the fact that, according to the biblical view, no carnivorous animals existed at the first, may be inferred from the prophetic announcements in Isa. xi. 6-8, Ixv. 25, where the cessation of sin and the complete trans- formation of the world into the kingdom of God are described as being accompanied by the cessation of slaughter and the eat- ing of flesh, even in the case of the animal kingdom. With this the legends of the heathen world respecting the golden age of the past, and its return at the end of time, also correspond (cf. Gesenius on Isa. xi. 6-8). It is true that objections have been raised by natural historians to this testimony of Scrip- ture, but without scientific ground. For although at the pre- sent time man is fitted by his teeth and alimentary canal for the combination of vegetable and animal food; and although the law of mutual destruction so thoroughly pervades the whole b6 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. animal kingdom, that not only is the life of one sustained by the death of another, but " as the graminivorous animals check the overgrowth of the vegetable kingdom, so the excessive in- crease of the former is restricted by the beasts of prey, and of these again by the destructive implements' of man;" and al- though, again, not only beasts of prey, but evident symptoms of disease are met with among the fossil remains of the aboriginal animals : all these facts furnish no proof that the human and animal races were originally constituted for death and destrue- tion, or that disease and slaughter are older than the fall. For, to reply to the last objection first, geology has offered no con- clusive evidence of its doctrine, that the fossil remains of beasts of prey and bones with marks of disease belong to a pre-Adamite period, but has merely inferred it from the hypothesis already mentioned (pp. 41, 42) of successive periods of creation. Again, as even in the present order of nature the excessive increase of the vegetable kingdom is restrained, not merely by the grami- nivorous animals, but also by the death of the plants themselves through the exhaustion of their vital powers ; so the wisdom of the Creator could easily have set bounds to the excessive in- crease of the animal world, without requiring the help of hunts- men and beasts of prey, since many animals even now lose their lives by natural means, without being slain by men or eaten by beasts of prey. The teaching of Scripture, that death entered the world through sin, merely proves that 'the human race was created for eternal life, but by no means necessitates the as- sumption that the animals were also created for endless exist- ence. As the earth produced them at the creative word of God, the different individuals and generations would also have passed away and returned to the bosom of the earth, without violent destruction by the claws of animals or the hand of man, as soon as they had fulfilled the purpose of their existence. The decay of animals is a law of nature established in the creation itself and not a consequence of sin, or an effect of the death broughi into the world by the sin of man. At the same time, it was s( far involved in the effects of the fall, that the natural decay oi the different animals was changed into a painful death or violen end. Although in the animal kingdom, as it at present exists many varieties are so organized that they live exclusively upoi the flesh of other animals, which they kill and devour : this h CHAP. II. 1-8. 67 no means necessitates the conclusion, that the carnivorous beasts of prey were created after the fall, or the assumption that they were originally intended to feed upon flesh, and organized ac- cordingly. If, in consequence of the curse pronounced upon the earth after the sin of man, who was appointed head and lord of nature, the whole creation was subjected to vanity and the bondage of corruption (Eom. viii. 20 sqq.) ; this subjection might have been accompanied by a change in the organization of the animals, though natural science, which is based upon the observation and combination of things empirically discovered, could neither demonstrate the fact nor explain the process. And if natural science cannot boast that in any one of its many branches it has discovered all the phenomena connected with the animal and human organism of the existing world, how could it pretend to determine or limit the changes through which this organism may have passed in the course of thousands of years ? The creation of man and his installation as ruler on the earth brought the creation of all earthly beings to a close (ver. 31). God saw His work, and behold it was all very good; i.e. everything perfect in its kind, so that every creature might reacli the goal appointed by the Creator, and accomplish the purpose of its existence. By the appHcation of the term "good" to everything that God made, and the repetition of the word with the emphasis "very" at the close of the whole creation, the existence of anything evil in the creation of God is absolutely denied, and the hypothesis entirely refuted, that the six days' work merely subdued and fettered -an ungodly, evil principle, which had already forced its way into it. The sixth day, as being the last, is distinguished above all the rest by the article — >mn Di-i " a day, the sixth" (Gesenius, § 111, 2a). Chap. ii. 1-3. The Sabbath or Creation. — " Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them." N3S here denotes the totality of the beings that fill the heaven and the earth: in other places (see especially Neh. ix. 6) it is applied to the host of heaven, i.e. the stars (Deut. iv. 19, xvii. 3), and according to a still later representation, to the angels also (1 Kings xxii. 19 ; Isa. xxiv. 21 ; Neh. ix. 6 ; Ps. cxlviii. 2). These words of ver. 1 introduce the completion of the work of crea- 68 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. tion, and give a greater definiteness to the announcement in vers. 2, 3, that on the seventh day God ended the work whicli He had made, by ceasing to create, and blessing the day and sanctifying it. The completion or finishing (^f?) of the work of creation on the seventh day (not on the sixth, as the LXX., Sam., and Syr. erroneously render it) can only be understood bv recarding the clauses vers. 2b and 3, which are connected with 'py'^ by i consec. as containing the actual completion, i.e. by supposing the completion to consist, negatively in the cessation of the work of creation, and positively in the blessing and sanc- tifying of the seventh day. The cessation itself formed part of the completion of the work (for this meaning of nnB* vid. chap, vm. 22, Job xxxii. 1, etc.). As a human artificer completes his work just when he has brought it up to his ideal and ceases to work upon it, so in an infinitely higher sense, God completed the creation of the world with all its inhabitants by ceasing to produce anything new, and entering into the rest of His all- sufficient eternal Being, from which He had come forth, as it were, at and in the creation of a world distinct from His own essence. Hence ceasing to create is called resting (nw) in Ex. XX. 11, and being refreshed (B'SS';) in Ex. xxxi. 17. The rest into which God entered after the creation was complete, had its own reality " in the reality of the work of creation, in contrast with which the preservation of the world, when once created, had the appearance of rest, though really a continuous crea- tion" {Ziegler, p. 27). This rest of the Creator was indeed " the consequence of His self-satisfaction in the now united and harmonious, though manifold whole*" but this self-satisfaction of God in His creation, which we call His pleasure in His work, was also a spiritual power, which streamed forth as a blessing upon the creation itself, bringing it into the blessedness of the rest of God and filling it with His peace. This constitutes the positive element in the completion which God gave to the work of creation, by blessing and sanctifying the seventh day, be- cause on it He found rest from the work which He by making {n\bpb faciendo : cf. Ewald, § 280d) had created. The divme act of blessing was a real communication of powers of salvation, grace, and peace; and sanctifying was not merely declaring holy, but " communicating the attribute of holy," " placing in a living relation to God, the Holy One, raising to a participation CHAP. II. 1-3. 69 in the pure clear light of the holiness of God." On ^1p see Ex. xix. 6. The blessing and sanctifying of the seventh day had regard, no doubt, to the Sabbath, which Israel as the people of God was afterwards to keep ; but we are not to suppose that the theocratic Sabbath was instituted here, or that the institution of that Sabbath was transferred to the history of the creation. On the contrary, the Sabbath of the Israelites had a deeper mean- ing, founded in the nature and development of the created world, not for Israel only, but for all mankind, or rather for the whole creation. As the whole earthly creation is subject to the changes of time and the law of temporal motion and develop- ment; so all creatures not only stand in need of definite re- curring periods of rest, for the sake of recruiting their strength and gaining new power for further development, but they also look forward to a time when all restlessness shall give place to the blessed rest of the perfect consummation. To this rest the resting of God (fi KaTawavai^) points forward ; and to this rest, this divine aa^^aTia-fi6<; (Heb. iv. 9), shall the whole world, especially man, the head of the earthly creation, eventually come. For this God ended His work by blessing and sanctifying the day when the whole creation was complete. In connection with Heb. iv., some of the fathers have called attention to the fact, that the account of the seventh day is not summed up, like the others, with the formula " evening was and morning was ;" thus, e.g., Augustine writes at the close of his confessions : dies septimus sine vespera est nee habet occasum, quia sanctificasti eum ad per- mansionem sempiternam. But true as it is that the Sabbath of God has no evening, and that the o-a/SySarfcr/xo?, to which the creature is to attain at the end of his course, will be bounded by no evening, but last for ever; we must not, without further ground, introduce this true and profound idea into the seventh creation-day. We could only be warranted in adopting such an interpretation, and understanding by the concluding day of the work of creation a period of endless duration, on the supposition that the six preceding days were so many periods in the world's history, which embraced the time from the begin- ning of the creation to the final completion of its development. But as the six creation-days, according to the words of the text, were earthly days of ordinary duration, we must understand the seventh in the same way ; and that all the more, because in every 70 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. passage, in which it is mentioned as the foundation of the thee cratic Sabbath, it is regarded as an, ordinary day (Ex. xx. 1] xxxi. 17). We must conclude, therefore, that on the seventl day, on which God rested from His work, the world also, witl all its inhabitants, attained to the sacred rest of God ; that tb KaTairavau'^ and cra^l3aTtafi6 as giving the original pronunciation, chiefly on the ground of Eev. i. 4 and 5, 8 ; but the theological expansion 6 au »a\ 6 ^u »al 6 epxi/^ti/og caimot be regarded as a philological proof of the formation of niH by the fusion of nin, nin, iJV into one word. CHAP. II. 4 75 termined only by the subject itself" (Hofmann). The verb '^\n signifies " to be, to happen, to become ; " but as neither happen- ing nor becoming is applicable to God, the unchangeable, since the pantheistic idea of a becoming God is altogether foreign to the Scriptures, we must retain the meaning "to he;" not forgetting, however, that as the Divine Being is not a resting, or, so to speak, a dead being, but is essentially living, displaying itself as living, working upon creation, and moving in the world, the formation of mni from the imperfect precludes the idea of abstract existence, and points out the Divine Being as moving, pervading history, and manifesting Himself in the world. So far then as the words rTTiS IK'S nTiS are condensed into a proper name in mn'', and God, therefore, " is He who is," inasmuch as in His being, as historically manifested. He is the self-deter- mining one, the name Jehovah, which we have retained as being naturalized in the ecclesiastical phraseology, though we are quite in ignorance of its correct pronunciation, " includes both the absolute independence of God in His historical move- ments," and " the absolute constancy of God, or the fact that in everything, in both words and deeds, He is essentially in harmony with Himself, remaining always consistent" (Oehlef). The " 1 am who am," therefore, is the absolute /, the absolute personality, moving with unlimited freedom ; and in distinction from Elohim (the Being to be feared). He is the personal God in His historical manifestation, in which the fulness of the Divine Being unfolds itself to the world. This movement of the personal God in history, however, has reference to the re- alization of the great purpose of the creation, viz. the salvation of man. Jehovah therefore is the God of the history of sal- vation. This is not shown in the etymology of the name, but in its historical expansion. It was as Jehovah that God mani- fested Himself to Abram (xv. 7), when He made the covenant with him ; and as this name was neither derived from an attribute of God, nor from a divine manifestation, we must trace its origin to a revelation from God, and seek it in the declaration to Abram, "I am Jehovah." Just as Jehovah here revealed Himself to Abram as the God who led him out of Ur of the Ohaldees, to give him the land of Canaan for a possession, and thereby de- scribed Himself as the author of all the promises which Abram received at his call, and which were renewed to him and to his 76 THE FIKST BOOK OF MOSES. descendants, Isaac and Jacob; so did He reveal Himself to Moses (Ex. iii.) as the God of his fathers, to fulfil His promise to their seed, the people of Israel. Through these revelations Jehovah became a proper name for the God, who was working out the salvation of fallen humanity; and in this sense, not only is it used proleptically at the call of Abram (chap, xii.), but trans- ferred to the primeval times, and applied to all the manifestar tions and acts of God which had for their object the rescue of the human race from its fall, as well as to the special plan in- augurated in the call of Abram. The preparation commenced in paradise. To show this, Moses has introduced the name Jehovah into the history in the present chapter, and has indi- cated the identity of Jehovah with Elohim, not only by the constant association of the two names, but also by the fact that in the heading (ver. 4&) he speaks of the creation described in chap. i. as the work of Jehovah Elohim. PARADISE. — CHAP. II. 5-25. The account in vers. 5-25 is not a second, complete and independent history of the creation, nor does it contain mere appendices to the account in chap. i. ; but it describes the com- mencement of the history of the human race. This commence- ment includes not only a complete account of the creation of the first human pair, but a description of the place which God prepared for their abode, the latter being of the highest impor- tance in relation to the self-determination of man, with its mo- mentous consequences to both earth and heaven. Even in the history of the creation man takes precedence of all other crea- tures, as being created in the image of God and appointed lord of all the earth, though he is simply mentioned there as the last and highest link in the creation. To this our present account is attached, describing with greater minuteness the position of man in the creation, and explaining the circumstances which exerted the greatest influence upon his subsequent career. These circumstances were — the formation of man from the dust of the earth and the divine breath of life ; the tree of knowledge in paradise ; the formation of the woman, and the relation of the woman to the man. Of these three elements, the first forms the substratum to the other two. Hence the more exact CHAP. II. 6, 6. 77 account of the creation of Adam is subordinated to, and in- serted in, the description of paradise (ver. 7). In vers. 5 and 6, with which the narrative commences, there is an evident allusion to paradise : " And as yet there was (arose, grew) no shrub of the field upon the earth, and no herb of the field sprouted ; for Jehovah El had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; and a mist arose from the earth and watered the lohole surface of the ground'' n*n in parallelism with riDX means to become, to arise, to proceed. Although the growth of the shrubs and sprouting of the herbs are repre- sented here as dependent upon the rain and the cultivation of the earth by man, we must not understand the words as mean- ing that there was neither shrub nor herb before the rain and dew, or before the creation of man, and so draw the conclusion that the creation of the plants occurred either after or con- temporaneously with the creation of man, in direct contradic- tion to chap. i. 11, 12. The creation of the plants is not alluded to here at all, but simply the planting of the garden in Eden. The growing of the shrubs and sprouting of the herbs is different from the creation or first production of the vegetable kingdom, and relates to the growing and sprouting of the plants and germs which were called into existence by the creation, the natural development of the plants as it had steadily proceeded ever since the creation. This was dependent upon rain and human culture ; their creation was not. Moreover, the shrub and herb of the field do not embrace the whole of the vegetable productions of the earth. It is not a fact that " the field is used in the second section in the same sense as the earth in the first." n'le' is not " the widespread plain of the earth, the broad expanse of land," but a field of arable land, soil fit for cultiva- tion, which forms only a part of the "earth" or "ground,." Even the "beast of the field" in ver. 19 and iii. 1 is not synonymous with the " beast of the earth" in chap. i. 24, 25, but is a more restricted term, denoting only such animals as live upon the field and are supported by its produce, whereas the " beast of the earth" denotes all wild beasts as distinguished from tame cattle and reptiles. In the same way, the " shrub of the field" consists of such shrubs and tree-like productions of the cultivated land as man raises for the sake of their fruit, and the "herb of the field," all seed-producing plants, both corn 78 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. and vegetables, which serve as food for man and beast. — TL mist (IK, vapour, which falls as rain, Job xxxvi. 27) is coj rectly regarded by Delitzsch as the creative beginning of th rain (i''?l?n) itself, from which we may infer, therefore, that i rained before the flood. Ver. 7. " Then Jehovah God formed man from dust of ih ground." iSV is the accusative of the material employed {Ewal and Gesenius). The Vav consec. imperf. in vers. 7, 8, 9, does no indicate the order of time, or of thought ; so that the meaninj is not that God planted the garden in Eden after He ha( created Adam, nor that He caused the trees to grow after H( had planted the garden and placed the man there. The lattei is opposed to ver. 15 ; the former is utterly improbable. TIm process of man's creation is described minutely here, because il serves to explain his relation to God and to the surroundiDS world. He was formed from dust (not de limo terrm, from a clod of the earth, for isj; is not a solid mass, but the finest pari of the material of the earth), and into his nostril a breath oi life was breathed, by which he became an animated being, Hence the nature of man consists of a material substance and an immaterial principle of life. " The breath of life" i.e. breath producing Kfe, does not denote the spirit by which man is dis tinguished from the animals, or the soul of man from that of the beasts, but only the life-breath (vid. 1 Kings xvii. 17). It is true, noB'J generally signifies the human soul, but in chap. vii. 22 D''>n niTnara is used of men and animals both; and should any one explain this, on the ground that the allusion is cluefly to men, and the animals are connected per zeugma, or should he press the ruach attached, and deduce from this the use of neshamah in relation to men and animals, there aie several passages in which neShamah is synonymous with niMh (e.g. Isa. xlii. 5 ; Job xxxii. 8, xxxiii. 4), or Qiin Jin applied to animals (chap. vi. 17, vii. 15), or again neshamah used as equi- valent to nephesh (e.g. Josh. x. 40, cf. vers. 28, 30, 32). Foi neshamah, the breathing, ttvo^, is " the ruach in action" (Auber- len). Beside this, the man formed from the dust became, through the breathing of the " breath of life," a n>n % ac animated, and as such a living being; an expression which is also applied to fishes, birds, and land animals (i. 20, 21, 24, 30), and there is no proof of pre-eminence on the part of man. Ai CHAP. II. 7. 79 njn t^S), ylrv^rj t,S>aa, does not refer to the soul merely, but to the whole man as an animated being, so HDB'J does not denote the spirit of man as distinguished from body and soul. On the relation of the soul to the spirit of man nothing can be gathered from this passage ; the words, correctly interpreted, neither show that the soul is an emanation, an exhalation of the human spirit, nor that the soul was created before the spirit and merely received its life from, the latter. The formation of man from dust and the breathing of the breath of life we must not under- stand in a mechanical sense, as if God first of all constructed a human figure from dust, and then, by breathing His breath of life into the clod of earth which he had shaped into the form of a man, made it into a living being. The words are to be under- stood OeovpeTT&'i. By an act of divine omnipotence man arose from the dust ; and in the same moment in which the dust, by virtue of creative omnipotence, shaped itself into a human form, it was pervaded by the divine breath of life, and created a living being, so that we cannot say the body was earlier than the soul. The dust of the earth is merely the earthly substratum, which was formed by the breath of life from God into an animated, living, self-existent being. When it is said, " God breathed into his nostril the breath of life," it is evident that this descrip- tion merely gives prominence to the peculiar sign of life, viz. breathing j since it is obvious, that what God breathed into man could not be the air which man breathes ; for it is not that which breathes, but simply that which is breathed. Conse- quently, breathing into the nostril can only mean, that " God, through His own breath, produced and combined with the bodily form that principle of life, which was the origin of all human life, and which constantly manifests its existence in the breath inhaled and exhaled through the nose" {Delitzsch, Psychol, p. 62). Breathing, however, is common both to man and beast ; so that this cannot be the sensuous analogon of the supersensuous spiritual life, but simply the principle of the physical life of the soul. Nevertheless the vital principle in man is different from that in the animal, and the human soul from the soul of the beast. This difference is indicated by the way in which man received the breath of life from God, and so became a living soul. " The beasts arose at the creative word of God, and no communication of the spirit is mentioned even in ch. ii. 19 ; the 80 THE FIRST BOOK OP MOSES. origin of their soul was coincident with that of their corporeality, and their life was merely the individualization of the universal life, with which all matter was filled in the beginning by the Spirit of God. On the other hand, the human spirit is not a mere individualization of the divine breath which breathed upon the material of the world, or of the universal spirit of nature ; nor is his body merely a production of the earth when stimu- lated by the creative word of God. The earth does not bring forth his body, but God Himself puts His hand to the work and forms him ; nor does the life already imparted to the world by the Spirit of God individualize itself in him, but God breathes directly into the nostrils of the one man, in the whole fulness of His personality, the breath of life, that in a manner correspond- ing to the personahty of God he may become a living sonl" (Delitzsch). This was the foundation of the pre-eminence of man, of his likeness to God and his immortality ; for by this he was formed into a personal being, whose immaterial part was not merely soul, but a soul breathed entirely by God, smce spirit and soul were created together through the inspiration of God. As the spiritual nature of man is described simply by the act of breathing, which is discernible by the senses, so thd name which God gives him (chap. v. 2) is founded upon the earthly side of his being : Adam, from riDlN (adamah), earth, the earthly element, like homo from humus, or from %a/io, jj;a/xat', j(^a,fiaOev, to guard him from self-exaltation, not from the red colour of his body, since this is not a distinctive character- istic of man, but common to him and to many other creatures. The name man (Mensch), on the other hand, from the Sanskrit mdnuscha, manuschja, from mav to think, manas = mens, ex- presses the spiritual inwardness of our nature. Ver. 8. The abode, which God prepared for the first man, was a "garden in Eden," also called "the garden of Eden" (ver. 15, chap. iii. 23, 24; Joel ii. 3), or Eden (Isa. li. 3 ; Ezek. xxviii. 13, xxxi. 9). Eden (HJJ, le. delight) is the proper name of a particular district, the situation of which is described in vers. 10 sqq. ; but it must not be confounded with the Eden of Assyria (2 Kings xix. 12, etc.) and Coelesyria (Amos i. 5), which is writ- ten with double seghol. The garden (lit. a place hedged round) was to the east, i.e. in the eastern portion, and is generally called Paradise from the Septuagint version, in which the word is ren- CHAP. II. 10-14. 81 dered vapcSeiao^. This word, according to Spiegel, was derived from the Zendic pairi-da^za, a hedging round, and passed into the Hebrew in the form vr\^ (Cant, iv. 13 ; Eccl. ii. 5 ; Neh. ii. 8), a park, probably through the commercial relations which Solomon established with distant countries. In the garden itself God caused all kinds of trees to grow out of the earth ; and among them were two, which were called " the tree of life" and " the tree of knowledge of good and evil," on account of their peculiar significance in relation to man (see ver. 16 and chap. iii. 22). njnn, an infinitive, as Jer. xxii. 16 shows, has the article here because the phrase JTil 3113 njJT is regarded as one word, and in Jeremiah from the nature of the predicate. — Ver. 10. " And there was a river going out of Eden, to water the garden ; and from thence it divided itself, and became four heads ;" i.e. the stream took its rise in Eden, flowed through the garden to water it, and on leaving the garden was divided into four heads or beginnings of rivers, that is, into four arms or separate streams. For this meaning of W^f^l see Ezek. xvi. 25, Lam. ii. 19. Of the four rivers whose names are given to show the geographical situa- tion of paradise, the last two are unquestionably Tigris and Euphrates. Hiddekel occurs in Dan. x. 4 as the Hebrew name for Tigris ; in the inscriptions of Darius it is called Tigrd (or the arrow, according to Strabo, Pliny, and Curtius), from the Zendic tighra, pointed, sharp, from which probably the nieaning stormy {rapidus Tigris, Hor. Carm. 4, 14, 46) was derived. It flows before (riDli?), in front of, Assyria, not to the east of Assyria ; for the province of Assyria, which must be intended here, was on the eastern side of the Tigris : moreover, neither the mean- ing, " to the east of," nor the identity of nmp and DlpD has been, or can be, established from chap. iv. 16, 1 Sam. xiii. 5, or Ezek. xxxix. 11, which are the only other passages in which the word occurs, as Ewald himself acknowledges. Praih, which was not more minutely described because it was so generally known, is the Euphrates ; in old Persian, Ufrdta, according to Delitzsch, or the good and fertile stream ; Ufrdtu, according to Spiegler, or the well-progressing stream. According to the present condition of the soil, the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris are not so closely connected that they could be regarded as the commencements of a common stream which has ceased to exist. The main sources of the Tigris, it is true, are only 2000 82 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. paces from the Euphrates, but they are to the north of Diar- bekr, in a range of mountains which is skirted on three sides by the upper course of the Euphrates, and separates them from this river. We must also look in the same country, the high- lands of Armenia, for the other two rivers, if the description of paradise actually rests upon an ancient tradition, and is to be regarded as something more than a mythical invention of the fancy. The name Phishon sounds like the Phasis of the an- cients, with which Reland supposed it to be identical ; and CAo- vilah like Colchis, the well-known gold country of the ancients. But the $acri? o KoX^o'^ {Herod. 4, 37, 45) takes its rise in the Caucasus, and not in Armenia. A more probable conjecture, therefore, points to the C^rus of the ancients, which rises in Armenia, flows northwards to a point not far from the eastern border of Colchis, and then turns eastward in Iberia, from which it flows in a south-easterly direction to the Caspian Sea. The expression, " which compasseth the whole land of Chavilah" would apply very well to the course of this river from the eastern bor- der of Colchis ; for 33D does not necessarily signify to surround, but to pass through with different turns, or to skirt in a semi- circular form, and Chavilah may have been larger than modern Colchis. It is not a valid objection to this explanation, that in every other place Chavilah is a district of Southern Arabia. The identity of this Chavilah with the Chavilah of the Jok- tanites (chap. x. 29, xxv. 18 ; 1 Sam. xv. 7) or of the Cushites (chap. X. 7 ; 1 Chron. i. 9) is disproved not only by the article used here, which distinguishes it from the other, but also by the description of it as land where gold, bdolach, and the shoham- stone are found ; a description neither requisite nor suitable in the case of the Arabian Chavilah, since these productions are not to be met with there. This characteristic evidently shows that the Chavilah mentioned here was entirely distinct from the other, and a land altogether unknown to the Israelites. — What we are to understand by npian is uncertain. There is no certain ground for the meaning "pearls," given in Saad. and the later Rabbins, and adopted by Bochart and others. The rendering ^SeWa or ^SeWtov, bdellium., a vegetable gum, of which Dio- scorns says, ol Be fidBeXKov ol Be ^oXypv KaXovai, and Pliny, " alU brochon appellant, alii malacham, alii maldacon,'' is favoured by the similarity in the name ; but, on the other side, there is the CHAP. II. 10-14. 83 fact that Pliny describes this gum as nigrum and hadrobolon, and Dioscorus as vrro-Trekiov (blackish), which does not agree with Num. xi. 7, where the appearance of the white grains of the manna is compared to that of hdolach. — The stone shoham, according to most of the early versions, is probably the heryl, which is most likely the stone intended by the LXX. (d Xt^os d Trpacnvo'i, the leek-green stone), as Pliny, when speaking of beryls, describes those as probatissimi, qui viriditatem puri maris imitantur ; but according to others it is the onya: or sardonyx (yid. Ges. s. v.)} The Gihon (from H^ia to break forth) is the Araases, which rises in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates, flows from west to east, joins the Cyrus, and falls with it into the Caspian Sea. The name corresponds to the Arabic Jaihun, a name given by the Arabians and Persians to several large rivers. The land of Cush, cannot, of course, be the later Cush, or Ethiopia, but must be connected with the Asiatic Koacraui, which reached to the Caucasus, and to which the Jews (of Shir- wan) still give this name. But even though these four streams do not now spring from one source, but on the contrary their sources are separated by mountain ranges, this fact does not prove that the narrative before us is a myth. Along with or since the disappearance of paradise, that part of the earth may have undergone such changes that the precise locality can no longer be determined with certainty.^ 1 The two productions furnish no proof that the Phishon is to be sought for in India. The assertion that the name bdolach is Indian, is quite un- founded, for it cannot be proved that maddlaha in Sanscrit is a vegetable gum ; nor has this been proved of maddra, which is possibly related to it (cf. Lassen's indische Althk. 1, 290 note). Moreover, Pliny speaks of Bac- tria'aa as the land " in qua Bdellium est nominatissimum,''' although he adds, " nascitur et in Arabia Indiaque, et Media ac Babylone ;'' and Isidorus says of the Bdella which comes from India, '■'■' Sordida est et nigra et majori gleba," which, again, does not agree with Num. xi. 7.— The shoham-stone also is not necessarily associated with India ; for although Pliny says of the beryls, "India eos gignit, raro alibi repertos,'' he also observes, "in nostra orbe aliquando circa Pontum inveniri putantur." " That the continents of our globe have undergone great changes since the creation of the human race, is a truth sustained by the facts of natural history and the earliest national traditions, and admitted by the most cele- brated naturalists. (See the collection of proofs made by Keerl.) These changes must not be all attributed to the flood ; many may have occurred before and many after, like the catastrophe in which the Dead Sea origin- 84 THE FIRST BOOK OP MOSES. Vers. 15-17. After the preparation of the garden in Eden God placed the man there, to dress it and to keep it. >nmi not merely expresses removal thither, but the fact that the man was placed there to lead a hfe of repose, not indeed in inactivity, but in fulfilment of the course assigned him, which was very different from the trouble and restlessness of the weary toil into which he was plunged by sin. In paradise he was to dress (colere) the garden ; for the earth was meant to be tended and cultivated by man, so that without human culture, plants and even the different varieties of corn degenerate and grow wild. Cultivation therefore preserved (iDt^ to keep) the divine plantar tion, not merely from injury on the part of any evil power, either penetrating into, or already existing in the creation, but also from running wild through natural degeneracy. As nature was created for man, it was his vocation not only to ennoble it by his work, to make it subservient to himself, but also to raise it into the sphere of the spirit and further its glorification. This applied not merely to the soil beyond the limits of paradise, but to the garden itself, which, although the most perfect portion of the terrestrial creation, was nevertheless susceptible of de- velopment, and which was allotted to man, in order that by his care and culture he might make it into a transparent mirror of the glory of the Creator. — Here too the man was to commence his own spiritual development. To this end God had planted two trees in the midst of the garden of Eden ; the one to train his spirit through the exercise of obedience to the word of God, the other to transform his earthly nature into the spiritu^ essence of eternal life. These trees received their names from their relation to man, that is to say, from the effect which the eating of their fruit was destined to produce upon human Hfe and its development. The fruit of the tree of life conferred the power of eternal, immortal life ; and the tree of knowledge was planted, to lead men to the knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge of good and evil was no mere experience of good and ill, but a moral element in that spiritual development, through ated, without being recorded in history as this has been. Still less must we interpret chap. xi. 1 (compared with x. 25), as Falri and Keerl have done, as indicating a complete revolution of the globe, or a geogonic process, by which the continents of the old world were divided, and assumed their pre- sent physiognomy, CHAP. II- 15-17. 85 whicli the man created in the image of God was to attain to the filling out of that nature, which had already been planned in the likeness of God. For not to know what good and evil are, is a sign of either the immaturity of infancy (Deut. i. 39), or the imbecility of age (2 Sam. xix. 35) ; whereas the power to dis- tinguish good and evil is commended as the gift of a king (1 Kings iii.' 9) and the wisdom of angels (2 Sam. xiv. 17), and in the highest sense is ascribed to God Himself (chap. iii. 5, 22). Why then did God prohibit man from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, with the threat that, as soon as he ate thereof, he would surely die? (The inf. abs. before the finite verb intensifies the latter : vid. JEwald, § 312a). Are we to regard the tree as poisonous, and suppose that some fatal pro- perty resided in the fruit ? A supposition which so completely ignores the ethical nature of sin is neither warranted by the antithesis, nor by what is said in chap. iii. 22 of the tree of life, nor by the fact that the eatiag of the forbidden fruit was actually the cause of death. Even in the case of the tree of life, the power is not to be sought in the physical character of the fruit. No earthly fruit possesses the power to give immor- tality to the life which it helps to sustain. Life is not rooted in man's corporeal nature ; it was in his spiritual nature that it had its origin, and from this it derives its stability and per- manence also. It may, indeed, be brought to an end through the destruction of the body ; but it cannot be exalted to per- petual duration, i.e. to immortality, through its preservation and sustenance. And this applies quite as much to the original nature of man, as to man after the fall. A body formed from earthly materials could not be essentially immortal : it would of necessity either be turned to earth, and fall into dust again, or be transformed by the spirit into the immortality of the soul. The power which transforms corporeality into immortality is spiritual in its nature, and could only be imparted to the earthly tree or its fruit through the word of God, through a special operauon of the Spirit of God, an operation which we can only picture to ourselves as sacramental in its character, rendering earthly elements the receptacles and vehicles of celestial powers, God had given such a sacramental natiu:e and significance to the two trees in the midst of the garden, that their fruit could and would produce supersensual, mental, and spiritual effects upon 86 THE FIEST BOOK OF MOSES. the nature of the first human pair. The tree of life was to im- part the power of transformation into eternal life. The tree of knowledge was to lead man to the knowledge of good and evil ; and according to the divine intention, this was to be attained through his not eating of its fruit. This end was to be accom- plished, not only by his discerning in the limit imposed by the prohibition the difference between that which accorded with the will of God and that which opposed it, but also by his coming erentually, through obedience to the prohibition, to recognise the fact that all that is opposed to the will of God is an evil to be avoided, and, through voluntary resistance to such evil, to the full development of the freedom of choice originally imparted to him into the actual freedom of a deliberate and self-conscious choice of good. By obedience to the divine will he would have attained to a godlike knowledge of good and evil, i.e. to one in accordance with his own likeness to God. He would have de- tected the evil in the approaching tempter; but instead of yield- ing to it, he would have resisted it, and thus have made good his own property acquired with consciousness and of his own free-will, and in this way by proper self-determination would gradually have advanced to the possession of the truest libeity. But as he failed to keep this divinely appointed way, and ate the forbidden fruit in opposition to the command of God, the power imparted by God to the fruit was manifested in a dif- ferent way. He learned the difference between good and evil from his own guilty experience, and by receiving the evil into his own soul, feU a victim to the threatened death. Thus through his own fault the tree, which should have helped him to attain true freedom, brought nothing but the sham liberty of sin, and with it death, and that without any demoniacal power of destruction being conjured into the tree itself, or any fatsd poison being hidden in its fruit. Vers. 18-25. Okeation of the Woman. — As the creatioH of man is introduced in chap. i. 26, 27, with a divine decree, so here that of the woman is preceded by the divine declaratioBj It is not good that the man should be alone; I will mahe him ''''^v? "'I-^j ^ ^^^P of his like : " i.e. a helping being, in which, as soon as he sees it, he may recognise himself " (Delitzsch). Of snct a help the man stood in need, in order that he might fuliil his CHAP. II. 18-25. 87 calling, not only to perpetuate and multiply his race, but to cul- tivate and govern the earth. To indicate this, the general word nJ3D "ity is chosen, in which there is an allusioE to the relation of the sexes. To call out this want, God brought the larger quadrupeds and birds to the man, " to see what he would call them (i^ lit. each one) ; and whatsoever the man might call every living being should be its name." The time when this took place must have been the sixth day, on which, according to chap. i. 27, the man and woman were created : and there is no difficulty in this, since it would not have required much time to bring the animals to Adam to see what he would call them, as the animals of paradise are all we have to think of ; and the deep sleep into which God caused the man to fall, till he had formed the woman from his rib, need not have continued long. ' In chap. i. 27 the creation of the woman is linked with that of the man ; but here the order of sequence is given, because the creation of the woman formed a chronological incident in the history of the human race, which commences with the creation of Adam. The circum- stance that in ver. 19 the formation of the beasts and birds is connected with the creation of Adam by the imperf. c. 1 consec., constitutes no objection to the plan of creation given in chap. i. The arrangement may be explained on the supposition, that the writer, who was about to describe the relation of man to the beasts, went back to their creation, in the simple method of the early Semitic historians, and placed this first instead of making it subordinate ; so that our modern style of expressing the same thought woxdd be simply this : " God brought to Adam the beasts which He had formed." ^ Moreover, the allusion is not ^ A striking example of this style of narrative we find in 1 Kings vii. 13. First of all, the building and completion of the temple are noticed several times in chap, vi., and the last time in connection with the year and month (chap. vi. 9, 14, 37, 38) ; after that, the fact is stated, that the royal palace was thirteen years in building ; and then the writer pro- ceeds thus : " And king Solomon sent and fetched Hiram from Tyre .... and he came to king Solomon, and did all his work ; and made the two pil- lars," etc. Now, if we were to understand the historical preterite with 1 con- sec, here, as giving the order of sequence, Solomon would be made to send for the Tyrian artist, thirteen years after the temple was finished, to come and prepare the pillars for the porch, and all the vessels needed for the temple. But the writer merely expresses in Semitic style the simple thought, that " Hiram, whom Solomon fetched from Tyre, made the ves- sels," etc. Another instance we find in Jndg. ii. 6. 88 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. to the creation of all the beasts, but simply to that of the beasts living in the field (game and tame cattle), and of the fowls of the air, — to beasts, therefore, which had been formed like man from the earth, and thus stood in a closer relation to him than water animals or reptiles. For God brought the animals to Adam, to show him the creatures which were formed to serve him, that He might see what he would call them. Calling or naming presupposes acquaintance. Adam is to become acquainted with the creatures, to learn their relation to him, and by giving them names to prove himself their lord. God does not order him to name them ; but by bringing the beasts He gives him an opportunity of developing that intellectual capacity which constitutes his superiority to the animal world. " The man sees the animals, and thinks of what they are and how- they look ; and these thoughts, in themselves already inward words, take the form involuntarily of audible names, which he utters to the beasts, and by which he places the impersonal creatures- in, the first spiritual relation to himself, the personal being" (Delitzscli). Language, as W. v. Humboldt says, is " the organ of the inner being, or rather the inner being itself as it gradually attains to inward knowledge and expression." It is merely thought cast into articulate sounds or words. The thoughts of Adam with regard to the animals, to which he gave expression in the names that he gave them, we are not to regard as the mere results of reflection, or of abstraction from merely outward pe- culiarities which affected the senses ; but as a deep and direct mental insight into the nature of the animals, which penetrated far deeper than such knowledge as is the simple result of reflect- ing and abstracting thought. The naming of the animals, there- fore, led to this result, that there was not found a help meet for man. Before the creation of the woman we must regard the man (Adam) as being " neither male, in the sense of com- plete sexual distinction, nor androgynous as though both sexes were combined in the one individual created at the first, but as created in anticipation of the future, with a preponderant ,;; tendency, a male in simple potentiality, out of which state he | passed, the moment the woman stood by his side, when the mere potentia became an actual antithesis" (Ziegler). — Then God . caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man (ver. 21). nOTin, a deep sleep, in which all consciousness of the outer world and CHAP. II. 18-25. 89 of one's own existence vanishes. Sleep is an essential element in the nature of man as ordained by God, and is quite as neces- sary for man as the interchange of day and night for all nature besides. But this deep sleep was different from natural sleep, and God caused it to fall upon the man by day, that He might create the woman out of him. " Everything out of which something new is to spring, sinks first of all into such a sleep " (Ziegler), VJi means the side, and, as a portion of the human body, the rib. The correctness of this meaning, which is given by all the ancient versions, is evident from the words, " God took one of his niyiiV," which show that the man had several of them. ^^ And closed up Jlesh in the place thereof;" i.e. closed the gap which had been made, with flesh which He put in the place of the rib. The woman was created, not of dust of the earth, but from a rib of Adam, because she was formed for an inseparable unity and fellowship of life with the man, and the mode of her creation was to lay the actual foundation for the moral ordi- nance of marriage. As the moral idea of the unity of the human race required that man should not be created as a genus or plurality,^ so the moral relation of the two persons establishing the unity of the race required that man should be created first, and then the woman from the body of the man. By this the priority and superiority of the man, and the dependence of the woman upon the man, are established as an ordinance of divine creation. This ordinance of God forms the root of that tender ^ Natural science can only demonstrate the unity of the human race, not the descent of all men from one pair, though many naturalists question and deny even the former, but without any warrant from anthropological facts. For every thorough investigation leads to the conclusion arrived at by the latest inquirer in this department, Th. Waitz, that not only are there no facts in natural history which preclude the unity of the various races of men, and fewer difficulties in the way of this assumption than in that of the opposite theory of specific diversities ; but even in mental re- spects there are no specific differences within the limits of the race. Delitzsch has given an admirable summary of the proofs of unity. " That the races of men," he says, " are not species of one genus, but varieties of one species, is confirmed by the agreement in the physiological and pathological pheno- mena in them aU, by the similarity in the anatomical structure, in the fun- damental powers and traits of the mind, in the limits to the duration of life, in the normal temperature of the body and the average rate of pulsa- tion, in the duration of pregnancy, and in the unrestricted fruitfulness of marriages between the various races." PENT. — VOL. I. a 90 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. love with which the man loves the woman as himself, and by which marriage becomes a type of the fellowship of love and life, which exists between the Lord and His Church (Eph. vi. 32). If the fact that the woman was formed from a rib, and not from any other part of the man, is significant ; all that we can find in this is, that the woman was made to stand as a helpmate by the side of the man, not that there was any allusion to conjugal love as founded in the heart ; for the text does not speak of the rib as one which was next the heart. The word n33 is worthy of note : from the rib of the man God builds the female, through whom the human race is to be huilt up by the male (chap. xvi. 2, XXX. 3).— Vers. 23, 24. The design of God in the creation of the woman is perceived by Adam, as soon as he awakes, when the woman is brought to him by God. Without a revelation from God, he discovers in the woman bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh." The words, " this is now (DVan lit. this time) bone of my bones," etc., are expressive of joyous astonishment at the suitable helpmate, whose relation to himself he describes in the words, " she shall be called Woman, for slie is taken out of man." nm is well rendered by Luther, " Mannin" (a female man), like the old Latin vlra from vir. The words which follow, " therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shiM cleave unto his wife, and they shall become one flesh," are not to be regarded as Adam's, first on account of the \5'7y, which is always used in Genesis, with the exception of chap. xx. 6, slii. 21, to introduce remarks of the writer, either of an archaeological or of a historical character, and secondly, because, even if Adam on seeing the woman had given prophetic utterance to his perception of the mystery of marriage, he could not with propriety have spoken of father and mother. They are the words of Moses, vnritten to bring out the truth embodied in the fact recorded as a divinely appointed result, to exhibit marriage as the deepest corporeal and spiritual unity of man and woman, and to hold up monogamy before the eyes of the people of Israel as the form of marriage ordained by God. But as the words of Moses, they are the utterance of divine revelation ; and Christ could quote them, therefore, as the word of God (Matt. xis. 5). By the leaving of father and mother, which appHes to the woman as well as to the man, the conjugal union is shown to be a spiritual oneness, a vital communion of heart as well as of body, in which CHAP. III. 91 it finds its consummation. This union is of a totally different nature from that of parents and children ; hence marriage be- tween parents and children is entirely opposed to the ordinance of God. Marriage itself, notwithstanding the fact that it de- mands the leaving of father and mother, is a holy appointment of God ; hence celibacy is not a higher or holier state, and the relation of the sexes for a pure and holy man is a pure and holy relation. This is shown in ver. 25 : " They were both naked (Q'''?11J!, with dagesh in the d, is an abbreviated form of d''13"i'J| iii. 7, from iiij; to strip), the man and his wife, and were not ashamed^ Their bodies were sanctified by the spirit, which animated them. Shame entered first with sin, which destroyed the normal relation of the spirit to the body, exciting tenden- cies and lusts which warred against the soul, and turning the sacred ordinance of God into sensual impulses and the lust of the flesh THE FALL. — CHAP. III. The man, whom God had appointed lord of the earth and its inhabitants, was endowed with everything requisite for the de- velopment of his natm-e and the fulfilment of his destiny. In the fruit of the trees of the garden he had food for the susten- ance of his life ; in the care of the garden itself, a field of labour for the exercise of his physical strength ; in the animal and vege- table kingdom, a capacious region for the expansion of his intellect ; in the tree of knowledge, a positive law for the train- ing of his moral nature ; and in the woman associated with him, a suitable companion and help. In such circumstances as these he might have developed both his physical and spiritual nature in accordance with the will of God. But a tempter approached him from the midst of the animal world, and he yielded to the temptation to break the command of God. The serpent is said- to have been the tempter. But to any one who reads the narra- tive carefully in connection with the previous history of the creation, and bears in mind that man is there described as exalted far above all the rest of the animal world, not only by the fact of his having been created in the image of God and invested with dominion over all the creatures of the earth, but also because God breathed into him the breath of life, and no help meet for 92 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. him was found among the beasts of the field, and also that this superiority was manifest in the gift of speech, which enabled him to give names to all the rest — a thing which they, as speech^ ^ess, were unable to perform, — ^it must be at once apparent that it was not from the serpent, as a sagacious and crafty animal, that the temptation proceeded, but that the serpent was simply the tool of that evil spirit, who is met with in the further com-se of the world's history under the name of Satan (the opponent)j or the Devil (d Bid^oXo^, the slanderer or accuser).-^ When> the serpent, therefore, is introduced as speaking, and that just as if it had been entrusted with the thoughts of God Himself, the speaking must have emanated, not from the serpent, but from a superior spirit, which had taken possession of the serpent for the sake of seducing man. This fact, indeed, is not distinctly stated in the canonical books of the Old Testament ; but that is simply for the same educational reason which led Moses to transcribe the account exactly as it had been handed down, in the pm:e objective form of an outward and visible occurrence, and with- out any allusion to the causality which underlay the external phenomenon, viz. not so much to oppose the tendency of con- temporaries to heathen superstition and habits of intercourse with the kingdom of demons, as to avoid encouraging the dispo- sition to transfer the blame to the evil spirit which tempted man, and thus reduce sin to a mere act of weakness. But we find the fact distinctly alluded to in the book of Wisdom ii. 24 ; and not only is it constantly noticed in the rabbinical writings, where the prince of the evil spirits is called the old serpent, or the ser-' ' pent, with evident reference to this account, but it was introduced at a very early period into Parsism also. It is also attested by Christ and His apostles (John viii. 44; 2 Cor. xi. 3 and 14; Kom. xvi. 20 ; Eev. xii. 9, xx. 2), and confirmed by the tempta- ^ There was a fall, therefore, in the higher spiritual world before the fall of man ; and this is not only plainly taught in 2 Pet. ii. 4 and Jude 6, but assumed in everything that the Scriptures say of Satan. But this event in the world of spirits neither compels us to place the fall of Satan before the six days' work of creation, nor to assume that the days represent long periods. For as man did not continue long in communion with God, so the angel- prince may have rebelled against God shortly after his creation, and not only have involved a host of angels in his apostasy and fall, but have proceeded immediately to tempt the men, who were created in the image of God, t» abuse their liberty by transgressing the divine command. CHAP. III. 93 tion of our Lord. The temptation of Christ is the counterpart of that of Adam. Christ -was tempted by the devil, not only like Adam, but because Adam had been tempted and overcome, in order that by overcoming the tempter He might wrest from the devil that dominion over the whole race which he had secured by his victory over the first human pair. The tempter approached the Saviour openly ; to the first man he came in disguise. The serpent is not a merely symbolical term applied to Satan ; nor was it only the form which Satan assumed ; but it was a real serpent, perverted by Satan to be the instrument of his tempta- tion (vers. 1 and 14). The possibility of such a perversion, or of the evil spirit using an animal for his own purposes, is not to be explained merely on the ground of the supremacy of spirit over nature, but also from the connection established in the creation itself between heaven and earth ; and still more, from the posi- tion originally assigned by the Creator to the spirits of heaven in relation to the creatures of earth. The origin, force, and limits of this relation it is impossible to determine a priori, or in any other way than from such hints as are given in the Scriptures ; so that there is no reasonable ground for disputing the possibility of such an influence. Notwithstanding his self-willed opposition to God, Satan is still a creature of God, and was created a good spirit ; although, in proud self-exaltation, he abused the freedom essential to the nature of a superior spirit to purposes of rebellion against his Maker. He cannot therefore entirely shake off his dependence upon God. And this dependence may possibly ex- plain the reason, why he did not come " disguised as an angel of light" to tempt our first parents to disobedience, but was obliged to seek the instrument of his wickedness among the beasts of the field. The trial of our first progenitors was ordained by God, because probation was essential to their spiritual development and self-determination. But as He did not desire that they should be tempted to their fall. He would not suffer Satan to tempt them in a way which should surpass their human capacity, The tempted might therefore have resisted the tempter. If, instead of approaching them in the form of a celestial being, in the likeness of God, he came in that of a creature, not only far inferior to God, but far below themselves, they could have no excuse for allowing a mere animal to persuade them to break the commandment of God. For they had been made to have do- 94 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. minion over the beasts, and not to take their own law from them. Moreover, the fact that an evil spirit was approaching them in the serpent, could hardly be concealed from them. Its speaking alone must have suggested that ; for Adam had already become acquainted with the nature of the beasts, and had not found one among them resembling himself — not one, therefore, endowed with reason and speech. The substance of the address, too, was enough to prove that it was no good spirit which spake through the serpent, but one at enmity with God. Hence, when they paid attention to what he said, they were altogether without excuse. Vers. 1-8. " The serpent was more subtle than all the beasts of the field, which Jehovah God had made." — The serpent is here described not only as a beast, but also as a creature of God; it must therefore have been good, like everything else that He had made. Subtilty was a natural characteristic of the serpent (Matt. X. 16), which led the evil one to select it as his instru- ment. Nevertheless the predicate DIIJ? is not used here in the good sense of ^p6vifio<; (LXX.), prudens, but in the bad sense of Travovpyo';, callidus. For its subtilty was manifested as the craft of a tempter to evil, in the simple fact that it was to the weaker woman that it turned ; and cunning was also displayed in what it said : " Hath God indeed said, Ye shall not eat of all the trees of the garde?!?" '3 fjK is an interrogative expressing surprise (as in 1 Sam. xxiii. 3, 2 Sam. iv. 11) : "Is it really the fact that God has prohibited you from eating of all the trees of the garden ? " The Hebrew may, indeed, bear the meaning, "hath God said, ye shall not eat of everi/ tree'?" but from the context, and espe- cially the conjunction, it is obvious that the meaning is, " ye shall not eat of any tree." The serpent calls God by the name of Elohim alone, and the woman does the same. In this more general and indefinite name the personality of the living God is obscured. To attain his end, the tempter felt it necessary to change the living personal God into a merely general numen ddvinum, and to exaggerate the prohibition, in the hope of excit ing in the woman's miiid partly distrust of God Himself, and partly a doubt as to tlie truth of His word. And his words were listened to. Instead of turning away, the woman 'replied, " We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; hut of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said. CHAP. III. 1-8. 95 Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." She was aware of the prohibition, therefore, and fully understood its meaning ; but she added, " neither shall ye touch it," and proved by this very exaggeration that it appeared top stringent even to her, and therefore that her love and confidence towards God were already beginning to waver. Here was the beginning of her fall: " for doubt is the father of sin, and skepsis the mother of all transgression ; and in this father and this mother, all our present knowledge has a common origin with sin" (Ziegler). From doubt, the tempter advances to a direct denial of the truth of the divine threat, and to a malicious suspicion of the divine love (vers. 4, 5). " Ye will by no means die " (a^ is placed be- fore the infinitive absolute, as in Ps. xlix. 8 and Amos ix. 8 ; for the meaning is not, " ye will not die;" but, ye will positively not die). " But^ God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof ^ your eyes will be opened^ and ye will be like God, knowing good and evil." That is to say, it is not because the fruit of the tree will injure you that God has forbidden you to eat it, but from ill-will and envy, because He does not wish you to be like Him- self. " A truly Satanic double entendre, in which a certain agree- ment between truth and untruth is secured ! " By eating the fruit, man did obtain the knowledge of good and evil, and in this respect became like God (vers. 7 and 22). This was the truth which covered the falsehood " ye shall not die," and turned the whole statement into a lie, exhibiting its author as the father of lies, who abides not in the truth (John viii. 44). For the know- ledge of good and evil, which man obtains by going into evil, is as far removed from the true likeness of God, which he would have attained by avoiding it, as the imaginary liberty of a sinner, which leads into bondage to sin and ends in death, is from the true liberty of a Mfe of fellowship with God. — Ver. 6. The illusive hope of being like God excited a longing for the for- bidden fruit. " The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a pleasure to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise (?''3K'[' signifies to gain or show discernment or insight) ; and she took of its fruit and ate, and gave to her husband by her (who was present), and he did eat'' As distrust of God's com- ' '•a used to establish a denial. ' ^npDJI perfect c. 1 consec. See Oesenius, § 126, Note 1. 96 THE FIEST BOOK OF MOSES. mand leads to a disregard of it, so the longing for a false indo- pendence excites a desire for the seeming good that has heen prohibited ; and this desire is fostered by the senses, until it brings forth sin. Doubt, unbelief, and pride were the roots of the sin of our first parents, as they have been of all the sins of their posterity. The more trifling the object of their sin seems to have been, the greater and more difficult does the sin itself appear ; especially when we consider that the first men " stood in a more direct relation to God, their Creator, than any other man has ever done, that their hearts were pure, their discern- ment clear, their intercourse with God direct, that they were surrounded by gifts just bestowed by Him, and could not excuse themselves on the ground of any misunderstanding of the divine ' prohibition, which threatened them with the loss of life in the event of disobedience " {Delitzsch) . Yet not only did the woman yield to the seductive wiles of the serpent, but even the man allowed himself to be tempted by the woman. — Vers. 7, 8. " Then the eyes of them both were opened" (as the serpent had foretold : but what did they see 1), " and they knew that they were naked." They had lost "that blessed blindness, the ignorance of innocence, which knows nothing of nakedness" (Ziegler). The discovery of their nakedness excited shame, which they sought to conceal by an outward covering. " They sewed jig- leaves together, and made themselves aprons" The word nJKri always denotes the fig-tree, not the pisang (Musa paradisiaca), nor the Indian banana, whose leaves are twelve feet long and two feet broad, for there would have been no necessity to sew them together at all. nijn, irepi^d/jMra, are aprons, worn round the hips. It was here that the consciousness of nakedness first suggested the need of covering, not because the fruit had poi- soned the fountain of human life, and through some inherent quality had immediately corrupted the reproductive powers of the body (as Hoffmann and Baumgarten suppose), nor because any physical change ensued in consequence of the fall ; but because, with the destruction of the normal connection between soul and body through sin, the body ceased to be the pure abode of a spirit in fellowship with God, and in the purely natural state of the body the consciousness was produced not merely of the distinction of the sexes, but still more of the worthlessness of the flesh ; so that the man and woman stood ashamed in each CHAP. III. 9-15. 97 otlier's presence, and endeavoured to hide the disgrace of their .spiritual nakedness, by covering those parts of the body through which the impurities of nature are removed. That the natural feeling of shame, the origin of which is recorded here, had its root, not in sensuality or any physical corruption, -but in the consciousness of guilt or shame before God, and consequently that it was the conscience which was really at work, is evident from the fact that the man and his wife hid themselves from Jehovah God among the trees of the garden, as soon as they heard the sound of His footsteps, nin) 7ip (the voice of Jeho- vah, ver. 8) is not the voice of God speaking or calling, but the sound of God walking, as in 2 Sam. v. 24, 1 Kings xiv. 6, etc. — In the cool of the day (lit. in the wind of the day), i.e. towards the evening, when a cooling wind generally blows. The men have broken away from God, but God will not and cannot leave them alone. He comes to them as one man to another. This was the earliest form of divine revelation. God conversed with the first man in a visible shape, as the Father and Instructor of His children. He did not adopt this mode for the first time after the fall, but employed it as far back as the period when He brought the beasts to Adam, and gave him the woman to be his wife (chap. ii. 19, 22). This human mode of intercourse between man and God is not a mere figure of speech, but a reality, having its foundation in the nature of humanity, or rather in the fact that man was created in the image of God, but not in the sense supposed by Jakobi, that " God theomorphised when creating man, and man therefore necessarily anthropomor- phises when he thinks of God/' The anthropomorphies of God have their real foundation in the divine condescension which culminated in the incarnation of God in Christ. They are to be understood, however, as implying, not that corporeality, or a bodily shape, is an essential characteristic of God, but that God having given man a bodily shape, when He created him in His own image, revealed Himself in a manner suited to his bodily senses, that He might thus preserve him in living com- munion with Himself. Vers. 9-15. The man could not hide himself from God. " Je- hovah God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou ?" Not that He was ignorant of his hiding-place, but to bring him to a confession of Ins sin. And when Adam said that he had 98 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. hidden himself through fear of his nakedness, and thus sought to hide the sin behind its consequences, his disobedience behind the feehng of shame; this is not to be regarded as a sign of pe- cuhar obduracy, but easily admits of a psychological explanation, viz. that at the time he actually thought more of his nakedness and shame than of his transgression of the divine command, and his consciousness of the effects of his sin was keener than his sense of the sin itself. To awaken the latter God said, " Wlw told thee that thou wast naked?" and asked him whether he had broken His command. He could not deny that he had, but sought to excuse himself by saying, that the woman whom God gave to be with him had given him of the tree. When the woman was questioned, she pleaded as her excuse, that the ser- pent had beguiled her (or rather deceived her, i^airaTijcrev, 2 Cor. xi. 3). In offering these excuses, neither of them denied the fact. But the fault in both was, that they did not at once smite upon their breasts. " It is so still ; the sinner first of all endear vours to throw the blame upon others as tempters, and then upon circumstances which God has ordained." — ^Vers. 14, 15. The sen- tence follows the examination, and is pronounced first of all upon the serpent as the tempter : " Because thou hast done this, tliou art cursed before all cattle, and before every beast of the field." p, liter- ally out of the beasts, separate from them (Deut. xiv. 2 ; Judg. v. 24), is not a comparative signifying more than, nor does it mean bi/ ; for the curse did not proceed from the beasts, but from God, and was not pronounced upon all the beasts, but upon the serpent alone. The /cTttrt?, it is true, including the whole animal crea- tion, has been " made subject to vanity" and " the bondage of corruption," in consequence of the sin of man (Eom. viii. 20, 21); yet this subjection is not to be regarded as the effect of the curse, which was pronounced upon the serpent, having fallen upon the whole animal world, but as the consequence of death passing from man into the rest of the creation, and thoroughly pervading the whole. The creation was drawn into the fall of man, and compelled to share its consequences, because the whole of the irrational creation was made for man, and made subject to him as its head ; consequently the ground was cursed for man's sake, but not the animal world for the serpent's sake, or even along with the serpent. The curse fell upon the serpent for having tempted the woman, according to the same law by CHAP. III. 9-15. 99 whicn not only a beast which had injured a man was ordered to be put to death (chap. ix. 5 ; Ex. xxi. 28, 29), but any beast which had been the instrument of an unnatural crime was to be slain along with the man (Lev. xx. 15, 16); not as though the beast were an accountable creature, but in consequence of its having been made subject to man, not to injure his body or his life, or to be the instrument of his sin, but to subserve the great purpose of his life. " Just as a loving father," as Chrysostom says, " when punishing the murderer of his son, might snap in two the sword or dagger with which the murder had been com- mitted." The proof, therefore, that the serpent was merely the instrument of an evil spirit, does not lie in the punishment itself, but in the manner in which the sentence was pronounced. When God addressed the animal, and pronounced a curse upon it, this presupposed that the curse had regard not so much to the irra- tional beast as to the spiritual tempter, and that the punishment which fell upon the serpent was merely a symbol of his own. The punishment of the serpent corresponded to the crime. It had exalted itself above the man ; therefore upon its belly it should go, and dust it should eat all the days of its life. If these words are not to be robbed of their entire meaning, they cannot be understood in any other way than as denoting that the form and movements of the serpent were altered, and that its present repulsive shape is the effect of the curse pronounced upon it, though we cannot form any accurate idea of its original appear- ance. Going upon the belly (= creeping, Lev. xi. 42) was a mark of the deepest degradation ; also the eating of dust, which is not to be understood as meaning that dust was to be its only ' food, but that while crawling in the dust it would also swallow dust (cf. Micah vii. 17 ; Isa. xlix. 23). Although this punish- ment fell literally upon the serpent, it also affected the tempter in a figurative or symbolical sense. He became the object of the utmost contempt and abhorrence ; and the serpent still keeps the revolting image of Satan perpetually before the eye. This degradation was to be perpetual. " While all the rest of crea- tion shall be delivered from the fate into which the fall has plunged it, according to Isa. Ixv. 25, the instrument of man's temptation is to remain sentenced to perpetual degradation in fulfilment of the sentence, ' all the days of thy life,' and thus to prefigure the fate of the real tempter, for whom there is no 100 • THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. deliverance" {Hengstenherg, Clirlstology i. 15).— Tho presump- tion of the tempter was punished with the deepest degradation; and in like manner his sympathy with the woman was to be turned into eternal hostility (ver. 15) God established perpe- tual enmity, not only between the serpent and the woman, but also between the serpent's and the woman's seed, i.e. between the human and the serpent race. The seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head, and the serpent crush the heel of the woman's seed. The meaning, terere, conterere, is thoroughly established by the Chald., Syr., and Eabb. authorities, and we have therefore retained it, in harmony with the -word a-vvrpifieiv in Rom. xvi. 20, and because it accords better and more easily with all the other passages in which the word occurs, than the rendering inhiare, to regard with enmity, which is obtained from the combination of flits' with ^^^. The verb is construed with a double accusative, the second giving greater precision to the first (yid. Ges. § 139, note, and Ewald, § 281). The same word is used in connection with both head and heel, to show that on both sides the intention is to destroy the opponent ; at the same time, the expressions head and heel denote a majus and minus, or, as Calvin says, superius et inferius. This contrast arises from the nature of the foes. The serpent can only seize the heel of the man, who walks upright ; whereas the man can crush the head of the serpent, that crawls in the dust. But this difference is itself the result of the curse pronounced upon the serpent, and its crawling in the dust is a sign that it will be defeated in its conflict with man. However pernicious may be the bite of a serpent in the heel when the poison circulates throughout the body (chap. xlix. 17), it is not immediately fatal and utterly incurable, like the crushing of a serpent's head. But even in this sentence there is an unmistakeable allusion to the evil and hostile being concealed behind the serpent. That the human race should triumph over the serpent, was a neces- sary consequence of the original subjection of the animals to man. When, therefore, God not merely confines the serpent within the limits assigned to the animals, but puts enmity between it and the woman, this in itself points to a higher, spiritual power, which may oppose and attack the human race through the serpent, but will eventually be overcome. Observe, too, that although in the first clause the seed of the serpent is CHAP. 11. 9-15. 101 opposed to the seed of the woman, in the second it is not over the seed of the serpent but over the serpent itself that the victory is said to be gained. It, i.e. the seed of the woman, will crush thy head, and thou (not thy seed) wilt crush its heel. Thus the seed of the serpent is hidden behind the unity of the serpent, or rather of the foe who, through the serpent, has done such injury to man. This foe is Satan, who incessantly opposes the seed of the woman and bruises its heel, but is eventually to be trodden under its feet. It does not follow from this, how- ever, apart from other considerations, that by the seed of the woman we are to understand one solitary person, one individual only. As the woman is the mother of all living (ver. 20), her seed, to which the victory over the serpent and its seed is pro- mised, must be the human race. But if a direct and exclusive reference to Christ appears to be exegetically untenable, the allusion in the word to Christ is by no means precluded in con- sequence. In itself the idea of V^l, the seed, is an indefinite one, since the posterity of a man may consist of a whole tribe or of one son only (iv. 25, xxi. 12, 13), and on the other hand, an entire tribe may be reduced to one single descendant and be- come extinct in him. The question, therefore, who is to be understood by the " seed " which is to crush the serpent's head, can only be answered from the history of the human race. But a point of much greater importance comes into consideration here. Against the natural serpent the conflict may be carried on by the whole human race, by all who are born of woman, > but not against Satan. As he is a foe who can only be met with spiritual weapons, none can encounter him successfully but such as possess and make use of spiritual arms. Hence the idea of the " seed " is modified by the nature of the foe. If we look at the natural development of the human race. Eve bore three sons, but only one of them, viz. Seth, was really the seed by whom the human family was preserved through the flood and perpetuated in Noah: so, again, of the three sons of Noah, Shem, the blessed of Jehovah, from whom Abraham descended, was the only one in whose seed all nations were to be blessed, and that not through Ishmael, but through Isaac alone. Through these constantly repeated acts of divine selection, which were not arbitrary exclusions, but were rendered necessary by differ- ences in the spiritual condition of the individuals concerned, the 102 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. "seed" to which the victory over Satan was promised, was spiritually or ethically determined, and ceased to be co-extensive with physical descent. This spiritual seed culminated in Christ, in whom the Adamitic family terminated, henceforward to be renewed by Christ as the second Adam, and restored by Him to its original exaltation and likeness to God. In this sense Christ is the seed of the woman, who tramples Satan under His feet, not as an individual, but as the head both of the posterity of the woman which kept the promise and maintained the con- flict with the old serpent before His advent, and also of all those who are gathered out of all nations, are united to Him by faith, and formed into one body of which He is the head (Rom. xvi. 20). On the other hand, all who have not regarded and pre- served the promise, have fallen into the power of the old serpent, and are to be regarded as the seed of the serpent, whose head will be trodden under foot (Matt, xxiii. 33 ; John viii. 44 ; 1 John iii. 8). If then the promise culminates in Christ, the fact that the victory over the serpent is promised to the posterity of the woman, not of the man, acquires this deeper significance, that as it was through the woman that the craft of the deyil brought sin and death into the world, so it is also through the woman that the grace of God will give to the fallen human race the conqueror of sin, of death, and of the devil. And even if the words had reference first of all to the fact that the woman had been led astray by the serpent, yet in the fact that the destroyer of the serpent was born of a woman (without a human father) they were fulfilled in a way which showed that the pro- mise must have proceeded from that Being, who secured its fulfilment not only in its essential force, but even in its ap- parently casual form. Vers. 16-19. It was not till the prospect of victory had been presented, that a sentence of punishment was pronounced upon both the man and the woman on account of their sin. The woman, who had broken the divine command for the sake of earthly enjoyment, was punished in consequence with the sorrows and pains of pregnancy and childbirth. " / will greatly multiply (n3"in is the inf. abs. for nann, which had become an adverb : vid. Ewald, § 240c, as in chap. xvi. 10 and xxii. 17) thy sorrow and thy pregnancy : in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children." As the increase of conceptions, regarded as the ful- CHAP. III. 17-19. 103 filment of the blessing to " be fruitful and multiply " (i. 28), could be no punishment, ^i'lni must be understood as in apposi- tion to 'n.^.i^SJ? thy sorrow (i.e. the sorrows peculiar to a woman's life), and indeed (or more especially) thy pregnancy (i.e. the sorrows attendant upon that condition). The sentence is not rendered more lucid by the assumption of a hendiadys. " That the woman should bear children was the original will of God ; but it was a punishment that henceforth she was to bear them in sorrow, i.e. with pains which threatened her own life as well as that of the chUd " (Delitzsch). The punishment consisted in an enfeebling of nature, in consequence of sin, which disturbed the normal relation between body and soul. — ^The woman had also broken through her divinely appointed subordination to the man ; she had not only emancipated herself from the man to listen to the serpent, but had led the man into sin. For that, she was punished with a desire bordering upon disease (ni^wn from pi{^ to run, to have a violent craving for a thing), and with subjection to the man. "And he shall rule over thee." Created for the man, the woman was made subordinate to him from the very first ; but the supremacy of the man was not in- tended to become a despotic rule, crushing the woman into a slave, which has been the rule in ancient and modem Heathenism, and even in Mahometanism also, — a rule which was first softened by the sin-destroying grace of the Gospel, and changed into a form more in harmony with the original relation, viz. that of a rule on the one hand, and subordination on the other, which have their roots in mutual esteem and love. Vers. 17-19. "And unto Adam:" the noun is here used for the first time as a proper name without the article. In chap, i. 26 and ii. 5, 20, the noun is appellative, and there are sub- stantial reasons for the omission of the article. The sentence upon Adam includes a twofold punishment : first the cursing of the ground, and secondly death, which affects the woman as well, on account of their common guilt. By listening to his wife, when deceived by the serpent, Adam had repudiated his superiority to the rest of creation. As a punishment, therefore, nature would henceforth offer resistance to his will. By break- ing the divine command, he had set himself above his Maker , death would therefore show him the worthlessness of his own nature. " Cursed be the ground for thy sake ; in sorrow shalt 104 THE riEST BOOK OF MOSES thou eat it (the ground by synecdoche for its produce, as in Isa. i. 7) all the days of thy life : thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field." The curse pronounced on man's account upon the soil created for him, consisted in the fact, that the earth no longer yielded spon- taneously the fruits requisite for his maintenance, but the man was obliged to force out the necessaries of life by labour and strenuous exertion. The herb of the field is in contrast with the trees of the garden, and sorrow with the easy dressing of the garden. We are not to understand, however, that because man failed to guard the good creation of God from the invasion of the evil one, a host of demoniacal powers forced their way into the material world to lay it waste and offer resistance to man ; but because man himself had fallen into the power of the evil one, therefore God cursed the earth, not merely withdraw- ing the divine powers of life which pervaded Eden, but chang- ing its relation to man. As Luther says, " primum in eo, quod ilia bona non fert quae tulisset, si homo non esset lapsus, deinde in eo quoque, quod multa noxia fert quae non tulisset, sicut sunt infelix lolium, steriles avence, zizania, urticce, spince, tribuli, adde venena, noxias bestiolas, et si qua sunt alia hujus generis." But the curse reached much further, and the writer has merely noticed the most obvious aspect.-"^ The disturbance and distor- tion of the original harmony of body and soul, which sin intro- duced into the nature of man, and by which the flesh gained the mastery over the spirit, and the body, instead of being more and more transformed into the life of the spirit, became a prey ^ "Non omnia incommoda enmnerat Moses, quibus se homo per peccatum implicuit : constat enim ex eodem prodiisse fonte omnes prsssentis vitse arumnas, quas experientia innumeras esse ostendit. ASris intemperies, gelu, tonitrm, pluvise intempestivas, uredo, grandines et quicquid inordinatum est in mundo, peccati sunt fructus. Nee alia morborum prima est causa: idque poelicis fdbulis celebratum fuit : haud dubie quod per manus a patribus traditum esset. Unde illud Horatii : Post ignem wtherea domo Sviductum, macies et nova/ebrium Terris incuhuit cohors : Semotiipie prius tarda necessitas Lethi corripuit gradum. Sed Moses qui brevitaii studet, suo more pro communi vulgi captu attingere contentus fuit quod magis apparuit: ut sub exemplo uno discamus, liominisvitio inversum fuisse totum naturst. orrftVien!."— Calym. CHAP. III. 17-19. 105 to death, spread over the whole material world ; so that every- where on earth there were to be seen wild and rugged wastes, desolation and ruin, death and corruption, or /iaratori;? and n (xix. 32, 34), the Hfe-receiving one. This name was given by Adam to his wife, " because" as the writer explains with the historical fulfilment before his mind, " she be- came the mother of all living," i.e. because the continuance and life of his race were guaranteed to the man through the woman. God also displayed His mercy by clothing the two with coats of skin, i.e. the skins of beasts. The words, " God made coats," are not to be interpreted with such bare Hterality, as that God sewed the coats with His own fingers ; they merely affirm " that man's first clothing was the work of God, who gave the necessary directions and ability " (Delitssch). By this clothing, God imparted to the feeling of shame the visible sign of an awakened conscience, and to the consequent necessity for a cover- ing to the bodily nakedness, the higher work of a suitable disci- pline for the sinner. By selecting the skins of beasts for the clothing of the first men, and therefore causing the death or slaughter of beasts for that purpose. He showed them how they might use the sovereignty they possessed over the animals for their own good, and even sacrifice animal life for the preservation of human ; so that this act of God laid the foundation for the sacrifices, even if the first clothing did not' prefigure our ulti- mate " clothing upon " (2 Cor. v. 4), nor the coats of skins the robe of righteousness. — Vers. 22, 23. Clothed in this sign of mercy, the man was driven out of paradise, to bear the punish- ment of his sin. The words of Jehovah, " The man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil," contain no irony, as though man had exalted himself to a position of autonomy resembling CHAP. Ill, 20-24. 107 that of God ; for " irony at the expense of a wretched tempted sonl might well befit Satan, but not the Lord." Likeness to God is predicated only with regard to the knowledge of good and evil, in which the man really had become like God. In order that, after the germ of death had penetrated into his nature along with sin, he might not "take also of the tree of life, and eat and live for ever (''n contracted from ''^n = Pi^Hj as in chap. v. 5 ; 1 Sam. XX. 31), God sent him forth from the garden of JSden." With innpB'JI (sent him forth) the narrative passes over from the words to the actions of God. From the D| (also) it follows that the man had not yet eaten of the tree of life. Had he con- tinued in fellowship with God by obedience to the command of God, he might have eaten of , it, for he was created for eternal life. But after he had fallen through sin into the power of death, the fruit which- produced immortahty could only do him harm. For immortality in a state of sin is not the ^tor] aldvio^, which God designed for man, but endless misery, which the Scriptures call "the second death" (Rev. ii. 11, xx. 6, 14, xxi. 8). The expulsion from paradise, therefore, was a punish- ment inflicted for man's good, intended, while exposing him to temporal death, to preserve him from eternal death. To keep the approach to the tree of life, ■" God caused cherubim to dwell (to encamp) at the east (on the eastern side) of the garden, and the (i.e. with the) _;?a?we of the sword turning to and fro" (nasrinDj moving rapidly). The word 3113 cherub has no suitable etymo- logy in the Semitic, but is unquestionably derived from the same root as the Greek 7/3iji|r or <^pinrh, and has been handed down from the forefathers of our race, though the primary meaning can no longer be discovered. The cherubim, however, are crea- tures of a higher world, which are represented as surrounding the throne of God, both in the visions of Ezekiel (i. 22 sqq., X. 1) and the Eevelation of John (chap. iv. 6) ; not, however, as throne-bearers or throne-holders, or as forming the chariot of the throne, but as occupying the highest place as living beings (rii*n, ifaa) in the realm of spirits, standing by the side of God as the heavenly King when He comes to judgment, and proclaim- ing the majesty of the Judge of the world. In this character God stationed them on the eastern side of paradise, not " to in- habit the garden as the temporary representatives of man," but " to keep the way of the tree of life," i.e. to render it impossible 108 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. for man to return to paradise, and eat of the tree of life. Hence there appeared by their side the flame of a sword, apparently in constant motion, cutting hither and thither, representing the de- vouring fire of the divine wrath, and showing the cherubim to be ministers of judgment. With the expulsion of man from the garden of Eden, paradise itself vanished from the earth. God did not withdraw from the tree of life its supernatural power, nor did He destroy the garden before their eyes, hut simply prevented their return, to show that it should be pre- served until the time of the end, when sin should be rooted out by the judgment, and death abolished by the Conqueror of the serpent (1 Cor. xv. 26), and when upon the new earth the tree of life should flourish again in the heavenly Jerusalem, and bear fruit for the redeemed (Rev. xx. and xxi.). THE SONS or THE EIRST MAN. — CHAP. IV. I Vers. 1-8. The propagation of the human race did not corn- mence till after the expulsion from paradise. Generation in mar is an act of personal free-will, not a blind impulse of nature, and rests upon a moral self-determination. It flows from the divine institution of marriage, and is therefore knowing (JH*) the wife.- — ^At the birth of the first son Eve exclaimed with joy, "I have gotten (''n''3p) a man with Jehovah ;" wherefore the child received the name Cain (t)p from pp=n3i7, Kraadai). So far as the gram- mar is concerned, the expression nin^TiX might be rendered, as in apposition to Ei'S, " a man, the Lord" (Luther), but the sense would not allow it. For even if we could suppose the faith of Eve in the promised conqueror of the serpent to have been sufficiently alive for this, the promise of God had not given her the slightest reason to expect that the promised seed would be of divine nature, and might be Jehovah, so as to lead her to believe that she had given birth to Jehovah now. ns is a preposition in the sense of helpful association, as in chap. xxi. 20, xxxix. 2, 21, etc. That she sees in the birth of this son the commence- ment of the fulfilment of the promise, and thankfully acknow ledges the divine help in this display of mercy, is evident from the name Jehovah, the God of salvation. The use of this name IS significant. Although it cannot be supposed that Eve herself knew and uttered this name, since it was not till a later period CHAP. IV. 1-8. 109 that it was made known to man, and it really belongs to the Hebrew, which was not formed till after the division of tongues, yet it expresses the feeling of Eve on receiving this proof of the gracious help of God. — ^Ver. 2. But her joy was soon overcome by the discovery of the vanity of this earthly hfe. This is ex- pressed in the name Abel, which was given to the second son (bn, in pause ?3n, i.e. nothingness, vanity), whether it indicated generally a feeling of sorrow on account of his weakness, or was a prophetic presentiment of his untimely death. The occupation of the sons is noticed on account of what follows. " Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground." Adam had, no doubt, already commenced both occupations, and the sons selected each a different department. God Himself had pointed out both to Adam, — the tilling of the ground by the employment assigned him in Eden, which had to be changed into agriculture after his expulsion ; and the keeping of cattle in the clothing that He gave him (iii. 21). Moreover, agriculture can never be entirely separated from the rearing of cattle ; for a man not only requires food, but clothing, which is procured directly from the hides and wool of tame animals. In addition to this, sheep do not thrive without human protection and care, and therefore were probably associated with man from the very first. The different occupations of the brothers, therefore, are not to be regarded as a proof of the difference in their dispositions. This comes out first in the sacrifice, which they offered after a time to God, each one from the produce of his vocation. — " In process of time" (lit. at the end of days, i.e. after a considerable lapse of time : for this use of D''pj cf . chap. xl. 4 ; Num. ix. 2) Cain brought of the fruit of the ground a gift C^^p) to the Lord ; and Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and indeed (vav in an explanatory sense, vid. Ges. § 155, 1) of their fat," i.e. the fattest of the firstlings, and not merely the first good one that came to hand. C^'H are not \hQ fat portions of the animals, as in the Levitical law of sacrifice. This is evident from the fact, that the sacrifice was not connected with a sacrificial meal, and ani- mal food was not eaten at this time. That the usage of the Mosaic law cannot determine the meaning of this passage, is evi- dent from the word minchah, which is applied in Leviticus to bloodless sacrifices only, whereas it is used here in connection with Abel's sacrifice. " And Jehovah looked upon Abel and his 110 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. gift ; and upon Cam and his gift He did not look." ^ The look of Jehovah was in any case a visible sign of satisfaction. It is a common and ancient opinion that fire consumed Abel's sacrifice, and thus showed that it was graciously accepted. Theodotion explains the words by koi iveirvpurev 6 0eos. But whilst this explanation has the analogy of Lev. ix. 24 and Judg. vi. 21 in its favour, it does not suit the words, " upon Abel and his gift." The reason for the different reception of the two offerings was the state of mind towards God with which they were brought, and which manifested itself in the selection of the gifts. Not, indeed, in the fact that Abel brought a bleeding sacrifice and Cain a bloodless one ; for this difference arose from the differ- ence in their calhngs, and each necessarily took his gift from the produce of his own occupation. It was rather in the fact that Abel offered the fattest firstlings of his flock, the best that he could bring ; whilst Cain only brought a portion of the fruit of the ground, but not the first-fruits. By this choice Abel brought •jrXeLova dvcriav vapa Kalv, and manifested that disposition which is designated faith (TriWt?) in Heb. xi. 4. The nature of this disposition, however, can only be determined from the mean* ing of the offering itself. The sacrifices offered by Adam's sons, and that not in con- sequence of a divine command, but from the free impulse of their nature as determined by God, were the first sacrifices of the human race. The origin of sacrifice, therefore, is neither to be traced to a positive command, nor to be regarded as a human invention. To form an accurate conception of the idea which lies at the foundation of all sacrificial worship, we must bear in mind that the first sacrifices were offered after the fall, and therefore presupposed the spiritual separation of man from God, and were designed to satisfy the need of the heart for fellowship with God. This need existed in the case of Cain, as well as in that of Abel ; otherwise he would have offered no sacrifice at all, since there was no command to render it compulsory. Yet it was not the wish for forgiveness of sin which led Adam's sons to offer sacrifice ; for there is no mention of expiation, and the notion that Abel, by slaughtering the animal, confessed that he deserved death on account of sin, is transferred to this passage from the expiatory sacrifices of the Mosaic law. The offerings were expressive of gratitude to God, to whom they owed CHAP. IV. 1-8. Ill all that they had ; and were associated also with the desire to secure the divine favour and blessing, so that they are to be regarded not merely as thank-offerings, but as supplicatory sacri- fices, and as propitiatory also, in the wider sense of the word. In this the two offerings are alike. The reason why they were not equally acceptable to God is not to be sought, as Hofmann thinks, in the fact that Cain merely offered thanks " for the preservation of this present life," whereas Abel offered thanks " for the for- giveness of sins," or " for the sin-forgiving clothing received by man from the hand of God." To take the nourishment of the body literally and the clothing symbolically in this manner, is an arbitrary procedure, by which the Scriptures might be made to mean anything we chose. The reason is to be found rather in the fact, that Abel's thanks came from the depth of his heart, whilst Cain merely offered his to keep on good terms with God, — a difference that was manifested in the choice of the gifts, which each one brought from the produce of his occupation. This choice shows clearly " that it was the pious feeling, through which the worshipper put his heart as it were into the gift, which made the offering acceptable to God" {Oehler) ; that the essence of the sacrifice was not the presentation of a. gift to God, but that the offering was intended to shadow forth the dedication of the heart to God. At the same time, the desire of the wor- shipper, by the dedication of the best of his possessions to secure afresh the favour of God, contained the germ of that substitu- tionary meaning of sacrifice, which was afterwards expanded in connection with the deepening and heightening of the feeling of sin into a desire for forgiveness, and led to the development of the idea of expiatory sacrifice. — On account of the preference shown to Abel, " it burned Cain sore (the subject, ' wrath,' is wanting, as it frequently is in the case of nnn, cf . chap, xviii. 30, 32, xxxi. 36, etc.), and his countenance fell" (an indication of his discontent and anger : cf . Jer. iii. 12 ; Job xxix. 24). God warned him of giving way to this, and directed his attention to the cause and consequences of his wrath. " PF/iy art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallenV The answer to this is given in the further question, " Is there not, if thou art good, a lifting up''^ {sc. of the countenance) ? It is evident from the context, and the antithesis of falling and lifting up (isaj and XB'j), that Q''JS must be supplied after riKb. By this God gave him to 112 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. understand that his look was indicative of evil thoughts and in- tentions ; for the hfting up of the countenance, i.e. a free, open look, is the mark of a good conscience (Job xi. 15). " But if thou art not good, sin lieth before the door, and its desire is to thee (directed towards thee) ; but thou shouldst rule over it" The fem. riStsn is construed as a masculine, because, with evident allusion to the serpent, sin is personified as a wild beast, lurking at the door of the human heart, and eagerly desiring to devour his soul (1 Pet. v. 8). ^''tp'n, to make good, signifies here not good action, the performance of good in work and deed, but making the disposition good, i.e. directing the heart to what is good. Cain is to rule over the sin which is greedily desiring him, by giving up his wrath, not indeed that sin may cease to lurk for him, but that the lurking evil foe may obtain no entrance into his heart. There is no need to regard the sentence as in- teiTogative, "Wilt thou, indeed, be able to rule over it? " (Ewald), nor to deny the allusion in ia to the lurking sin, as Delitzsch does. The words do not command the suppression of an inward temptation, but resistance to the power of evil as pressing from without, by hearkening to the word which God addressed to Cain in person, and addresses to us through the Scriptures. There is nothing said here about God appearing visibly ; but this does not warrant us in interpreting either this or the following conversa- tion as a simple process that took place in the heart and con- science of Cain. It is evident from vers. 14 and 16 that God did not withdraw His personal presence and visible intercourse from men, as soon as He had expelled them from the garden of Eden. " God talks to Cain as to a wilful child, and draws out of him what is sleeping in his heart, and lurking like a wild beast before his door. And what He did to Cain He does to every one who will but observe his own heart, and listen to the voice of God" (Herder). But Cain paid no heed to the dime warning. Ver. 8. He " said to his brother Abel." What he said is not stated. We may either supply " it," viz. what God had Just said to him, which would be grammatically admissible, since 1?^? is sometimes followed by a simple accusative (xxii. 3, xliv. 16), and this accusative has to be supplied from the context (as in Ex. six. 25) ; or we may supply from what follows some such expressions as " let us go into the field," as the LXX., Sam., Jonathan, and others have done. This is also allowable, so that CHAP. IV. 9-15. 113 we need not imagine a gap in the text, but may explain tlie con- struction as in chap. iii. 22, 23, by supposing that the writer has- tened on to describe the carrying out of what was said, without stopping to set down the words themselves. This supposition is preferable to the former, since it is psychologically most improb- able that Cain should have related a warning to his brother which produced so little impression upon his own mind. In the field " Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him." Thus the sin of Adam had grown into fratricide in his son. The writer intentionally repeats again and again the words " his brother," to bring clearly out the horror of the sin. Cain was the first man who let sin reign in him ; he was " of the wicked one" (1 John iii. 12). In him the seed of the woman had already become the seed of the serpent ; and in his deed the real nature of the wicked one, as " a murderer from the beginning," had come openly to light : so that already there had sprung up that contrast of two distinct seeds within the human race, which runs through the entire history of humanity. Vers. 9-15., Defiance grows with sin, and punishment keeps pace with guilt. Adam and Eve fear before God, and acknow- ledge their sin; Cain boldly denies it, and in reply to the question, " Where is Abel thy brother?" declares, " I know not, am I my brother^ s keeper?" God therefore charges him with his crime : " What hast thou done ! voice of thy brother's blood crying to Me from the earth." The verb "crying" refers to the "blood," since this is the principal word, and the voice merely expresses the adverbial idea of "aloud," or "listen" (Ewald, § dlld). D''D'=j (drops of blood) is sometimes used to denote natural hemorrhage (Lev. xii. 4, 5, xx. 18) ; but is chiefly applied to blood shed un- naturally, i.e. to murder. " Innocent blood has no voice, it may be, that is discernible by human ears, but it has one that reaches God, as the cry of a wicked deed demanding vengeance" (Delitzsch). Murder is one of the sins that cry to heaven. " Primum ostendit Deus se de factis hominum cognoscere utcunque nullus queratur vel accuset ; deinde sibi m,agis charam esse homi- num vitam quam ut sanguinem innoxium impune effundi sinat , tertio curam sibi piorum esse non solum quamdiu vivunt sed etiam post mortem" (Calvin). Abel was the first of the saints, whose blood is precious in the sight of God (Ps. cxvi. 15) ; and by virtue of hi.s faith, he being dead yet speaketh through his blood 114 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES which cried unto God (Heb. xi. 4).— Vers. 11, 12. " And now (sc. because thou hast done this) be cursed from the earth." From : i.e. either away from the earth, driven forth so that it shall no longer afford a quiet resting-place {Gerlach, Delitzsch, etc.), or out of the earth, through its withdrawing its strength, and thus securing the fulfilment of perpetual wandering (Baum- garten, etc.). It is difficult to choose between the two; but the clause, " which hath opened her mouth" etc., seems rather to favour the latter. Because the earth has been compelled to drink innocent blood, it rebels against the murderer, and when he tUls it, withdraws its strength, so that the soil yields no pro- duce ; ]ust as the land of Canaan is said to have spued out the Canaanites, on account of their abominations (Lev. xviii. 28). In any case, the idea that " the soil, through drinking innocent blood, became an accomplice in the sin of murder," has no bibli- cal support, and is not confirmed by Isa. xxvi. 21 or Num. xxxr. 33. The suffering of irrational creatures through the sin of man is very different from their participating in his sin. " A fugi- tive and vagabond ("ijl W, i.e. banished and homeless) shalt thou be in the earth" Cain is so affected by this curse, that his ob- duracy is turned into despair. "My sin" he says in ver. 13, "is greater than can be borne." ilV XK'J signifies to take away and bear sin or guilt, and is used with reference both to God and man. God takes guilt away by forgiving it (Ex. xxxiv. 7); man carries it away and bears it, by enduring its punishment (cf. Num. V. 31). Luther, following the ancient versions, has adopted the first meaning ; but the context sustains the second : for Cain afterwards complains, not of the greatness of the sin, but only of the severity of the punishment. " Behold, Thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth, and from Thy face shall I be hid ; • • ■ and it shall come to pass that every one that findeth me shall slay me" The adamah, from the face of which the curse of Jehovah had driven Cain, was Eden (cf. ver. 16), where he had carried on his agricultural pursuits, and where God had revealed His face, i.e. His presence, to the men after their expulsion from the garden ; so that henceforth Cain had to wander about upon the wide world, homeless and far from the presence of God, and was afraid lest any one who found him might slay him. By "eiiery one that findeth me" we are not to understand omnis creatura, as though Cain had excited the Los- CHAP. IV. 16-24. 115 tility of all creatures, but every man ; not in the sense, however, of such as existed apart from the family of Adam, but such as were aware of his crime, and knew him to be a murderer. For Cain is evidently afraid of revenge on the part of relatives of the slain, that is to say, of descendants of Adam, who were either already in existence, or yet to be born. Though Adam might not at this time have had " many grandsons and great- grandsons," yet according to ver. 17 and chap. v. 4, he had un- doubtedly other children, who might increase in number, and sooner or later might avenge Abel's death. Eor, that blood shed demands blood in return, " is a principle of equity written in the heart of every man ; and that Cain should see the earth full of avengers is just like a murderer, who sees avenging spirits {'Epivvei;) ready to torture him on every hand." — ^Ver. 15. Although Cain expressed not penitence, but fear of punishment, God displayed His long-suffering and gave him the promise, " Therefore (13? not in the sense of t? N?, but because it was the case, and there was reason for his complaint) whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold." \\\> ^'p'^'^ is cas. ahsolut. as in chap. ix. &;. and Q|?n avenged, i.e. resented, punished, as Ex. xxi. 20, 21. The mark which God put upon Cain is not to be regarded as a mark upon his body, as the Eabbins and others supposed, but as a certain sign which protected him from vengeance, though of what kind it is impossible to deter- mine. God granted him continuance of life, not because banishment from the place of God's presence was the greatest possible punishment, or because the preservation of the human race required at that time that the lives of individuals should be spared, — for God afterwards destroyed the whole human race, with the exception of one family, — but partly because the tares were to grow with the wheat, and sin develop itself to its utmost extent, partly also because from the very first God determined to take punishment into His own hands, and protect human life from the passion and wilfulness of human vengeance. Vers. 16-24. The family of the Cainites. — ^Ver. 16. The' geographical situation of the land of Nod, in the front of Eden (nonj?, see chap. ii. 14), where Cain settled after his departure from the place or the land of the revealed presence of God (cf. Jonah i. 3), cannot be determined. The name Nod denotes a land of flight and banishment, in contrast with Eden, the land 116 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES. of delight, where Jehovah walked with men. There Cain knew his wife. The text assumes it as self-evident that she accom- panied him in his exile ; also, that she was a daughte"r of Adam, and consequently a sister of Cain. The marriage of brothers and sisters was inevitable in the case of the children of the first men, if the human race was actually to descend from a single pair, and may therefore be justified in the face of the Mosaic prohibition of such marriages, on the ground that the sons and daughters of Adam represented not merely the family but the genus, and that it was not till after the rise of several families that the bands of fraternal and conjugal love became distinct from one another, and assumed fixed and mutually exclusive forms, the violation of which is sin. (Comp. Lev. xviii.) His son he named Hanoch (consecration), because he regarded his birth as a pledge of the renovation of his life. For this reason he also gave the same name to the city which he built, inasmuch as its erection was another phase in the development of his family. The construction of a city by Cain will cease to surprise us, if we consider that at the commencement of its erection, centuries had already passed since the creation of man, and Cain's descend- ants may by this time have increased considerably in numbers; also, that T'J' does not necessarily presuppose a large town, but simply an enclosed space with fortified dwellings, in contradis- tinction to the isolated tents of shepherds ; and lastly, that the words np'3 in^i^ « he was building," merely indicate the com- mencement and progress of the building, but not its termination. It appears more surprising that Cain, who was to be a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth, should have established himself in the land of Nod. This cannot be fully explained, either on the ground that he carried on the pui'suits of agriculture, which lead to settled abodes, or that he strove against the curse. In addition to both the facts referred to, there is also the circum- stance, that the curse, " the ground shall not yield to thee her strength," was so mollified by the grace of God, that Oaia and his descendants were enabled to obtain sufficient food in the land of his settlement, though it was by dint of hard work and strenuous effort ; unless, indeed, we follow Zmilier and under- stand the curse, that he should be a fugitive upon the earth, as relating to his expulsion from Eden, and his removal ai incertum locum et opus, non addita ulla vel promissione vel mandato, sicut CHAP. IV. 16-24. 117 avis quae in liberp coelo incerta vagatur. The fact that Cain undertook the erection of a city, is also significant. Even if we do not regard this city as " the first foundation-stone of the kingdom of the world, in which the spirit of the beast bears sway," we cannot fail to detect the desire to neutralize the curse of banishment, and create for his family a point of unity, as a compensation for the loss of unity in fellowship with God, as well as the inclination of the family of Cain for that which was earthly. The powerful development of the worldly mind and of ungodliness among the Cainites was openly displayed in Lamech, in the sixth generation. Of the intermediate links, the names only are given. (On the use of the passive with the accusative of the object in the clause " to Hanocli was born (they bore) Irad," see Ges. § 143, 1.) Some of these names resemble those of the Sethite genealogy, viz. Irad and Jared, Mehujael and Mahalaleel, Methusael and Methuselah, also Cain and Cainan; and the names Enoch and Lamech occur in both families. But neither the recurrence of similar names, nor even of the same names, warrants the conclusion that the two genea- bgical tables are simply different forms of one primary legend. For the names, though similar in sound, are very different in meaning. Irad probably signifies the townsman, Jered, descent, or that which has descended; Mehujael, smitten of God, and Mahalaleel, praise of God ; Methusael, man of prayer, and Me- thuselah, man of the sword or of increase. The repetition of the two names Enoch and Lamech even loses all significance, when we consider the different places which they occupy in the re- spective lines, and observe also that in the case of these very names, the more precise descriptions which are given so thoroughly establish the difference of character in the two indi- viduals, as to preclude the possibility of their being the same, not to mention the fact, that in the later history the same names frequently occur in totally different families ; e.g. Korah in the families of Levi (Ex. vi. 21) and Esau (chap, xxxvi. 5) ; Hanoch in those of Eeuben (chap. xlvi. 9) and Midian (chap. xxv. 4) ; Kenaz in those of Judah (Num. xxxii. 12) and Esau (chap, xxxvi. 11). The identity and similarity of names can prove nothing more than that the two branches of the human race did not keep entirely apart from each other ; a fact established by then: subsequently intermarrying. — Lamech took two wives, and 118 THE FIRS r BOOK OF MOSES. thus was the first to prepare the way for polygamy, by which the ethical aspect of marriage, as ordained by God, was turned into the lust of the eye and lust of the flesh. The names of the women are indicative of sensual attractions : Adah, the adorned; and Zillali, either the shady or the tinkling. His three sons axe the authors of inventions which show how the mind and efforts of the Cainites were directed towards the beautifying and per- fecting of the earthly life. Jabal (probably — jebul, produce) became the father of such as dwelt in tents, i.e. of nomads who lived in tents and with their flocks, getting their living by a pastoral occupation, and possibly also introducing the use of animal food, in disregard of the divine command (Gen. i. 29), Jubal (sound), the father of all such as handle the iiarp and pipe, i.e. the inventors of stringed and wind instruments. 1^33 a guitar or harp; ^W the shepherd's reed or bagpipe. TubalrCain, " hammering all kinds of cutting things (the verb is to be con- strued as neuter) in brass and iron ; " the inventor therefore of all kinds of edge-tools for working in metals : so that Cain, from i'p to forge, is probably to be regarded as the surname which Tubal received on account of his inventions. The meaning of Tubal is obscure ; for the Persian Tupal, vcon-scoria, can throw no light upon it, as it must be a much later word. The allusion to the sister of Tubal-Gain is evidently to be attributed to her name, Naamah, the lovely, or graceful, since it reflects the worldly mind of the Cainites. In the arts, which owed their origin to Lamech's sons, this disposition reached its culminating point; and it appears in the form of pride and defiant arrogance in the song in which Lamech celebrates the inventions of Tubal-Cain ■ (vers. 23, 24) : "Adah and Zillah, hear my voice ; ye wives of Ijamech, hearken unto my speech : Men I slay for my wound, and young men for my stripes. For sevenfold is Cain avenged, and Lamech seven and seventy-fold." The perfect TiJ^n is expressive not of a deed accomplished, but of confident assurance (Ges. § 126, 4 ; Ewald, § 135c) ; and the suffixes in ''n^sn and ''51X8 are to be taken in a passive sense. The idea is this : whoever inflicts a wound or stripe on me, whether man or youth, I will put to death ; and for every injury done to my person, I will take ten times more vengeance than that with which God promised to avenge the murder of my ancestor Gain. In this song, which contains in its rhythm, its strophic arrangement oj j CHAP. IV. 25, 26. 119 the thoughts, and its poetic diction, the germ of the later poetry, we may detect " that Titanic arrogance, of which the Bible says that its power is its god (Hah. i. 11), and that it carries its god, viz. its sword, in its hand (Job xii. 6) " (Delitzsch). — Accord- ing to these accounts, the principal arts and manufactures were invented by the Cainites, and carried out in an ungodly spirit ; but they are not therefore to be attributed to the curse which rested upon the family. They have their roots rather in the mental powers with which man was endowed for the sovereignty and subjugation of the earth, but which, like all the other powers and tendencies of his nature, were pervaded by sin, and dese- crated in its service. Hence these inventions have become the common property of humanity, because they not only may pro- mote its intended development, but are to be applied and conse- crated to this purpose for the glory of God. Vers. 25, 26. The character of the ungodly family of Oainites was now fully developed in Lamech and his children. The history, therefore, turns from them, to indicate briefly the origin of the godly race. After Abel's death a third son was born to Adam, to whom his mother gave the name of Seth (ri&, from n^E?, a present participle, the appointed one, the compensa- tion) ; "for" she said, " God hath appointed me another seed (descendant) for Abel, because Cain slew him." The words " because Cain slew him " are not to be regarded as an explana- tory supplement, but as the words of Eve ; and 'a by virtue of the previous nnri is to be understood in the sense of '3 nnn. What Cain (human wickedness) took from her, that has Elohim (divine omnipotence) restored. Because of this antithesis she calls the giver Elohim instead of Jehovah, and not because her hopes had been sadly depressed by her painful experience in connection with the first-born. — Ver. 26. " To Seth, to him also (Nin ajj intensive, vid. Ges. § 121, 3) there was born a son, and he called his name Enosh." t^J^, from K'JSJ to be weak, faint, frail, designates man from his frail and mortal condition (Ps. viii. 4, xc. 3, ciii. 15, etc.). In this name, therefore, the feeling and knowledge of human weakness and frailty were expressed (the opposite of the pride and arrogance displayed by the Canaanitish family) ; and this feeling led to God, to that in- vocation of the name of Jehovah which commenced under Enos. nSp\ DB'3 Nil?, literally to call in (or by) the name of Jehovah, is 120 THE FIRST BOOK 0* MOSES. used for a solemn calling of the name of God. When applied to men, it denotes invocation (here and chap. xii. 8, xiii. 4, etc.); to God, calling out or proclaiming His name (Ex. xxxiii. 19, xxxiv. 5). The name of God signifies in general " the whole nature of God, by which He attests His personal presence in the relation into which He has entered with man, the divine self-manifestation, or the whole of that revealed side of the divine nature, which is turned towards man" (Oehler). We have here an account of the commencement of that worship of God which consists in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, or in the acknowledgment and celebration of the mercy and help of Jehovah. While the family of Cainites, by the erection of a city, and the invention and development of worldly arts and business, were laying the foundation for the kingdom of this world ; the family of the Sethites began, by united invocation of the name of the God of grace, to found and to erect the kingdom of God. II. THE HISTORY OF ADAM. Chap, v.-vi. 8. gbnekations from adam to noah. — chap. v. The origin of the human race and the general character of its development having been thus described, all that remained of importance to universal or sacred history, in connection with the progress of our race in the primeval age, was to record the order of the families (chap, v.) and the ultimate result of the course which they pursued (chap. vi. 1-8). — First of all, we have the genealogical table of Adam with the names of the first ten patriarchs, who were at the head of that seed of the woman by which the promise was preserved, viz. the posterity of the first pair through Seth, from Adam to the flood. We have also an account of the ages of these patriarchs before and after the birth of those sons in whom the line was continued ; so that the genealogy, which indicates the line of development, furnishes at the same time a chronology of the primeval age. In the genealogy of the Cainites no ages are given, since this family, as being accursed by God, had no future history. On the other hand, the family of Sethites, which acknowledged God, began from the time of Enos to call upon the name of the Lord, and CHAP. V. 121 was therefore preserved and sustained by God^ in order that under the training of mercy and judgment the human race might eventually attain to the great purpose of its creation. The genealogies of the primeval age, to quote the apt words of M. Baumgarten, are " memorials, which bear testimony quite as much to the faithfulness of God in fulfilling His promise, as to the faith and patience of the fathers themselves." This testi- mony is first placed in its true light by the numbers of the years. The historian gives not merely the age of each patriarch at the time of the birth of the first-born, by whom the line of succession was continued, but the number of years that he lived after that, and then the entire length of his life. Now if we add together the ages at the birth of the several first-born sons, and the hundred years between the birth of Shem and the fiood, we find that the duration of the first period in the world's history was 1656 years. We obtain a different result, however, from the numbers given by the LXX. and the Samaritan version, which differ in almost every instance from the Hebrew text, both in chap. v. and chap. xi. (from Shem to Terah), as will appear from the following table : — The Fathers lefore the Flood.— Cha,-^. v. Hebrew Text. Samaritan Text. Septuagint. a ^ II of birth (fi ion), Heb Text. d a 6 O 5 a .2 (D ^B oJ 6 Names. o .2 CD 'o *o 'o ■a o •o _© 3 "CO 1